6 ms·

What no-code alternative would you recommend for pro web designers?

by whyage 3y ago

kidfiji 3y ago
Although it isn't open source, Webflow seems to be the current most popular thing for that specific niche (low/no-code platform for designers)
hakube 3y ago
Webflow
frankzander 3y ago
Lern to code (at least a little bit) and if not ... Contao. CSS isn't considered "coding"
- lolinder 3y ago
  Most of the gatekeeping of what is and isn't "coding" is done by novices who don't really know what they're talking about. Beginners tend to want a hard line with "coding" on one side and "not coding" on the other, but that's not a very useful way to model interactions with computers. It's more of a spectrum of complexity, with WhatsApp on one side and full-blown software engineering on the other. In the middle is a vast gray area, much of which could very legitimately be referred to as programming, but which equally someone might consider to be simply using an application (like Excel). Further, what tools you use is less significant for whether something should be considered coding than is how you're using them. I'm a professional web developer, and the way that I and my colleagues use CSS is unquestionably coding. On the other hand, someone who's just styling the fonts on their squarespace page might not consider what they're doing to be coding and that's also fine.
  - kodah 3y ago
    > Most of the gatekeeping of what is and isn't "coding" is done by novices who don't really know what they're talking about. Beginners tend to want a hard line with "coding" on one side and "not coding" on the other, but that's not a very useful way to model interactions with computers. I disagree. There's a meaningful distinction between what is code and what is formatting because the concerns are quite different. This distinction is more apparent on frontend applications where the code bits are actually dealing with the fact that there's a single process doing all these seemingly asynchronous things, the use of very infrastructure-like components (eg: pubsub implementations, stores, etc). Formatting and design doesn't need to deal with the how, it needs to deal with the why. The powerhouse of a developer is knowing both. Trying to shoehorn peoples attitudes into discriminatory experience levels based on your perception of that rhetoric is an odd behavior unto itself. These topics merit talking about because ultimately they affect how we think, reason, and organize on different layers of projects. You actually somewhat proved my point with your example of CSS. It more recently became capable of more "code like" qualities, but it can definitely be used for just styling and formatting. Without discussion someone may never know the difference or why you'd use some of CSSs computational capabilities. Another crossover is YAML; YAML can be very markup language oriented but it also supports aliases, pointers, etc.
    - lolinder 3y ago
      I agree that the distinction you're drawing is valuable, but it's not a distinction between "code" and "not code": both aspects are defined with a language that the computer parses, interprets, and executes on. One happens to be a declarative language that deals with the what and why, and the other an imperative one that deals with the how. > Trying to shoehorn peoples attitudes into discriminatory experience levels based on your perception of that rhetoric is an odd behavior unto itself. I think this is a bit of an overreaction to my words. Referring to someone as a beginner is not discriminatory, we all start as beginners and it's okay to not know things. It's also okay (and desirable!) for those of us who do know better to help novices to learn the material and the culture better than they now do. And the fact is that "what counts as coding" is not a discussion that serious developers have between themselves. > These topics merit talking about because ultimately they affect how we think, reason, and organize on different layers of projects. I believe that "code" and "not code" aren't useful categories for dividing up CSS, HTML, YAML, JavaScript, Haskell, and C. We're capable of enough nuance to distinguish between them while still acknowledging that they're all languages which we use to tell a computer what to do. Let's talk about them in that nuanced way, not try to split the world into a code/everything-else binary.
