Coding Principles for Creative Types

Members of the creative side of web design and search engine optimisation tend to steer clear of ‘coding’, leaving it to people with beards. Creative Types don’t want to waste time entering, presumably, ones and zeros into a website’s code (wherever that is). But as many Creative Types find out sooner or later, it is good to get a basic grounding in coding. What follows is a few of the most important points, enough at least to get you through a drunken conversation with a ‘Coder’.

You must first realise that the Coder believes a Creative Type simply draws a pretty picture or creates a striking logo, then writes some bollocks to go with it. The Creative Type must reassure the Coder that this is not the case. Even though it quite clearly is. 

It is beneficial then to go over a few key terms used with dizzying frequency by the Coder. An ASP is a kind of digital ‘snake’ which slithers over the internet searching for Met-her Date-her (sometimes called Meta data). Met-her Date-hers are people who use dating websites. Dating websites are of course what the internet was primarily invented for by the US military, way back in 1959. 

OK, so these ‘snakes’ are really just pieces of code – but sometimes they get attacked by ‘spiders’, who plant ‘viruses’ in the ‘snakes’. With me so far? OK so these spiders and viruses are really bad news, but don’t worry – there is a solution. As any Coder worth his beard will tell you, spiders can be wiped off the infected code by using AJAX cream cleaner. AJAX cream cleaner is popular among many Coders, although some protest that JAVA is better, as evidenced by many pub glassings. 

Sometimes a digital ‘spider’ crawls deep into a websites code and finds a tin of SPAM suspended at the centre. If the spider is allowed to digest the SPAM it can get bloated, increasing its bandwidth, which in turn causes it to lose four legs and grow a horses head. A Coder would call this a Trojan Horse Virus, which are very difficult to get out of the website code, primarily because of their ridiculous SPAM fattened size. An old school Creative Type will hurriedly draw a pretty picture of a Magic Knight, write some bollocks to go with it, and hand this expectantly to the Coder in the vain belief that the Knight will slay the nasty Trojan Horse Virus. 

The Coder will cast his eyes skywards at this point and start to reconfigure the backlinks so they point directly at the Trojan’s head. If the backlinks come from a trusted source, then with luck they should all converge and create enough heat to produce a Firewall. While this sets the Trojan on fire, it also makes it feel a bit nauseous so it regurgitates the SPAM. As soon as this happens the Trojan turns back into a Spider who, covered in flames and screaming, catches the next 404 redirect out of the website. The Coder will be quite annoyed that the Spider had found a Back Door, and annoyed further by all the sticky blobs of pink SPAM the Spider left all over the code.

Thus ends the Creative Type’s first adventure into the realm of the Coder. Still don’t know what the HTML Coders are talking about? Frequently Asked Questions not making any FAQ-ing sense? Fear not, you’re in good company.