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Page builders might not be a good idea

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Re: Page builders might not be a good idea

#31

Post by YokoZar »

lpapez wrote: post #3

> I don’t want to offend anyone here, but building pages is more than just writing content and placing it somewhere on the page. You should leave this job to a professional, especially if you want to maintain the site on a longer run. But this use case of simply getting some content accessible on the web is the primary reason why page builders are so popular :) For example, a large number small of businesses just wan…

I once clicked on a restaurant website. It was plain text on an empty background. The only content was their address, phone number, hours, and a link to a PDF of their menu.

The site asked for forgiveness and assured me that it was "under construction". But it was already perfect.

Re: Page builders might not be a good idea

#32

Post by crop_rotation »

I think the article misses the point that people just want to get things done. Particularly this point is so naive:

> using a page builder doesn’t make you a developer.

People who are using page builders are not doing to pass the arbitrary qualifications of being a developer. They just want to get something done and getting a developer to create a performant page is just so much more expensive. Even within big companies some departments leverage these because getting developer bandwidth is just too expensive for most of these use cases.

Re: Page builders might not be a good idea

#33

Post by nonethewiser »

crop_rotation wrote: post #32

I think the article misses the point that people just want to get things done. Particularly this point is so naive: > using a page builder doesn’t make you a developer. People who are using page builders are not doing to pass the arbitrary qualifications of being a developer. They just want to get something done and getting a developer to create a performant page is just so much more expensive. Even within big compan…

That makes it sound completely naive but I think that conclusion would be too rash. it seems like the author has some audience in mind. Perhaps himself after trying a page builder.

Re: Page builders might not be a good idea

#34

Post by camillomiller »

crop_rotation wrote: post #32

I think the article misses the point that people just want to get things done. Particularly this point is so naive: > using a page builder doesn’t make you a developer. People who are using page builders are not doing to pass the arbitrary qualifications of being a developer. They just want to get something done and getting a developer to create a performant page is just so much more expensive. Even within big compan…

It’s a wrong assumption and a marketing trick of all major page builders. For a one-person business, sure thing, maybe go with it. For all other use cases they are a liability, and a time consuming effort by people that shouldn’t be spending their (precious) time building a website for the first time.

As a web designer / FE developer and wordpress developer, I am happy they exist because they’re great business. The client starts with one template picked at random based on the wrong assumption that what you see in the frontend is tied to the template, two months in they realize that the marketing claims of Elementor or Divi or whatev where BS, and get frustrated about the unholy mess they’ve made. That’s when I get usually called in - mostly via word of mouth - to “fix the mess”. What I usually do is guide the client through why having a custom theme with flexible repeatable components is a much better idea. Then we sit down and we make a complete content outline to better structure what they’ve been scattering around the site in different pages with no separation of concerns between content, structure and graphic design (99% of the time this is really the problem they didn’t know they needed to solve first!). After that, I get to refactor the site into a lean, SEO-friendly structure, and finally I can sell them a small retainer for maintenance, because they finally understood that two hours of their time are worth MORE than a few hundred dollars they pay to a professional to keep the machine humming

So I guess yeah, thanks DIVI and Elementor?

Re: Page builders might not be a good idea

#35

Post by ravenstine »

Page builders and LLMs are the future. There was a time when that wouldn't be as plausible, but the web is reverting back to being a place to dump text and media, and host restaurant menus, in which case it begs the question why we need so many web developers.

Re: Page builders might not be a good idea

#36

Post by ozim »

YokoZar wrote: post #31
lpapez wrote: post #3

> I don’t want to offend anyone here, but building pages is more than just writing content and placing it somewhere on the page. You should leave this job to a professional, especially if you want to maintain the site on a longer run. But this use case of simply getting some content accessible on the web is the primary reason why page builders are so popular :) For example, a large number small of businesses just wan…

I once clicked on a restaurant website. It was plain text on an empty background. The only content was their address, phone number, hours, and a link to a PDF of their menu. The site asked for forgiveness and assured me that it was "under construction". But it was already perfect.

That is pet peeve of mine, getting annoyed by rando pizza places having web page like they are some fancy restaurant.

Landing page like SV startup, photo gallery.

Hell, give me the menu and phone number, you can drop photo links of your food somewhere in menu.

Re: Page builders might not be a good idea

#37

Post by tannhaeuser »

crop_rotation wrote: post #32

I think the article misses the point that people just want to get things done. Particularly this point is so naive: > using a page builder doesn’t make you a developer. People who are using page builders are not doing to pass the arbitrary qualifications of being a developer. They just want to get something done and getting a developer to create a performant page is just so much more expensive. Even within big compan…

> Getting to know page builder doesn’t make you a developer (leave the job to a professional).

Not only is it naive but based on the sad, self-centric failure to understand the original purpose of the web as a means for publishing hypertext.

Re: Page builders might not be a good idea

#39

Post by mewpmewp2 »

camillomiller wrote: post #34
crop_rotation wrote: post #32

I think the article misses the point that people just want to get things done. Particularly this point is so naive: > using a page builder doesn’t make you a developer. People who are using page builders are not doing to pass the arbitrary qualifications of being a developer. They just want to get something done and getting a developer to create a performant page is just so much more expensive. Even within big compan…

It’s a wrong assumption and a marketing trick of all major page builders. For a one-person business, sure thing, maybe go with it. For all other use cases they are a liability, and a time consuming effort by people that shouldn’t be spending their (precious) time building a website for the first time. As a web designer / FE developer and wordpress developer, I am happy they exist because they’re great business. The c…

Yet there are countless of business and small businesses who were able to leverage just from page builders and spin up their business viably and cheaply.

Re: Page builders might not be a good idea

#40

Post by syntheticnature »

YokoZar wrote: post #31
lpapez wrote: post #3

> I don’t want to offend anyone here, but building pages is more than just writing content and placing it somewhere on the page. You should leave this job to a professional, especially if you want to maintain the site on a longer run. But this use case of simply getting some content accessible on the web is the primary reason why page builders are so popular :) For example, a large number small of businesses just wan…

I once clicked on a restaurant website. It was plain text on an empty background. The only content was their address, phone number, hours, and a link to a PDF of their menu. The site asked for forgiveness and assured me that it was "under construction". But it was already perfect.

My sole objection is I'd prefer a non-PDF menu, especially when on mobile.

Also: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website

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