      - kodah 3y ago
        > both aspects are defined with a language that the computer parses, interprets, and executes on. Sure, but low order definitions of "code" being something that takes an input and produces a different output do not relate to the real world unless you believe modern word processors require programmers. > Referring to someone as a beginner is not discriminatory, we all start as beginners and it's okay to not know things. I think you're missing the point that the statement you made applies to a wide variety of discussion, not simply binary code|not_code discussions. > Most of the gatekeeping of what is and isn't "coding" is done by novices who don't really know what they're talking about This statement would also imply anyone trying to sort out coding from formatting, from styling as a novice. There's a reason we separate these activities in programming that has to do with how you model applications not to mention empowering the people who have expertise in doing them. While I agree that code|not_code is not helpful, trying to make the definition of code so low order that it's meaningless is also not helpful. There's a bar there that belongs in the middle and I think you both have missed it. I was merely calling out equally harmful wording that you were using to correct harmful wording.
8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
Wouldn't say "pro" unless you get strictly mean design and not functionality. In which case I'd have recommended Photoshop which is what I used for design only 20 years ago, but I think the UX folks like Figma or something these days.
imilk 3y ago
Wordpress is still great for downloading a theme from Themeforest to get brochure style sites (restaurant, simple small business, etc) up and running pretty fast. It is not great (possibly horrendous) for revisiting a few years later when all the plugins/theme/core needs to be updated and a bunch of different people have added custom JS/CSS all over in random places. It's hard to reconcile "pro web designer" with no-code though. Having said that, my preferred stack for something that involves more than a simple site is Sveltekit, Tailwindcss, & Sanity. But everyone has their own preferences.
- photomatt 3y ago
  I hope we can make the .org Theme directory so good and Gutenberg + Patterns so usable you don't need to go to Themeforest anymore.
  - marc_io 3y ago
    Need to get the intrinsic design approach right first, that's lot to cover.
- pentagrama 3y ago
  In my experience, I bought some pro/high sellers/high rated themes on Theme Forest for 3 sites, but all of them come with a bunch of pre-installed plugins, and was a mess. Specially two who have a mandatory plugin to edit pages, called WPBakery, damn I hated it, is awful, the native WP editor is miles away (Gutenberg), but the design will brake if you use Gutenberg. Also, this and other plugins do not auto-update automatically, for each update you have to login to a site of the theme seller, download a zip, and update the plugin manually. And also on the admin you always gets upsells of the pre-installed plugins all the time, you can't disable it, sometimes you get a rack of 3 top banners simultaneously. The end user sites looked really nice tho, but the editing experience was horrible.
  - imilk 3y ago
    Yeah some themes are way better than others, that's for sure. This is one of the cleanest and most flexible that I've used on dozens of sites, getting them up and running with a branded look in 2-3 hours: https://themeforest.net/item/salient-responsive-multipurpose-theme/4363266 https://themeforest.net/item/salient-responsive-multipurpose...
carlosjobim 3y ago
You can't design anything in WordPress without code. Unless you count installing a theme as "design". If you're a pro web designer you should know CSS. Then there's some good alternatives.
- mthoms 3y ago
  I might have misinterpreted your comment, but there are plenty of site builders for WordPress (WYSIWYG-ish editors). Granted, you can only do so much without knowing CSS.
Giorgi 3y ago
I would recommend Kirby, it is not all there, but is getting there.
infp_arborist 3y ago
Wordpress + Oxygen/Bricks/...?

