DEV Community: Andy Stitt

As a web developer, people are more important than code

Andy Stitt — Fri, 23 Apr 2021 15:16:18 +0000

You have to be able to write code in order to be a web developer. However, all websites and digital solutions are developed for people by people, so developing people-centered skills will serve you far better than focusing on code alone.

This isn't an introvert vs. extrovert question, and I don't think either one has an advantage over the other. It is about the following:

Think about the people you are serving

There are three groups of people you are serving:

The website visitors

The people who are visiting your website need to have a good experience in order to accomplish their goals. These people have varying abilities, world views, and ways of interacting with your website.

Choose technology and a development style that makes it as easy as possible to build a website that is usable and accessible to as many people as possible.

The people who are maintaining the website

If you're a developer and content manager, then it might not matter as much. However, if you have non-developers managing content on the website, then you need to choose technology and build it in a way that makes it as easy as possible for them to do their jobs.

The people who you are building the website for

Sometimes this coincides with the people who are maintaining the website, and sometimes it doesn't. Either way, you are building the website to help solve a problem for people, and choosing the technology and how you build it affects how well you can solve their problems.

Think about your team

If you're a solo developer, then choosing the technology you're most comfortable with is usually the go-to solution. Unless there's a technology that you don't know as well but the client will pay you to learn it and implement it because it solves their problem.

If you're working as part of a team, think about:

The skills of the people on your team

Do they specialize in certain languages and systems? Might you need to subcontract out some work to another developer or company? It could be that the perfect solution to your client's problem is a system that you and your team are not familiar with, so subcontracting work could come in handy.

How you work as a team

If you specialize in certain languages and systems, what tools do you use to collaborate? Do you use a specific version control system? Project management? Communication?

Do you have certain coding standards so that everyone is on the same page and all code has a similar style, making it more readable and maintainable across the board?

Technology is used to solve problems for people

It's incredibly easy to get caught up in which programming languages you should learn. There's so much chatter, especially on Twitter, about which languages are "best" and what a developer needs to know.

At the end of the day, solving problems for people is your job, and choosing the best technology for the job for your unique set of circumstances and people involved is the name of the game.

All programming languages, stacks, and content management systems are tools to get the job done. Choose which one works best for your problem. For your people.

Using the WordPress in_category() function

Andy Stitt — Thu, 15 Apr 2021 12:28:26 +0000

My biggest project at work is the Delaware COVID-19 information website. It is built in WordPress.

I recently had a problem to solve where I wanted alert boxes to automatically display in the language that the page was translated into. We have pages in the three most spoken languages in Delaware: English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole.

I decided to approach it by assigning specific categories to the Spanish and Haitian Creole pages. I was then able to use the WordPress in_category() function to identify which categories that page belonged to.

This applied to single pages, so in page.php, my code looked something like this:

<?php
   if(in_category('spanish')) {
      include 'includes/spanish-file.php';
   } elseif(in_category('haitian-creole')) {
      include 'includes/haitian-creole-file.php';
   } else {
      include 'english-file.php';
   }
?>

This if statement first looks to see if the category assigned to the page is "spanish", and if it is, then the PHP include function displays the content within spanish-file.php.

If the category is not "spanish", then it looks to see if it is "haitian-creole", and if it is, then it displays the contents of haitian-creole-file.php.

If the category doesn't match either of those, then it displays english-file.php.

The majority of pages on the website are in English, so I didn't feel the need to assign an English category and simply included it in the "else" condition for all pages that had neither "spanish" or "haitian-creole" assigned to it.

I wrote this function in the page.php file. I'm sure there are arguments against doing that. If you wanted to, you could also define it as a function in the functions.php file and then call the function in page.php. If you did it that way, it would look something like this:

In functions.php:

<?php
   function multi_language_page_files() {
      if(in_category('spanish')) {
         include 'includes/spanish-file.php';
      } elseif(in_category('haitian-creole')) {
         include 'includes/haitian-creole-file.php';
      } else {
         include 'english-file.php';
      }
   }

No closing PHP ?> tag needed in the functions.php file.

Then, you would call the function in page.php:

<?php multi_language_page_files() ?>

I hope this helps. I was not previously aware of the in_category() function before I found it yesterday. It is extremely helpful in this case!

