The future of Website development in HTML, CSS

I am a developer and love working in HTML, CSS and JS. I’ve recently started a business that uses these technologies together with bootstrap to create pretty cool websites for small businesses. However, it seems that it is a little difficult to complete with companies using Wordpress because there allow customers to edit the site themselves as well as can offer cheap prices. I believe the flexibility of HTML, CSS allows me to create much better looking and more flexible sites that can be done in Wordpress.
What are your thoughts on what are the best applications for pure HTML, CSS sites in the next few years.

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I hate being restricted by a framework and write my own.

I know of people getting into deep problems editing it themselves and in one case the original developer refused to help them get their site back after the user screwed it up.

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Hi, we have currently also a wordpress website, but are thinking about alternatives, which are easy to handle? do you have any suggestions for me? Many thanks :slight_smile:

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What is your business website?

So you build websites that the end client cannot update him/herself?

Updating content is one thing. Messing with HTML / CSS / PHP is a whole 'nother thing.

The WordPress ACP provides the UI to edit files that some should never fool with.

I added the business website, but was removed from the administrator :confused:

But as you have to see the website (it is not very complex), it is necessary to paste the link into the reply.

Thanks for help

Edited to remove unnecessary link again

I did not consider any of the links posted in this topic so far to be necessary or relevant to the topic.
Most of us know what a Wordpress and a non Wordpress site look like, there are countless examples out there.

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Off Topic

That’s really a quite different question from the one with which @info1359 started this topic, so you should start a new thread of your own for it.

You don’t need to post a link to your current site; that won’t help.

What you do need to do is explain your needs more clearly. What do you mean by “easy to handle”? What requirements do you have? Why do you want to move away from WordPress?

The more information you give, the greater your chances of receiving useful responses.

Perhaps you could create your own custom admin panel that will still allow users to edit certain things while giving you the flexibility to use whatever you create for them, I would imagine you would need a server side language such as PHP to accomplish that, it’s interesting as plenty out there that rely on a CMS may not be understand HTML and CSS like you do @info1359 although I think you may be restricting yourself a little without something happening server side…

That would be an easy fix with many plugins out there or some sort of role manager to restrict those that should not be messing about with core files @Mittineague, adding some rules to the .htaccess file would be another alternative…

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There are a lot of build your own website packages out there. But those packages still have to be designed. Take WordPress as the example. The default themes are packaged with HTML and CSS files that control how the themes look.

Thanks for the responses guys.
All frameworks\methods to develop websites have their pros and cons.
Back to the original question, I was actually looking for thoughts on when HTML, CSS would be most appropriate. I’m trying to continue focusing on these technologies (together with Javascript and PHP or Java accessed via REST) and trying to find what the target market would be.

The target market for what?

I’m not sure I understand what you mean here. HTML and CSS are the building blocks of any site, whether you use a framework, or a CMS, or simply hand code from scratch.

@TechnoBear, yes obviously, the comparison is between hand coding HTML, CSS using bootstrap and Wordpress (or any CMS). Looking for what is the use case for hand coded websites going forward. It takes longer, it also does not give the customer the ability to update himself or herself. So, does CMS become the clear choice for everyday websites? Or are there use cases where HTML, CSS is clearly better.

I can understand why people use things like WP, being fast and easy, allowing client updates, if the client requires that. But I much prefer to hand-code. In some cases I may integrate some form of custom built partial CMS that allows a certain limited level of editing where appropriate.

Here is a Food analogy. You see these DIY “website builder” packages, I see those as like microwave ready meals. It allows anyone with very little skill or knowledge to quickly and easliy create a meal for themselves. But lets face it, they are not very good.
Wordpress to me is like some sort of fast-food, like McDonalds or something. It’s quick, it’s widely available, it is very popular and people seem to love it.
So what about hand-coded sites? Well you could go out to a nice restaurant to get a meal. There a properly trained chef will prepare you a great meal, skilfully created from the finest ingredients and served to you. But it’s going to take a bit more time than fast-food and it’s going to cost you more too. there is also a possibility that it turns out to be terrible and you want to leave without paying.
The other option is to learn to cook yourself. Again it’s going to take you more time, to both learn how and to actually prepare a meal. But with practice you will be able to come up with good results and serve up a wholesome home-cooked meal, carefully prepared from fresh ingredients. With more experience you may become as good as or better than the chef, or you may even become the chef.

But why is the hand-coded stuff better?
Well if you take away the element of human skill and the time and attention paid to something, you are invariably left with a cheap mass-produced product of a lesser quality. When you study the actual code of the CMS it is quite often massively over bloated and laden with all manner of seemingly unnecessary additives. How many css files? How much javascript? Did anyone even consider optimising these images? And you often see what I call “Russian doll divs”, I’m sometimes astonished at the level of nesting seen on some CMS elements, I cannot comprehend how such levels of nesting can be necessary. From the little I have seen of the back-end coding, that’s not much better either in terms of being verbose. Filling in an any-purpose template leaves little scope for proper attention to semantics. Then you see the same templates used over and over again, so it’s like the whole of the web looks the same. so what you can end up with are people who are not so much coders (or chefs), but operatives in a sausage factory, filling empty skins with cheap processed meats, one after another in a production line.
I could rant on more, I haven’t even mentioned Bloatstrap. :speak_no_evil:
But it’s just my opinion, there will be many who would much rather eat :hamburger::fries: than a wholesome home-cooked meal, each to their own, and convenience can be convenient sometimes.
Quick, cheap and easy will always be popular and have a market, but remember, you get what you pay for.

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I totally agree that coding websites from scratch is better, lighter and more efficient than coding a website to run in a ready-made CMS. But more and more I worry about the owner of the website being able to keep the content fresh and up-to-date, which is a big part of successful SEO, if they don’t have a CMS to work with and don’t have the budget to hire me or another developer to maintain and update the website. This becomes a real dilemma and that is why this discussion is good to have.

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It really depends. If it’s a blog-like site with focus on original text content, then obviously a CMS like WP is a reasonable choice. If the content is mostly coming from a database (such as user-generated content or an online shop) and there’s little static content that needs to be maintained, the overhead of a CMS would be de trop.

Cool analogy Sam and very good reply as well.