Is it Necessary to Learn Coding?
As asked by Jules Letona…
Hello,
Great site! My name is Jules, I’m 23 yrs old. It would be great to become a webmaster my self. I have a very small hat per every responsibility you mention on Becoming a Webmaster Part 2. However, I have a basic knowledge of HTML and JavaScript. I was wondering in this day and age, is it necessary to learn the coding? I don’t know if I should continue to focus on HTML, JavaScript, DHTML, yadda etc, etc. or simply just focus on some type of code editor that will do all the coding for me.
Thank you for your time.
Jules,
Thanks for the kind remarks :)
You bring up a great question and an issue that I have struggled with along my webmaster journey. At one point in time, I felt sure that I was going to be spending a lot of my time writing code from scratch to develop new and exciting web applications to make the world a better place. As my webmaster skills progressed, it soon became clear that there were a lot of other developers out there who were better, faster and enjoyed solving coding problems more than I.
After learning a few things about myself, that I was more wired for right-brained creativity than left-brained analytics, I pursued other webmasterly skills that interested me. For one thing, I enjoyed writing so I researched and wrote a lot of content. I published the content on Clickfire and began watching my server logs to see what people were searching for and how they were arriving on my pages. It wasn’t long before I realized through tweaking the pages and links, I could influence the types and numbers of visitors arriving at my site from search engines. Many years later, I found myself doing SEO for large corporations.
So, my answer is to be guided by what really inspires you. Maybe the aspect of webmastering that excites you is not writing code but doing graphics, servers, domains, blogging or just a zeal to make money online. Dive into something and see where it takes you. You don’t have to learn all the coding languages out there. I do think that it is important to have a firm grasp of HTML. Editors are just fine as long as you are paying attention to the code. Knowing HTML will serve you well in whatever direction you take.
Let me know how things develop for you!
Best of luck,
Emory Rowland
August 5th, 2007 at 11:26 am
If you don’t want full time employment as a web master, there is no reason to learn code. You don’t need to learn it if you run your own website. If you want to be employed as a webmaster, a quick look at monster.com will show you that most companies want some combination of javascript, visualbasic, PHP or ASP, and other coding skills. Also, you will probably need to be familiar with SQL, as most commercial websites rely on backend connectivity to a database, and you have to be competant to manage this connectivity.
August 5th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
Great point, Jeff. Full and part time are important distinctions.
August 21st, 2007 at 4:00 pm
I don’t feel its essential, because you can always outsource your programming to somebody or give it to an employee. But it does have its benefits… with a good book, you can pick up PHP in about a couple of days. Once you know your way around PHP, you can save a lot of time and money doing basic tasks like forms and simple databases to build sites faster. In addition, you can also double-check outsourced work, and fix bugs without spending more time and money for updates.
February 6th, 2008 at 2:52 am
Hi,
I spend a lot of time on the internet. I used to make fun of people who were computer nerds. Now everyone I know are making fun of me, for always being on the computer. I think I am a webmaster in the making. I have learned a great deal just from researching and studying online. I have an excellent knowledge of the world wide web. Am I a webmaster or webmastress? :)
February 6th, 2008 at 11:33 pm
My experience is very similar. I used to be intimidated by computers but now I have become a geek as well. I have read that the feminine form of webmaster is supposed to be “webmistress” but I consider “webmaster” to be generic and include both male and female. What term do you prefer?