Forums » Smalltalk » AMA: Professional web developer & SEO specialist

Hello friends!

I'm a professional web developer working full time for a small local company that builds websites and does content and PR/marketing for local businesses. Feel free to ask away!

What is the single most important skill you use day to day?

Is there one you want to acquire?

Communication!! I have to communicate well with my boss, coworkers and the clients in order to get any project out on time and correctly, no matter what part of the job it involves. When things go wrong with the communication, everything else is affected dramatically.


I'm not sure! I'm mostly focused on improving my current skills and working through some disability related coping strategies to improve my daily workflow and minimize the impact work has on my mental and physical health. I'm always learning new things as I work on projects though, so I guess that's happening whether I want it to or not.

Hi Sanne!! Sorry, this is probably the most basic question. What programs do you use, and do you recommend them for a beginner?

That is a totally fair question!!

I work mostly with Wordpress as a content management system. It's rare for a website to have such a unique need that it needs to be built from the ground up (RPR is a custom website that needed to be built from the ground up by Kim, but most of our clients are just fairly standard businesses that don't need anything fancy ), so we don't really use any programs to write code in and deploy a website.

Instead we arrange a host for the server and domain, which often comes with a tool to install a CMS with. Then we add plugins to Wordpress with a site builder to create a website template, and then we populate it with content. In some cases we need to add code snippets or utilize/build more complex systems, but we always use plugins to make that happen. This is because plugins are maintained by their developers and get updated automatically every on a weekly basis to catch security issues.

I do write my own code on a regular basis, but it's supplemental in nature, and the majority of the writing happens in Notepad++ or Visual Studio Code. Other than that it's all management systems on the host or Wordpress.

Thank you for your answer I'll give both of those programs a try in future coding.

(And I agree, Wordpress is really amazing! I'm always so shocked and amazed to see what people are doing with it!)

I just want to butt in here and say, for beginners reading this thread, that this is true of big plugins with teams associated with them... But there are plenty that get updated once a year or less, and may be a simple enough that this is okay -- or badly written enough that it is SUPER NOT OKAY. So always check the reviews and rep of your plugins before installing.

Yes, definitely! We tend to rely on paid for plugins as a business, built by actual companies which do maintain and update their plugins for security because it's a big source of their income. But we always try to see if the plugin was updated sometime in the last 3-ish months and was tested for the current Wordpress version to verify if it's good to use, alongside reviews.

Hi I'm currently trying to learn to code with Python. I want to make a game website like a pet collection site similar to Chickensmoothie. Is Python going to help me get there? Is it even possible to learn to code and build a website without going to school for it? I have a ton of other questions but I will just start with these ones first.

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Building a website requires a base knowledge of HTML, CSS and probably also JavaScript at the bare minimum. To do a pet website you'd also need a database functionality like MySQL. It's possible to program the backend with Python, but it has a few disadvantages over other backend languages that may make it a poor choice for that particular project. I recommend comparing the advantages and disadvantages of Python versus a language like PHP and see which one suits the needs a project like that better.

The upside is that if you are fluent in Python, learning PHP should be a breeze.

Oh awesome and well I have barely started Python in all honesty but I have been learning HTML which I'm much further along in I switched to Python not long ago to try to learn it cuz I thought it was the only way to learn real coding 😅 I was unaware of PHP, CSS and MYSQL? Is there a way to learn those for free or cheap-ish? I do know Javascript though.

Just do some googling; there are hundreds and hundreds of tutorials on them. But CSS and MySql (or some other similar database) are going to be completely crucial to your goal.

Thanks x3