I should probably dive right to the point and pick sides on which is better than the other between the WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) website editors and websites that are built from scratch – but I find it necessary to also shed a little background on my personal experience with both approaches in order to offer you as much of an insight into the topic as I proceed.
When I first took interest in online outsourcing and the income-generating opportunities that came with it – I signed up into freelancer websites as a content writer and focused on honing my skills towards writing good SEO copy for the projects I landed, and that is how I got introduced to a client who needed someone to develop content for his Content Management System (CMS) powered by Joomla. I must say – the learning curve for Joomla seemed a bit daunting for me to handle at the beginning but it all too suddenly became easy to comprehend and that is how I added my mastery of the Joomla CMS to my skill-set. At this point – I began scouting for local businesses that would need a website confident in my ability to create content and create websites with the Joomla templates – and then I landed my first local client – a small private college that needed a website to market their courses for an upcoming intake that they had at the time. Now Joomla is as great a CMS as they come and I would prefer Joomla to other alternative Content Management Systems if required to work with one – but the college website needed a lot more customization than I could handle with the plugins availed by the editor at hand.
I eventually had to make the client settle for what the template had to offer because money had already been spent purchasing themes and other plugins for the project – and that was the moment I decided to enroll for coding courses. When I was just a template editor at my best – it must have been challenging to convince me that there would be applications where a WYSIWYG editor would not suffice – but now that I am on my path to becoming a better developer than I already am – I am exposed enough to admit that there are projects that are out of my scope – and I would not waste a client's resources by pretending that I can get the job done when I know my skills would fall short. What I mean to say is that I still bump into template editors who swear by their templates – but it gives me greater satisfaction to be able to build exactly what my clients need and not what I can fit into a template. So am I saying that templates are a no-no? No. I am saying that there are probably projects that would be adequately handled by a template editor and there are scenarios where it wouldn’t suffice, and that is where building from scratch comes in handy.
As a policy – I build all the websites that I create from scratch because I am able to optimize the UX (user-experience) and the UI (user-interface) specifically for my clients and the users to the website, and that involves creating a custom Content Management System to ensure my clients can update what they need to update on the fly just as they would on a CMS minus all the limitations.
In conclusion, although a template website is fast and cheap to set up initially, cheap is very expensive in the long run. When looking at cost, it is advisable to keep an eye on quality and long-term value – hence I would recommend that you find a professional developer who will cater to your website’s present needs as well as the long-term needs. Do you have observations of your own to add to this list? Please share them below in the comments to help empower each other. Was this article helpful? Please sign up to stay updated with our empowering conversations.