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Ask Slashdot: Has the Time Passed For Coding Website from Scratch?
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?
Setup Dosbox runniing wordstar to do mailmerges to generate your temp pages.
That shit is hand tuned assembler, it will scream.
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).
/. 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.
I know all the php/wordpress snobs on
He's making sites from scratch without programming because HTML isn't programming. Most small business/personal websites require little to no work even at the javascript level. He isn't talking about writing a blog, he's talking about a dozen screens for a restaurant with their location, menu, and a few pictures. Which still probably shouldn't be done by hand anymore unless its a personal for fun project.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
I can program and I maintain the web site of our family business with as much static html as possible. The actual places where dynamism is required (E.G. class bookings) is handled with CGI in python. Credit card processing is farmed out to stripe.
Thus the total amount of code that needs to be comprehended is small. A few hundred lines.
The long term savings in terms of enabling staff to go in and edit stuff live has saved a fortune.
What works for one business may not work for another. I tried Django and the sheer volume of stuff I needed to do to get the same functionality up was huge and then the staff couldn't edit it because for all that's claimed for Django, there's a big model you have to get in you head before you can start meddling with it, and that means web professionals who cost a lot of money.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Here's my website. I invite anybody to look at the source code, and compare it against your run-of-the-mill WordPress website.
Here are the 249 lines of Python code that I use to render it. In addition to the source code, there are x6 template files (each less than 1KB large), and x1 CSS file (less than 2KB).
What the parent post says, rings true to me.
No need for Django, no need for frameworks, no need for deployment systems beyond DropBox.
"The long term savings in terms of enabling staff to go in and edit stuff live has saved a fortune." -- This especially rings true to me.
"I tried Django and the sheer volume of stuff I needed to do to get the same functionality up was huge and then the staff couldn't edit it because for all that's claimed for Django, there's a big model you have to get in you head before you can start meddling with it, and that means web professionals who cost a lot of money." -- And this too. (And I'm a professional Django developer, by day.)
I heard recently that there are people working on an "Indie Web" concept; I'm all in favor.
Your problem is you've mixed design with the site HTML.
Developers are notoriously bad at design work. Being a developer, I can tell you that we are not usually great at the artsy aspects it takes to design good sites.
However, if you give us a design, we can transform it (using our preferred frameworks) into a working site.
Somewhere along the way you got the idea that you can do it all, but that's your problem. You can't (and shouldn't) be coding or generating all of the pages. If your expertise is design, then have at it. But after your design is done, hand it over to a developer for implementation.
Just as I don't want to see a developer designing, I don't want to see a designer developing.
I work at Amazon, and I can tell you that there's reams of code written from scratch... and then left to moulder in a corner. Once in a while you might find and old package that still works, saves you a ton of time, and impresses your coworkers, but mostly you'll just get partway through setting it up and you find that it depends on something else that has become incompatible or deprecated.
Knowing what packages are available, what they do, and whether they're still working is a word-of-mouth operation; people occasionally try to gather this tribal knowledge in a wiki page, but the page usually fizzles out after a little while. After six months someone else starts up another wiki page to do the exact...same...thing. This is also why 'the wheel' has been reinvented dozens of times here.
Make your websites a PDF file. It will always look and print nicely without wasted time quibbling over screen size, browser compatibility, fonts, CMS security patches or complaints from clients who need your help changing x, y AND z by themselves for free.
The nice thing about PDF files creating them is just a click away for most WYSIWYG publishing systems and by withholding source document your clients will have no way of making any changes without paying you.
If you object to my response with reasonable arguments it may be better to consider a different approach better addressing your (customers) specific needs.
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?
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
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.