Why do people create a site using programming languages if they can easily design it on websites like Wix?
In: Technology
Wix is for people who don’t know how to code or do not want to pay for a professional developer.
If you can do it yourself, you are going to have access to more options. If you use a website like Wix, you can only use what they have coded for you to use.
Wix is like an Ikea of website development.
you can only do so much with websites like wix. using programming languages gives flexibility and more customizations on the designs.
Complete control over every last detail.
Also, you can only use Wix or Squarespace’s design tools if they’re hosting your site on their servers… meaning you’re paying them.
With a custom built site, you could completely change the host without worry.
Wix is like a bicycle with training wheels.
It will get you where you need to go and doesn’t require a lot of skill to operate. But if you want to do more than the bare minimum, you’ll have a lot more flexibility if you remove the training wheels and actually learn to ride properly.
Why do chefs need commercial kitchens when you can easily cook a meal in a home kitchen?
If a tool like Wix gets the job done for you, great! Go for it. Most people who want/need a website don’t have the time or energy to learn more sophisticated tools. There’s just better things for them to put their effort towards. Even software engineers will usually reach for Bear, Substack, Github Pages, or something of that ilk to host their personal blogs rather than have to deal with all the faff of setting something up from scratch.
The problem is when you have more specialised needs that those tools don’t cater to. When you actually need to get your hands dirty. Ultimately, you can’t really build Reddit on Wix or Squarespace.
A friend had a someone set up a website in Wix for a small community group. After six months, the site still didn’t show up in Google so I offered to take a look. In two minutes with a Google search I figured out he had never checked the ‘allow Google to index your website’ box. Was there a menu and a photo, a few pages and headlines? Yes. But they had never set up meta descriptions, keywords, style sheets, color palette, featured images, and so much more. They had obviously never tested it for mobile either. It was a hot mess, and made me realize that just because you can set up a website in Wix doesn’t mean it will work. My experience working in multiple Content management systems meant I could fix all the stuff he didn’t even know needed to be done. I was kind of shocked that someone could launch a site without first completing a run-through list.
Knowing web design languages is like having a blank canvas with every type of paint imaginable available to you. Wix is like having an adult coloring book and a 16 pack of colored pencils.
Wix is fine if you lack the skills to build a website of your own and chances are that it will create a good-looking result. But ultimately you’re going to be limited to the designs that they’ve provided you with. If you have web design skills, you can create pretty much whatever you want and it has the possibility to look and run so much better and do far more things than anything you could ever get from Wix.
Why do carpenters still exist when ikea has all your needs covered and anyone can assemble it?
You can buy a prefab home from a contractor who’s building 10 identical homes and maybe pick out some different materials here and there. Or maybe an apartment in a new 10 story apartment complex. Then go to Ikea and buy a bunch of standard furniture for your home. Or you hire an architect who designs your house from scratch to fit in your plot of land and then have skilled carpenters custom build your furniture so it matches precisely in the rooms of your house. Depending on your needs and how much you’re willing to pay you can choose your best fit. Sure the apartment building will probably have a decent water and electricity setup going on. Probably some security cameras at the entrances and a badge to enter the common areas, and that’s good enough for most people. But if you want control over every aspect of your house, like an extra garage for your fourth car, a private golf course, an in door pool and infra red security scanners, you need to own the place to do so. Similarly, making a simple website on platforms like Wix is probably easy and fast and will fit the needs of small businesses. But if you have special requirements for it then you’ll have to look at having it custon made. Things like this could include stuff like… Handling a ton of visitors, store tons of data, a people-will-die-if-we-get-hacked level of security, run special code (like a game, or a conversion tool, or a generator for making sudokus or crosswords or …). Also if you’re dealing with highly sensitive data, you may not want a third party (like Wix) to even be able to process and secretly log or save that data either. Imagine the apartment building’s security system recording 24/7 in the common areas. You don’t really know how long they keep that footage. Or maybe the walls between apartments aren’t as sound proof as they should be. So if incredibly wealthy people come to visit they may not feel comfortable enough discussing business strategies with you.
As everyone has said it’s easier and cheaper. The big part for growing companies is scalability. WIX sites are extremely limited. If you develop a website from scratch you can literally do anything with it, including scale up pretty much indefinitely.
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