How to create a website: self-made websites

When it comes to creating a website, you have 5 ways to do it:

• Self-made websites
• No-code solutions and website builders
• Specialized platforms
• Content Management Systems
• Frameworks

Today, I'll continue the topic of ?How to create a website? and talk about the first method - self-made websites. What is it? When is it best to use this method? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Let's dive in.

When I say ?self-made websites?, I mean that popular development approaches were not used in their creation. In this regard, there are three situations where you might encounter a homemade website.

The first situation: beginner developer

First and foremost, when you work with a beginner developer or student. Such a specialist already knows how to create websites but is not yet familiar with all the possibilities. Then he comes up with his own solutions and uses limited functionality, for example, creating static pages in HTML without a control panel. Or he uses hybrid systems because he lacks sufficient experience.

Besides the obvious drawbacks - low development quality - you get a project that is difficult or impossible to develop and maintain. Adding new functionality, updating content, search engine optimization, and other features become difficult to access. It's challenging to hand over the website to another developer because development standards were not followed.

One of the dubious advantages might be the price - beginner webmasters may set a low price for their work, but in the end, you'll pay much more.

The second situation: advanced developer

But there are more dangerous cases. Some programmers, with extensive development experience, invent their own content management systems or similar solutions that they use exclusively for their clients. These solutions are not popular and are mostly maintained by a single creator.

Compared to the first situation, the quality of website development can be high, but the client becomes tied to such a developer and forced to use their product. With all its technical and personal peculiarities. In case of disagreements or dissatisfaction, it's not easy to change the programmer. Moreover, one person often cannot meet all the requirements for flexibility, functionality, security, and other aspects of the project.

For example, content management systems like WordPress, Drupal, MODX have large developer communities constantly working on expanding and improving their favorite CMS. They conduct security checks, identify bugs, develop custom extensions, and collectively work on the common product. You can switch developers at any time, and they all know how your website works.

I have personally seen projects suffocating from the limitations of a custom system and unable to switch to another solution because they invested resources in it over the years. The web infrastructure has grown and it would not require a huge amount and not only financial resources to redo it.

The third situation: advanced developer 2

There are also positive aspects. Despite the listed problems, self-made websites are actively used in many modern and high-quality projects. The fact is that it is often easier to write some quick solution with your own hands than using a CMS or framework. Or even a builder.

For example, developers can create ?coming soon? pages, ?technical work is underway?, contact placeholders, and other temporary pages in a ?self-made? way. This implies that today we use a ?quick solution?, but at the same time, we are working on the full development of the website, which will be published later.

Conclusions

So, the ?self-made? method itself is not bad. It only becomes bad when used as the main solution.

Remember that a bad website steals your customers, time, and money. Therefore, I can recommend never encountering self-made websites except for the third case we discussed.

But how to identify a self-made website? If you want to avoid problems with homemade websites, ask the developer before starting work: ?What solutions and technologies will we use to create the website?? A good answer will be any CMS, framework, or builder that they will provide links to.

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In the next article, we will discuss the features of no-code solutions and website builders.

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