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Ask Slashdot: Has the Time Passed For Coding Website from Scratch?

Posted by samzenpus on from the best-tools-for-the-job dept.

First time accepted submitter thomawack writes As a designer I always do webdesign from scratch and put them into CMSMS. Frameworks are too complicated to work into, their code is usually bloated and adaptable online solutions are/were limited in options. I know my way around html/css, but I am not a programmer. My problem is, always starting from scratch has become too expensive for most customers. I see more and more online adaptive solutions that seem to be more flexible, but I am a bit overwhelmed because there are so many solutions around. Is there something you can recommend?

15 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. Yes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You wouldn't grow your own wheat, sugar cane, raise chickensc, etc for the ingredients for your choclate chip cookies. Just go buy the dough from the store. Good enough for 90% of clients out there. For the other 10%, you might make from scratch but you are still going to use store-bought ingredients.

  2. Choose a CMS you like by s1d3track3D · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, it really depends what they need but most folks want a website they can 'control' to some ability and with lot's of built in features. As you said there are many CMS' out there. I'd say pick one which appeals to you, maybe one which has a separate template system, since you're a designer, you can make a nice front end, that is all they will care about anyway. (with template scaffolding this should speed up development time).

    I know all the php/wordpress snobs on /. will dismiss this and laugh but personally if i'm building a site for someone (usually for no money and limited time) I just install wordpress, 'secure it', then use or modify a theme. Just basic stuff, you can remove the meta links from the front page and other tweaks and now they have fully functioning site that you don't have to do much to. If you are hosting it, be prepared to apply security patches the instant they come out and backup the db.

    1. Re:Choose a CMS you like by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      With the one caveat that, unless your client was already selling herbal viagra and penis pills, you'd better allocate enough time for patching in perpetuity and/or until the money runs out.

      Not like web servers haven't had their share of bugs; but you'd think Adobe had something to do with Wordpress.

    2. Re:Choose a CMS you like by TubeSteak · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I know all the php/wordpress snobs on /. will dismiss this and laugh but personally if i'm building a site for someone (usually for no money and limited time) I just install wordpress, 'secure it',

      I dismiss this and laugh because you think you can secure WordPress.

      If you're using WordPress for clients, you better budget in the time you/they will spend upgrading WordPress to fix its latest security vulnerabilities.

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    3. Re:Choose a CMS you like by Jesus_666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not so fast, my friend. While I agree that the WordPress core has come a long way and is reasonably secure once hardened (such as by removing the XML-RPC and trackback files, two of the biggest attack vectors) I decidedly disagree on plugins being even remotely secure.

      Some WordPress plugins are well-written and secure. Most WordPress plugins are messy and were written by people who haven't even heard of code injections. If you want your WordPress to be secure, don't use plugins. Ever. At least not without a full code review by someone who knows how to write secure code in PHP.

      Seriously. Most WordPress CVEs these days are for plugins and after having seen the code of a few dozen plugins I can see why. Do not trust a WordPress plugin you have not verified yourself.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
  3. Re:So, the problem is.. by Intrepid+imaginaut · · Score: 4, Insightful

    (I'm not suggesting frameworks are good in general; but a good framework is good in its niche; you want to put up a blog.. it takes 10 minutes using an existing blogging framework; you want to write it yourself, order of magnitude more time.)

    Problem is it works so well that clients immediately want fifty adjustments not covered by any plugin, and now you're spending ten times longer untangling spaghetti code slapped together by a myriad of well meaning contributors with no interest at all in documentation trying to make that happen.

  4. Far better a Restaurant site in HTML... by Nova+Express · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...than one of those bloated, slow-loading, all-Flash restaurant front-ends that take 20 seconds to load and animate before they show you the location, hours of operation, or any menus.

    --
    Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)

    http://www.lawrenceperson.com/

  5. That's WordPress in a nutshell by Wrexs0ul · · Score: 5, Insightful

    WordPress is the store-bought bread solution. Does what most people need, is advanced enough that most work can be done through the admin GUI, and plugins are easy enough to build that a fellow by-hand person can figure them out without too much difficulty.

    The only caveat I'd put on using WordPress is that you need to treat updates like you would on Windows: make sure your WordPress core and plugins are always up to date. Its huge user-base means there's a lot more hackers running automated exploits that'll bog-down a web hosting server if you get compromised, and that might get your account suspended. On our shared hosting we're now recommending clients install WordPress via Installatron (a cPanel addon) and have it automatically patch everything by default.

    Simpler sites, but more OS-level issues from going mainstream.

    --
    --- Need web hosting?
    1. Re:That's WordPress in a nutshell by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Sorry. I can't take any solution that runs on PHP seriously. Especially one with such a history of horrid bugs and remote exploits.

      Anyone suggesting PHP as a solution is quite obviously a moron.

  6. Re:Mod Parent Up by buchner.johannes · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here's my website. I invite anybody to look at the source code, and compare it against your run-of-the-mill WordPress website.

    It doesn't do comments on blog posts, it does not have an interface to post new blog entries, it does not keep track of which articles have been viewed. You might as well generate your pages from templates and serve them statically, 0 lines of python needed on the webserver.

    --
    NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
  7. The time for "from scratch" is gone for ALL of IT by msobkow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I can't think of a single thing I do or would want to do with a computer that doesn't have some sort of toolkit, library, framework, or other component out there to get a "leg up" on doing the work, unless you're only doing the most basic and simplistic pieces of code or presentation. In the case of HTML, that means a text document without images, video, or sound; never mind "active" components of the interface via JavaScript.

    The hardest lesson to learn as a programmer is that "not invented here" is code for "I am too arrogant to use someone else's solution."

    --
    I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
  8. designers are fucking awful! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Design right now is the biggest fucking problem.

    I see the shit going up these days that's designers are crapping out, yes the designers, and I want to see the developers going back to doing the design.

    Crap like: ohh look we have continues pagination on a page, and see the floating search/header bar that scrolls down the page as you scroll. And pages that transform as you type into the search bar.

    It's fucking awful! Stop that shit!

  9. Yuck by SuperKendall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You wouldn't grow your own wheat, sugar cane, raise chickensc, etc for the ingredients for your choclate chip cookies. Just go buy the dough from the store.

    That's quite a leap man. No I would not grow my own sugar cane, but store bought dough is disgusting compared to small effort to make your own cookies from ingredients you buy at a store...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  10. Become a Brogrammer by Moblaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't bother coding from scratch. Any client for whom money is an object, you're better off just hanging out and drinking beers with as you co-plan world domination. Eventually if you ask enough detailed product spec questions the client will realize they are in over their heads, get intimidated and abandon the project. They got off lucky. You got free beer.

  11. Re:The time for "from scratch" is gone for ALL of by NickFortune · · Score: 3, Insightful
    p>

    The hardest lesson to learn as a programmer is that "not invented here" is code for "I am too arrogant to use someone else's solution."

    Well sure. No one should ever invent anything without written permission from the Flying Spaghetti Monster, countersigned by Bill Gates, His Holiness the Pope and the ghost of Alan Turing. I mean everyone knows that!

    Seriously, I quite agree with Dutch Gun's point that we all build on the work of others. I just think that blindly accepting third party solutions can be just as bad as blindly rejecting them. And if no-one ever reinvented the wheel, we'd probably still be coding in COBOL

    --
    Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!