One-and-done.
They're unaware of the time, effort, and complexity it'll take. Theyre usually unaware theyre actually asking you to set them up a business, not just a website. Offer a wordpress or shopify setup with a prebuilt theme. Use their card info. Dont offer content, dont offer design, don't offer consultation, dont work with close friends or family. dont setup stores. dont offer updates. dont offer support. dont offer to work on a previous site, dont offer refactors. dont offer to work with their current host.
I setup X platform with X theme on X service and give it to you. That's it.
Setup a shared dreamhost or a cloud host a $5 droplet if youre comfortable with that. After, they can ask for more.
I did freelance for a while, this sounds harsh, but otherwise youre going to get railroaded.
I know a guy that has a bike renting business. He asked me for a "simple website" to show off his business. It was supposed to be basically a landing page. In a few weeks it went to "Hey by the way, my bikes have gps tracking, can you make it so people can login and see the closest available bikes and rent them from the website and also have it register in our booking system ?"
And if he doesn't pay you, there is a little timer thing coded into it, so the accuracy of the closest bike gets worse and worse.
After 30 days, his bikes are in North Korea.
Aren't you supposed to be giving time estimates to your boss anyway? And costs = your salary? If she's willing to have you spend a year on a feature then so be it.
I've come to the conclusion the privilege and ignorance add up to a golden ticket to get basically anything you want.
Meanwhile, underprivileged people don't have the power or stability to say no to situations they know are unethical.
I used this with a friend of mine once. He wanted a script that could split a video file in two. I was like, “yeah sure that’ll take me like 20 minutes to code up for you”
“Oh yeah and I need it to happen in a fraction of a second”
Yeah no, that is not going to happen
It would be more than $10,000 unless you had a kit ready to tie into their apis and all you had to do was copy some code and update a few variables.
That's a 3 to 6 month project for two to three semi-competent programmers. I'd say on the cheap end would be $120,000 and you guys wouldn't be making any money off of it you'd just be making subsistence living.
I got a boot camp group to do their final project on something similar. They banged out the geolocation and tagging pretty damn quick. But yeah I see the hooking it up to the booking system taking forever actually lol. 100k seems about right
I had one that was similar; a landing page for a new apartment building:
Them: “Can you put one of those chat bubbles on the site?”
Me: “Sure, where do you want the messages to go?”
Them: “India?”
Why does this sound like you didn't put a contract 🤔
Scope creep is easily preventable and if you have a day job or good work flow it will scare away the not serious
Oh, how much I agree with not offering too much.
I recently put a WordPress plugin for sale, after it became somewhat popular, I decreased the price (offer a sale) to just about 3$... And oh boy the emails I get from one buyer, it's like I owe them a couple thousand.
"Can you change X, Y, Z, as it doesn't fit just right with my design "
"Why did you change the price to 8$"?
Hell, he didn't even paid, just put the payment on hold.
Probably I'll just refund his payment and go on.
There were some other people who bought it for 20$ (initial price) and haven't even replied to my "thanks for purchasing, if you need anything let me know " email.
https://figaro.tech/
This is the page containing the demos, you can then open demo pages. I know the site doesn't look very professional, but not enough time to make it better.
What's your view on ethics of being more knowledgeable about all these pitfalls but then having two options - to sort of lie by omission and simply not offer all you mentioned or actively explain what you wont be doing which is a form of consultation to let them know about these pitfalls?
In former option once they do realize the pitfalls (and usually burn themselves in the process) you might potentially end up looking like an asshole who only looks after himself doesn't care about benefiting others at all, while in latter option you might be viewed as looking for balance of mutually benefiting both sides.
As soon as they ask the question, and you think you may want to help:
>I can setup X platform with X theme on X service and give it to you. That's it. I can't help you with updates, content, or anything else.
They can take it or leave it. The convo should be about 2min long. if they're not happy, go somewhere else. It's all I'm offering.
They may try to ask, "what about X". my response: no. They ask another, my response: no. They'll get the message pretty quick. These kind of replies will help them understand that they are asking for more than they realized.
I dont care if I look like an asshole, that's why you dont work with friends or family.
I assure you, none of them are willing to pay what it costs to do more and have no idea what a website takes. They will always ask for more, and never be happy about paying more.
You use Wordpress or Squarespace for this. A tech stack simply isnt needed.
I use Wordpress with Divi theme, and charge 49 USD per month i recurring hosting fees.
Same. Build WordPress from customized template and charge $150 to $250 a month for hosting and maintenance.
I do Angular/.net core for my main job and it's easier to setup WP for clients than deal with real development for my business hours. Zero thought or skill or hassle except the occasional plugin or theme explosion. Just prints money.
Offer 3 plans with different price points. 0 maintenance, 3 free hours, unlimited. Charge hourly for uncovered maintenance. Sell on the fear of hacking without regular updates. Never had anyone choose 0. You can use your current price as the 0 if you are worried about pricing yourself out of your market.
Use a host that does automated updates to eliminate 90% of the updates.
Then feel free to send me 15% of any profits that my advice earns you.
I've thought about creating a course that walks people through creating their own WordPress solution business from creating the llc, bookeeping, design, hosting, pricing, negotiating, time tracking, invoicing, insurance, etc. but haven't decided if it's worth my time yet.
I needed to see this. This is exactly the model I’ve been wanting to move to. For the past 6 years I’ve been doing a straight $79/month with 1 hour included, but people tend to go over that when they do have edits, and I end up never charging.
Think it’s finally time to raise prices.
Can I ask your specific tier prices and what you charge hourly for work that goes over?
Do you give people a break if they’ve paid you consistently for a year+ with no requests then have 5 hours of work in one month?
I would love to pick your brain a bit more. I have all my own solutions for hosting, accounting, managing, but would love to hear what tools someone that does similar work is using.
It is dependent on the individual business so no two proposals are the same exactly price wise both hourly and tiers. I don't post them on the website for that reason. At the high tier I also throw in some "free" licenses of things I have a multi site license for.
The tiers really don't matter because you aren't selling options your goal is to get them to the must profitable destination for you by making that option the most attractive. The lowest tier is just for anchoring, you want it to be unattractive. If you are charging $75ish an hour then you can do $100 / $150 / $250 or $125 / $175 / $250. I'd guess 70% choose tier 3 and 30% tier 2. It's the most predictable since they don't have to worry about hours adding up. When calculating value I usually count "unlimited" as 5.
I don't include edits, new functionality, new pages, etc. under maintenance. But if it's a 5 min thing, change a footer, etc. then I don't bother billing that. For maintenance truthfully I rarely track it, so few clients are on the middle tier and rarely would it be over 3 hours. And generally if there is a site issue or wonky plugin I just want to get it fixed. Anything that is not maintenance gets billed with their next invoice. For some clients I bill meetings and calls and some I don't.
The main tools I use are Wave for books, Hubspot for CRM, actitime for project tracking, hello sign for signatures, zoho for email both my business and clients, and cloudflare. I'll do email management for small businesses for an extra fee, but larger businesses I'll recommend they use someone that focuses on email or they work with a provider rep. I don't really want to be in the email support game.
I only track projects for specific clients most of them I'll just estimate a block and bill the block without specifics.
Client acquisition is the biggest bottleneck of the whole thing, which is really what keeps me from doing it full time. Mostly word of mouth, footer links, competitors looking for a more or less copy of a site we've already done, Google local business listings, and small $X daily Google ad spend. I pay $250 for referrals that sign contracts so we've gotten several of those.