How to learn web development and level up using WordPress

Andy Stitt — Sun, 21 Feb 2021 17:32:26 +0000

If you're just starting in your web development journey, it can be extremely intimidating. There are so many options as far as programming languages to learn, areas of focus (front-end, back-end, databases), etc.

I would like to introduce you to the WordPress path. I offer it to you as an option. If it resonates with you and could be right for you, then great. I don't want to present this as "the only option" or "the best option". Your journey is still yours, and you should trust your instincts above all else.

WordPress meets you where you're at

WordPress is flexible enough that you can build websites with it in any number of ways.

If you're super early in your journey

If you're just starting to get comfortable with coding basics, or even if you're not yet comfortable with it, you can still build WordPress websites. There are drag-and-drop page builders that you can use to create beautiful layouts without writing a line of code.

Beaver Builder and Elementor are my favorite ones because of ease of use and they are built using solid WordPress and web development practices.

You can use those page builders to make beautiful website designs and install plugins to add functionality. All without having to know code. There are some risks involved with plugin use, and you will make mistakes, but we all get better by learning from those experiences.

If you're comfortable with the basics and want to level up

If you're solid with HTML and CSS, then building WordPress sites without page builders is an excellent way to level up. WordPress is built in PHP and uses a MySQL database.

If you build WordPress themes manually (a theme is the layout and design of a WordPress website), then you will undoubtedly use HTML, CSS, and PHP. You can use your flavor of JavaScript for interactivity.

If you're interested in learning about databases, then you can write SQL queries to return data from the database tables that WordPress creates.

If you're a pro at building WordPress themes and want to level up

If you are, or once you become, a pro at building WordPress themes, you can level up by turning WordPress into a headless CMS (content management system) and connecting it to the front-end tools of your choice. WordPress has a REST API that you can plug into, or you can install the WPGraphQL plugin to add a GraphQL endpoint if that's your preference.

If you're into JavaScript front-end frameworks, then there are plenty of ways to turning WordPress into a headless CMS. Gridsome is a Vue-based static site generator that has a plugin that allows a WordPress connection. Gatsby does the same thing, but it's built with React. Next.js also has a nice WordPress starter template.

The new WordPress editor uses content blocks that people can choose from, and those blocks are built in React. Another opportunity to level up.

WordPress has always met me where I've been at, and I've been able to go from building static sites in HTML and CSS to leveling up my web development game using WordPress. I'm a complete rookie to making it a headless CMS and block-building, but I now get paid to build WordPress themes the HTML/CSS/JavaScript/PHP way!

There is a lot of demand for WordPress

WordPress currently powers 40% of the world's websites, and no other CMS comes even close. It even powers the website of the President of the United States.

There is quite a bit of demand for it, from small and medium-sized businesses all the way up to the enterprise. You can find people hiring for it on the job market, or you can offer it to clients via freelance services.

The WordPress community is amazing

The WordPress community involves thousands and thousands of people. This includes those who build and maintain WordPress itself as well as teachers/trainers and meetup and event organizers.

Web development is a team sport. There will always be things you don't know and need help with. Becoming part of the community is one of the best moves you can make.

You can search for meetups in your area, most of which have gone virtual. You can also see if there are any upcoming WordCamps that you'd like to attend. Twitter has a thriving WordPress community (look me up if you want a place to start), and you can also find WordPress groups on Facebook and LinkedIn as well.

The WordPress journey has been amazing for me

I wanted to go full-time into web development after having done mostly digital marketing and dabbling in web development at work. Through the ability to learn and level up, as well as growing my community for support and getting job referrals, I turned my dream of becoming a full-time web developer into reality.

If all of this resonates with you, then take the WordPress journey. If it doesn't, then listen to your instincts and go in the best direction for you.

Whichever direction you decide to take, I wish you the best of luck!

Choose your own adventure to break into web development

Andy Stitt — Mon, 18 Jan 2021 16:22:41 +0000

If you are an aspiring developer, breaking into the industry can seem like a monumental task. There is so much to learn, and there are so many paths you can take to get in.

Following people on social media can make it seem like there's only one true path to success: learning the most complex, cutting-edge technologies and landing a job at a big tech company due to your engineering prowess.

But what if that's not the right path for you?

