Is building a site from scratch dead?

[wiggsfly]

For 90% of the sites out there I would say it isn't necessary. However, for that last 10% it isn't just alive, but thriving.

[Nerz]

I build from scratch, Joomla and Wordpress with each of my own personal sites. I decide by scalability. If I want people to only read content/post comments, I'll go with Wordpress. If the site doesn't need to be updated often and is as valuable sitting as with updating, I'll build from scratch. If the site needs to scale with functions and I suspect the site to grow large, I'll use Joomla.

I think thats a pretty good philosophy myself...

[Gobbo Mon]

For some reason I just thought using a site like wordpress or google cheapens a site. What do you think. It certainly makes things a hell of a lot easier so if it works then why not use it.

[Carl Henry]

For some reason I just thought using a site like wordpress or google cheapens a site. What do you think. It certainly makes things a hell of a lot easier so if it works then why not use it.

Hi Gobbo Mon,

Some people treat the use of Joomla/Wordpress as a lower version of website - these people have not work with them in my opinion.

These are highly efficient platforms - if you work to customise them with your own templates, avatars, admin layout etc. they become totally unique.

The only thing I would say is that you should pick a platform which matches the size and complexity of the site you are building, Joomla is a large-ish CMS which can be too big & complex for small websites, wordpress might be a better option.

Regards,

Carl Henry

[Yellowberry.org]

I am thinking of my next page will be pure HTML to avoid it be hacked and upload every new page from ftp. WordPress is very risky

[mmj]

If people look at your site and think less of you because you are using Joomla or Wordpress, then the problem is not using Joomla or Wordpress, but it is that you stuck with the bog standard template. If you customised it properly, they wouldn't even realise it is Wordpress/Joomla. Does SitePoint blogs look like wordpress? No? Well it's because they are not using the standard template.

Joomla and Wordpress and powerful publishing platforms - you just need to look at who is using them to see that. They only look amateurish if you have chosen to make them look amateurish. That's going to be true of the most professional CMS, too. And you know what? It is going to be even more true if you start from scratch. If you do not come up with a decent template, and you start from scratch, the chance of things looking amateurish is just as high as with a CMS and the same template.

You don't even have to design your own template - there are plenty of people who will sell or design you one really cheaply.

[turnerlittle]

Again, I'm inclined to agree with the majority - if you are good enough at, and don't get too frustrated by tweaking (which I certainly do) that you can make a wordpress/joomla site look nothing like the provided templates, then go for it.

If it's already there and it's what you need, then why build from scratch?

However, if you're like me, and you don't like learning from templates, but rather from your own mistakes, then do it from scratch. I think building a site from scratch at least once should be a prerequisite to building a site using Wordpress / Joomla etc, because at least you can understand the template you're working with a little better than if you simply tried using Wordpress without any prior knowledge of how their code works.

[asp-hosting.ca]

Of course it's not dead. The majority of my sites are custom-built and I use third-party applications for forums and blogs only.

[artcoder]

For me, the following process works best for medium to large site that may have a lot of content updates.

1. Take Photoshop PSD or purchased template PSD, slice and hand-code HTML. (I know that if you buy template, it probably comes with HTML code. But I don't use those code as they are not well optimized.)

2. Install Wordpress, Joomla, or Drupal depending on which content management system (CMS) you choose. I like the ease of use of Wordpress. But I like the hierarchical structure of Joomla and it may be better for "website style" sites as opposed to "blog-style" site.

3. Merge and customize your your choosen CMS to match your hand-coded HTML.

Of course, this take a lot more time than installing an Wordpress template. But in the long run, it has the best mix of coding from scratch and the benefits of CMS.

[samanime]

OwainGDWilliams said my main reason for always starting from scratch (unless I'm using Wordpress, etc.): I know exactly what's going on.

It makes maintenance SOOOO much easier if you know every "nut and bolt" of the site.

I am actually working on my own highly-flexible, plug-in based CMS which I'll use as the core for any sites that need some kind of CMS, but I still consider that building from scratch since I built it myself and how it's designed, it's not like just reusing Wordpress. It's primarily just the CMS portion. The front-end is still created from scratch.

[RyanReese]

I'm actually trying to create a forums right now and it's impossible for me to use a template because people might recognize it! I'm trying to do this from scratch. Maintenance issues with my own layout is the real reason I love using my own designs. Also I don't feel guilty .

[merovinq]

Between wordpress, joomla and other CMS's the art of from scratch website building is dying..

[kimmerwetz]

I think it really depends on what you are looking to achieve. I do like Wordpress though.

[billy_the_sound]

for me, I think many major sites that giving services like digg, technorati, facebook, myspace, rapidshare, youtube, didnt use cms to make their website.

[yasha78]

I am thinking of my next page will be pure HTML to avoid it be hacked and upload every new page from ftp. WordPress is very risky

Great point.

But, is building your own more secure (provided your site would attract this kind of (unwanted) attention?

[BigDirk]

No, I build all mine from scratch.

[lerxtjr]

We churn out a lot of sites here and over the past year I've been asking new clients to, in a round-about sort of way, convince me they need something other than a wordpress blog site. Very seldom does someone give me enough reason to build a site from scratch instead of a wordpress blog format.

I mean, what most business owners want is the ability to manage their own content and have that content automatically syndicate right? Get automatic search engine positioning and visibility every time they add something. Wordpress is the answer for that...well if you add the right plugins and configs of course.

Another client wanted a long sales page / sales letter style offer. We added it to wordpress and she didn't even know the difference!

Making a website from scratch just for sake of making it from scratch so that us developers "know everything about the site we've created" is old hat.

Sure there are reasons to upgrade to a Joomla or Drupal when multiple users are involved especially, but those are few and far between.

[Sha]

The people saying it's completely dead are wrong. It's not as popular as it was before, but there are people that still build sites completely from scratch, myself included.

[stuffedbuggy]

I would never buy or use a pre-designed site. I enjoy the creativity, originality, and challenge of programming and designing a good website. Plus I learn so much everyday about what I'm doing.
My philosophy: Desire to learn is the key to knowledge, and knowledge is the key to wisdom, with wisdom comes success, and with success, you can aid to others who were once in your shoes.

[BillyParadise]

Not only do I advocate using Joomla and Wordpress for the majority of sites, I also advocate using standardized development environments. Ruby on Rails, or Symfony (for php).

I assume every site I design will be sold one day, and have them built with standards so that they will appeal to a larger base of buyers. Not many people want to hack their way through hand-built code.

[JonShannow]

I have a team of designers and programmers and every site I have is build from scratch. You can control much better the site when you know every single detail of it

Really? Did they do Greenstalk? You need a new staff mate.

[amedia]

I always use some form of CMS for any site with a decent amount of content

[YuriKolovsky]

recently i had wordpress and zenphoto on a clients pc attacked by spammers,
not going to use them anymore...

overall i would love to use the already made scripts for a website, but the technology changes so much so fast, that the templates are very outdated, and i endup making it from scratch, hoping to find the ideal templates that will never change, sounds like a utopia for me.

[Ami1]

Absolutely, definitely yes

Most of my websites are still built from scratch

but I must add that I like building sites, so the wordpress shortcut is something I wouldn't want to do

But in a nut shell yes, some of us still build our sites from 'scratch'

[hubertthefly]

I find myself doing the same thing these days. There's just really no need to start again from scratch with the amount of resources available in CSS, blogs and other site creation software.