Coding

Digital Marketing: How knowing the Principles of Coding can save the day! (Html + CSS)

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Laptop sits on a white desk with coding on its screen.

Think coding is something that only belongs in The Matrix? Think again!

When you think of coding, you probably picture that famous blur of green numbers whizzing across a black background, or you might think of a hacker on TV breaking into the ‘FBI mainframe’ from a café around the corner. But coding is so much more, and so much less, than that! From simple instructions to format text to creating complex applications and programs, there are endless possibilities when it comes to the magic of coding. And, as part of your Level 3 Digital Marketer Apprenticeship, you’ll learn the very basics of how to code for websites to get you started!

So, what is coding?

Essentially, coding is the way we tell computers to perform certain tasks. These words you’re reading right now? They’ve been formatted using HTML. And this website? That’s been dressed up with CSS. These are the two coding languages that you’ll learn the basic principles of during your Level 3 Digital Marketer Apprenticeship. In the same way that other languages work, coding languages come with their own ‘rulebooks’. Using these rules, you can apply elements of the language to create specific outcomes. For example, using ‘tags’ in HTML, you can create bold text or italic. Similarly, in CSS, you can apply rules that mean all paragraphs are, for example, centred to the middle of the page instead of formatting this manually in HTML.

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HTML
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is used for creating Web pages. Originally, it was the only coding language used to create a web page and designs were often simple and awkward to format. Nowadays, it is still the standard markup language for creating Web pages, but it only describes the structure of the page and tells the browser how to display the content with basic formatting (such as headers and paragraphs). The design element of the webpage is taken care of by CSS.

CSS
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is what we use to ‘decorate’ the HTML structure. This is where colour and design come into play. The way CSS works is by creating sets of rules, e.g. to make all headers appear bold and blue. The further down the CSS code you go, the more specific your rules can be – lower down rules override higher up ones, hence the name ‘cascading’.

But why do I need to know coding?

For the most part, you won’t! You definitely won’t need to know how to hack into any mainframes (that can just be a hobby, if you want!). But understanding how to quickly format your website using basic coding can be essential to making your design stand out from the rest. You can create your own unique design, rather than working from a template, and will have an instant basic understanding of how websites are structured – something which hugely appeals to prospective employers.

Now, while you’re unlikely to need to build a website from scratch yourself as a Digital Marketer, being able to format your content using just your keyboard will save you heaps of time – time you can spend planning your next campaign or reviewing content performance. Plus, if something does go wrong with the website you’re working on, you’ll have a better chance of understanding the error and either fixing it yourself or communicating it with a team member if you have an understanding of the principles of coding. Not only that, but you’ll be able to impress clients by taking their website to the next level with smoother linking, and interactive elements (e.g. quizzes and forms).

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Take your digital marketing skills to the next level with a bootcamp on the Principles of Coding

If you’ve already learned the basics of HTML and CSS on your apprenticeship (or, you’re just excited to get started!), you can support those learnings with free classes on w3schools.com or via apps like SoloLearn (where you can learn even more languages!).

Conclusion

Learning the basics of coding in HTML and CSS is a great way to get yourself familiar with the structures of websites, and while you might not need to build a website from scratch for your job knowing what’s going on ‘under the hood’ will help you quickly fix problems and format blog posts using just your keyboard!

Web Protocols and Technologies – Digital Marketing Apprentice

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Web Protocols and Technologies - Digital Marketing Apprentice
Image courtesy of panumas nikhomkhai on Pexels, CC BY CC0 1.0

As part of your Digital Marketing Level 3 Apprenticeship, you will be required to complete a workshop revolving around a range of different coding languages. This includes a wide variety of other information including web protocols and technologies. If your new to coding there is a chance you may be learning from scratch; however in the workshops you will work alongside your fellow apprentices to complete different tasks. One of the most confusing elements of the workshop can be learning the different web protocols and technologies. That’s why today we are going to learn, what is web technology?

Before we start, let’s explore some possible career opportunities for coders: 

  • Computer Programmer
  • Website Developer
  • Stack Developer
  • Computer Systems Analysist
  • Network Administrator
  • Database Administrator 

What is Web Technology

Web technology refers to the way in which computers and devices communicate with each other using something called mark-up languages. Computers, unlike humans, communicate in code. These binary codes and commands are used allowing computers to process unimaginable amounts of information. Different protocols are used for different types of transfers, for example, watching or streaming movies will use a different protocol to email. 