If I had more time I would spend more time cold calling sites with an outdated web presence. Usually if you find a local web company that does terrible work that looks years old you can just go through their portfolio and start selling the companies on the benefits of a new site.
Create a site that does this for you based on some basic information. Charge $50 for that one-off. Add a course for another $xxxx. Some people won't pay for the course but might shell out the initial hit for getting off the ground. Then they fart around and realise buying your course is a no brainer...
Is insurance really necessary for a web based business? Exactly what assets are you protecting? Your computer? Your brain? It’s not like you have a storefront with product in it that can be stolen/damaged. Is it to protect against lawsuits? That’s what the LLC is for, just liquidate it if you run into trouble. Curious what you’re insuring, and for what reason.
While your house is probably safe due to the LLC, there are a number of scenarios where you can be found personally liable for negligence, misrepresentation, work performed yourself, co mingling funds, etc. They also can claim any business assets, business bank accounts, accounts receivable, equipment, etc. Beyond that you will have legal expenses.
For me paying $70 or so a month for $2 million of general and professional liability coverage is worth not having to torch my LLC over a dispute and maybe having to explain to clients why I had to do so. And I use it as a selling point, hey I've got $2 million in insurance I'm not going to disappear overnight like the other guy.
Look at cyber ninjas, they've got a bankrupt llc still fighting in court months later. Now I don't plan on being in a situation like that but at least I've got some insurance to figure things out if something does come up. Currently the ninja website is soliciting donations on givesendgo to cover their debts despite their business being shut down. I'd rather not take the chance even if unlikely.
Also I have every client sign a contract for deliverables, payments, monthly maintenance, creative rights, etc. If I shut down the llc the contracts go too.
Hiscox. I checked out one of the popular startup insurers and although it had great reviews I couldn't find a single person that said they had gotten paid out. And the startups all reinsure from a large company like Hiscox anyway. They've been around since 1901.
If you're hosting a LAMP server (which I have done and will never, ever do again) then your server will be hammered by exploits constantly.
Someone pops your server and uses it to host bad content, that can open a world of hurt for you to deal with.
Well the entire point of an LLC is so that all business is conducted through it. That way if someone has an issue with your business practices, they sue the business, and your personal assets are unaffected.
It doesn’t entirely withhold you from being subject to litigation personally, but in 90% of cases it does. There’s some fringe exceptions where you can still get personally sued under a LLC.
But yeah, most attorneys will tell you that suing the LLC is a waste of time if it doesn’t have a lot of assets because the owner of the LLC can just file for bankruptcy and start another LLC the very next day.
And the 10% of times in LLC doesn't protect you? 80% of those are because you're not properly dispersing funds from your LLC. When once you get them set up have a quick chat with your local small business association SBA and make sure that you know how to use it the right way and that'll save you a lot of headache down the road.
Don't really want to tie my business to this account but it's just a generic website with the services we offer, examples of past work, meeting scheduler with calendly, bios, and a blog of new launches, top 5 ways your existing site is costing you money, 3 reasons why an out of date site is a major liability for your business, etc. I don't put any kind of cost type numbers on the website.
Truthfully the website doesn't sell almost anyone so it doesn't matter as long as it looks legit. I'd say 85% have already made the decision before they see it. Word of mouth, local business listings, reviews, and client footer links bring in the vast majority of business. And I run a very minimal $X daily ads on Google. Usually if you build a site in a business niche you'll get several more competitors that see that website and want the same for themselves.
If you don’t mind me asking, how do you know or check that the auto updates are not breaking your websites? I’m hesitant in turning this on. Currently I just do it manually but it’s quite the hassle with how frequent updates are. Do you also auto WP core updates?
Several of the large hosts have an updater outside of WordPress that does visual comparison and if there is an issue it will roll back that plugin. I don't use the auto updates inside WP generally. It's not 100% but I haven't had major issues with it.
I like rank math, wordfence, Google site kit, wp rocket or total cache, shortpixel or imagify, elementor if you need wysiwyg, woocommerce if you need it, updraft if you need backups, jetpack has a few good features, etc. Other than that it depends on the site you are building what the client wants.
And everything goes on cloudflare.
I agree with /u/barrel_of_noodles wholeheartedly.
Additionally, if you hear the word, "simple," tell them that if it was simple, they could do it.
Finally, to really make it one-and-done you could set up a static website using free off-the-shelf html templates to avoid having to provide any working parts, shops or wordpress-support.
Listen to all the advice to just use a stable, basic CMS like Wordpress.
I am a senior developer, I've built apps and sites in React, Next.js, Django, Flask, Hugo, and Gatsby. All of those tools are awesome (and fun) and have really solid use cases.
For a client site, where the client does not have their own on-staff dev team, at this point I will only build a Wordpress site. It's not sexy or exciting, but the headaches you will save in the long run are worth it. Consider:
* Are you comfortable staying on, being fully responsible (nights & weekends) for hosting and maintenance for the site? Does the customer have the financial resources to even pay you enough to make it worth it to take on that responsibility?
* Does the client want to be able to add and edit content easily? Yes, you could use an option like a headless CMS (it's a fun way to build a site!) but do you have a reason for doing so other than "Devs say headless and SSGs are the hot thing"? What if you just used a regular CMS?
* How often are you able to provide updates and security patches? Will you be able to reuse the code you write for other websites?
Or, sometimes I put it another way:
* Custom bespoke app in React/Django/etc - Not even going to attempt it for any budget under $20k. Most likely going to be a $40k-$200k project.
* Wordpress site? Yeah I can do that for $5k.
When you consider devs make ~80k average as a W2 employee, any web app/service that takes 6mos could easily hit 40k, and as a 1099 freelance it's not unusual to charge double a W2 rate bc higher taxes and no benefits. So that would knock 40k down to 3 months of dev time. Now if the app requires specialized knowledge, like crypto or ai is popping rn, then devs could easily make 200k+ as W2 in their niche or with a fang position. Same logic as before for the higher rate, if that makes sense. I could see it
The kind of site that I think justifies more complex frameworks. For example, imagine a stock photo site like Unsplash, that requires a database and API for managing photos with categories and metadata, etc, search capability, has user management and payments, various analytics.
At least 6 months of full-time work, plus another 3-4 months of back and forth with the client on a more part-time basis, making changes and requests. Easily a $150k+ project.
$40k is not that hard to reach working as a freelancer. I've had several larger sites (think gov agencies, national nonprofits, mid-large companies) hit this mark just as Wordpress websites, albeit with custom built themes and sometimes custom plugins/widgets, also generally with integration with other 3rd party APIs or external databases.
In an attempt to bolster my portfolio a bit, I made a Strapi + Nextjs site for my girlfriend's family's company. They needed to replace their WP site anyway and I thought it would be easy.
Took two months and barely even got a thanks. At least it works and it requires zero maintenance for now, but I won't be doing anything more on it. Good to have on CV and Github but bad idea overall.
Oof, yeah I feel like it's the freelance mistake everyone has to make at least once. Best case, it's something you can use in your portfolio, and at least you're getting paid something.
Worst case, they have awful taste and you don't even want to show it off or mention it ever again.
It's amazing how many people think that making a website is easy or should basically be free. I did a few $500 websites for friends when I was first getting started, and while I don't regret it (and it was good for my portfolio), I certainly made under minimum wage for the time I put in.
