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Ask HN: Freelance website builders/maintainers, what's in your 2024 toolkit?

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51–60 of 82 posts

Re: Ask HN: Freelance website builders/maintainers, what's in your 2024 toolkit?

#51
Depending on the clients' complexity and needs, I like to structure the work as:

Tier 1 (just need a basic site): Use the built-in website builders from their domain provider or hosted static site generators, like GoDaddy, Github Pages, etc.

Tier 2 (need plugins or ecommerce): If they require some more functionality like email lists or selling products then use services like Wordpress, Squarespace, or Shopify to build their site.

Tier 3 (extra data complexity): For sites that have more structured data that is not satisfied with tier 2, then use something like Webflow or Framer. These allow you to add more data types and categories to build unique pages.

Tier 4 (custom app) If they are building something unique that is complicated to build with the previous tiers, then my preferred stack to use is Django, Django Rest Framework, HTMX, Tailwind. Django-cms or Wagtail are also proven CMS to help build their site.

You should also consider serverless apps like Google Cloud Run or AWS Fargate so you don't worry too much about the infrastructure unless it is absolutely necessary to roll your own.

Tier 5 (a little bit of everything): Combine tiers with subdomains. For example, build their blog or marketing site on webflow, but have a custom API or an authenticated interface with a Django/DRF backend.

Ultimately, you need to see what level of technology your client is comfortable with and how you want to leave the project as your contract ends. Don't try to build a overtly complicated system that will give you more headaches later when the client calls on you again.

Re: Ask HN: Freelance website builders/maintainers, what's in your 2024 toolkit?

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Hacker News is a horrendous place to gauge technologies.

Seriously, some of the responses make me think that they weren’t written by freelancers.

Many of the responses appear to entirely ignore the operative word ('freelancer') and are just descriptions of their personal webdev stack, where the only user is them.

Re: Ask HN: Freelance website builders/maintainers, what's in your 2024 toolkit?

#54
I know you're asking about developer tools - the main ones I use include:

* Webflow (in case the client needs something relatively unsophisticated)

* Django / HTMX / AlpineJS / Django Ninja (in case the client needs a full CRUD application with more powerful capabilities).

I also want to shamelessly plug - if you are looking to do freelance or contract work, and you want an easy way to manage the contract, engagements, milestones, and invoices, consider using withpartly.com.

I'm the founder and CEO, and looking for freelancers / contractors to play around with the alpha product (for free).

Re: Ask HN: Freelance website builders/maintainers, what's in your 2024 toolkit?

#55

This will sound like cheating but I argue for the time it saves me, both in creation and on-going maintenance, and delivering a quality finished project: Squarespace. The clients are happy, if they get to the point where they want to manage the content themselves, and for less than $300/yr they get hosting, access to a payment processor if they need it, and domain renewal. It's been a no-brainer.

I do same, but with Wordpress and Elementor builder. It's good enough for most small scale clients on nano-size budget. But Squarespace is a solid tool too!

Re: Ask HN: Freelance website builders/maintainers, what's in your 2024 toolkit?

#56
I'm not a full-time freelancer, so I try to optimize the type of work I do. To that end, I'm sticking with Rails.

For my personal workflow, I put all projects in their own Docker Compose files (with local containers and/or standard images as appropriate). As much as possible, I want every project set up in such a way that my (host) machine has very few dependencies and everything is separate.

I limit the freelance work I do to the engagement; I'm not interested in managed services like owning the Github or the hosting accounts. I want to remove myself from the deployment if possible, so I push them towards CI/CD when I have the influence. (Github Actions these days, but I've used many of the standard options)

I avoid any kind of locking-in the client to me.

Re: Ask HN: Freelance website builders/maintainers, what's in your 2024 toolkit?

#57

This will sound like cheating but I argue for the time it saves me, both in creation and on-going maintenance, and delivering a quality finished project: Squarespace. The clients are happy, if they get to the point where they want to manage the content themselves, and for less than $300/yr they get hosting, access to a payment processor if they need it, and domain renewal. It's been a no-brainer.

I don't feel that's cheating. In many ways you're a better option than a generalist, since I assume you've become an expert on that platform. I know others who focus on Shopify, Wix, etc.

Re: Ask HN: Freelance website builders/maintainers, what's in your 2024 toolkit?

#58
post #9

For marketing sites: Wordpress with a custom theme,ACF, and some other plugins, with WP-Rocket, behind a WAF. Integrate it with whatever service the client uses. Then hand it over or maintain it for them. Lately I have been using Framer which is awesome. Trying to stay away from any JS framework or build system for my sanity.

This approach makes sense for even non-freelance deployments. Our primary income earner is a beast, with a custom workflow engine, orchestrated across multiple Docker containers in the cloud etc. However, our marketing site is a Wordpress site with a standard set of plugins, and I don't think I have a single line of custom code on it.

Re: Ask HN: Freelance website builders/maintainers, what's in your 2024 toolkit?

#59

No one in here is going to agree with me because I'm not cool, but I don't care, "I've seen it all!!" I have an employer, and we work with a particular stack, but if I was doing my own thing I would work native each an every time... If you work with apps, xcode and Swift, Android? Android Studio and Kotlin/Java, Windows desktop? Windows Forms and .NET %CURRENT_DOTNET_ITERATION%... Web? pick a solid framework with ton…

> remember Heroku f* everyone sideways Can you elaborate please? I hosted an API on heroku recently. I have no problem so far. Should I be concerned?

It's just expensive and is less of a value add than it was when deployment tools were painful (especially for Rails applications)

Re: Ask HN: Freelance website builders/maintainers, what's in your 2024 toolkit?

#60
post #12

How come I don't see anyone recommending ruby and ruby on rails? I am curious as I am going this route.

I did. It's just not the cool kid anymore, and given that discussion is focused on freelancing, there are other options that may be better for padding your billable hours :-)
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