It's so easy to twist ourselves into pretzels trying to fit into something that looks cool to us, which is influenced by everyone else saying how cool it looks.

Other people's opinions influence us all the time. It started when we were young children, and we learned how things worked in our family system. We didn't always have the freedom to express our true selves and our true needs and desires in order to receive love.

Exploring why you, as an individual with a unique blueprint never seen before on this planet and never to be seen again, want to break into web development is an incredibly useful exercise.

A few things to consider as you choose your own adventure:

What type(s) of organizations do you want to serve?

What kind of work do you find interesting, exciting, and inspiring?

I did nonprofit tech for over a decade, and I'm now in state government. I have been in the "tech for good" lane since 2008. I love working for organizations that I believe are making a difference in people's lives.

How about you? What lights you up? What type(s) of organizations do you want to serve?

I intentionally say "serve" instead of "work for" because there are a number of ways to serve organizations. You can work for them directly. You can work for a consultancy that has them as clients. You can do freelance work for them.

There are lots of paths in.

What kind of web technologies do those organizations use?

If you have identified a type of organization/industry that you want to break into, look at the types of web technologies that they use.

When I started my career in nonprofit tech, I found WordPress to be easy for me to understand and implement. Lucky for me, WordPress is also heavily used in the nonprofit world, and I was the lead WordPress developer for a nonprofit for 2.5 years.

Luckier for me, I now work in state government, and all of the websites that we are in charge of are built in WordPress.

Heck, the incoming Biden-Harris administration's website is built in WordPress. That lets me know that I can stay the course in my current path.

See if you can identify web technologies that your desired organizations/industries use.

Your primary job is to build websites that get results

The people in charge of the organization that you serve want to use technology to get results, and they don't care what technology it is.

It's your job to build a website that gets more customers, more donors, more volunteers, more marketing leads, more [insert objective here].

The people in charge will not look down on you if you use jQuery instead of React, if it satisfactorily gets the job done.

Understanding the needs of the business, the current technical infrastructure, and the skills and abilities of your teammates is invaluable as a developer.

You need an organization that's a good culture fit for you

When you're breaking into tech, the best thing you can have is team members who can support you.

I went at it solo for 11 years, and using Google, tutorials, and Stack Overflow was my primary mode of getting help. I have been part of a team for over a year, and it has hugely built up my skills and confidence as a developer in a way that going solo never could.

Web development is complex and challenging. Going at it alone can be isolating. We are social beings, and having the safety of teammates who can help you allows you to have greater access to the analytical part of your brain required for problem-solving. If you feel like you're alone, then access to that part of your brain is inhibited.

Since I've started working as a member of a team, I've had the benefit of:

Asking for help to debug a problem that I can't solve
Asking someone to review my code to make sure that it makes sense and most effectively gets the job done
Asking if we have already have code for a piece of new functionality that I get asked to build for a website, so I don't have to write something from scratch

Freelancer vs. contractor vs. employee - whatever works best for you

I have bad news for you: you can't just start a freelance practice, magically generate five figures a month in revenue, and spend your days on a beach in Tahiti. It doesn't just magically work that way no matter how much some people want to make you believe it does.

I set up my own freelance WordPress development practice, and I had to close my doors within seven months because I ran out of work and money.

Doing the work AND drumming up new business AND managing my money and health insurance and everything else under the sun is absolutely not for me.

However, during that time, I learned how to play the game with tech recruiters. I've gotten temporary contract work, long-term contract work (my job right now), and full-time work from them as well.

I learned to align myself with recruiters who wanted to find the best possible job for me, and who had people banging down their doors trying to fill tech roles.

For the contract positions that I've had, my recruiters also provided benefits. In my current contractor role, I have health insurance and a 401k.

Whether you want to be a freelancer or contractor or employee depends on your unique needs. There isn't one way to do it. There are lots of ways to get in.

Open as many doors as you need to get in

If you're interested in tech, but the traditional ways of getting in that everyone raves about don't resonate with you, that's ok.

There are lots of people who have made satisfying careers for themselves in tech by choosing their own adventure.

Your journey is uniquely yours. Find those open doors, get support wherever you can, and go for it!

The Real Reason Why My Freelance Business Failed

Andy Stitt — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 01:23:20 +0000

In May 2016, I quit my job of nine years to go into freelance web development full-time specializing in WordPress. My last day on the job was June 3.

