Building a website can be complicated, however be easy depending on the route you take. There are different ways to build your website online from using Website Builder provided by the web hosting company to building a website with HTML and CSS using standard HTML or CMS. The easier method will be using the website builder, which does not require any type of coding. It just requires some knowledge of understanding computer languages just like learning how to edit your Facebook page.
Taking a look at both aspects will give you an idea on what directions you should go.
Website Builder
Website Builder is probably one of the easier ways to build your own website. The site builders are mostly web-based, which you can access anywhere with a computer allowing to easily make changes to your site. Website builder are intended to make a building a website easy with quick click and drag, and repositioning texts and images into certain places. It does not require any HTML knowledge whatever so ever and pretty much anybody can figure out quickly.
While website builder is easy and quick to build, there are many limitations on what can be done to the template. Typically, there is no access to customize the template when using a site builder. Design will be limited and unoriginal. The coding is usually bloated with site builder, which can lead to a buggy site. “What you see is what you get” is untrue because all browsers act and display different especially when website builder produces poor coding.
Pros of a website builder:
- Build a site within minutes
- Easy to learn and use
- Performance is optimized by host
- No technical issue needed, requiring only content
- No coding or programming knowledge require
- Beautiful templates available
- Low cost, usually free after purchasing a host with provider
- Perfect for blogs, business pages, and even e-commerce stores
Cons of a website builder:
- Does not work in sync with all browsers and mobile devices
- Design is limited
- Limit customization and editing of CSS or HTML
- Not good for big websites
- Buggy because of bloated coding
- No flexibility
- Unoriginal
- Poor coding
HTML/CMS
Regular coding or using a CMS system allows greater flexibility to your web design. It does require knowledge of HTML, CSS, and some Javascript, which is difficult to learn without any prior experience. But it gives the freedom to fully customize your design with pure HTML and CSS coding. CMS system like WordPress gives you the ability to fully edit the code while obtaining a user friendly interface for adding text and images to certain pages or post.
Working on do-it-yourself coding can require a lot of work or require you to hire a web designer to achieve your needed goals. While it is more expensive and harder to do, a web site looks much better using pure HTML and CSS with less bugs and looks perfect with all browsers across the board.
Pros of HTML/Wordpress
- More freedom to customize design
- Works well with all browsers and mobile devices
- Functions are endless
- Thousands of web templates available
- Better for higher traffic
- CMS system like WordPress and Drupal
- Perfect for any type of website
Cons of custom HTML & CSS
- Complicated to customize
- Requires knowledge of HTML, CSS, and Javascript
- Expensive when hiring developer
- Hard to edit
- Time consuming
- Buggy with wrong coding
Depending on what you prefer, if you are on a budget and have no knowledge with HTML and CSS, website builder sound more ideals to go with. While the limitations are excessive, web builders do offer beautiful temples to choose from. So depending on the type of website you are trying to obtain, site builders make sense for a site with few pages and low on traffic.
If you are looking for more stable and complex design with added advanced features that can handle high traffic, then hiring a web designer makes more sense if you do not know website coding yourself. It can cost a bit higher to hire someone, but your website will be a higher professional level compared to a website builder. The design will be unique and you can add endless functions of the site.