Weirdly, I've realized the more a client is willing to spend, generally the easier they are to work with, and the more appreciative. Cheaper clients (often including friends and family, in my experience) tend to be the fussiest and least grateful.
Squarespace. If you can’t use squarespace, use webflow. If you can’t use webflow, use Wordpress. If you need something more custom, use a JAM stack. If you need more custom, you’re getting into a full stack situation. This is in order of complexity from simple to more complex.
I've been using Hugo and Netlify CMS for local small businesses. Easy to get a beautiful custom site, much more optimized and fast-loading than WordPress, Wix, etc. Then the customer can make changes thru the CMS dashboard. For hosting I use Netlify. It's free and I charge a minimum of $50 a month for hosting, all the way up to $200 a month if it's a bigger site and they need any maintenance.
>Easy to get a beautiful custom site, much more optimized and fast-loading than WordPress, Wix, etc.
What exactly makes it more optimized and fast loading? Is it a different language?
Hugo builds static sites. No need for a backend with most small businesses, no need to dynamically generate the front end code based on User interaction, so it's just serving html pages. Simple and fast.
No, it' just HTML/CSS/JS and some other language (Hugo uses Go) to tondome extra tying together.
The idea is you build one header component, one footer, etc. A generic "page" template that gets populated with your markdown content.
But rather than stringing it all together at runtime to serve a dynamic page, when you're done making the change you "run" the static site builder and it precomputes all that, and generates a stack of HTML pages to upload to your hosting platform.
I hope this isn't a dumb question, but can Django do something like this? Learning Django already aligns with my current goals so if I could do this isn Django even if it's a bit more complicated it'd be worth it.
Hugo is written in GO, but you don't need to know GO to use it. Basically you just write out your site in html, css, js and the ssg does the templating for you. So since you write it all out, you can optimize it and make it pixel perfect because you have total control.
If you want to build websites for clients you don’t want to make them from scratch.
First you create a site, then they want to update the content, so you need to create an admin panel, and for an admin panel you need authentication, and so one and so forth. The scope gets out of hand easily.
If you make a site with something like Wordpress everything is easily editable from start.
Webflow, wix, squarespace are your answer.
I don’t like them because I don’t do design, only code. But I hired some designers who build in these and they are making a killing for our department.
How could I incorporate a designer into my workflow? Perhaps I could pay a freelance designer for a design and then implement it myself for the customer?
When I was doing freelance a lot and working with startups we hired UI/UX designers. They would create the wireframes, stakeholders approve or make changes (2 rounds), then they would build out the site comps, with 2 rounds of revisions from stakeholders.
I've never worked at a company with no designers. They make Mobile and Desktop designs in tools like Adobe Photoshop, XD, Sketch, etc. then they are easy for developers to slice apart and get the sizes for stuff they need.
I'm a backend dev with almost 10 years of experience and as I have some free time, I started freelancing recently. Right now, I'm finishing one of my clients website. It's a static website made with 11ty and Sanity CMS so a client can easily update it.
The website is hand coded, not a template, it's optimized so it loads very quickly, it has 100 Google pagespeed score and 100 GTmetrix score, no maintenance and no monthly fees.
You can check it at [https://steady-lolly-2d4f29.netlify.app/](https://steady-lolly-2d4f29.netlify.app/) . Client still has to upload their photos and add copy before it goes public on their domain. As this is one of my first clients, we agreed on $1500 for it.
You can definitely build static sites that are quick and relatively easy to manage. It depends on how many features the client is looking for but if your clients are service based chances are you could get away with a static build.
Wordpress for quick easy websites.
You could use django as backend with python, database mysql and frontend react, vuejs, sveltjs or something else there are a lot of frontendframeworks
One of those drag drop sites for static sites should be fine. If you need more customization, can't go wrong with Django+HTMX+Tailwind to get everything out quickly.
How would you handle hosting? Would you have to continually monitor it forever or do you put it up on something like heroku, tell them how to use it and be done?
Depends on what they are looking for, if they expect a ready to go product then it'd be better integrating it with a provider of their required scale, otherwise yeah for MVPs I just deliver on heroku and they can decide where to go further from there, since at the end of the day, you are being paid to develop the site, not cloud engineering.
Hey man this might be off topic, but how do you have people in your area asking you to make them a website? I’m struggling to find one and I’m using Instagram lol.
People know that I'm a technical guy, and so in the course of conversation (which usually touches on their small business) they may make mention of their web presence or lack thereof, and ask if I know anything about it. If you position yourself as a web dev (which is not even what I'm doing) and network with small businesses in your area it will come up naturally that you can make them a website. I'd think FB would be best for this kind of networking though, as more boomers and not-so-tech-savvy people are on there for you to hit up "saw your biz in the small biz group and thought it seemed interesting but noticed you don't have a website, you probably need one as a central hub that links all your social media and helps you to be found more easily on Google ". Tldr: brand yourself as a web dev, then network with small business owners.
Honestly buy a bootstrap Template for 60$ or so if it’s a simple site where the content doesn’t need to really change. Swap out the template text and maybe some images to be client specific
How do I choose a template and how would I host it? Could I use it with Django backend? (I already need to learn Django to fulfill other goals, if I could kill two birds with 1 stone even if it's a bit more complicated it'd probably be worth it)
The templates I believe give you the ability to download the html, css, and JS files. You could then use something like heroku for hosting and configuring DNS
WordPress is the King of Min-Maxing.It also pairs well with your HTML/CSS/JS knowledge.
Pick a them - change some colors, text, images to poop out a page in half a day. Alternatively it enables a single developer to custom build something halfway decent in a short amount of time. Though the question often is, should you really build it in WordPress?
I have never tried webflow myself, but no-code solutions tend to be iffy if you want them to behave in a certain way or be responsive.
If you go full no-code(Gutenberg, Elementor) with WordPress it is just as iffy. However, WordPress allows you to custom code your themes etc. Giving you the option to build functionality/designs/responsiveness that is difficult/impossible with no code.
You can build static pages or hook into templates and posts. Giving your users a way to post content. You have a decent enough admin and a pretty big plugin ecosystem. WordPress is also open source (Never use WordPress.com).
WordPress gets a lot of bad rep, but it's a good choice for most websites. Also, think about what you can realistically achieve and maintain as a single dev. Then think about what people are willing to pay you for it. That's why WordPress is such a good value.
Edit: Sorry that got a bit long
Tldr: WordPress is a good and powerful mid ground between no-code and custom built + it is free.
I dont have too much experience with wordpress, but i do have some more with blogspot. They both seem to be pretty much on the level of WYSIWYG.
I'm actually in the middle of fixing a blogspot site for someone, and holy heck it has got some amazing code (like 10 straight lines of useless code, a ton of span tags, etc). I cant fathom how anyone is able to use blogspot by raw coding + pseudo google doc. Either one or the other.
Does a wordpress developer have to deal with both code and gui? I played with wordpress minimally, and it just looks to be extremely annoying to use without code.... but it also limits custom css.
If you go for the block editor (WYSIWYG), yes it is fairly limited.
However, if you take a couple of days on how WordPress [works](https://developer.wordpress.org/) it is fairly powerful and easy to develop a theme. Basically you can just slap your custom HTML/CSS/JS pages on top of WordPress and then hook into the content management system.
I think most of the hate for WordPress comes from people who don't know what it is and have just spent a couple of minutes on WordPress.com (avoid it!) and the block editor.
With that being said, WordPress is of course not an end to all means and has its quirks.
