<h1>HTML, Squarespace, and WordPress</h1>

Technology is all around us, and yes, I know that’s an obvious statement, but a vast majority of business professionals don’t quite understand the language of technology; in other words, coding. If you don’t know much about Coding, you have come to the right place. Today, I’m going to walk you through my experience with HTML, Squarespace, and Word press and explain how becoming knowledgeable with the software can help you as a marketer.

HTML and Codeacademy

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a language for describing webpages using ordinary text, it is very simple to understand and will not give you the ability to program in a complex manner. Think of HTML as the beginner’s coding language, all HTML webpages are comprised of HTML tags that define the format and display of your webpage. If you want to learn how to utilize HTML, you can do so on Codeacademy. Codeacademy offers a 7-day free trial so users can test out its services, this is more than enough time to complete the course on HTML. The entirety of the course is about 7 hours and you get hands-on practice with the coding language. Codeacademy isn’t just for HTML though, it also gives you access to other coding languages like Python, CSS, JavaScript, etc.

To demonstrate how simple HTML is, I took screenshots as I went through the introduction of the course, so buckle up! Below, you can see that this section of the introduction focuses on line breaks, again, HTML focuses on the most basic form of coding so that you can easily format your website. As mentioned, the HTML tags are the tools that form your webpage. For example, to add a line break, all you have to do is add a tag introduction like <br>, the text that you want the line to break at, followed by a closing tag </br>. HTML runs off these tags, so if you miss an ending tag, or forget the forward slash, your code will not be processed correctly. This isn’t demonstrated in the code below, but it would look something like this: <br>is native to parts of northern Eurasia</br>. This would cause the text within the tag to drop down one line (line break), even if the previous line isn’t full.

Check out this second example that focuses on ordered lists. All the tags that you use in HTML are structured the same way, they allow you to create and format your webpage in a simple manner. While HTML is important, there are other ways marketers can create websites and webpages with ZERO coding experience!

Squarespace

If you are looking for a user-friendly website engine then look no further, Squarespace is one of the best! Squarespace offers users a wide variety of website templates that run smoothly and look amazing. The best part? No coding experience needed! This is quite different from Codeacademy and HTML, in Squarespace, you aren’t creating your entire website from scratch using code. Take a look below, in the box you can type in CSS code to change minor things to your Squarespace sites like fonts, colors, and backgrounds. However, Squarespace support recommends that you don’t modify the padding, margins, floats, images, and positioning because this can interfere with the default template code and negatively affect your site. Squarespace also provides several marketing tools to monitor site traffic like an analytics tab that measures unique visitors, visits, and pageviews and a marketing tab that offers SEO options and various promotional buttons that offer access to Facebook Pixel/Ads and Instagram. Again, if you want to create a blog or site for a small business, I recommend using Squarespace. It offers a variety of great templates, designs, and marketing functions to help you create your website.

WordPress

WordPress, like Squarespace, is a site that allows you to construct your webpage. Unlike Squarespace, WordPress enables you to create your site from scratch by adding various blocks; it is a bit more customizable. I created a mockup site on WordPress to demonstrate, I found that building your site on WordPress is quite similar to building one on HTML. As you can see, WordPress enables you to build your site in blocks-the various block options are image, paragraph, heading, gallery, list, quote, etc.- which are the basic HTML coding tag options. Rather than having to write your code, WordPress presents you with the option to add a pre-created block making it easier to use! Like Squarespace, there are also several templates you can choose from, but from my experience, the templates on Squarespace are more desirable and a bit simpler.

If you are debating between Squarespace and WordPress, keep a few things in mind:

1.    More than 34% of all websites are powered by WordPress, so utilizing this software will help you better understand the structure of 34% of websites. This will be very helpful in the workplace, especially if you are a digital marketing consultant.

2.    Squarespace is simple with a variety of beautiful design templates. Although these are not as customizable, they function well and are easy to use

3.    WordPress is open-source, so anyone can modify the source code. If you are extra savvy with coding, this offers an even greater range of customization options.

4.    Both WordPress and Squarespace make exporting and importing sites easy, so if you want to switch from WordPress to Squarespace or vice versa, you can do so easily.

You can Use all Three!

If you are a digital marketer but aren’t as comfortable with coding, I highly suggest you start a free trial at Codeacademy. Like I said before, you will have access to training programs on a variety of coding languages like HTML, Python, JavaScript, etc.

Once you are done learning, check out Squarespace and WordPress! These tools are widely used in website creation. If you are looking for a more customizable software, I recommend you start with WordPress, it is a bit more difficult to learn, but after your introduction with HTML or CSS (from Codeacademy), you should understand how to utilize WordPress. If you are okay with a template-oriented software, go with Squarespace, the templates are well made, and you still have some customization options.

That’s all for this week, join in next week for a brief guide on email marketing! Until then, happy marketing!