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Business

Posted by Philippe Massaad
Philippe Massaad
3,091 Points

Question about becoming a Web Developer(Freelancer).

Hi everyone,

I have a question in my head which I can't seem to find an answer to. I have been thinking of starting a Web Development business hoping to target small businesses and probably medium businesses in the long term.

My questions is:

Do people who sell websites always offer a CMS with their website for back-end control?

What I mean is, lets say I am building a website for a business that just wants basic information to be shown on the internet(About, Contact information and a Products page that gives just information on what brands they offer). Is it outdated to code a page from scratch using basic HTML and CSS with the use of anchor tags to link to the Product, Contact and About page from the main page (index.html) ?

Or is it preferable to always offer a client with some back-end control and create more dynamic webpages?

Thank you all for the response

Phil

ps. sorry if this question is a bit vague

1 Answer

Ethan Lowry
PLUS
Ethan Lowry
Courses Plus Student 7,323 Points
Ethan Lowry
Ethan Lowry
Courses Plus Student 7,323 Points

As a part-time freelance web dev myself I've often wondered this.

Personally for me it depends mainly on asking the client one thing - will the content on the site be likely to change or be added to often? And, does it require a blog or similar feature?

If yes, I'll usually head to WordPress, or whatever your CMS of choice is. And odds are you'll charge more for this added complexity - though whether it's actually more 'complex' with the amount of work done for you by WordPress etc. and their themes is another matter, and depends on how much customisation you need.

If not, I personally still feel fine about just using the good old holy trinity of pure HTML, CSS and JS. Of course, you can still use all sorts of awesome modern tools for front end development like css frameworks, HAML, SASS, CoffeeScript, etc. if you like, which I would highly recommend checking out.

Also I will typically use very basic PHP to create re-usable templates for things like the Header and Footer of the site - this way, you don't have to make small changes to every individual page on your site every time you update something. A simple search for PHP templates or the 'include' function should be all you need for that if interested.

Just my opinion but hope it helps :)

Philippe Massaad
Philippe Massaad
3,091 Points

Thank you so much. That is actually exactly the answer I was hoping for. :)

I am currently doing the Web Design track and was hoping on doing the Front-end development afterwards. So I will be learning more about JS and PHP. I will make sure to check out the other languages that you have mentioned.

Thanks again