In October 2016, I saw the writing on the wall and started looking for a full-time job while freelancing. I landed a full-time job in January 2017.

I had to shut my doors seven months after I started. It was a dream I had for about a decade. And I failed.

The obvious reason why I failed is because clients ran out and money dried up. However, I didn't know the real reason why I failed until recently.

My business failed because of unhealed trauma

My unhealed trauma caused me to go into business for myself without setting myself up for success.

I was absolutely obsessed with going into business for myself. I wanted to be a web developer and marketing consultant. I dreamt about it and prepared myself for it in the best ways that I knew how.

When I made the decision to quit my job, everything in my body told me that it was the right thing to do. It was a year after my ex-wife had left me and completely turned my life upside down. We got divorced, and I had a little of bit of savings stashed away after we split the money up.

I figured I had already lost so much that I didn't have much left to lose. Might as well go for it, right?

I lacked what I needed to succeed

I decided to become a WordPress consultant for nonprofits since I had spent a decade working in the nonprofit space. I wanted to take on projects where I built custom WordPress websites for nonprofits that would help them increase their fundraising.

I wanted to build a six figure consulting business.

I didn't have anything that it took to actually make this happen. Let me count the ways:

1. I wasn't a very good developer yet

I wanted to do freelance web development, and I wasn't a very good web developer. I had a pretty solid handle on HTML and CSS, though I knew far less than I thought I did. My JavaScript knowledge was almost nonexistent except for a few simple jQuery methods.

I loved working with the Genesis Framework in WordPress because the child themes gave me such a head start that I didn't have to do all the coding myself. Custom builds were not yet something that I was comfortable with.

Yet I was marketing myself as a service provider that could do just that.

2. I wasn't a proven marketer yet

I got my MBA in marketing. I worked with an external agency that helped build our website at my old job. I was the solo marketing person at my old job before we started working with that agency. However, I had no experience actually doing marketing work that brought in leads that then brought in cash.

Yet I was marketing myself as a service provider that could do just that.

3. I didn't have nearly enough leads in the pipeline

I had no idea just how many leads I needed in the pipeline that would convert into project sales and monthly maintenance retainer clients. I started with basically nothing and tried planting my seeds as I needed them to harvest. It didn't work out so well.

I had part-time contract work that slowed my demise, but otherwise I had next to nothing.

Even if I had leads, I didn't have a pricing plan that would allow me to charge enough to have profitable projects. I set an hourly rate that I thought was reasonable, but otherwise I had no plan.

4. Oh yeah, my trauma....I was afraid of people and was hoping to be saved

At the time, I had no idea that I had been carrying around trauma since I was a baby/toddler. It manifested itself in many symptoms, including anxiety, depression, OCD, kidney stones, and allergies.

I always looked at these symptoms as symptoms to be treated with medications instead of thinking that they had a root cause. The root cause was trauma that I, and everyone around me, were completely unaware of.

The trauma that I was carrying caused me to be unconsciously afraid of people. I was afraid that everyone was out to hurt me, and if I reached out to people and asked for something that they would respond negatively to me and hurt me.

This is very, very problematic when you go into business for yourself doing client services. You have to reach out to people all the time for many reasons, including to drum up business, move projects along, etc.

If you're a good consultant, you have to set boundaries, defend your decisions, and communicate persuasively with clients.

If I'm afraid that people are going to hurt me if I reach out to them, then how the hell am I supposed to do any of that?

A characteristic shared by many victims of childhood trauma is that they are looking to be saved. The trauma takes away their sense of agency and capability, and so they look for someone to save them since they feel that they can't hack it on their own.

I carried this childhood trauma into adulthood, and so I was always looking for someone to save me.

I was drawn to the WordPress community because of how open, friendly, and accepting they were. I also saw that people would frequently refer work to each other when they were at capacity with client work.

I went into business for myself with full confidence that people would refer work to me and that it would keep me afloat for as long as I needed.

I reached out to two friends at the beginning asking if they had any work or leads, and they said no but they would be happy to let me know if they saw anything that came up. One even offered to retweet me if I put it out there that I was looking for project work.

This caused me to absolutely freak out. They weren't giving me work. They weren't saving me. And I was too afraid to put myself out there and say that I was looking for project work, because I was afraid that people were going to hurt me.

