As soon as I see a big PHP error message on a website I leave straight away. It means something isn’t working and the webmaster obviously isn’t on top of everything. Always concentrate and do everything you can to avoid errors on your website.

When installing new designs in the past I have had PHP errors on my own websites. Once I had entered a small bit of ’php include’ code into a file and spelt it wrong. The site was producing big fat errors for about 4 hours, by then my error_log was massive! Hundreds of visitors had been to the site during that time, and no doubt they all left within a couple of seconds, costing me in revenue, potential return visitors and credibility with those who may stumble across my site again.

So, the lesson is clear: whenever messing with your design or coding always create separate folders to test everything before making it live on your website. When you do make it live also keep checking it is all working fine, you don’t want to do what I did as the effects are very negative!

I am not qualified in any kind of computer coding or programming, in fact I’m not formerly qualified in anything! The truth is you don’t need to be to run a successful online business. There are plenty of people who are qualified and have the ability to create the website you want (and need to be successful).

However one thing I do recommend is getting to grips with the basics of HTML and CSS. Learning the basics has several big advantages. For example a few lines of CSS and you can instantly change the text across your site; color, size, font; whatever you want you can change it. And these little changes can make your site look better and sometimes fresher.

Learning HTML and CSS basics will also have SEO benefits. With CSS you can reduce the amount of HTML you have on your pages, this moves the main content (text) further up the file which has SEO benefits – and visitors know no different!

With CSS you can also reduce the size of your files because of less reliance on HTML. This helps load pages quicker which improves users experience and it reduces the load on your server potentially saving you money in hosting costs!

There are many websites online which have info on CSS and HTML so you can learn the basics within literally a few hours (you will need a good memory though). Learning these little nuggets of information will save you money in programmers and also have the benefits listed above - a very good use of your time!

For more reading check out this seomoz post and this smashingmagazine post.