CMS vs Hand Coding Websites?

You can market yourself and your business in any way you want really. However, I'm not sure if one can fully call themselves a developer if you're not actually creating and coding something of your own. Sure, you can use templates and try to somewhat customize them on your own, although, that might leave out projects from your reach that require original code or designs of your own.

I understand the point and concept you're trying to make, but it does not mean that something is necessary faster. It really depends on the types of clients you'll be landing. Some personal websites, local business, etc., maybe not all need something entirely unique and they also might not want to pay a lot of money for a website. With clients like that it should work for getting some initial business.

There are definitely no shortcuts to learning something, or really making it easier because that's not really the issue. It's a matter of grasping certain concepts and finding the right approach and method to use, and then taking yourself to a level that would leave certain things behind that maybe you did in the beginning stages of learning this industry.

By the way, CMS software isn't necessarily more secure. In fact it's oftentimes less secure and more of a task to recover if you don't stay up-to-date on security and any software updates that any particular CMS might provide.

I would say however that using templates and themes to get yourself going is a great way to start your business and market yourself as someone who can provide some level of website customization.

CMS software (depending on what you use) has many uses. It can be used for eCommerce, organizing content, and of course blogs. I think over 20% of websites are running Wordpress, so the work and expertise is surely needed. Platforms can come and go but there will always be people who are needed to initially code them.

Also, I might add that if you want to be a forerunner in something, check out Ghost; it's fairly new and uses newer technologies like Node.js.

Learn to hand code and you can easily add CMS customization. Adding the ability to work with a CMS can't hurt your skill set. CMSs have a few benefits:

1. They allow your customers to edit content on the site you developed with having to know how to code themselves.
   
2. As a front end developer it could provide a framework for you to begin your development.
3. Could allow for faster development as many people contribute to the platforms ( at least the open source CMSs) for example if a client needs an ecommerce solution you could hand could but the faster and more cost effective solution is to leverage an existing solution and customize.

Thanks for the replies guys, so it seems that having both skills would be ideal in this industry. I'm hoping to learn how the two compliment each other in projects, but I guess this will be made clear through my own experimentation and experience.