  • TCP / IP – Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol

This is a suite of protocols which allows two computers to establish a connection. IP sets the rules for communication over the internet. 

  • HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol 

This is the protocol we use when surfing the internet. We can see ‘HTTP’ in the URL bar within our browser when typing an address. A TCP connection is opened between the browser on your computer and the web server which hosts the site. From here, requests and responses go between the two using HTTP. A HTTP 404 error is where the requested page does no longer exist on the web server. This could be as It has been deleted or the URL may have changed. 

  • HTTPS – Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure 

Much like HTTP however now traffic is encrypted using SSL encryption of Secured Sockets Layer for long. This allows for your sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, addresses and other financial information to be sent over a secure connection. The encryption takes place in plaintext, ran through cipher to create ciphertext. This ciphertext only makes sense to those who know the encryption type used. 

  • FTP – File Transfer Protocol 

This is a protocol used for the transfer of files over a network; this is how saving in remote locations work, such as the cloud. 

  • SMTP – Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

This is the protocol used to send email. When your email is sent, the simple mail transfer protocol allows the email to be sent to the server in the appropriate location. However, you do not receive mail this way. 

  • POP3 – Post Office Protocol v3

As SMTP is not used to receive emails, the Post Office Protocol v3 delivers the email to the device used to access the email on. 

  • IMAP4 – Internet Message Access Protocol v4 

This protocol is used to allow a device to access and view the email they want to look at. The email stays on the mail server. 

Domain and Web Hosting Services

A website host is an organisation which makes their own website available to the entire internet. Pages can be uploaded to the host, the host in turn ensures the website and content is always available. Cloud-based hosting is becoming more and more popular with websites being hosted within data centres across the world. Companies such as Wix.com, Squarespace, Shopify and Cloudflare all host websites. 

Screenshot of code
Image courtesy of Pixabay on Pexels, CC BY CC0 1.0

A domain name can be purchased more times than not from one of these sites, this will allow customers to find your website with your unique URL. This can later be linked to email services offering personalised business email addresses to employees. 

  • IP Addresses – Internet Protocol Address 

An IP address is required by all devices to connect to any network. This allows resources on the network such as the internet to be located. An IP address is a series of numbers that help identify a device on the network, this allows for information to be sent between devices. 

  • DNS – Domain Name System 

The purpose of the DNS is to translate website addresses into IP addresses. This allows us to work with networks and the internet in the manor we do searching for the domain rather than a long series of letters and numbers. 

Conclusion

Today, you have learned some basics on what web technology is read to prepare you for your workshop. However, there are a range of other areas covered within the Principles of Coding such as coding languages, hardware and the software development Lifecyle. In the meantime, be sure to check out W3 Schools to jump ahead with HTML, in their tutorial. 

Alternatively check out our blog, to find the latest posts on apprenticeships.

HTML Coding Basics – Digital Marketing Apprenticeship

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HTML Coding

Learn how HTML works for the DM3 apprentice

In the Digital Marketing Level 3 Apprenticeship, HTML is arguably the hardest assessment you will face, spending roughly 2 weeks in workshops learning coding from scratch.

You’ll work together with your fellow apprentices to create your own websites for you to practice with. The teacher will guide you through creating HTML files to explain the different tags, attributes, elements and more! Suddenly all that confusing code that you’ve never been able to understand will all make sense.

Coding can lead to all these jobs:

  • Software Application Developer 
  • Web Developer 
  • Database Administrator 
  • Software Quality Assurance Engineer 
  • Network Administrator 
  • Computer Systems Engineer 
  • Computer Systems Analyst 
  • Business Intelligence Analyst 

Let’s get coding!

HTML coding apprenticeship
Let’s get coding!

“Whether you want to uncover the secrets of the universe, or you just want to pursue a career in the 21st century, basic computer programming is an essential skill to learn.”

– Stephen Hawking – Theoretical Physicist

HTML – Headings

There are 6 HTML heading elements that start from 1, descending in size and importance. In HTML their syntax looks like this:

<h1>Heading 1</h1>
<h2>Heading 2</h2>
<h3>Heading 3</h3>
<h4>Heading 4</h4>
<h5>Heading 5</h5>
<h6>Heading 6</h6>

When rendered by the browser the tags look like this:

Heading HTML example

Rules of using Heading tags:

It’s very important to remember that each heading tag has a specific meaning when it comes to the structure of the HTML page. Search Engine Optimisation can be greatly affected by improper use of heading tags.