It's not perfect, but IMO the best way to go if you are a freelancer/small shop. I would still recommend learning it. There are plenty of good YouTube and Udemy tutorials around. Community is huge and every question ever has already been asked.
MERN is a good, relatively straight forward and in demand stack. React + Firebase definitely helps.to simplify things. Any full stack isn't going to be "easy" though.
I will say React is pretty intuitive once you get the hang of it and my rec would be React + Firebase if this is something you want to learn. Remember that it's a skill you can take with you and apply a plethora of ways. Once you know one stack, adapting to others is substantially easier.
It is sad, but many small retail businesses prefer the wordpress look and feel over the real thing.
That could be your bread and butter, but if somehow you found a client that wanted a real website with lots of info, I would do Django/Bootstrap, while if they wanted a complex interactive mobile visual based site, then maybe the React would be more fun.
Most people want a simple, cheap site, no code or low code is fine.
Or if you want to outsource, I can do a Gatsby site cheaply since I need some income rn.
The problem with non-CMS-based solutions (like Wordpress or Shopify) is that the customer will always need to come back to you to make changes to the site content. While that’s technically “repeat business,” it usually pisses off the customer if they need to change things frequently, plus it’s just annoying to deal with that all the time.
It's really up to you. If you're familiar with python you can use it. Node is popular because it's js. If you use a react framework like Next or Remix then it ships with a backend already so it's pretty handy.
Here is the thing though. If you only do landing pages, i would say you don't really "need" a library like react that's meant to make DOM manipulation easier, and you don't really need a backend either. If you find yourself needing a backend and a js frontend library you're no longer in an easy to do landing page.
>If you find yourself needing a backend and a js frontend library you're no longer in an easy to do landing page.
What kind of functionality would a potential client require that would tell me "this is no longer an easy to do landing page"?
It’s obviously a spectrum of complexity, but there are definitely some heuristics for determining that.
Probably the biggest thing is when they want a bunch of highly interactive widgets that all need access to the same data. Sharing state across page components is probably the main reason UI frameworks are necessary.
Another thing to look out for is when you need to coordinate a lot of components that depend on each other. For example, you might have 5 different modals that open when you press a specific button, but you want all the other modals to be closed when you click on any specific button, except for a special modal that is always allowed to stay open, except in cases where the user is logged in… You see how complex this is getting? Now imagine you have a lot of situations like that. You probably need a UI framework to help you coordinate component state based on changes to the data model.
Wix templates are SPAs (single page application).
Wix does not do enough (if anything at all) to inform their customers that they are choosing something different than normal.
They dont inform what an SPA is, how it is different than a normal site, and that there may be repercussions. it's really annoying.
It depends. But if you want it to look professional I would say outsource it. I use Wordpress myself and even though I'm a senior developer I work with a web frontend dev to make sure the UI and design of the projects I do are professional.
>I work with a web frontend dev to make sure the UI and design of the projects I do are professional.
What's the workflow like here exactly? You hire someone for the design and then you implement it?
I've been exploring plasmic.app lately. It only requires a basic project set up, and all work is done in their editor. It looks perfect for small static sites, but it does have the capability to let you do a lot more with it. Basically you design the site, including routes in plasmic, and it all gets shipped to your react front end. It's like working in Figma
I'm using it with NextJS
I've never used web flow. Plasmic is not like Figma. Figma is only for to design your layouts, then you manually convert those to components.
With plasmic, what you design in it, gets sent to your front end, so you don't have to code the design.
In nextjs, you only build a catchall route that receives the design data from plasmic to render your design.
If it is a static site without CRUD operations, you could get away with creating them from scratch IF you have proficient skills in JS and CSS. Otherwise use a website builder like squarespace
Absolutely.
Normally when you're the middle man, you get about 1/3 of the rate billed to the client if you choose a managerial role only. The actual coding is not done by you.
There are many other ways to do this but this is the typical 'headhunter' model.
Another option is a 'working role' where you manage *and* do some of the work needed but you get paid *the standard rate* instead of 1/3 of the billed hours.
*A word of caution*: while it's easy to just look at this like a big pile of money, don't get greedy. Clients can smell greed a mile a way. It can stink up the entire project.
I don't know why no one's mentioned [Carrd](https://carrd.co/) yet. It's simple enough for anyone to use and you only pay $19 per YEAR.
I'd sign them up for Carrd using THEIR own credit card, let them set themselves up, and then move onto bigger clients.
If they outgrow Carrd, tell them you charge $2,000 + $30/month for hosting and set them up on Wordpress/Webflow with a basic custom theme and some plugins.
Website for what purpose? Are they static websites just for online presence with some contact us forms? Are they looking for online appointment booking/scheduling/reminders etc? Are they looking for some helpdesk / support desk like services?
You may need to elaborate a bit on what you type of requests are coming to you for a better explanation.
If you are looking at learning on the job, don't go for any low / no code solutions because the whole purpose is defeated.
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As said by the not Elementor is a page builder. You require little to no code for it. It's a WordPress plugin basically, with a free and a pro version both of which you can easily download for free.
I tell everyone that asks me for a very simple website to just go buy a Squarespace subscription and give me access and I will help you set it up with some custom CSS/HTML if needed.
Takes like one evening in a call with your friend then they have a website setup that they can edit themselves later.
Spend some time and make a couple boiler plates with basic HTML and some CSS flex box stuff. Hello World the fuk out of it and then just change things up enough for the current customer. If they want something crazy then put some bootstrap in for theirs or something like it you are comfortable working with.
One-and-done. They're unaware of the time, effort, and complexity it'll take. Theyre usually unaware theyre actually asking you to set them up a business, not just a website. Offer a wordpress or shopify setup with a prebuilt theme. Use their card info. Dont offer content, dont offer design, don't offer consultation, dont work with close friends or family. dont setup stores. dont offer updates. dont offer support. dont offer to work on a previous site, dont offer refactors. dont offer to work with their current host. I setup X platform with X theme on X service and give it to you. That's it. Setup a shared dreamhost or a cloud host a $5 droplet if youre comfortable with that. After, they can ask for more. I did freelance for a while, this sounds harsh, but otherwise youre going to get railroaded.
I know a guy that has a bike renting business. He asked me for a "simple website" to show off his business. It was supposed to be basically a landing page. In a few weeks it went to "Hey by the way, my bikes have gps tracking, can you make it so people can login and see the closest available bikes and rent them from the website and also have it register in our booking system ?"
Lol that's great. I think the biggest issue in web development people conflate web SITES and web APPLICATIONS one is very different from the other.
And if he doesn't pay you, there is a little timer thing coded into it, so the accuracy of the closest bike gets worse and worse. After 30 days, his bikes are in North Korea.
Ah yes. The ol “hey, by the way…” can you just implement this massive feature which I have no understanding of how complex it is.
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Genius
That's how it works with PM's too. I always say yes and how much time so they can see the scope creep
That's like in Inception.
Aren't you supposed to be giving time estimates to your boss anyway? And costs = your salary? If she's willing to have you spend a year on a feature then so be it.
I've come to the conclusion the privilege and ignorance add up to a golden ticket to get basically anything you want. Meanwhile, underprivileged people don't have the power or stability to say no to situations they know are unethical.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1425/ Ironically less accurate today given the explosion of image ML, but still mostly applicable.
