I’m not a programmer. I understand the basics and can generally figure out the logic to a very short segment of code, but that’s it. So much for taking BASIC, FORTRAN and Pascal back in high school, and FORTRAN again in college.

I do code many of my own sites though. I’m pretty good with HTML, can cope with CSS, and can use PHP includes. I’d love to do more, although I’m certainly not intending on learning C++. I’ll leave that to others.

One thing I have learned is that you can struggle with any of these at times. That’s where forums to talk to other people who understand code is really helpful. I’ve learned that it can be a real bear at times to convince CSS to display properly across a sufficient range of browsers. That some HTML code is really ugly, and you can do it more simply other ways.

Understanding HTML and some CSS is something I would recommend as a minimum for anyone serious about running a website, and even more so for multiple websites. They aren’t that hard, and it’s nice to not have to pay a webmaster for every little change to your site. There are times that it’s worth it, but not so much for little stuff.