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On Website Builders

January 25th, 2024

Re: Can anyone recommend a website builder for dummies?[archived] by @prologic@twtxt.net on twtxt

I have never seen a good website builder for dummies. Many of them are extremely narrow in the type of website they will make, and if they aren't they're way more frustrating to use than writing HTML/CSS.

It's like those websites that will let you create your own business cards according to a template. They might look OK, but then you have the exact same business card as everyone else in town. If you want to tweak the template, the web-based tools are so bad and so frustrating you might as well learn how to use Inkscape and send the SVG to your local print shop.

That said, many are "good enough" for some people even if they generate ridiculous multi-megabyte monstrosities with all kinds of external JavaScript that we technical people might hate. Wix is the one for which I have the most first-hand knowledge. It's a great example of the second type of website builder. You can make whatever you want, but the tools will fight you the whole way there.

The owner of the website has to employ all kinds of tricks to get text to appear where he wants. Sometimes, edits to one part of a page can have strange, unpredictable effects on another and the only way to fix it is to roll back the entire site and try the edit again. The home page is currently 3.84 MB in size and 1.26 MB compressed, and that's with uBlock Origin blocking all the tracking garbage. I think he pays almost $20 per month for the privilege.


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