I learned quickly that I wasn't going to be saved and didn't know what to do next.

5. I did everything alone.

Aside from the part-time contract work, where I worked on teams, I did everything else completely on my own. I also lived alone, having been divorced for less than a year, and did all of my work remotely. This included the contract jobs.

Part of my trauma comes from feeling like I was all alone. So, I managed to recreate this condition by actually being alone trying to execute a business and not having what I needed to succeed to begin with.

The end result: I re-traumatized myself

From July through the end of October, I did my contract work that didn't pay all the bills, got very occasional client work that made me pennies, and slowly burned through my savings. At the beginning of November, my contract gig hired someone else for the full-time developer position and let me go.

My income went to zero, I didn't have much left in savings, and I was alone.

I had outside financial help, so I was never in danger of starving. However, that was not enough to stave off my trauma activation.

The anxiety was so intensely, horrifyingly bad that I took myself to the hospital crisis center so that I didn't take my own life.

I wound up ok, dusted myself off, took a course to help me become a better developer, and landed my first job as a full-time WordPress developer.

How I finally became a good, confident developer

After that full-time job, where I was a solo developer at a nonprofit with the help of an outside agency that did maintenance work for us, I got laid off and landed a four-month contract as a front-end developer on a team with other developers.

I finally had people I could ask for help. When I would receive a project when the client was asking for a particular feature, I could ask if we had working code that did the job. I had a supervisor and team lead that both supported me and gave me what I needed to get the job done.

The four month contract ended, and now I am a long-term state government contractor doing WordPress development on a team with developers, designers, and other creative professionals.

My team is fantastic. They are incredibly supportive. The environment has a nurturing aspect to it, which is something that I really benefit from. My trauma symptoms certainly show up when working with my team, but they've been nothing but good to me, and so it gives me the disconfirming experiences that I need to heal much of my trauma.

Thanks to my current job, I get to enjoy my work and become a better developer and marketer as well. I get to do it in a supportive environment with a steady paycheck and benefits and not all alone with a plummeting income and draining savings.

I think the trauma made me do it

People with unresolved trauma unconsciously do things to try to resolve it. That's just your body at work. Your body is an organism, and the organism does what it does to try and resolve the trauma so that it can release the trapped energy and get back to baseline.

Unfortunately, the organism doesn't work on a cognitive/intellectual level. Therefore, when you unconsciously do things to try and resolve your trauma, your organism doesn't give you the tools that you actually need to succeed, and you wind up at risk of becoming re-traumatized.

I think that's what happened to me. I charged forward with going into business for myself doing marketing and web development that I couldn't really do yet. It was an emotionally charging experience thinking about all the success I would have and how good it would make me feel.

When I quit my job and went into business for myself, I didn't have what I needed to succeed and wound up crashing and re-traumatizing myself.

I think I went into business for myself unconsciously in an effort to resolve my trauma.

Since then, I have thankfully discovered that I had been traumatized and have gotten treatment for it. It is still a work in progress and will be for as long as it needs to be. The pandemic has not helped, but healing has still been taking place.

I wonder if I went into web development itself to resolve my trauma. I really don't know. I have made much of what has been unconscious conscious, and I am still learning every day.

For now, my web development job is enough. I have a wonderful wife (we got married a month ago), and I have wonderful friends and family. Everything I have right now is enough, and my primary goal is to heal my trauma. I am doing that through therapy and reading and learning about trauma as much as I can.

That is my story. I don't have any lessons learned or takeaways for you. We live in a culture that celebrates success and the "top 30 under 30" and super-full-stack-developers who know front-end, back-end, databases, servers, and nuclear physics.

Front-end web development is also getting much more complicated with JavaScript frameworks, build tools, dependencies, and a whole bunch of other muck to wade through. My trauma brain wants to be able to solve complex problems, but my healing brain wants to simplify things.

For now, I have what I need at work, including a supportive team and uncomplicated development practices, and we'll see what the future holds!

Building a Coronavirus state government website that will hopefully save lives

Andy Stitt — Wed, 25 Mar 2020 21:17:16 +0000

I didn't know exactly where my web development journey would take me when I quit my job and started freelancing full-time in June 2016.

