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As somebody who's only dabbled in creating a personal website in the late 90s, using FrontPage and hosting on a free hoster, the current web seems like a comple

As somebody who's only dabbled in creating a personal website in the late 90s, using FrontPage and hosting on a free hoster, the current web seems like a completely, and way more complex beast to build websites for. Back then all I needed was get a bit familiar with FrontPage and html scripting, some Photoshop to create/edit image elements, and I already had a functional website. I knew if I wanted to "really" do it, I should probably learn proper html, but 15 years old me was already plenty proud of having a pretty good looking, and well working, website at all. It even had a visitor counter, and a guest book, all the Jazz that defined 90s websites, and that was enough for me. Now, over 2 decades later, just the prospect of getting back into it seems so extremely more daunting and complex. We are now at Html5? At "Web 3.0"? I don't really know anymore, it's all just become so "vast" with so many options and so much complexity that I wouldn't even know where or how to start anymore. Is it still viable to just learn plain html and do something with that? Have WYSIWYG editors matured so much that they can be used at least semi-professionally, or is that still "looked down upon"?

Mezzie 5y ago
I started in the 90s and have dipped in and out of web dev ever since, but my impression is that a lot of the complexity stems from organizations and teams getting bigger and needing to work with one another. Frameworks and tools proliferate in order to make it easier to spread the work out across devs, communicate with one another, deal with version control, etc. The other main reason is to deal with the fact that a lot of web 'pages' are actually apps now and have to talk to the server/there's a bunch of backend stuff going on, so there has to be reconciliation between front-end and back-end. If you're working on your own and don't need a back-end, there are options for putting up a personal site. Webflow[0] and Squarespace[1] come to mind. They'd be taken seriously semi-professionally in non-tech spaces. Can't speak to tech ones. [0]: https://webflow.com/?r=0 https://webflow.com/?r=0 [1]: https://www.squarespace.com/ https://www.squarespace.com/
wombat-man 5y ago
You can still do html people will just notice that. Personally I don't care. I'm not a webdev and I don't pretend to be. I have setup a pretty basic sorta retro personal website where people can find my resume. There's a lot more you can do with static sites, it just depends on how much time you want to sink into it. I just made something basic. Maybe when I'm bored I'll try to build on it.
rchaud 5y ago
> Is it still viable to just learn plain html and do something with that? Have WYSIWYG editors matured so much that they can be used at least semi-professionally, or is that still "looked down upon"? Are you trying to make a website, or a web application? That really is the biggest question. For a static website that's read-only (meaning no user login, or user-submitted data, no online store), the old ways work fine. With modern CMSes, you can create ecommerce stores and other dynamic functionality, but it comes at the cost of flexibility. On Squarespace for example, you can only use the pre-build templates to create the site. And even if you are building a website by hand where you have full visual control, you can you can add a lot of interactivity by embedding iframes for things like JotForm or a PayPal button.

Mezzie 5y ago

I started in the 90s and have dipped in and out of web dev ever since, but my impression is that a lot of the complexity stems from organizations and teams getting bigger and needing to work with one another. Frameworks and tools proliferate in order to make it easier to spread the work out across devs, communicate with one another, deal with version control, etc. The other main reason is to deal with the fact that a lot of web 'pages' are actually apps now and have to talk to the server/there's a bunch of backend stuff going on, so there has to be reconciliation between front-end and back-end. If you're working on your own and don't need a back-end, there are options for putting up a personal site. Webflow[0] and Squarespace[1] come to mind. They'd be taken seriously semi-professionally in non-tech spaces. Can't speak to tech ones. [0]: https://webflow.com/?r=0 https://webflow.com/?r=0 [1]: https://www.squarespace.com/ https://www.squarespace.com/

wombat-man 5y ago

You can still do html people will just notice that. Personally I don't care. I'm not a webdev and I don't pretend to be. I have setup a pretty basic sorta retro personal website where people can find my resume. There's a lot more you can do with static sites, it just depends on how much time you want to sink into it. I just made something basic. Maybe when I'm bored I'll try to build on it.

rchaud 5y ago

> Is it still viable to just learn plain html and do something with that? Have WYSIWYG editors matured so much that they can be used at least semi-professionally, or is that still "looked down upon"? Are you trying to make a website, or a web application? That really is the biggest question. For a static website that's read-only (meaning no user login, or user-submitted data, no online store), the old ways work fine. With modern CMSes, you can create ecommerce stores and other dynamic functionality, but it comes at the cost of flexibility. On Squarespace for example, you can only use the pre-build templates to create the site. And even if you are building a website by hand where you have full visual control, you can you can add a lot of interactivity by embedding iframes for things like JotForm or a PayPal button.