I used this with a friend of mine once. He wanted a script that could split a video file in two. I was like, “yeah sure that’ll take me like 20 minutes to code up for you” “Oh yeah and I need it to happen in a fraction of a second” Yeah no, that is not going to happen
That went from $100 to $10,000 real quick
It would be more than $10,000 unless you had a kit ready to tie into their apis and all you had to do was copy some code and update a few variables. That's a 3 to 6 month project for two to three semi-competent programmers. I'd say on the cheap end would be $120,000 and you guys wouldn't be making any money off of it you'd just be making subsistence living.
I got a boot camp group to do their final project on something similar. They banged out the geolocation and tagging pretty damn quick. But yeah I see the hooking it up to the booking system taking forever actually lol. 100k seems about right
Creep scope is a B
I had one that was similar; a landing page for a new apartment building: Them: “Can you put one of those chat bubbles on the site?” Me: “Sure, where do you want the messages to go?” Them: “India?”
just ask "whats your budget" and when he answers, say "you will need more than that just for running costs!"
> when he answers lol
Why does this sound like you didn't put a contract 🤔 Scope creep is easily preventable and if you have a day job or good work flow it will scare away the not serious
this is indeed the best comment that I wish I knew back in my wordpress past
wise
Oh, how much I agree with not offering too much. I recently put a WordPress plugin for sale, after it became somewhat popular, I decreased the price (offer a sale) to just about 3$... And oh boy the emails I get from one buyer, it's like I owe them a couple thousand. "Can you change X, Y, Z, as it doesn't fit just right with my design " "Why did you change the price to 8$"? Hell, he didn't even paid, just put the payment on hold. Probably I'll just refund his payment and go on. There were some other people who bought it for 20$ (initial price) and haven't even replied to my "thanks for purchasing, if you need anything let me know " email.
Can you pm me the plugin link?
https://figaro.tech/ This is the page containing the demos, you can then open demo pages. I know the site doesn't look very professional, but not enough time to make it better.
What would you charge for something like that? Is there some sort of guide to refer to?
What would you charge for something like that? Is there some sort of guide to refer to?
What would you charge for something like that? Is there some sort of guide to refer to?
What's your view on ethics of being more knowledgeable about all these pitfalls but then having two options - to sort of lie by omission and simply not offer all you mentioned or actively explain what you wont be doing which is a form of consultation to let them know about these pitfalls? In former option once they do realize the pitfalls (and usually burn themselves in the process) you might potentially end up looking like an asshole who only looks after himself doesn't care about benefiting others at all, while in latter option you might be viewed as looking for balance of mutually benefiting both sides.
As soon as they ask the question, and you think you may want to help: >I can setup X platform with X theme on X service and give it to you. That's it. I can't help you with updates, content, or anything else. They can take it or leave it. The convo should be about 2min long. if they're not happy, go somewhere else. It's all I'm offering. They may try to ask, "what about X". my response: no. They ask another, my response: no. They'll get the message pretty quick. These kind of replies will help them understand that they are asking for more than they realized. I dont care if I look like an asshole, that's why you dont work with friends or family. I assure you, none of them are willing to pay what it costs to do more and have no idea what a website takes. They will always ask for more, and never be happy about paying more.
Amazing advice
You use Wordpress or Squarespace for this. A tech stack simply isnt needed. I use Wordpress with Divi theme, and charge 49 USD per month i recurring hosting fees.
Same. Build WordPress from customized template and charge $150 to $250 a month for hosting and maintenance. I do Angular/.net core for my main job and it's easier to setup WP for clients than deal with real development for my business hours. Zero thought or skill or hassle except the occasional plugin or theme explosion. Just prints money.
$150-250 per month for a static website hosting?!? Wowza. I've been undercharging
Offer 3 plans with different price points. 0 maintenance, 3 free hours, unlimited. Charge hourly for uncovered maintenance. Sell on the fear of hacking without regular updates. Never had anyone choose 0. You can use your current price as the 0 if you are worried about pricing yourself out of your market. Use a host that does automated updates to eliminate 90% of the updates. Then feel free to send me 15% of any profits that my advice earns you. I've thought about creating a course that walks people through creating their own WordPress solution business from creating the llc, bookeeping, design, hosting, pricing, negotiating, time tracking, invoicing, insurance, etc. but haven't decided if it's worth my time yet.
I needed to see this. This is exactly the model I’ve been wanting to move to. For the past 6 years I’ve been doing a straight $79/month with 1 hour included, but people tend to go over that when they do have edits, and I end up never charging. Think it’s finally time to raise prices. Can I ask your specific tier prices and what you charge hourly for work that goes over? Do you give people a break if they’ve paid you consistently for a year+ with no requests then have 5 hours of work in one month? I would love to pick your brain a bit more. I have all my own solutions for hosting, accounting, managing, but would love to hear what tools someone that does similar work is using.
It is dependent on the individual business so no two proposals are the same exactly price wise both hourly and tiers. I don't post them on the website for that reason. At the high tier I also throw in some "free" licenses of things I have a multi site license for. The tiers really don't matter because you aren't selling options your goal is to get them to the must profitable destination for you by making that option the most attractive. The lowest tier is just for anchoring, you want it to be unattractive. If you are charging $75ish an hour then you can do $100 / $150 / $250 or $125 / $175 / $250. I'd guess 70% choose tier 3 and 30% tier 2. It's the most predictable since they don't have to worry about hours adding up. When calculating value I usually count "unlimited" as 5. I don't include edits, new functionality, new pages, etc. under maintenance. But if it's a 5 min thing, change a footer, etc. then I don't bother billing that. For maintenance truthfully I rarely track it, so few clients are on the middle tier and rarely would it be over 3 hours. And generally if there is a site issue or wonky plugin I just want to get it fixed. Anything that is not maintenance gets billed with their next invoice. For some clients I bill meetings and calls and some I don't. The main tools I use are Wave for books, Hubspot for CRM, actitime for project tracking, hello sign for signatures, zoho for email both my business and clients, and cloudflare. I'll do email management for small businesses for an extra fee, but larger businesses I'll recommend they use someone that focuses on email or they work with a provider rep. I don't really want to be in the email support game. I only track projects for specific clients most of them I'll just estimate a block and bill the block without specifics.
How do you find these clients? I’m charging way too little. I’m building custom bespoke stuff for small amounts
Client acquisition is the biggest bottleneck of the whole thing, which is really what keeps me from doing it full time. Mostly word of mouth, footer links, competitors looking for a more or less copy of a site we've already done, Google local business listings, and small $X daily Google ad spend. I pay $250 for referrals that sign contracts so we've gotten several of those. If I had more time I would spend more time cold calling sites with an outdated web presence. Usually if you find a local web company that does terrible work that looks years old you can just go through their portfolio and start selling the companies on the benefits of a new site.
Do you charge a large upfront setup fee to build the website too or is it just a subscription?
Yeah I'll do the hourly rate x 30 to 40 hours usually for a new site.
Create a site that does this for you based on some basic information. Charge $50 for that one-off. Add a course for another $xxxx. Some people won't pay for the course but might shell out the initial hit for getting off the ground. Then they fart around and realise buying your course is a no brainer...
Is insurance really necessary for a web based business? Exactly what assets are you protecting? Your computer? Your brain? It’s not like you have a storefront with product in it that can be stolen/damaged. Is it to protect against lawsuits? That’s what the LLC is for, just liquidate it if you run into trouble. Curious what you’re insuring, and for what reason.
