Static Website Design vs CMS Based Design

everybody its staff with killer sites and other sites so in this vlog would answer a question that was put to me recently do you build static sites or sites based on a CMS a content management system so it just in case you don't know a content management system is an app like WordPress Drupal Joomla these are pieces of software that you install on a web server and they help with content management you could post articles and upload the images and do all kinds of stuff set categories etc except centers that are Sara so to give you some context CMS's are used quite a bit in websites today it's as much as thirty thirty five percent of the world's websites are powered by some sort of CMS and that's that's a rough figure could be a bit more actually so the big king of it all of course is WordPress WordPress power something like twenty seven percent twenty five percent of the world's websites just WordPress so that's significant to consider so the larger question is well I'm just gonna read the question when you build for a client to use a specific CMS or do you build static sites he goes on this guy to say I've been trying to gather a consensus a consensus on the best approach for designing sites for clients and well everyone seems to have a different opinion on the subject I'm interested to know your opinion so what I said was that long as I just opened up so many sites are based on Joomla Drupal and especially WordPress and there's a reason for because they bring a lot to the table to bring a lot of bonus functionality a lot of free functionality to a website now I believe the days of static websites what I mean by static web sites web sites that are just HTML CSS may be a little bit of JavaScript here and there and they're not connected to any database you're not part of a content management system just the traditional type of web site I think that business of building traditional website is going to become more and more difficult in terms of making and living as a freelancer and there's a couple reasons for that number one a lot of small business owners which are 80% of businesses are if they just want a static website because they're not designed training about majority of them because they don't have the eyes to see the difference between a great-looking design from scratch versus some template or versus a website builder like a Wix or something if you come to a client with just the ability to build static websites you're going to be severely limiting your job prospects your gig prospects so I would strongly suggest that you do pick a particular content management system and you learn it and you learn to skin them basically add the template and modify them and work with them there was a big business in that and many years ago I don't know what it was maybe 2008 something like this 2006 I'm not sure when I coined the term haha I don't know maybe somebody else came up with this term before me but I wrote I came up with the idea of the WordPress web designer and this whole idea back then I said there's gonna be a huge business opportunity for for web developers what designers who just work with WordPress and in fact that is the case and some people who made a lot of money doing that you know custom wordpress templates building wordpress plugins and providing that expertise you would be surprised how many small businesses are driven on WordPress so I know a lot of developer types of all designer type subway I don't know we're pressed and I'm one to complain about WordPress but it's the reality of the situation so to work with WordPress of course you need to know your HTML html5 your css3 and a little bit of JavaScript but it's also good to know a little bit of PHP because WordPress is created with PHP so if you want to go a little deeper in terms of your WordPress skills in terms of the the services that you provide for WordPress you know PHP is just gonna make your life that much easier on top of that I want to bring up a wider issue the idea of the web designer versus the web developer now web designer to me is a is a throwback the term it's a profession that has reference to the 90s early 2000s maybe I know a lot of people so think about web design they talk about web design I think a better way of describing the modern-day web designer if you will is you would describe him as a front-end developer versus the back-end developer so the back-end developer is the person right in the PHP or the Django Python Java Ruby the person building the apps behind the scenes the engine of dynamic websites now the front-end web developer is a person who's building the user interface the UI the visual components of a website of a web app and so yeah so that's what I would really call the modern-day web designer I would really call them front-end web front-end developers or front-end web developers because they're really much more there's much more about code with modern-day web design much more is much more about user experience UX than there was in the past you see back in the day if you built a nice-looking site you know maybe add some search engine friendliness to it and they used to call this we call this se-ho basically making sure that your code is optimized for searches of course these days if you do proper web development you write your code properly for your websites you don't need to you don't need to make your code compatible with the search engines it's already compatible with the search engines for two reasons a the code is better be everybody codes better rather and the search engines are better at what they do so in the old days it was much more about aesthetics how good looked these days if you're developing websites you really are front end web developer because you have to not only understand how but it looks good you have to make it look good you have to make it work good so that's where user experience come comes in UX and then you're probably gonna have to have some sort of knowledge about how to structure your code so it works with back-end coders so you need to really understand code and to even make use full use of html5 and css3 these days you have to know a little bit of JavaScript programming because a lot of the power in html5 and css3 not all of it but a lot of it comes unlocked when you understand a little bit of JavaScript if you want to get it you're gonna need to learn a little bit of jQuery as well you have to be a master at it but jQuery you know you could you could fledged through without knowing JavaScript but if you know just the basics of JavaScript your ability to use jQuery will be you know you'll be ten times more productive so yeah there's other frameworks bootstrap and so on so you know these days modern day web design has much more to do with front and front and web development rather than design so I think the days of the peer designer somebody who develops the user interface for a website or a web app just so that it looks good I think those jobs are fading simply because the web is much more sophisticated web sites are much more sophisticated so you as a developer have to be much more sophisticated let me give you context and a story back in the 90s what we had to do in terms of coding and a web site was a totally different event today the average web designer in the mid-90s a lot of them didn't know anything about code a lot of them were graphic designers who moonlighted as web designers and they would use a product like go live or Dreamweaver or something or front page and they would just cut up slice up their Photoshop images where they would lay out their sites in Photoshop and that was it you know it's all those web design has really changed quite a bit it got much more sophisticated and so in year 2000 2001 when the web standards movement took place where everybody started thinking smart about Cole about writing good code good HTML CSS code a lot the time in the late 90s early 2000s all about XHTML which is just that anyway forget about XHTML we don't do that anymore but point is is that the game changed the game of what a web designer did change it went from being what was mid-90s to when it became in early 2000 so now we're in you know 2016 unbelievable hot time flies the game has changed again in the last five years or so so you know give or take a year so yes bottom line should you just do static sites well if you're really good designer you might be able to scrape together living but Tanja the business and the action is with using some sort of content management system and these days because of its popularity WordPress is probably your best bet I'm not saying WordPress is the best on a technical level I'm just saying it's probably it is the most popular and there's so many companies use it it's well worth your time and your money to learn WordPress and to work with it and yes it can be a pain trust me I know all right I hope you found this useful Chacho

Channel: Stefan Mischook

Views: 17,521

Keywords: web design, wordpress, joomla design, wordpress careers, web design jobs, drupal

Id: Tsk0EX1iBWs

Length: 10min 9sec (609 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 10 2016