I had been doing "tech for good" since 2008 as a digital marketing manager and web producer for a nonprofit. I wanted to get more involved in the development side of things, and I wanted to work in WordPress.

I went freelance full-time in hopes of being a WordPress consultant for nonprofits. I got to do a bit of that during seven months of self-employment, and then for 2.5 years as a full-time employee at a local nonprofit.

I am now working for the Delaware state government after having gotten laid off and then taking a temporary contract to tide me over.

I was told we would be building WordPress websites for state government agencies and municipalities. I had never worked in government before, so I took it as an opportunity to learn something new.

One month into my new job, Coronavirus happened.

Developing a new website for Coronavirus-related information

Delaware Health and Social Services has its own website, and it had information on the Coronavirus along with everything else.

We wanted to build a website that would serve as a central information hub on Coronavirus for all Delaware citizens. This would be a website that's similar to the federal government's coronavirus.gov, but on a state level.

So, my team and I built https://coronavirus.delaware.gov/ on WordPress. I had the privilege of designing the initial layout, and we have been building and contributing to it ever since.

The website gives information on what people can do, information about testing, resources for different groups of people, videos from the governor, and other information and resources.

Web development for good in a time of crisis

I am really proud to be able to contribute to this effort. I hope this website saves lives and gives the message to the citizens of Delaware that their government is here for them and has their back.

10 lessons learned on a 12-year journey as a web developer

Andy Stitt — Thu, 27 Feb 2020 21:12:01 +0000

Hi, I'm Andy. I started working with websites in 2008, and I've been a full-time professional developer since June 2016.

I started my career in the nonprofit field as an office assistant and then program administrator. I had experimented with website building as a bored teenager in the 90's. I re-discovered an interest in websites in 2008 when I got the opportunity to manage my organization's website.

Since then, I have devoured knowledge on marketing, project management, and web development. I got an MBA in marketing and two project management certifications along the way.

In June 2016, I started my own WordPress freelance business and thus my career as a full-time professional developer. I closed up shop after seven months due to financial instability.

Since then, I have managed to make a living as a full-time and short-term/long-term contract web developer.

I've had many ups, downs, and lessons learned in my journey as someone who switched to web development from not having a computer science background. Here's what I learned:

1. This profession is difficult.

Web development is complex, and it's absolutely impossible to know every single thing.

I've gone to many, many meetups and conferences where I don't understand what on earth people are talking about in terms of programming. I'm a front-end guy, so I can only assume that whatever they were talking about was back-end or server stuff.

Even though I'm a front-end guy, whenever I go to my local React meetup and they talk about pretty much anything, I still have no idea what's going on.

You'll experience this too. It's ok. Things will become more apparent over time

2. Get a mentor

If I had a mentor, then I probably would've cut my learning curve by quite a lot. It's incredibly difficult for me to reach out for help. I experienced early childhood trauma, so I have unconsciously thought that:

It would be unsafe to ask for help
If I had to ask for help, then it would show that I wasn't good enough

I still don't have a mentor and am making it a priority to find one this year.

3. Empathy is your greatest quality.

Solving complex problems and writing code that works might give you great satisfaction. Hopefully you also find fulfillment in building products that improve people's lives.

In my current gig, I help build websites that move government forward and make it more accessible to its constituents. Previous jobs have allowed me to build websites that:

Connect people to their Judaism through education, volunteering, community and philanthropy
Connect college students to scholarships
Connect school teachers to resources that help them teach their students life skills via learning through projects

My entire career has been about "tech for good" and building programs that help people. This makes my career not only fun because of problem solving and piecing together puzzles, but also rewarding.

4. Problem-solving is your second-greatest quality

In my journey as a developer, I have used the following technologies, frameworks, and content management systems (and am probably forgetting a few):

HTML
CSS
Sass
JavaScript
jQuery
GreenSock
React
NodeJS
PHP
ASP
Visual Basic (for automating Microsoft Excel tasks)
SQL
GraphQL
Bootstrap
Foundation
WordPress
ExpressionEngine
MojoMotor
Sitecore
Drupal
Gatsby

This in no way makes me a ninja or a rockstar. It simply means that a whole bunch of tools accomplish essentially the same thing.

You don't have to be a PHP developer, JavaScript developer, or any one thing developer. You can be a web developer. One that can take a set of tools and learn how to use them through reading documentation and then trial and error.