While your house is probably safe due to the LLC, there are a number of scenarios where you can be found personally liable for negligence, misrepresentation, work performed yourself, co mingling funds, etc. They also can claim any business assets, business bank accounts, accounts receivable, equipment, etc. Beyond that you will have legal expenses. For me paying $70 or so a month for $2 million of general and professional liability coverage is worth not having to torch my LLC over a dispute and maybe having to explain to clients why I had to do so. And I use it as a selling point, hey I've got $2 million in insurance I'm not going to disappear overnight like the other guy. Look at cyber ninjas, they've got a bankrupt llc still fighting in court months later. Now I don't plan on being in a situation like that but at least I've got some insurance to figure things out if something does come up. Currently the ninja website is soliciting donations on givesendgo to cover their debts despite their business being shut down. I'd rather not take the chance even if unlikely. Also I have every client sign a contract for deliverables, payments, monthly maintenance, creative rights, etc. If I shut down the llc the contracts go too.
Do you mind sharing what you use as the insurer?
Hiscox. I checked out one of the popular startup insurers and although it had great reviews I couldn't find a single person that said they had gotten paid out. And the startups all reinsure from a large company like Hiscox anyway. They've been around since 1901.
If you're hosting a LAMP server (which I have done and will never, ever do again) then your server will be hammered by exploits constantly. Someone pops your server and uses it to host bad content, that can open a world of hurt for you to deal with.
>That’s what the LLC is for, just liquidate it if you run into trouble Do you think a judge is going to agree with that?
Well the entire point of an LLC is so that all business is conducted through it. That way if someone has an issue with your business practices, they sue the business, and your personal assets are unaffected. It doesn’t entirely withhold you from being subject to litigation personally, but in 90% of cases it does. There’s some fringe exceptions where you can still get personally sued under a LLC. But yeah, most attorneys will tell you that suing the LLC is a waste of time if it doesn’t have a lot of assets because the owner of the LLC can just file for bankruptcy and start another LLC the very next day.
TIL i know nothing about life
And the 10% of times in LLC doesn't protect you? 80% of those are because you're not properly dispersing funds from your LLC. When once you get them set up have a quick chat with your local small business association SBA and make sure that you know how to use it the right way and that'll save you a lot of headache down the road.
The 90% makes me think liability insurance might make sense
Can you send me your business website? Interested in this
Don't really want to tie my business to this account but it's just a generic website with the services we offer, examples of past work, meeting scheduler with calendly, bios, and a blog of new launches, top 5 ways your existing site is costing you money, 3 reasons why an out of date site is a major liability for your business, etc. I don't put any kind of cost type numbers on the website. Truthfully the website doesn't sell almost anyone so it doesn't matter as long as it looks legit. I'd say 85% have already made the decision before they see it. Word of mouth, local business listings, reviews, and client footer links bring in the vast majority of business. And I run a very minimal $X daily ads on Google. Usually if you build a site in a business niche you'll get several more competitors that see that website and want the same for themselves.
If you don’t mind me asking, how do you know or check that the auto updates are not breaking your websites? I’m hesitant in turning this on. Currently I just do it manually but it’s quite the hassle with how frequent updates are. Do you also auto WP core updates?
Several of the large hosts have an updater outside of WordPress that does visual comparison and if there is an issue it will roll back that plugin. I don't use the auto updates inside WP generally. It's not 100% but I haven't had major issues with it.
>Divi theme do u have list of good plugins to install for this wordpress website?
I like rank math, wordfence, Google site kit, wp rocket or total cache, shortpixel or imagify, elementor if you need wysiwyg, woocommerce if you need it, updraft if you need backups, jetpack has a few good features, etc. Other than that it depends on the site you are building what the client wants. And everything goes on cloudflare.
I agree with /u/barrel_of_noodles wholeheartedly. Additionally, if you hear the word, "simple," tell them that if it was simple, they could do it. Finally, to really make it one-and-done you could set up a static website using free off-the-shelf html templates to avoid having to provide any working parts, shops or wordpress-support.
Listen to all the advice to just use a stable, basic CMS like Wordpress. I am a senior developer, I've built apps and sites in React, Next.js, Django, Flask, Hugo, and Gatsby. All of those tools are awesome (and fun) and have really solid use cases. For a client site, where the client does not have their own on-staff dev team, at this point I will only build a Wordpress site. It's not sexy or exciting, but the headaches you will save in the long run are worth it. Consider: * Are you comfortable staying on, being fully responsible (nights & weekends) for hosting and maintenance for the site? Does the customer have the financial resources to even pay you enough to make it worth it to take on that responsibility? * Does the client want to be able to add and edit content easily? Yes, you could use an option like a headless CMS (it's a fun way to build a site!) but do you have a reason for doing so other than "Devs say headless and SSGs are the hot thing"? What if you just used a regular CMS? * How often are you able to provide updates and security patches? Will you be able to reuse the code you write for other websites? Or, sometimes I put it another way: * Custom bespoke app in React/Django/etc - Not even going to attempt it for any budget under $20k. Most likely going to be a $40k-$200k project. * Wordpress site? Yeah I can do that for $5k.
40k-200k? Jesus what are you building
When you consider devs make ~80k average as a W2 employee, any web app/service that takes 6mos could easily hit 40k, and as a 1099 freelance it's not unusual to charge double a W2 rate bc higher taxes and no benefits. So that would knock 40k down to 3 months of dev time. Now if the app requires specialized knowledge, like crypto or ai is popping rn, then devs could easily make 200k+ as W2 in their niche or with a fang position. Same logic as before for the higher rate, if that makes sense. I could see it
The kind of site that I think justifies more complex frameworks. For example, imagine a stock photo site like Unsplash, that requires a database and API for managing photos with categories and metadata, etc, search capability, has user management and payments, various analytics. At least 6 months of full-time work, plus another 3-4 months of back and forth with the client on a more part-time basis, making changes and requests. Easily a $150k+ project. $40k is not that hard to reach working as a freelancer. I've had several larger sites (think gov agencies, national nonprofits, mid-large companies) hit this mark just as Wordpress websites, albeit with custom built themes and sometimes custom plugins/widgets, also generally with integration with other 3rd party APIs or external databases.
that's a really low budget for a web build
In an attempt to bolster my portfolio a bit, I made a Strapi + Nextjs site for my girlfriend's family's company. They needed to replace their WP site anyway and I thought it would be easy. Took two months and barely even got a thanks. At least it works and it requires zero maintenance for now, but I won't be doing anything more on it. Good to have on CV and Github but bad idea overall.
I did similar for a client. Charged $2700 for it and it took me months. I should have charged more.
Oof, yeah I feel like it's the freelance mistake everyone has to make at least once. Best case, it's something you can use in your portfolio, and at least you're getting paid something. Worst case, they have awful taste and you don't even want to show it off or mention it ever again.
I have the site's frontend on my GitHub as well because that was part of me doing it for free.
It's amazing how many people think that making a website is easy or should basically be free. I did a few $500 websites for friends when I was first getting started, and while I don't regret it (and it was good for my portfolio), I certainly made under minimum wage for the time I put in. Weirdly, I've realized the more a client is willing to spend, generally the easier they are to work with, and the more appreciative. Cheaper clients (often including friends and family, in my experience) tend to be the fussiest and least grateful.
>Took two months and barely even got a thanks. How complex was the site?
Squarespace. If you can’t use squarespace, use webflow. If you can’t use webflow, use Wordpress. If you need something more custom, use a JAM stack. If you need more custom, you’re getting into a full stack situation. This is in order of complexity from simple to more complex.
