If you’ve ever launched your own website in the past, there’s a good likelihood that you did the whole thing without using so much as a scrap of HTML code.
After all, why would you when there’s far more easier options available to you at very low cost.
Forgetting for a moment that you could always go out and pay a professional, qualified web developer to do the hard work for you, even if you decided to go it alone there’s still a number of ways you could do it without staring at reams of mind-numbing coding.
You may have used a drag-and-drop website creator such as Wix or Weebly, or even used the one-click installation tools your web hosting company provides for platforms like WordPress or Magento.
Either way, you’re thinking of taking the very same approach when it comes to your latest online adventure, but have you ever stopped to consider that there might be a few benefits in store if you did possess even rudimentary coding skills?
Not sure why?
We asked our experts to provide us with just a few reasons why it pays to learn website coding before starting your new website.
Take greater control over your new website
Using a web hosting comparison site, it’s easy to see which plans come with all those free, easy-to-use tools that make setting up your site a breeze.
Yet even the most powerful and dynamic of these can only allow you to do so much, as many back-end functions and features are hidden behind those admittedly attractive user-interfaces and drag-and-drop panels.
So when you want complete control over every aspect of your website, and the freedom to customize even the most minor of details, often the only way to do it is to delve into that behind-the-scenes code and do it manually.
As such, even having just a basic grasp of web coding can help you really take the design and functionality of your website to a whole new level.
Save time and costs when things go wrong
You can test and tweak your website to your heart’s content, have everything looking just perfect, and yet still find that after all those countless page revisions you’ve been carrying out, something’s gone wrong somewhere.
Perhaps it’s a simple case of a logo that just won’t align the way you want it to or something more serious like your entire eCommerce store screwing up and costing you money.
Whatever the problem, it again may well involve going deep into the hard code of your site to fix it.
Don’t know how to do that?
You’ll either need a lot of time on your hands to figure it out, or else spend even more money on hiring outside help.
Learn a bit of coding first, and you’ll have a much easier time of things when it comes to fixing those critical -and even those not-so-critical- issues.
Develop a new skill
Last but not least, it never hurts to develop a new set of skills, does it?
If you’re the kind of person that loves learning new things, there’s nothing more rewarding than taking on the challenge of using many of the countless free coding tutorial sites out there to learn how to do the kind of things the professionals spent years in school for.
Even if you’re not so inclined, you never know when that new skillset may come in handy either for developing future projects, helping out a friend or, if you find yourself as fascinated as we are by coding, even taking on a whole new change in career.
Besides, what’ve you really got to lose?
Will you be learning HTML and other coding languages before starting your website or do you prefer to leave that to the experts? Join in the debate on the Web Design DIY Facebook page or get in touch with us @WebDesignDIY on Twitter.
