I was coding tables and slicing photoshop layouts some 16-17 years ago. Then, I took a different path in life. Imagine my surprise when I came back to the table. Wow.
Great video, this is even more true today. If I need a quick blog site for a client, I sure as hell won't be writing it from scratch. I'll just install Wordpress and a cool template and be done with it in 30 minutes. But if the requirements become more complex than that, suddenly it's real helpful to understand how the code works.
Thank you for this video! I’m an aspiring FrontEnd Developer and had a black and white view of using these tools. I thought they would make me seem less of a developer. Now I see that it’s ok to use them when a certain project calls for it.
Liked. Subscribed.The quality of your commentary, opinions and advice warrant at least 5 times as many subscribers as the 200K or so I see now, Good luck to you and I will be following.
Thank you for this video. This pretty much apply to many fields also such as game development where there are tools that are "drag-and-drop". I love the part where you said you were able to make the right judgement because of your background in web design. Thank you for this gold insight.
As a Computer Engineer from the late 80s, I did go exactly the road you did descripe.And I remember, we made Website for free in our sparetime, for several years. I did educate zillions of people in the 90s - until the whole profession did split up and split again in even smaller peaces. Then every new tiny part of the Profession like webdesign did make it self super important and took enormous amount of money, for things we did for free just some years ago. I didn’t like the development and did study psychology, to help people in the IT world on a quiet different way. To make my Website today, I have a lot of knowledge but do not have a lot of time, beginning from scratch. So - it is not always tru, people with own business have no clue about programming. We just don’t like the horrible high sallery some people are taking, for things we did for free some years before. This new tools make’s it easy to setup appointment calendars inside my Website, Blog, Paypal, Landingpage to collect email and upload download files and video - without lots of coding. I think, there are so many companies out there today, who like to have a monthly fee for every little peace of service, like a bookmark app - fee for Adobe, fee for Wix or Webhotel, fee for tepmplates, fee for plugins, fee for Spotify fee for a thousand small peaces today, to get perhaps one or two more clients. And we can ask us self, when does all the monthly fee’s exeet our monthly income? So we all have to find a way to survive - and free services like WordPress.org are some of the few organisations, who still gives people the opportunity to survive as a business. If you see the statistics in the entire western world, 60% of all new Entrepreneurs are dying after just 2 years and 95% after 7-10 years in business. And why? Because everybody is milking the cow - until she dies. Instead turn it around - it will be so much wiser helping each other to grow and get stronger, so everybody makes some desant income. Win Win Stefan 😊👍🥂
I had a conversation with a wix guy once. He could not understand why I hand coded my sites or why I bothered learning JS CSS and so. The conversation became painful. So I walked away.
Should I, as a beginner who wants to start earning soon, learn full stack development or CMS(and which one)? I'd like to hear your opinion. Thank you in advance.
Really good video (no surprise here). I did not know there were also Wix pros out there ! I've handled it to help some friends, also Jimdo and Weebly (a bit more freedom, html and css edit, but as mentioned in the video, stuff is always limited. And for some target user, more expensive in the long run (in some scenarios) than even contracting someone doing for you whatever needed to get any cms up and running.) I started web design in the 96, and have seen all that (surely in my case much poorly driven). Image compression, hehe, I remember the html lowsrc parameter, loading b/n gifs there, doing all graphics icon sized with gifs (png is a "modern thing"), reducing the palete to 6 colors and avoiding in some cases using error difussion. There was even a tool to "paint" quality compression levels over a JPG, so to export different levels of compression depending on the image area... or later on, removing extra ancillary info chunks from PNGs with tweakPNG, and using tools (PNGcrunch, etc) to compress best the already compressed PNGs... This, or tweaking crazily for IE6 is fully gone? I'd be to think then it should be pleasant to do webs in 2018, but then I get to think on the responsive nightmare with the phones, and the too many CMs, frameworks, languages.... So I guess it all balances. 2 steps back 2 steps front, in the end it is always complex. (but better if so, or nobody would need us, hehehe ) I remember back in 98 I made a portfolio site with that old html (tables, frames). I believe there was some form of JS going on already, as I remember one man from my country's public administration (a scientific department of dunno what) congratulating me for the site. Looking back it was pretty cr4ppy, but back then, in context, I realized some1 could think it was good. Simply, back then close to no one was designing very seriously (not yet the times of stylegala, not the CSS times). I did set one midi as a background music - back then ppl didn't hate it yet- with even play and pause . OFC, premade JS freely available. I'm gonna do the course (and buy some books) 'cause I have no freaking idea about JS, although can understand most scripts. I know some small business owners, one very good friend, 100% doing their stuff with Wix, but have asked me about stuff that can't do. In comparison, they can be much more independent than back in the early 2000s and late 90s, so is a portion that some of us lost, but yes, I guess then is a matter of getting into the new aspects of the thing. Thank you very much, very interesting video, as always.
