their website is totally broken on my browser (Firefox 82 with uBlock Origin)
Hm, I'm looking at it right now in Firefox 82 with uBlock Origin and everything looks fine to me. Do you have any other details? Thanks for the report!
Why build another website builder?
61–70 of 89 posts
Re: Why build another website builder?
#62Hey everyone! With what seems like a new website builder popping up every week, I'm often asked the same question. Why build another one? Here's my answer. We're starting to invite people to our early access program and would love your feedback.
Check out the US Digital Web Design standards. For example their discussion on color and accessibility is one of the best and easiest to share I’ve found: https://designsystem.digital.gov/design-tokens/color/overvie...
Especially now that I’m over 40, the important of contrast can’t be overstated yet right now everyone seem to be competing on how many barely discernible shades of grey they can have layered over their sites and content.
Lots of good common sense guidance in there - and it’s freely available/useable to all.
Re: Why build another website builder?
#63From https://www.makeswift.com/early-access : > Can I host a Makeswift site elsewhere? > Makeswift code can't be exported. Every page created in Makeswift is securely hosted and served via Google Cloud. I'm sorry, maybe I'm just being absolutist and cranky, but this doesn't sound to me like it's a 'website builder' - it's a tool that allows users to create presentations that can be displayed on the web. I get why you…
I don't think you're being absolutist or cranky at all. I think there's valid reasons why you would want to export your site. I guess the reason we call ourselves a "website builder" is because Makeswift lets you build, well, websites. As for "presentations that can be displayed on the web", it's a bit more powerful than that. All components use to build Makeswift sites are React components and we are planning on ope…
This might be a sticking point to adopting your service for some stakeholders, not so much because they actually need to export the website anywhere but because the business model of so many website builders seems to be 'regret'.
Re: Why build another website builder?
#64From https://www.makeswift.com/early-access : > Can I host a Makeswift site elsewhere? > Makeswift code can't be exported. Every page created in Makeswift is securely hosted and served via Google Cloud. I'm sorry, maybe I'm just being absolutist and cranky, but this doesn't sound to me like it's a 'website builder' - it's a tool that allows users to create presentations that can be displayed on the web. I get why you…
I don't think you're being absolutist or cranky at all. I think there's valid reasons why you would want to export your site. I guess the reason we call ourselves a "website builder" is because Makeswift lets you build, well, websites. As for "presentations that can be displayed on the web", it's a bit more powerful than that. All components use to build Makeswift sites are React components and we are planning on ope…
Yeah, that's a no from me, dawg.
Re: Why build another website builder?
#65>For one, the template never lasts as long as you need it to. You realize the design isn't working, or your competitor just unexpectedly made a move. So you start trying to make changes. Swapping out the text and images comes easy, but as soon as you start adjusting the layout, frustration begins to set in. You've got a million other things to do and for some reason you can't get the page to look right on mobile. I'v…
The promise (and I understand it's something we have to prove) is that extensibility won't lock you down. The most succinct way I can put it is: component composition. We're making a bet on the idea of components as a composable visual entity that can be used for building websites.
By putting the abstraction layer, even with templates, at the component level instead of the page level like most builders do, we believe that all of these pain points Alan mentions in the article will be solved. The component you're using should be flexible enough to modify to your heart's content. And if it isn't, you can just find a third-party component to satisfy that. And if that component exist, then you should be able to make your own by just writing some React (or Vue, etc.), not interfacing with some bespoke API.
And becase these components compose, there shouldn't be a need for a "rescue". That's the vision.
Re: Why build another website builder?
#66I don't understand the need for additional SMB website builders (as the use-case described says "company") — problems I see:
- Squarespace/Shopify may seem like "website builders", but the bigger play is to manage parts of online business (transactions, reservations, point of sale, etc.), and ultimately everything. "Website builder" is just an entry point.
- Online presences need to manage multiple web properties (i.e. a restaurant = yelp, tripadvisor, facebook, etc.). And lets be real, a restaurant can just redirect their domain to whatever the hottest social platform is (chances are it's going to load faster).
- Websites aren't the only channel anymore.
Website builders are commoditised imho, and have no value as a pure tool.
Re: Why build another website builder?
#67From https://www.makeswift.com/early-access : > Can I host a Makeswift site elsewhere? > Makeswift code can't be exported. Every page created in Makeswift is securely hosted and served via Google Cloud. I'm sorry, maybe I'm just being absolutist and cranky, but this doesn't sound to me like it's a 'website builder' - it's a tool that allows users to create presentations that can be displayed on the web. I get why you…
I don't think you're being absolutist or cranky at all. I think there's valid reasons why you would want to export your site. I guess the reason we call ourselves a "website builder" is because Makeswift lets you build, well, websites. As for "presentations that can be displayed on the web", it's a bit more powerful than that. All components use to build Makeswift sites are React components and we are planning on ope…
I'm reading through the first half of the article, which mostly tells some story about how a pain point might turn out, but I don't feel like that's really answering the "why _another_ website builder".
To really address that question, one needs to address the elephant in the room: wordpress. Thanks to over a decade head start, it's arguably the most advanced solution in the space. Wordpress and its ecosystem handle a myriad of business-focused things that make most attempts at React-based solutions look like toys. There are power user templates that let you configure pretty much every aspect of the site and then some, and if you want to defer, you can also find wordpress experts very very easily.
Re: Why build another website builder?
#68Developers hate these tools for a reason: they're the ones maintaining it after it's been deployed. The whole concept of "no-code website builder" ultimately goes back to "where is the code and how do we modify or integrate it with our current systems". Maybe if it was marketed as a "fast prototyping" tool, I'd be more on board with the product.
I made it a rule that all articles are html/css, no website builders. One website builder page broke and I had no idea for potentially years.
I had nursing students, high school grads, history majors, and a heroin addict make a html/css page.
Sure it was wrapped in my header/footer, but this means 1 front end developer, once.
Re: Why build another website builder?
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not the most educated person on the matter, but I think there is an argument to be had about what constitutes a "website" and what is just a "multi-paged presentation" or even a "multi-paged advertisement" that is hosted on the web. I can imagine that even certain presentations can foster more intrigue and be more informative than just a place online that supports brands, products and services. I wish I was more…
I agree that there's a clear difference between the two. Makeswift sites aren't just a "presentation", though. They're hybrid (server-side rendered on first load and client-side rendered after) React apps. And because of that you can have components that do all sorts of things a "presentation" can't do. For example, you can pull in data from third party APIs, you can build dynamic UIs with dialogs, you can animate co…
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Re: Why build another website builder?
#70Tangential: Does anyone know what the name of this latest design trend is that makes heavy use of illustrations with shapely people? Does anyone know where it originated? It's taken over everything.