5. Don't be afraid to work on both sides of the stack

It's perfectly ok to specialize in front-end or back-end. It's good for your career since they are two different disciplines.

However, the task at hand may require you to work on both sides of the stack.

I first experienced this when I managed my first website in 2008. It was built in static HTML, but it used server-side includes so that you only had to change one file for the header, one file for the sidebar, and one file for the footer on all pages.

These includes were written in classic ASP, which is a back-end language.

I then experienced this working with WordPress. It is a content management system built on PHP. So, in certain instances, when I wanted a particular result on the front-end, I wrote PHP to make it happen.

In a recent contract job I had, websites that were not built on a content management system made extensive use of PHP for server-side includes and other functionality.

I'm a front-end developer, but when the task called for working on the back-end of the stack, I was able to do it.

As a bonus, you can also learn about databases for when you're using a content management system that has content stored in a database.

6. You don't have to be a guru/ninja/rockstar

You don't have to know sixteen different languages, have 20 years of experience with React (especially when React isn't nearly that old), know everything about servers, and be an expert at cybersecurity.

Anyone who is asking for an unusually long list of competencies is trying to overwork you and underpay you.

For those job descriptions that have a more reasonable list of expectations, you don't have to know everything on those either. You have to know enough of the core requirements and be willing and excited to learn how to do the others.

7. Build real applications as often as possible

They don't have to be complex applications. It can be a to-do list or a pounds to kilograms converter in JavaScript. It can be a portfolio website in pure HTML and CSS.

I have taken ten million online courses/tutorials on languages, and I wondered why I wasn't becoming a better developer. I could write variables, arrays, and if statements in several different languages.

What I wasn't getting better at was developing websites and applications.

When you develop software, you have a set of requirements that you want it to accomplish. Then you decide the best tool for the job to get it to accomplish those requirements (language, framework, CMS, etc.).

Once you make that decision, then you plan how you're going to use that tool to build the functionality. Then you write code. Then you test it and fix whatever bugs come about from it.

This is how you get better at web development. Not by taking tutorials to learn as many languages as possible like I did.

8. Learn the foundations of web development: HTML, CSS and JavaScript

There are 1,000,000 different tools, frameworks, languages, etc. that you can use to build websites. However, the browser still renders HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

HTML tells the browser what to put on the screen. CSS tells the browser how it should appear (color, height, width, which font, etc.). JavaScript adds interactivity (though CSS does sometimes too, but that's not its primary role).

When you learn the foundations first, then it will be much easier for everything else to make sense.

I've worked quite a bit with jQuery and have dabbled in React. However, things started making much more sense once I started learning vanilla JavaScript.

9. Get a code editor that helps you

A code editor that can find mistakes as you're writing code will save you a ton of time.

If you use a code editor that doesn't do that, and something breaks, then you'll have to spend time tracking down the culprit. Depending on how much code has been written and what dependencies there are, it could take a while.

Code editors that can incorporate CSS and JavaScript linters as well as other tools that point out mistakes are invaluable.

10. Give yourself a break for being human.

You won't know everything right off the bat. You won't learn everything in a short time.

You'll make mistakes. Others will point out your mistakes.

You'll want to go to more networking events and conferences and then get tired of being so social.

Go forth

My journey has been extraordinary. It has been filled with ups and downs.

When I was a full-time freelancer, I ran around my living room shouting with joy when a team member committed my code to the master branch of the Git repository.

One month later, the company decided not to retain my contract, my income dropped to zero, and I drove myself to the hospital crisis center because my anxiety spiked out of control.

Two months later, I took over the role of technical project manager and helped launch a redesigned WordPress website in three months while simultaneously migrating email systems. I then got to be the lead developer and got to develop on WordPress, Foundation, and HubSpot.

2.5 years later, I got laid off and was able to quickly pick up a short-term contract building websites, emails, and banner ads for a pharma marketing agency.

Four months later, I'm diving into the world of website building for state government.

I've gotten to meet all kinds of people, build all kinds of cool things, and have lots of fun despite the headaches at my 9-5. My adaptability, experience, connections, and knowledge of how the game is played have allowed me to rebound from adversity very well.

If all of this sounds like your thing, then go forth!