For years the debate has been whether professional website designers should know how to code websites. The argument for coding has been that designers should have knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP and other programming languages. It can be very useful in many situations to know how things work underneath, but it is certainly not a requirement to design websites.
The truth of the matter is that coding belongs to an entirely different role - that of the web developer. Both are different tasks requiring opposite sides of the brain for fulfillment. Web designing requires creativity - designing fonts, layouts, arranging graphics, etc. – which are right brain tasks. Web designers should have knowledge of programs such as Photoshop or Gimp.
Web development has left brain tasks, which involve logic, reasoning and critical thinking. These are needed to learn coding and programming languages such as HTML, CSS, PHP, etc. Learning coding requires years of practice and dealing with debugging, cross-browser compatibility, site responsiveness for handheld devices, learning updated programming languages such as HTML5, etc. It’s definitely something which can’t be learned overnight. If you design websites, you know that – right?
Most people are either predominantly right brained or left brained. There are many designers who do both jobs, but we are seeing an increasing number of web designers who create entire websites themselves without programming knowledge, or even outsourcing to a web developer.
How to Create a Website without Knowledge of HTML, PHP and CSS coding
The trend toward creating websites without coding has been in development for years.
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WYSIWYG editors
This stands for ‘what you see is what you get’ and means what is displayed on the screen is how it will look on the website. Anyone who has used WYSIWYG editors know that this is not always true though.
Most WYSIWYG programs use depreciated, messy and redundant code. Designers still have to look at HTML code, especially when dealing with cross browser compatibility issues and adding elements to the website.
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Predefined templates
This has been the traditional way of building a website. Designers have either used a pre-existing template as a site layout, or used templates as a basis to create another one. Most cheap and free website templates are not unique, and may appear at many other places on the web.
Templates are also not flexible. If you ever want changes to your design, you will have to get help from a web developer or learn coding – or get a new template. There is also a good chance that changing a website template will affect placement in search engines and website ranking.
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Webydo
With Webydo, professional web designers can create an entire website without any help from a web developer. There will be no need of learning website coding and programming languages. This is because the Webydo website builder creates the site code in real time, while it is being worked on.
This is true WYSIWYG – what you see while you are working on your site is actually how the website will appear to visitors.
The Webydo site editor’s design is based on the drag and drop system, and has pixel by pixel accuracy. The code is compliant with all the major browsers and W3C standards. When completed your design, all you have to do is hit the Publish button to host the website on Webydo’s own cloud servers.
If you ever feel the need to add additional elements or pages, or even a site redesign, the website can be worked on and then updated right away.
There is much more to Webydo than I have the space to mention here. Please refer to our previous post about Webydo for more information: Easy Web Design
I personally like advancements in technology, and I see Webydo as just that. It is miles ahead of many of the WYSIWYG and template systems on the web, and something I feel all professional web designers should at least have a look at.
If you do so, please return here and give your opinion or review, whatever it may be - of Webydo.
Interesting article - especially since I'm a Web Designer and an Artist; but also program front-end as well. What I am finding now is that employers who want a Web Designer are looking for a lot more than creativity. They are looking for that person to do the UI Design (mobile, tablet), UX (User Experience), Research, IA (Information Architecture) with sitemaps and wireframes, then design of course then the front-end programming as well in HTML, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and JQuery. They want the whole package for the front-end - luckly unless they label what they want wrong (which they often do), nothing in the backend is required (database, sql, cms, etc..). BUT, I have seen (while looking for work) those looking for Graphic Designers who also do Web Design. These are two totally different fields with different skill sets.
ReplyDeleteIt's tough out there now in this economy and employers are trying to get the most for the dollars in one individual. Somehow they are finding these people who are more than just designers somewhere. So, in today's market, it's not enough to be just a Web Designer. You HAVE to have more than that to bring to the table.
During my working years I was a software engineer in the field of networks and communications, which eventually included designing company websites. As a tech lead, I was responsible for both the design and the coding of the websites. So both design ability and coding ability was necessary, if not in one person, then within the team. Nowadays, I am a retired programmer and current artist. I coded my own website and used my background in creating easy-to-maneuver websites to create my design.
ReplyDeleteI did look at the Webydo link that you posted. While it did mention the easy of drag and drop, and pixel by pixel adjustment of website elements, something that I found irritatingly missing in other wysiwyg software, there were important items that were not addressed, at least not on the pages that I was reading. Some of the capability that I needed when coding my website were: drop down menus, sliders, clickable images for enlargement, images as menu components, mapping of images, and plugin style capability for items such as calendars and e-commerce. If there is documentation on Webydo's ability to handle the items that I listed, please let me know.
Velvet Tetrault
http://www.visualgemsstudio.com
You have to know some coding, but you can build in the structures of CSS themes that already exist.
ReplyDeleteHey @VisualGemsStudio
ReplyDeleteThis is Jackie and I'm the community manager here at Webydo. You're asking some really great questions about what features we have and I've got a really easy answer for you: Yes - everything you listed you can easily do on Webydo. For the plugin style capabilities, we call those widgets. You can easily insert these widgets onto your Webydo website. Specifically on the E-commerce, it's one of our newest and most popular widgets. The E-commerce widget gives you all the capabilities you could possibly need. For the calendar, you can easily copy and paste it onto your page.
If you want to learn more about how awesome Webydo is, check out our Knowledge Base Page: http://participate.webydo.com/knowledgebase
If you feel that something new should be added to Webydo - we want to hear from you! Tell us what you think here: http://participate.webydo.com/forums/191312-participate-vote-
Please let me know if I can help you with anything else. You can easily reach me at community@webydo.com
Best Regards.
Jackie
I feel happiness to read the content that you are posting.
ReplyDeletelogo design
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ReplyDeletewebsite designers