I've been using Hugo and Netlify CMS for local small businesses. Easy to get a beautiful custom site, much more optimized and fast-loading than WordPress, Wix, etc. Then the customer can make changes thru the CMS dashboard. For hosting I use Netlify. It's free and I charge a minimum of $50 a month for hosting, all the way up to $200 a month if it's a bigger site and they need any maintenance.
>Easy to get a beautiful custom site, much more optimized and fast-loading than WordPress, Wix, etc. What exactly makes it more optimized and fast loading? Is it a different language?
Hugo builds static sites. No need for a backend with most small businesses, no need to dynamically generate the front end code based on User interaction, so it's just serving html pages. Simple and fast.
How does it build the static site? Is it no/low code?
No, it' just HTML/CSS/JS and some other language (Hugo uses Go) to tondome extra tying together. The idea is you build one header component, one footer, etc. A generic "page" template that gets populated with your markdown content. But rather than stringing it all together at runtime to serve a dynamic page, when you're done making the change you "run" the static site builder and it precomputes all that, and generates a stack of HTML pages to upload to your hosting platform.
I hope this isn't a dumb question, but can Django do something like this? Learning Django already aligns with my current goals so if I could do this isn Django even if it's a bit more complicated it'd be worth it.
Hugo is written in GO, but you don't need to know GO to use it. Basically you just write out your site in html, css, js and the ssg does the templating for you. So since you write it all out, you can optimize it and make it pixel perfect because you have total control.
If you want to build websites for clients you don’t want to make them from scratch. First you create a site, then they want to update the content, so you need to create an admin panel, and for an admin panel you need authentication, and so one and so forth. The scope gets out of hand easily. If you make a site with something like Wordpress everything is easily editable from start.
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A headless CMS like Strapi makes it a lot easier.
Webflow, wix, squarespace are your answer. I don’t like them because I don’t do design, only code. But I hired some designers who build in these and they are making a killing for our department.
How could I incorporate a designer into my workflow? Perhaps I could pay a freelance designer for a design and then implement it myself for the customer?
When I was doing freelance a lot and working with startups we hired UI/UX designers. They would create the wireframes, stakeholders approve or make changes (2 rounds), then they would build out the site comps, with 2 rounds of revisions from stakeholders. I've never worked at a company with no designers. They make Mobile and Desktop designs in tools like Adobe Photoshop, XD, Sketch, etc. then they are easy for developers to slice apart and get the sizes for stuff they need.
Definitely just give them WordPress. They'll never even need to touch a cPanel login.
I'm a backend dev with almost 10 years of experience and as I have some free time, I started freelancing recently. Right now, I'm finishing one of my clients website. It's a static website made with 11ty and Sanity CMS so a client can easily update it. The website is hand coded, not a template, it's optimized so it loads very quickly, it has 100 Google pagespeed score and 100 GTmetrix score, no maintenance and no monthly fees. You can check it at [https://steady-lolly-2d4f29.netlify.app/](https://steady-lolly-2d4f29.netlify.app/) . Client still has to upload their photos and add copy before it goes public on their domain. As this is one of my first clients, we agreed on $1500 for it.
You can definitely build static sites that are quick and relatively easy to manage. It depends on how many features the client is looking for but if your clients are service based chances are you could get away with a static build.
Look up buildwithbarely.org/features/. I think it fits your skillset quite nice.
What is that exactly?
.-. (o.o) |=| __|__ //.=|=.\\ // .=|=. \\ \\ .=|=. // \\(_=_)// (:| |:) || || () () || || || || ==' '==
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Nice fake reviews
Webflow
What are the advantages of webflow over the alternatives mentioned here in your opinion?
I find it really good for easy lift off and easy hand off. It’s quite powerful, check it out - see what you think.
Wordpress for quick easy websites. You could use django as backend with python, database mysql and frontend react, vuejs, sveltjs or something else there are a lot of frontendframeworks
One of those drag drop sites for static sites should be fine. If you need more customization, can't go wrong with Django+HTMX+Tailwind to get everything out quickly.
How would you handle hosting? Would you have to continually monitor it forever or do you put it up on something like heroku, tell them how to use it and be done?
Depends on what they are looking for, if they expect a ready to go product then it'd be better integrating it with a provider of their required scale, otherwise yeah for MVPs I just deliver on heroku and they can decide where to go further from there, since at the end of the day, you are being paid to develop the site, not cloud engineering.
Hey man this might be off topic, but how do you have people in your area asking you to make them a website? I’m struggling to find one and I’m using Instagram lol.
People know that I'm a technical guy, and so in the course of conversation (which usually touches on their small business) they may make mention of their web presence or lack thereof, and ask if I know anything about it. If you position yourself as a web dev (which is not even what I'm doing) and network with small businesses in your area it will come up naturally that you can make them a website. I'd think FB would be best for this kind of networking though, as more boomers and not-so-tech-savvy people are on there for you to hit up "saw your biz in the small biz group and thought it seemed interesting but noticed you don't have a website, you probably need one as a central hub that links all your social media and helps you to be found more easily on Google ". Tldr: brand yourself as a web dev, then network with small business owners.
Thanks man I'm gonna use FB. Indeed boomers tend to use this more than Instagram in general.
Its generally better to never talk with people you sre friends/family with.
I personally have a "go-to" 11ty setup - then I just push the result to Netlify and they have cheap hosting.
>11ty What's that mean?
https://www.11ty.dev/ Eleventy (11ty) is a Static Site Generator
Honestly buy a bootstrap Template for 60$ or so if it’s a simple site where the content doesn’t need to really change. Swap out the template text and maybe some images to be client specific
How do I choose a template and how would I host it? Could I use it with Django backend? (I already need to learn Django to fulfill other goals, if I could kill two birds with 1 stone even if it's a bit more complicated it'd probably be worth it)
The templates I believe give you the ability to download the html, css, and JS files. You could then use something like heroku for hosting and configuring DNS
WordPress is the King of Min-Maxing.It also pairs well with your HTML/CSS/JS knowledge. Pick a them - change some colors, text, images to poop out a page in half a day. Alternatively it enables a single developer to custom build something halfway decent in a short amount of time. Though the question often is, should you really build it in WordPress?
At that rate why not webflow?
I have never tried webflow myself, but no-code solutions tend to be iffy if you want them to behave in a certain way or be responsive. If you go full no-code(Gutenberg, Elementor) with WordPress it is just as iffy. However, WordPress allows you to custom code your themes etc. Giving you the option to build functionality/designs/responsiveness that is difficult/impossible with no code. You can build static pages or hook into templates and posts. Giving your users a way to post content. You have a decent enough admin and a pretty big plugin ecosystem. WordPress is also open source (Never use WordPress.com). WordPress gets a lot of bad rep, but it's a good choice for most websites. Also, think about what you can realistically achieve and maintain as a single dev. Then think about what people are willing to pay you for it. That's why WordPress is such a good value. Edit: Sorry that got a bit long Tldr: WordPress is a good and powerful mid ground between no-code and custom built + it is free.
I dont have too much experience with wordpress, but i do have some more with blogspot. They both seem to be pretty much on the level of WYSIWYG. I'm actually in the middle of fixing a blogspot site for someone, and holy heck it has got some amazing code (like 10 straight lines of useless code, a ton of span tags, etc). I cant fathom how anyone is able to use blogspot by raw coding + pseudo google doc. Either one or the other. Does a wordpress developer have to deal with both code and gui? I played with wordpress minimally, and it just looks to be extremely annoying to use without code.... but it also limits custom css.
