Should You Use WordPress, Wix Or Other Page Builders To Build And Design A Website?
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You need a website, where do you start?
You need a website. Should you build it with easy website builders like Wix, Weebly, or SquareSpace?
If you are dead set on doing it yourself, and you’re not a not a web developer, you should definitely consider it. These days there are a number of very solid website easy builders that are very easy to use and can create very nice looking web sites in a short period of time. In the old days, the builders were cumbersome, buggy and normally the content they created looked pretty awful. If you had a business, it was almost imperative that you hire a real live person, a web designer or developer.
What’s the difference between a web designer and a web developer?
Typically a designer is someone who is good at creating the visual look and feel of your site. They may or may not be good at programming the site to make it actually work. That’s what a web developer usually does. In truth a web developer is a catch all term for designers, programmers, marketing and search engine experts, etc. — all the roles that go into creating a web site.
Usually a person or company calling themselves a web developer will offer most or all of these things, at least they should be able to create your site and get it up and working for you, whereas a designer often just does the visual part.
Will easy site builders like Wix be good enough?
Unless you have high-end custom needs, or your web presence is a major part of your business success, then page builders like Wix can be fine. If you have a small business and you don’t look at your web site every day for whatever reason, you could be a good candidate for an easy page builder.
If you are trying to build the next YouTube or the next big thing, you will definitely not want to use an easy page builder. You’ll need an experienced developer and probably a lot of cash to custom code the whole project.
Should I try to build a website myself or hire someone?
As I’ve said you can probably do it yourself with an easy web site builder.. but it really depends on a number of things: how professional does it need to be, do you have custom needs, what is your turnaround time, what can you afford and your what is willingness to update and manage your site after the initial site is up. If you are good with standard office software like Excel, PowerPoint and MS Word, and you are comfortable doing things like adding images, or table, colors, borders, etc. to your documents, you will probably figure out how to use Wix, Weebly or SquareSpace quickly.
All these sites provide fairly extensive help and tutorials sections. Take a look at any of those sites to see the reasonably high quality designs you can get by just selecting a theme from their collection of visual themes.
If I use an easy page builder, how long will it take to build the website?
You can easily build a 5-10 page website in an evening. It might take you 30 minutes to make some decisions about the site’s design, colors, look and feel, and then perhaps 15-30 minutes to write content for each page. You can upload some images, and drag a Contact Us widget into a page and you’ve got a good starter site.
How hard are easy page builders to use?
Using easy page builders at sites like Wix, Weebly or SquareSpace are very much like using MS Word, MS PowerPoint or any other full featured office document software. It’s all point and click, and you can upload images from your hard drive and do everything without any programming experience. My mother is not very savvy compared to most of you reading this, but she could create a site if she had to using these tools. They are pretty easy and over the years their tools have gotten quite good and very user-friendly.
After it’s live, who will update the website?
With these easy page builders, you will do it, or someone in your office with word processing experience can do it. However, if you do not use an easy page builder, and your web developer hasn’t used an easy to update backend like WordPress or some other site builder, you may need to have HTML programming experience to be able to update your own site. Updating your site means adding more pages, editing pages, adding images, new information, etc. Typically you will want to freshen up your site every few months, or perhaps more frequently if you can. So it’s important to ask your web developer (if you hire one) “Will I be able to EASILY update my site after you build it?”
What is WordPress and should my site be built using WordPress?
Probably yes! WordPress is the coolest thing to happen to web sites in years and years. It’s a free code base that makes page creation and editing very easy. It’s similar to using MS Word or PowerPoint. It’s not only free and easy to use, it’s extremely powerful. There are loads of fantastic plug-ins that extend the number of bells and whistles on your site extensively.
I would HIGHLY recommend any site that someone creates for you should be built using WordPress, or else the person building your site should have some incredibly good reasons why WordPress is a bad idea.
Unless your site is a custom site that does a lot of unusual things, chances are good WordPress is for you.
What are WordPress Themes and how can I use them?
WordPress themes are rockin’ cool. They are files that you can upload to your WordPress site that allows you to ENTIRELY change your site design from soup to nuts. All you do is go to your WordPress Admin Control Panel, upload the theme (following the simple prompts) and a few minutes later, you will be able to select and apply the new theme to your entire site for a whole new look! They are free sometimes, but the best WordPress Themes cost a few bucks but not much.
Many things left to say…
There are a lot of questions you might have such as how much does it cost to hire a programmer to do a custom site, or how much will hosting cost, what IS hosting, do you need it, etc., etc. The list goes on an on. I’ll be trying to cover all these things and much much more in upcoming blogs at CoolHomepages.