Coding, a necessity for serious IMers?

Have you guys ever thought about learning to code so that you have more flexibility and don't have to rely on other people and risk not getting exactly what you want, or not having to hire people for the most minor of changes?

Or perhaps even to work with APIs, create simple bots etc, and don't want to tell others your secrets just so they can code it?

I'm currently working on a few authority sites and I'm really limited by the nonexistant inbuilt flexibility provided by wordpress. I need Pages which list posts from a specific category in them and well, I can't do that. You can't put widgets in the middle of pages. Plus, I want to implement Schema, and while I can work with it myself, the writers I hired for this site will find it difficult to implement it manually and I won't have the time to add that quantity of content myself. Plus, the inbuilt editor removes the schema out of your posts/pages if using the Visual mode, which is what I think they will prefer using.

Sucks aye?

So I was planning on learning wordpress completely, properly. Become a wordpress rockstar, so to say. I'll learn how to make templates in Bootstrap, and convert those html templates to wordpress themes, so that I can have a lot more flexibility with the authority sites that I create. Plus, learn PHP and creating plugins and be able to completely hack wordpress.

I do have a minor background in coding however, and was planning on learning Python and Django soon.
So I'm a bit confused.

Should I learn Bootstrap+HTML->Wordpress conversion, or learn Python+Django first and use that? =/
What do you guys do for your authority websites? I don't like blog-style websites for my auth sites, I like pages and deeplinking, but that doesn't work the way I'd like it to work.

Wow. Check this:
http://bootswatch.com/
http://bootstrapwp.rachelbaker.me/
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widgets-on-pages/

Personally I just know the very basics of HTML/PHP, so that it's relatively easy for me to customize my WordPresses under the hood, but otherwise I have found no need for any serious coding. Sure it can be helpful depending on what you're aiming to do, but not really a requirement to be a "serious" IMer.

+Oukast
I know some PHP, HTML, CSS and a bit ot javascript, mysql etc, but I never ,like, learned these things. Once I need something done, I google for my problem or some similar problem and find a good peace of code. Than I adjust the code for my specific needs, because I have understanding on how it works , but I could never programm anything from scratch without the help of Google. Not talking about HTML/CSS, these are basics I believe any IMer should know.

So what Im saying is that you should understand how programming works, because at the end of it all, I see all major languages pretty similar when it comes to simply adjusting, not coding from scratch.

HTML/CSS is different. You should freely do it.

Oukast said:

Personally I just know the very basics of HTML/PHP, so that it's relatively easy for me to customize my WordPresses under the hood, but otherwise I have found no need for any serious coding. Sure it can be helpful depending on what you're aiming to do, but not really a requirement to be a "serious" IMer.

Click to expand...

I know the basics of HTML,CSS, PHP, JS as well, and have made templates purely in html, and modified several scripts to suit my requirements, but they're more of a workaround rather than a robust solution for what I need.

What I meant was basically being able to customize things to your needs yourself rather than passing it on to a designer who might or might not do it as you like.

Plus, when you want to implement schema, what you currently have in wordpress doesn't really work, which is basically my reason for creating this thread

Thanks for the input guys.
I talked to a couple of people and apparently Django is a backend framework, not frontend, so I guess I'll be learning to use bootstrap either way.
These might come in handy for you guys as well:
http://bootswatch.com/
https://wrapbootstrap.com/
http://bootstrapwp.rachelbaker.me/

Z0mbie said:

I know the basics of HTML,CSS, PHP, JS as well, and have made templates purely in html, and modified several scripts to suit my requirements, but they're more of a workaround rather than a robust solution for what I need.

Click to expand...

What I meant was basically being able to customize things to your needs yourself rather than passing it on to a designer who might or might not do it as you like.

Click to expand...

To some extent these two are the very same. But sure, I agree that if you really have the need to actually create something from scratch, then you either need to do it yourself, or pay someone else to do it. But then again, how often that happens in your own "IM roadmap"? If it's just a one time thing (maybe just few), then it might be just better not to spend the time with learning the coding itself, but just pay someone who already knows how to do it.

But coding knowledge or experience is not by any means a requirement to succeed in IM.

Oukast said:

To some extent these two are the very same. But sure, I agree that if you really have the need to actually create something from scratch, then you either need to do it yourself, or pay someone else to do it. But then again, how often that happens in your own "IM roadmap"? If it's just a one time thing (maybe just few), then it might be just better not to spend the time with learning the coding itself, but just pay someone who already knows how to do it.

But coding knowledge or experience is not by any means a requirement to succeed in IM.

Click to expand...

I see what you mean. However when you do a lot of split testing, trying out new features etc. then it becomes cheaper to either hire a inhouse coder/designer or doing it yourself rather than outsourcing it all the time. It doesn't help that I'm a very secretive kind of person as well.

I in no way tried to imply that coding knowledge or experience is a requirement to succeed in IM, but generally because IM is such a vast term. For some kind of projects, for example what zen19's journey thread is about, coding knowledge is essential. But if you're selling products, you can just pick up something like Drupal, Magento etc. and learn that, or pay someone to customize it, which would be a one-time thing.