Well said... Normal person can’t drive race car. But just think this way, small business owners doesn’t need to pay well to those professionals because someone with low experience also can build websites with this tools. So business is not dying but becoming very cheap.
Thanks for the video. I am a .NET back end developer with 4 years of experience who has done some front end. I coded simple stuff in bootstrap, HTML, CSS, js, jquery, but always basic stuff as my main role was in the back end. Now I want to create my own business (nothing to do with programming) and I would like to build the website for it by myself. The thing is whereas I feel strong in the back end, I am not a front end developer and by no means a designer. So I would like to pick one of these tools in order to help me with the front end design and I would like to add a lot of back end functionality. What would you suggest to me and to other back end developers with not a lot of designing skills? Thank you.
I'd suggest you stop worrying about being your own backend admin and just get a managed WordPress site with a pretty template that you can one click install. You just said it ... your new business is nothing to do with programming, so let it go and move on with your life.
Extremely off-topic, Stefan, but, I just heard on the news about the tragedy in Toronto. My heart felt sadness goes out to our Neighbors to the North, and, to a town I love. I know the area well, along Yonge St. We really need a change in people's hearts, both here and the U.S., and, it appears, the world.
I learned Webflow to make a site that someone could maintain on their own. It wasn't easy learning it and I missed the hell out of VS Code, HTML CSS and JS. Handy though, worth having it in the toolbox.
Hello, thank you very much :) the video was very useful to me. 👍. I'll ask you a question, I should migrate from Shopify to WordPress .... can you tell me how I can do it? Thanks in advance. Max
Nice Video Stefan, it gives a lot of hope to a lot of people, very positive... One question in or on your Killer Videos or your tutorials in this coding that you teach is that the same type of coding that you use to build "Frameworks"??? Chiquito...
Squarespace claims to help you out on a lot of the pitfalls of these site-builders where one would need a Web developer. What is your take on that? (their personal site support thing)
From my humble POV, I do think you always need a the seasoned sooner or later. May it not be for your day by day thing as you have stuff covered. But for example, one buddy I know he handled very well with one builder tool, but wanted a very specific custom adaptation of a theme/template he had bought. That is custom enough, and time consuming enough as for a regular support of these accounts/tools/services would give you as part included in a package, unless is a very premium solution. But then, the logic jump here, it'd be not really one of these services, not this type, but a much more custom service (actually, contracting a developer/designer)... I might be wrong, and I am a bit too messy explaining (and coding, sadly), but hoping it makes sense.
Hi Stefan! you are really awesome! Im a web developer, please share your idea what things should i really need to learn to be your apprentice. Thanks much!
Stefan, One question in or on your Killer Videos or your tutorials in this coding that you teach is that the same type of coding that you use to build "Frameworks"??? Chiquito...
so, what are we actually talking about here? web DESIGNING (build layouts in photoshop, adobe xd, some other tool) or are we talking about FRONTEND development (getting a layout from a designer and convert it into actual code with html, css, js)? the thing is, designing - it is always hard.... designers have a tough life compared to technicians. Many small web agencies don't even have dedicated designers, but get layouts from the web or freelancers, give them to their frontend dev and let the frontend guy do some customizations here and there. Therefore, being a frontend developer? Good career path. Now, coming to all the stuff that is out there... all the site builders... they actually don't replace us. People who are using them, are people who would not be a potential customer anyways since these are usually people that would not spend money, or very little money, on their web presentation anyways. So we are not losing since they don't chunk us several thousand to build their custom app. BUT, businesses that want to stand out and want to have something unique and customizable that will look exactly like they have imagined it, these businesses will always require at least a frontend guy creating their site. Depending on the scope, maybe even people beforehand on the design and people on the backend. These businesses are out there, they will always be there and there are many of them! Having a wix page, vs having a custom made web app, will always be a sign of quality for a company and it will more often than not be the first thing, that their potential customers will see.
When people call asking for your professional opinion on what technology to use, do you charge them for your advice? I could see the constant questions getting annoying
then why one would hire a web developer which specialises in ecommerce web dev when there is easier shopify tool, it means that web dev has lost his job?
