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23 Comments

How do you create websites?

Do you use a website builder, Wordpress or just code it yourself?

  1. 3

    It depends on the type of website that you want to create! There is a big difference between a brochure type of website and a fully functional e-commerce website. Nowadays, it's not only important to have a nice looking website but it has to be functional. And often people don't understand that the front-end is just a small part of the website :)

    So there are a lot of alternatives (easy and free) if you want to create a simple fancy website but what about if you want to create a fully-functional e-commerce website?

  2. 3

    We use webflow for https://www.bankpayments.net

    I tell everyone that will listen... webflow is an excellent product! Has worked really well for us and its easy to get up and running, I'd suggest viewing the tutorial videos to familiarise yourself with the product.

    Afterthat its really easy to use.

    1. 2

      I second Webflow. I've been using it for the five years and all its done is just wonders.

      Zoli, i see that you create themes. You should look into webflow cms. Alot of themes are being made.

    2. 1

      I have heard great things about Webflow! I am getting increasingly curious to try it. Can you talk about any of the limitations you've experienced with it though? A lot of my ideas require a fair amount of user input/output. Traditionally, I think of this being done with an API + database. I know Webflow can do all the front end stuff very well, but is it a full stack solution?

      1. 2

        I wouldn't say its a full stack solution (depends on ones definition I suppose :)) but it really shines when you're using it for semi-static sites. It does have CMS (content management) functionality but haven't played much with this. It also has a shopifyesque store as well.

        If you're building something complex like a dashboard then webflow won't work for that. But if its something fairly static (landing pages or sites, signup pages, etc) sites, then its really good. Alot simpler than wordpress for example (IMHO).

        It has loads of plugins that you can use to extend functionality. You can also edit the raw html if you wish (although you don't need to alot of the time). For example adding crisp.app chat functionalityto BankPayments.net was really easy by editing the html.

        1. 1

          Makes sense. Thanks for the breakdown!

  3. 2

    as a past time digital art director and a developer, i like to involve in every part of creation with a joy.
    here is my workflow:

    • i draw some sketches on a paper as an exploration
    • then designing layout in sketch or photoshop with dummy text and image placeholders.
    • then writing html and css in my selected css framework: mainly bootstrap and lately semantic ui and tailwind
    • in the mean time, i create database models for Python Django or Flask.
    • then writing javascript codes for functionality
    • then writing controllers and views in Django or Flask.
    • then writing some rest api if needed for moving parts
    • then combining backend and frontend
    • rinse and repeat till there is no problem
    • then configuring server mostly centos or ubuntu with Nginx with gzip on and gunicorn
    • adding analytics, sitemaps and some verification for tracking
    • congratulations! you have blazing fast and purely custom website you dreamed of
    1. 2

      This is great man! You do it full stack :) Congrats.

  4. 2

    Been making websites since 2004. Back then there wasn’t so much in the form of resources, so everything was hand-coded, not even any frameworks really. Did web development for a few years doing everything from scratch.

    Now I no longer do paid dev, but our company spins up around 6-8 MVPs a year and usually sticks with 1 or 2 to develop into communities.

    Now, we mostly start with WordPress. As much as I intrinsically don’t like how WP is written, it’s incredibly flexible and gives us the ability to build a full SaaS (payments, user auth, etc) within a few hours. We usually purchase premium engine templates (from places like appthemes or enginethemes) or use a high quality open source template to start.

    I still hardcode my personal blog by hand, because I love doing it!

  5. 2

    Well I create by writing my own code since I am a full stack developer. But why do you ask?Any specific reason?

    1. 1

      We're in the business of creating web templates, themes and so on. We're interested overall how others create or would want to create websites so we can give them more value :)

  6. 1

    Recently build this starter template using Jekyll and Tailwind CSS, it's SEO optimized and can be hosted for free using Netlify or Github pages.

    You can check it out here https://github.com/cporrast/tailwind-starter

  7. 1

    I hand roll them with Nextjs and Bulma but it’s seriously a huge time suck. I’d rather spend my time doing something far more useful. If there was a tool I could use to create my site (and it didn’t look like every other site) and then I could export it and deploy it as part of my repo that’d make me happy.

    1. 2

      I've been playing with Bulma recently and love it!

  8. 1

    larval is great if you like php.

  9. 1

    Myself with:

    • HTML ( no HTML preprocessors, hate em )
    • SASS / SCSS ( CSS, framework, like Bulma, Tailwind )
    • Js
    • Vue
    • Buefy ( Bulma & Vue )
  10. 1

    I've been building my own for a while now. I got on board the Vue.js train about a year ago and never looked back!

  11. 1

    I've been a huge fan of Hugo (static site generator) for blogs and other static websites.

    Its:

    • Super simple to use
    • There are a ton of templates
    • You can customize easily with just HTML/CSS
    • Its fast
    • There is significantly less infrastructure to maintain (no database or server side code)

    To host it, a Digitalocean droplet or AWS instance is easy.

    I use some Terraform scripts for provisioning a hardened, solid Nginx webserver.

    At that point, literally, your entire website is just code and everything is stored in a git repo.

    1. 1

      nginx is my fav too!

  12. 1

    For personal project(s) i prefer to do it all alone. From backend (simple plain php) to frontend (layout, css, javascript, react).

    And for work Laravel + jQuery/Vue.js.

    1. 1

      This comment was deleted a year ago.

      1. 1

        I've made a a shi**y MVC style something (i cannot call it a framework) somewhere near 2012. Used PDO directly, so no ORM. It's very fast and memory friendly because no bloatware (something like 200kb ram usage with data from mysql, and generation times like 0.012s with sql included).

        Regarding routes, it's one entry page routing. Using an array of the routes, pointing to a controller with defined params. First route to match via regex, first to be served. Simple stuff, not the most clean way too (actually if i go now into the code i may be shocked)

        1. 2

          This comment was deleted a year ago.

          1. 1

            Same at work. Laravel for everything. Great time saver at a cost of performance and ram usage.

            But still, if I was to do something for me that needs to be fast , I would go for something custom. :D

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