If you use <h3> to describe your main heading the browser won’t recognise that this is the most important heading. Remember to stay in order. <h1> then <h2> then <h3>, if you starting a paragraph after <h2> then you can use <h2> again if this is your desire. Only use one <h1> per page, this allows the browser to only need focus on one main heading. Avoid nesting headings too far into your code as the browser may miss them.

HTML – Paragraphs

These elements are used to display a block of text. In HTML its syntax looks like this:

<p>  This is a block of text! Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit.
</p>

The paragraph tag is used to help screen readers to find the text it needs to read. That’s why the alternative text on images is so important, so someone who is say blind can still understand what is happening on screen. Making the internet assessable for all.

HTML – Comments

Sometimes when dealing with HTML you’ll want to edit or remove code. Maybe because it’s not working correctly or you want, for example, a form to be hidden for the time being. Using comments to stop syntax from being read is the best way to do this. This is how you use it:

<!– Comments go between these tags. –>

HTML – Tags

Now you’ve seen some examples of HTML syntax it’s time to discuss the rules of tags, using <p> to explain. When writing syntax most tags have two parts a start tag and an end tag.

<p>Content</p>

The end tag includes the / to show that the instructions are over. When wanting to nest tags within tags, for example, making the text bold there is a correct order that the tags need to be in.

<p><strong>Content</strong></p>

If you don’t write them in order the browser simply won’t render them or you’ll have a confusing mess of symbols!

Sometimes you only want to make one work in your text bold:

<p>More<strong>important</strong>content</p>=More important content

This can get more and more complicated the more you add to the code so make sure to stagger the code in the HTML file so you can read it easier, kind of like how you’d order a list.

Here are some more tags for you to check out

Overview

These are just a few things that you will touch upon during the Principles of Coding (for level 3 Digital Marketer Apprenticeship). But sure to use Codecademy to get a head start there are loads of free resources you can use. If you really enjoyed learning about code and aren’t already doing Digital Marketing Level 3 find out more here

Principles of Coding: Level 3

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Course Description and Objectives

The course will give to the apprentices the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the principles of coding. There are mainly 4 areas the apprentices will get an understanding on:

  • Appreciation of logic
  • Software languages
  • Code compatibility on different platforms
  • Components involved to make the Web work

Here below you can find some additional information about the 4 areas covered in the Principle of Coding course:

  • Appreciation of Logic:
    • Useful to understand the basics of logic and logic gates such as and- or- not.
  • Programming languages:
    • Hypertext markup language (HTML), Javascript (JS), Java.
  • Interaction and compatibility of code on different platforms:
    • How to identify LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) and XAMPP (Apache, MariaDB, PHP, Perl) Stacks
    • How to share different files formats across different platforms: PDF, HTML, Images (GIF, JPG, PNG), Video (Mpeg), Audio (Mp3)
    • How to create and protect feeds (using API keys).
  • Web components:
    • Define the terminology for Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), Transport Layer Security and Secure Sockets layer (TLS/ SSL)
    • Discuss the scope of web and application server, hosting, database management system and content management systems.
    • Describe Search engines functions in regards to mark up languages, crawlers and search engine optimisation (SEO).
    • Define how cookies work and when are needed.
    • Roles of 2 key goernance groups: World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

Course Format, Duration and Examination

There are no specific pre-requisites to start the course. Therefore all the apprentices need to attend the full course in order to pass the exam and get the coding qualification. The estimated total qualification time is 50 hours.

The format for the exam is a one-hour multiple-choice examination consisting of 20 questions. No materials are allowed during the exam as it is a closed book one and the minimum required to pass the exam is 13/20 (65%).

My experience

I found it incredibly useful and I would recommend it to everyone. Before starting the course, I didn’t have any type of understanding of coding but I attended all the lessons, studied every day the material shared from the teacher and obtained my qualification.

I would recommend all the apprentices to follow carefully all the lessons, to do all the activities step by step and to ask as many questions as possible to the teacher. I found the teacher well prepared, keen on helping all the attendees and open to all the questions.

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Conclusion

If you are interested in starting a career in Digital Marketing, broadening your knowledge in the principles of coding and obtaining a coding qualification this course is a fundamental pillar. The Level 3 Award in Principles of Coding will give you the opportunity to pursue a career as a web developer, database administrator, computer programmer and computer system analyst just to name some.

If you want to have a better understanding of the course you can read the Full course brochure.