There is an issue being debated among aspiring web designers and developers pertaining to how to go about building a website, people wonder if they should build it with a CMS platform like WordPress, Joomla, Open Cart, or if learning to program and coding from scratch to finish is a better alternative. Both methods are viable and work well depending on what you want to build. But like everything else, there are pros and cons.
So let’s look further into these two methods
Hand Coding: This is more of a traditional way to build web applications. It requires you to code your application from start to finish. Hand coding requires that you have expert knowledge of the programming language you choose to use, whether it is HTML, CSS, PHP or JavaScript. You need to know the ins and outs of front-end to back-end development. Vast knowledge of programming is required to create the exact website of your choice. Note that when you are coding from scratch to finish, you’ll make errors that will affect your website and you may need to spend long debugging hours fix all the errors.
Hand coding a website takes longer hours to finish since you’ll be writing code from scratch, testing and debugging.
There are no restrictions with hand coding, you can do whatever you like, you can add new features now or in the future and customize the features to your preference. You can significantly improve the speed of your website when you hand code because you make use of shortcuts and you can remove unnecessary scripts and file that may be slowing your website down.
CMS: stands for Content Management System, a CMS is a tool used for building a website from a basic structure like a templates or themes. Using a CMS doesn’t require much technical expertise or prior programming language. Most CMS are user friendly and convenient, most of the customization done is carried out via drag and drop.
It takes lesser time to build a website with a CMS because you have access to millions of paid and free ready-made templates, so you spend less time building and debugging.
One of the pros of using a CMS is that it encourages effortless teamwork on the website. You can have multiple people working on your website, editing, posting, updating and so on depending on the roles and privileges you assign to each person.
One persistent con of using a CMS is the security risk present because hackers always try to hack these popular CMS platforms, 3rd party apps and plugins, then directly or indirectly attack websites making use of them. It’s not easy to locate these loopholes but thankfully the developers of these CMS platforms, 3rd party apps and plugins recognize the security threats and provides fixes in updated versions of their software and so I advise you update your CMS 3rd party apps and plugins frequently.
So we have talked about CMS and hand coding and now you understand both methods, you can make better and informed decisions on which approach to take. Let me know the approach you decide to take in the comment section.
You can read this article and similar posts on my website https://drag.com.ng/which-is-better-for-building-a-website-hand-coding-or-cms/