What no-code alternative would you recommend for pro web designers?

by whyage 3y ago

What no-code alternative would you recommend for pro web designers?

Although it isn't open source, Webflow seems to be the current most popular thing for that specific niche (low/no-code platform for designers)

hakube 3y ago

Webflow

frankzander 3y ago

Lern to code (at least a little bit) and if not ... Contao. CSS isn't considered "coding"

lolinder 3y ago
Most of the gatekeeping of what is and isn't "coding" is done by novices who don't really know what they're talking about. Beginners tend to want a hard line with "coding" on one side and "not coding" on the other, but that's not a very useful way to model interactions with computers. It's more of a spectrum of complexity, with WhatsApp on one side and full-blown software engineering on the other. In the middle is a vast gray area, much of which could very legitimately be referred to as programming, but which equally someone might consider to be simply using an application (like Excel). Further, what tools you use is less significant for whether something should be considered coding than is how you're using them. I'm a professional web developer, and the way that I and my colleagues use CSS is unquestionably coding. On the other hand, someone who's just styling the fonts on their squarespace page might not consider what they're doing to be coding and that's also fine.
- kodah 3y ago
  > Most of the gatekeeping of what is and isn't "coding" is done by novices who don't really know what they're talking about. Beginners tend to want a hard line with "coding" on one side and "not coding" on the other, but that's not a very useful way to model interactions with computers. I disagree. There's a meaningful distinction between what is code and what is formatting because the concerns are quite different. This distinction is more apparent on frontend applications where the code bits are actually dealing with the fact that there's a single process doing all these seemingly asynchronous things, the use of very infrastructure-like components (eg: pubsub implementations, stores, etc). Formatting and design doesn't need to deal with the how, it needs to deal with the why. The powerhouse of a developer is knowing both. Trying to shoehorn peoples attitudes into discriminatory experience levels based on your perception of that rhetoric is an odd behavior unto itself. These topics merit talking about because ultimately they affect how we think, reason, and organize on different layers of projects. You actually somewhat proved my point with your example of CSS. It more recently became capable of more "code like" qualities, but it can definitely be used for just styling and formatting. Without discussion someone may never know the difference or why you'd use some of CSSs computational capabilities. Another crossover is YAML; YAML can be very markup language oriented but it also supports aliases, pointers, etc.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    I agree that the distinction you're drawing is valuable, but it's not a distinction between "code" and "not code": both aspects are defined with a language that the computer parses, interprets, and executes on. One happens to be a declarative language that deals with the what and why, and the other an imperative one that deals with the how. > Trying to shoehorn peoples attitudes into discriminatory experience levels based on your perception of that rhetoric is an odd behavior unto itself. I think this is a bit of an overreaction to my words. Referring to someone as a beginner is not discriminatory, we all start as beginners and it's okay to not know things. It's also okay (and desirable!) for those of us who do know better to help novices to learn the material and the culture better than they now do. And the fact is that "what counts as coding" is not a discussion that serious developers have between themselves. > These topics merit talking about because ultimately they affect how we think, reason, and organize on different layers of projects. I believe that "code" and "not code" aren't useful categories for dividing up CSS, HTML, YAML, JavaScript, Haskell, and C. We're capable of enough nuance to distinguish between them while still acknowledging that they're all languages which we use to tell a computer what to do. Let's talk about them in that nuanced way, not try to split the world into a code/everything-else binary.
    - kodah 3y ago
      > both aspects are defined with a language that the computer parses, interprets, and executes on. Sure, but low order definitions of "code" being something that takes an input and produces a different output do not relate to the real world unless you believe modern word processors require programmers. > Referring to someone as a beginner is not discriminatory, we all start as beginners and it's okay to not know things. I think you're missing the point that the statement you made applies to a wide variety of discussion, not simply binary code|not_code discussions. > Most of the gatekeeping of what is and isn't "coding" is done by novices who don't really know what they're talking about This statement would also imply anyone trying to sort out coding from formatting, from styling as a novice. There's a reason we separate these activities in programming that has to do with how you model applications not to mention empowering the people who have expertise in doing them. While I agree that code|not_code is not helpful, trying to make the definition of code so low order that it's meaningless is also not helpful. There's a bar there that belongs in the middle and I think you both have missed it. I was merely calling out equally harmful wording that you were using to correct harmful wording.

8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago

Wouldn't say "pro" unless you get strictly mean design and not functionality. In which case I'd have recommended Photoshop which is what I used for design only 20 years ago, but I think the UX folks like Figma or something these days.

imilk 3y ago

Wordpress is still great for downloading a theme from Themeforest to get brochure style sites (restaurant, simple small business, etc) up and running pretty fast. It is not great (possibly horrendous) for revisiting a few years later when all the plugins/theme/core needs to be updated and a bunch of different people have added custom JS/CSS all over in random places. It's hard to reconcile "pro web designer" with no-code though. Having said that, my preferred stack for something that involves more than a simple site is Sveltekit, Tailwindcss, & Sanity. But everyone has their own preferences.

photomatt 3y ago
I hope we can make the .org Theme directory so good and Gutenberg + Patterns so usable you don't need to go to Themeforest anymore.
- marc_io 3y ago
  Need to get the intrinsic design approach right first, that's lot to cover.
pentagrama 3y ago
In my experience, I bought some pro/high sellers/high rated themes on Theme Forest for 3 sites, but all of them come with a bunch of pre-installed plugins, and was a mess. Specially two who have a mandatory plugin to edit pages, called WPBakery, damn I hated it, is awful, the native WP editor is miles away (Gutenberg), but the design will brake if you use Gutenberg. Also, this and other plugins do not auto-update automatically, for each update you have to login to a site of the theme seller, download a zip, and update the plugin manually. And also on the admin you always gets upsells of the pre-installed plugins all the time, you can't disable it, sometimes you get a rack of 3 top banners simultaneously. The end user sites looked really nice tho, but the editing experience was horrible.
- imilk 3y ago
  Yeah some themes are way better than others, that's for sure. This is one of the cleanest and most flexible that I've used on dozens of sites, getting them up and running with a branded look in 2-3 hours: https://themeforest.net/item/salient-responsive-multipurpose-theme/4363266 https://themeforest.net/item/salient-responsive-multipurpose...

carlosjobim 3y ago

You can't design anything in WordPress without code. Unless you count installing a theme as "design". If you're a pro web designer you should know CSS. Then there's some good alternatives.

mthoms 3y ago
I might have misinterpreted your comment, but there are plenty of site builders for WordPress (WYSIWYG-ish editors). Granted, you can only do so much without knowing CSS.

Giorgi 3y ago

I would recommend Kirby, it is not all there, but is getting there.

infp_arborist 3y ago

Wordpress + Oxygen/Bricks/...?