Tips | Rob Percival

Job Opportunities

January 13, 2016 / No Comments / Posted in: The Complete Web Developer Course, Tips

People who take The Complete Web Developer Course may think the only role available is to go into Web Development. Although the aim of the course is to teach people how to code, a Web Developer role can vary but there are other roles available to students who have an understanding of coding.

Technical Support Engineer

Technology companies normally have varieties of technical support roles such as 1^st line, 2^nd line and 3^rd line support. The first line support roles tend to be an entry level role which leads onto other things.

Web Hosting companies in particular have an interest in applicants that can demonstrate an understanding of internet technologies along with HTML and CSS skills. However, any company that provides an online presence or product tends to advertise for such roles. Just look at the job description from a job board below.

Sales Executive / Consultant

If you have an interest in sales and understand the web technologies and programming languages like HTML, CSS, MySQL etc and can talk to clients not only on a business level but on a technical level then you’ll have a huge advantage over the competition! People with a passion for sales and yet have a technical mind set are quite hard to come by.

Web Technology companies requires sales consultants to sell products from web hosting solutions to software solutions and on the higher scale web server infrastructure and technologies. On the higher scale for these roles do require experience in a related field. Have a look at one of the requirements from a web hosting company recruiting for sales consultants.

Account Manager

An account manager is essentially a sales agent who manages selected portfolios of client accounts. Their job is to grow the account and act as a point of contact for the client and their needs to the organisation of the service provided. Account managers tend to specialise in their specific fields can get involved with some support work as well. Have a look at a job requirement for an Account Manager for a Marketing Agency.

Web Developer

Creating websites and understanding the technologies behind them is a key skill much in demand. If you search job boards for the term “Web Developer” you’ll be amazed at the number of results and many of them require the skills taught on this course. Take a look at the advert below. If experience is limited then a junior role is a realistic opportunity

Freelance Web Developer

There’s nothing like working for yourself and the E-Book How To Earn $10,000 While Learning To Code which is available for FREE with any of the courses or can be purchased through Amazon, provides some great advice on how to achieve this. Freelance Web Developers have a great deal of freedom choosing their working hours as contract work is normally based on project work on a contract basis.

Most people like being their own boss as it means they get to decide what hours they work and have a good life / work balance. It does mean you have to apply or bid for the contracts yourself though. The E-Book How To Earn $10,000 While Learning To Code will provide hints and tips on how to source out work and gain experience.

Tak

Sales and marketing executive.
3rd degree black belt in Taekwon-Do.
Lives at the gym.
Enjoys burgers and cake.
Likes fast cars and lie-ins.

http://www.ecowebhosting.co.uk

How To Not Be Afraid of Coding….By A Non-Coder

November 5, 2015 / No Comments / Posted in: The Complete Web Developer Course, Tips

There are many success stories from students of The Complete Web Developer Course and one of them comes from Fred Spring who runs a daily satirical round-up of international news. He has written a piece about his experiences which other students may find useful. You can sign up to Fred’s newsletter at www.dailypnut.com to start your day with a laugh.

By Fred Spring, co-founder of The Daily Pnut

Like most people. I used to be terrified of anything to do with computers. Any tech issue and I would be on the phone with anyone to get them to help.

Then when we co-founded the Daily Pnut, a daily newsletter with a funny take on the world (sign-up here…people seem to like it), no one on the team knew anything about coding, and we didn’t have any money to go out and hire a developer. I decided to try it out.

I first started by Googling “how to learn coding”. Got about 900k different responses and still didn’t have a clue. I found most courses boring and I promptly forgot that I wanted to learn to code.

A few weeks later a Google ad popped up saying “The best coding course I’ve ever used.” (Google definitely spies on you). It was a video course made by a Brit (I’m a Brit so was re-assured). I tried, got hooked, and built a site within two weeks.

I’m still not a great coder but I can work out how to do stuff instead of shutting my laptop and running away whenever something goes wrong.

To non-coders, this is how you do it:

1. Learn:

Buy Rob Percival’s The Complete Web Developer Course on Udemy. Download all the videos offline. This is all you need to start and build your own stuff. He speaks “human” and is very responsive on forums if you have issues. Just watch the videos whenever you can and familiarize yourself with the language.

2. Supplement:

Download Codeacademy — do these on the side. It helps you get used to the more geeky language side of things and you don’t see the results immediately but helps you understand concepts.

