Building a website can be difficult, but there are a lot of tools available in the modern world that can make the process a lot more accessible. Of course, learning those tools can be a challenge itself.
Some people spend years in a university studying the languages and techniques required. This isn’t a necessity though, thanks to people like The Site Helpers and their intuitive, thorough web development classes.
Today we’ll talk to one client of The Site Helpers and see how much their classes really teach.
Before working with The Site Helpers, did you have any experience with making a website?
This is a bit of a tough question, I did but I didn’t. I made the site for my business way back in the early 2000s and then never touched it again.
I also had help from one of my kids, so they practically held my hand through it. So, I would say I went into the classes as a complete beginner, and honestly I thought I’d have a lot more trouble than I did.
Did the lessons seem modern? Does your website look like it’s from the 2020s?
Oh absolutely! One of the reasons I even started searching for classes was because I tried getting on my website on my phone and it looked terrible.
I checked around some other businesses and they all looked so good on mobile, and on my computer. I could tell mine was way out of date, and even boring compared to the other businesses in my city.
Not to toot my own horn or anything, but my website looks so good now. It’s responsive, and the layout is gorgeous. It really looks so much more professional, like a website you’d see a billion dollar business use.
How much of the process, exactly, does it cover?
They have classes that cover literally every aspect. I went through them all and learned how to use WordPress, PHP, and everything about how to actually design and build the website.
Then after that I took classes on hosting the site. So yeah, they cover every step you need to get your site off the ground and running.
Was it difficult learning with The Site Helpers? Do you think it would’ve been harder trying to learn on your own?
I’ll just put it this way. There’s no way I would’ve been able to learn PHP or WordPress on my own. Even if I managed to learn them on my own, I think that there’s the right way to learn, and the wrong way to learn.
By means of The Site Helpers’ courses and their blog, I know that I’m learning good habits, and best practices. I had someone look at my original website from the early 2000s, and they said it’d be less expensive to just build a new one than to try to work with that code.
I’m confident that if I ever outsource another website upgrade, my current code will be extremely easy for a professional to work with.
Finally, of course, I’d love to know how the site functions? Is it better than before? Was it worth the investment?
One hundred percent. It was worth the investment and then some. My site works on mobile phones, it works on computers, it looks fancy, the whole nine yards.
And beyond any of this, I picked up a new skill. One that will be relevant for as long as people will be surfing the web, which at this point I think will be the rest of my life at least.