It's the same with SEO. I'm sure you know as well how overpriced purchasing SEO services is.

I've been very limited in the types of sites I've been able to create so far mostly because of lack of understanding of wordpress, and I'm planning on changing that because it's just getting frustrating and I don't like subpar work.

Thank you for your inputs. I'm going to hire a coder for this particular website and start learning it myself starting today

I didn't read the whole post but in my humble opinion, YES.

Not that you can't make any money w/o any technical skills but having those skills helps BIG TIME... (yeah thats caps + bold + big font).

I have done the complete opposite thing. I got into IM a couple of years back and still learning the basics as you can say, but I started coding way back in 2004. From my experience, knowing the languages really helps you with your IM career and it does save a lot of your precious money too...

EDIT:
If you seriously want to learn coding, start with C. Your logic sense would be much better than others if you start with that. DBMS is also a field that you should consider learning.

g0g0l said:

I have done the complete opposite thing. I got into IM a couple of years back and still learning the basics as you can say, but I started coding way back in 2004. From my experience, knowing the languages really helps you with your IM career and it does save a lot of your precious money too...

EDIT:
If you seriously want to learn coding, start with C. Your logic sense would be much better than others if you start with that. DBMS is also a field that you should consider learning.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the suggestions. I started out with Java and also know the basics of C. Python is next on my list which I plan on properly finishing.
I also know the basics of DBMS and plan on learning it properly next year.

Z0mbie said:

Thanks for the suggestions. I started out with Java and also know the basics of C. Python is next on my list which I plan on properly finishing.
I also know the basics of DBMS and plan on learning it properly next year.

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Well my friend, then you are heading towards the right direction ;-)

No, we are entrepreneurs, forgot? At first you will do everything yourself, then you just hire someone full time and he will do marketing, coding, everything you need, you're just the owner.

Z0mbie said:

Thanks for the suggestions. I started out with Java and also know the basics of C. Python is next on my list which I plan on properly finishing.
I also know the basics of DBMS and plan on learning it properly next year.

Click to expand...

C is not important, it is an outdated intermediary language. Python is a good language to start with if you want to expand to a more different high-level language, such as C++. However, if you aren't going to be implementing it, I would suggest sticking with HTML and learning PHP. With those two web scripting languages under your belt, you can build your own high-powered CMS like Wordpress from scratch fairly easily.

If you decide you DEFINITELY want to learn Python, I suggest also moving from Python to C++. With C++ you can create your own SEO software (and possibly sell it), create web apps using the .NET Framework with .asp embedding, etc.

Lehsyrus said:

C is not important, it is an outdated intermediary language. Python is a good language to start with if you want to expand to a more different high-level language, such as C++. However, if you aren't going to be implementing it, I would suggest sticking with HTML and learning PHP. With those two web scripting languages under your belt, you can build your own high-powered CMS like Wordpress from scratch fairly easily.

If you decide you DEFINITELY want to learn Python, I suggest also moving from Python to C++. With C++ you can create your own SEO software (and possibly sell it), create web apps using the .NET Framework with .asp embedding, etc.

Click to expand...

I agree with your opinion of C. However C++ is not as great as you say.

I've researched python and it is both a scripting language(like php) and can make softwares.
The softwares uberBlogCreator is also coded in Python.

Python seems like a all-around solution for webdev and for making softwares, and frankly, seems quite powerful after seeing some code snippets. The amount of work you can get done/line is much more than Java or C++ and the readability is great.
C++ is just too much work compared to Python for the same amount of work. But then, each language has their positive and negative points and I'm sure python has them too.
Take a look at this, you'll love this: http://hammerprinciple.com/therighttool

EDIT:http://hammerprinciple.com/therighttool/items/python/c-2

Forget Python, Python is shit.

Learn C# if you want to make bots. For websites learn PHP,HTML,JS.
If you will need more, you will be able to learn.

Every time I've had a major problem in IM it involved coding, so YEAH.
And most of all site coding - proficiency in site platforms (mainly WP) is a must for serious people.
If you can't make your site idea materialized - how are you gonna make money?

ADHD-Dude said:

Forget Python, Python is shit.

Learn C# if you want to make bots. For websites learn PHP,HTML,JS.
If you will need more, you will be able to learn.

Click to expand...

Are you speaking from experience or hearsay? Why do you say that?

In my opinion, you don't need to know coding, you just need money to make money. If you know how to make money then you can outsource what needs to be done to someone who specializes in coding and all that. Lets remember, coding does not = a payday. I know some great programmers yet, they still don't have either the knowledge to make money because their market perspective on what or how to sell something could be different or they're lazy.

Long story shirt, no i don't think it's a necessity just because you can outsource everything.

I think having at least intermediate knowledge of HTML/php definitely helps, has helped me on many occasions. By the way, schema would be on my list as well. I just never felt the need to implement it so far.