3. Build:

Theme Forest is basically the Amazon of website templates. Find a theme that looks vaguely like the one you want. Buy it and play around with the code on it. If you have questions use the coding forum Stack Overflow and you get amazingly quick responses.

4. Stay motivated:

Work on specific problems so that you ensure you have a lot of quick wins early on (e.g. how do link Facebook to login or how do I put video on a site). Think in terms of what it will look like not the code itself.

5. KEEP LEARNING

Once you have an understanding of the basics and can code up a basic site you can then choose what you want to specialize in. You can then wade into the horrific world of “what language should I learn” forums.

Why It’s Good to Learn

In retrospect I see now that learning how to code isn’t just important if you want to start your own company, there are a whole host of other reasons to learn:

· Opportunities: Being familiar with coding opens increases the breadth of jobs you can apply to. You no longer run away when people talk about computers.

· Money: You have a hard skill which you can continually grow. You can do some mini-projects on the side. Also you can save money as you often get way over-charged by hiring developers even for small things.

· Satisfaction: You get to overcome that feeling of helplessness you have whenever you are faced with a technical task. You can also talk to engineers with a straight face.

· Kudos Your friends will ask you to help them with their sites. Very satisfying to help out them out where you can. Granted, I’m still not very good so my help is often not that extensive.

Happy coding (oh and don’t forget to sign up)!

Tak

Sales and marketing executive.
3rd degree black belt in Taekwon-Do.
Lives at the gym.
Enjoys burgers and cake.
Likes fast cars and lie-ins.

http://www.ecowebhosting.co.uk

A brief introduction to DNS

July 16, 2015 / No Comments / Posted in: Courses, Tips

Some technologies are technologies we take for granted. I remember my family were a little late to the game in getting connected to the internet, and it was only in 2003, when I was 14, that we actually got the internet at home.

Before that time, I essentially thought of the internet as being one technology, useful only for acquiring cheat codes for Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2 on PS1 and our dearly departed MSN Messenger.

As for how websites were loaded, it was just a given — you type in the address of a website and it loads. A website has an address, and that’s the end of it.

Of course, that’s not the end of it.

The internet of course is a collection of different technologies that work together to provide a worldwide electronic network, which can be used to send data for a whole host of other technologies, the most prevalent being the World Wide Web (serving websites over the HTTP protocol), e-mail and FTP.

There’s one technology that could easily be taken for granted, at least if you’ve not set up your own website before — DNS.

It’s the service that lets you load a website by typing a domain name into the address bar of your web browser.

It’s also the service that ensures that e-mails sent to your e-mail address are sent to the servers your mail provider has created your mailboxes on.

Students of the Complete Web Developer course and non-students alike, listen up. Here are the essential facts you need to know about DNS.

Andy Dunn

Andy Dunn is a web developing, photo taking, blog writing Wulfrunian based in Cambridge. He can generally be found on two wheels.

Block & Inline Elements: What they are and how to use them

June 18, 2015 / No Comments / Posted in: Courses, The Complete Web Developer Course, Tips

Your websites are all made up of inline and block elements. The Complete Web Developer Course tutorials show you how to use these elements, though this post talks about some of the differences between the types of element, and where you would use each type.

An element is defined in HTML tags. A paragraph is a HTML element that is opened with a  tag, and closed by a  tag.

Emphasised text is defined by the  and  tags surrounding the text to be emphasised (typically in italics).

Though both  and  elements are text elements, there is one key difference between them.

Paragraph elements are block elements, whereas emphasis elements are inline elements.

In this post, I’ll be looking at three of the most common element types you’ll need to use, where to use them, plus a few bonus types.

Andy Dunn

Andy Dunn is a web developing, photo taking, blog writing Wulfrunian based in Cambridge. He can generally be found on two wheels.

Upgrading Apps To Xcode 7: linker command failed with exit code 1

June 16, 2015 / 9 Comments / Posted in: The Complete iOS Developer Course, Tips, Uncategorized

While updating my iOS Developer Course to Xcode 7, I’ve found that when opening Xcode 6 apps in Xcode 7, even when going through the upgrader, I’m left with the error ‘linker command failed with exit code 1‘.

Fortunately, there is an easy fix. Just go to the project settings (click on the File Structure icon and then the app name, and then the Tests target), click Build Settings and then scroll down until you see Test Host (or type ‘host’ in the search box).

Then clear the contents of both the Debug and Release hosts, circled below. The app should then compile without any issues.

Hope that helps!

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