Stefan this is an excellent video. I really learned a lot from it. Back in 2001 I did a web design course and we did HTML and we used Dreamweaver 4 Photoshop, Illustrator Flash. I realize that’s ancient history now. CSS wasn’t mentioned at all in the course neither was Wordpress. PHP was mentioned but we didn’t cover it in the course. Anyway I didn’t pursue Web Design afterwards. I didn’t have enough belief in my abilities. Now I would like to go back and relearn. Do people still use Dreamweaver? It seems to me like it’s gone. I realize Flash is gone. Not necessary after HTML 5 came in. Illustrator I haven’t heard about it since then. Photoshop is still there. It seems to me I need HTML 5, CSS JavaScript to build a 2018 website. PHP if I want to use the website to connect with a database ( I do) SQL for the database. Ok I am clear about that. What I am not sure about is do I need to use a JavaScript Framework? To be honest I am very hazy about Frameworks and Libraries in general. I guess what I am trying to say is after HTML 5 CSS and JavaScript what else exactly should I use to build a professional looking website in 2018 that will work on desktop and mobile.
Ahh ... good questions. Answers: people do use Dreamweaver, but not nearly as much as before. So many options now, and honestly, because the underlying web languages (html5, css3, javaScript) have really matured, the need for fancy web design programs has diminished a huge amount. My IWD course package will give you all you need: shop.killervideostore.com/
Stefan Mischook Thanks for your reply to my Comment.I appreciate it. I will indeed check out your course. I am a relatively new subscriber to your channel and really enjoy your videos. I like the way you talk about programming in an accessible way. You don’t need to be a Techie to understand your videos. Keep up the good work.
for things similar to Dreamweaver today, Muse from Adobe has ceased to exist, Dreamweaver (from Adobe, too, so, cloud based, monthly subscription based) is still kicking (and is a tool I always liked). Pinegrow is (also, dirty cheap, compatible till certain point with modern frameworks, and no subscriptions) probably about the best graphic tool as a wysiwyg, and there are other solutions, like the one from Coffeecup (they make a pure code editor, but also another which is a wysiwg editor, a "responsive designer") , there's another called Macaw (I think) that just also ceased (Edit to be clear: Pinegrow and Coffecup are quite alive) as a standalone, integrated now in some sort of service, I believe. And one that designers of non coding nature are using to survive the all-about-coding-frameworks-tech, just to keep being able to get web making gigs,is the so called Webflow. Is in reality a (i believe old, I remember doing stuff for it inside a third party company, long ago) CMS with a wysiwyg editor, quite good, but still even there you loose some freedom in developing. It also provides hosting for the customers that you could have, I mean, making theirs sites (as a designer, and a Webflow platform member). Is built as a platform for non coders to make freelance gigs, in a kind of member account - not cheap, IMO, considering the many other things to pay for a freelancer (ie, 20 to 60 bucks for the Adobe Cloud unless like me, you like alternatives (Serif's Affinity (mostly), Clip Studio Paint, Corel, Xara, Krita, Paint Shop Pro, Gimp, Hitfilm, Fusion, Blender, etc, etc, etc)) . I bet a lot can get their place there (and so they are doing, it seems !). But I think is just yet another ostrich's head in the sand approach, way to not fight in the real arena, towards the best solution: knowing how to do web code so to better use modern frameworks and or CMSs, to have those basics well tied so to get to do better decisions depending on the project - personal or not- that is the case each time. I my self get very limited not being able to code in JS, neither really touch very deep in PHP / MySQL departments.
Oh, it's a English (British) expression: www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/bobs-your-uncle.html I'd never heard it before I stared watching Stefan's videos. I like it.
If the market-demand is for HTML/CSS with some PHP knowledge, what is the point of me studying Computer-Science at university which is insanely difficult instead of just brushing up on these skills and just freelance full-time?
Getting a CS degree opens up many more opportunities. Having a CS degree can get you jobs at huge companies that would not even consider you otherwise. But you are right, if your goal is freelance, them CS degree doesn't help much.
Hmm ... I wouldn't .. even if you could. Why? Because you would be bound to the limitations of Wix. With their JavaScript API, you have some ability to do things programmatic. That all said, I would prototype with PHP. My course will get you up and running faster than any other: shop.killervideostore.com/
why do we have to learn web developpment, vue js or react or whatever when there's wordpress which does almost everything perfectly with minimal php knowledge?
The same reason no company generating serious revenue in millions and billions of dollars uses them. Any company generating serious revenue have total control over their code base.
eFitzG, check out tutorials on WP theme development. So, instead of writing content in HTML, use php to refer to a widget or other WP dashboard item dynamically. A functions.php file contains the code and is saved in your theme folder. This allows a client to edit content in the dashboard.
Actually Wix is just a tool, but it still takes time to build a website with Wix or custom design. I wrote an article on it the other day. Custom design always looks nice. waetechsolutions.com/wix-vs-custom-web-design/