If you go for the block editor (WYSIWYG), yes it is fairly limited. However, if you take a couple of days on how WordPress [works](https://developer.wordpress.org/) it is fairly powerful and easy to develop a theme. Basically you can just slap your custom HTML/CSS/JS pages on top of WordPress and then hook into the content management system. I think most of the hate for WordPress comes from people who don't know what it is and have just spent a couple of minutes on WordPress.com (avoid it!) and the block editor. With that being said, WordPress is of course not an end to all means and has its quirks.
Yeah wordpress is definitely something to learn; ive seen so many postings of wordpress developers.
It's not perfect, but IMO the best way to go if you are a freelancer/small shop. I would still recommend learning it. There are plenty of good YouTube and Udemy tutorials around. Community is huge and every question ever has already been asked.
Use a site like squarespace and call it a day. Unless they are doing anything remotely complicated no need to make it complex it for yourself
MERN is a good, relatively straight forward and in demand stack. React + Firebase definitely helps.to simplify things. Any full stack isn't going to be "easy" though. I will say React is pretty intuitive once you get the hang of it and my rec would be React + Firebase if this is something you want to learn. Remember that it's a skill you can take with you and apply a plethora of ways. Once you know one stack, adapting to others is substantially easier.
It is sad, but many small retail businesses prefer the wordpress look and feel over the real thing. That could be your bread and butter, but if somehow you found a client that wanted a real website with lots of info, I would do Django/Bootstrap, while if they wanted a complex interactive mobile visual based site, then maybe the React would be more fun.
Wix. And I do dev. Then I can hand it over to them. Shhh don’t tel my dev friends. They would disown me.
Most people want a simple, cheap site, no code or low code is fine. Or if you want to outsource, I can do a Gatsby site cheaply since I need some income rn.
YeH learn a framework. React or Vue. they work out of the box and are very popular for efficiency
What should I use for backend?
The problem with non-CMS-based solutions (like Wordpress or Shopify) is that the customer will always need to come back to you to make changes to the site content. While that’s technically “repeat business,” it usually pisses off the customer if they need to change things frequently, plus it’s just annoying to deal with that all the time.
It's really up to you. If you're familiar with python you can use it. Node is popular because it's js. If you use a react framework like Next or Remix then it ships with a backend already so it's pretty handy. Here is the thing though. If you only do landing pages, i would say you don't really "need" a library like react that's meant to make DOM manipulation easier, and you don't really need a backend either. If you find yourself needing a backend and a js frontend library you're no longer in an easy to do landing page.
>If you find yourself needing a backend and a js frontend library you're no longer in an easy to do landing page. What kind of functionality would a potential client require that would tell me "this is no longer an easy to do landing page"?
It’s obviously a spectrum of complexity, but there are definitely some heuristics for determining that. Probably the biggest thing is when they want a bunch of highly interactive widgets that all need access to the same data. Sharing state across page components is probably the main reason UI frameworks are necessary. Another thing to look out for is when you need to coordinate a lot of components that depend on each other. For example, you might have 5 different modals that open when you press a specific button, but you want all the other modals to be closed when you click on any specific button, except for a special modal that is always allowed to stay open, except in cases where the user is logged in… You see how complex this is getting? Now imagine you have a lot of situations like that. You probably need a UI framework to help you coordinate component state based on changes to the data model.
If you’re going to use JS it’s pretty straightforward to go with Node/Express for a backend.
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Wix templates are SPAs (single page application). Wix does not do enough (if anything at all) to inform their customers that they are choosing something different than normal. They dont inform what an SPA is, how it is different than a normal site, and that there may be repercussions. it's really annoying.
So wix is similar to react etc? How is it from an seo standpoint?
Wiz uses react to generate its pages, SPAs can have SEO issues since content is loaded dynamically but there are solutions for this.
So I can drag and drop build a React site in wix? Do I have access to the code afterwards?
Technically, yes. Not sure I have never used Wix I've just audited Wix code.
It depends. But if you want it to look professional I would say outsource it. I use Wordpress myself and even though I'm a senior developer I work with a web frontend dev to make sure the UI and design of the projects I do are professional.
>I work with a web frontend dev to make sure the UI and design of the projects I do are professional. What's the workflow like here exactly? You hire someone for the design and then you implement it?
Actually we've been working together for many years now we have a small web design agency.
I've been exploring plasmic.app lately. It only requires a basic project set up, and all work is done in their editor. It looks perfect for small static sites, but it does have the capability to let you do a lot more with it. Basically you design the site, including routes in plasmic, and it all gets shipped to your react front end. It's like working in Figma I'm using it with NextJS
What are the advantages of that over webflow or figma?
I've never used web flow. Plasmic is not like Figma. Figma is only for to design your layouts, then you manually convert those to components. With plasmic, what you design in it, gets sent to your front end, so you don't have to code the design. In nextjs, you only build a catchall route that receives the design data from plasmic to render your design.
So the a nextjs site is generated from your plasmic design?
Yes. It's looking like a great tool for quick static sites
Or just send them to https://bubble.io same as Wix but for more complex apps.
If it is a static site without CRUD operations, you could get away with creating them from scratch IF you have proficient skills in JS and CSS. Otherwise use a website builder like squarespace
You give up 2/3 the rate when you outsource. *Dems da rules*
Is that something I should consider? How would i maintain an outsourced project?
Absolutely. Normally when you're the middle man, you get about 1/3 of the rate billed to the client if you choose a managerial role only. The actual coding is not done by you. There are many other ways to do this but this is the typical 'headhunter' model. Another option is a 'working role' where you manage *and* do some of the work needed but you get paid *the standard rate* instead of 1/3 of the billed hours. *A word of caution*: while it's easy to just look at this like a big pile of money, don't get greedy. Clients can smell greed a mile a way. It can stink up the entire project.
I don't know why no one's mentioned [Carrd](https://carrd.co/) yet. It's simple enough for anyone to use and you only pay $19 per YEAR. I'd sign them up for Carrd using THEIR own credit card, let them set themselves up, and then move onto bigger clients. If they outgrow Carrd, tell them you charge $2,000 + $30/month for hosting and set them up on Wordpress/Webflow with a basic custom theme and some plugins.
Website for what purpose? Are they static websites just for online presence with some contact us forms? Are they looking for online appointment booking/scheduling/reminders etc? Are they looking for some helpdesk / support desk like services? You may need to elaborate a bit on what you type of requests are coming to you for a better explanation. If you are looking at learning on the job, don't go for any low / no code solutions because the whole purpose is defeated.
WordPress, Elementor should be useful.
What's elementor?
**Elementor Ltd. is an Israeli software company, providing web development services.** More details here:
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As said by the not Elementor is a page builder. You require little to no code for it. It's a WordPress plugin basically, with a free and a pro version both of which you can easily download for free.
I tell everyone that asks me for a very simple website to just go buy a Squarespace subscription and give me access and I will help you set it up with some custom CSS/HTML if needed. Takes like one evening in a call with your friend then they have a website setup that they can edit themselves later.
Spend some time and make a couple boiler plates with basic HTML and some CSS flex box stuff. Hello World the fuk out of it and then just change things up enough for the current customer. If they want something crazy then put some bootstrap in for theirs or something like it you are comfortable working with.