Community Forums › Forums › Archived Forums › Design Tips and Tricks › Customizing themes with a page builder vs coding manually? Any freelancers here?
Tagged: business, freelancing, page builder, seo, web design
- This topic has 5 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated 7 years ago by Victor Font.
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August 6, 2017 at 9:11 pm #210062shamblinMember
Hey everyone,
First off, let me just give some background information. My dream is to travel the world as a freelancer and I would like to start this venture by designing WordPress sites for small businesses. I was hoping someone with any experience in the industry could help me out with a decision.
Should I be using a page builder to design a clients website after choosing a fitting Genesis theme or would I best off learning all the useful languages involved in making wordpress sites?
I love to learn, so I don't mind grinding it out to become more knowledgeable in these languages. However, I can't help but wonder if it would be more wise to use a page builder. I've done some research, but haven't really found much advice from a professional WordPress designer. Below, I'll lay out my hopes and concerns. I would be very grateful for any helpful input.
Hopes:
It might increase my efficiency. (Time is money, right?)
It might be easier to make customizations.
It would shorten my learning curve and get me freelancing sooner.Worries:
It might slow down the website.
It might negatively impact SEO and user experience.
It would be unprofessional.
I'm leaving something important out right now.What do you think?
August 7, 2017 at 6:39 am #210070Victor FontModeratorQuestions on this forum are answered by community volunteers and intended specifically for the Genesis Framework and Studio Press themes. You may get a quicker response by posing your question in one of the Facebook WordPress forums.
That being said, you certainly have a lofty personal goal. But, personal goals don't always translate into business goals. If you want to become a developer, then learn how to develop. Sure, you can use a page builder to get sites up quickly, but you'll never understand the inner workings of a site, especially if you intend to use the Genesis Framework. Page builders produce bloated code, slow down sites, and very often lock users into them for the life of their site. Page builders that insert shortcodes into a user's content are damaging to that content.
I've been developing applications for over 30 years and I'm still learning new things every day. Learning is a life-long process. Building a business is all about building solid, trusting relationships with your customers. Yes, time is money, but investing time into your customer relationships will result in greater, recurring revenue over the long term. This is not the type of business where you can buy a page builder and suddenly call yourself a web developer. You are either a developer of your not. I suggest you visit https://knowthecode.io to learn more about what it takes.
There's one more thing. If you've been following WordPress discussions at all, the core architecture will be changing in the not too distant future. When Gutenberg is released as the new editor, a lot of what we do as developers will change, and in some cases dramatically. Page builders, as they exist today, may no longer be compatible. Tools such as ACF and CMB2 may need to be re-engineered to work with content blocks. There's a GIT discussion going on now about how to use legacy meta boxes with Gutenberg. Meta boxes are not legacy today. They are a standard. If you're not ready for these changes as a site developer, you may find yourself scrambling to maintain your revenue streams. Good luck.
Regards,
Victor
https://victorfont.com/
Call us toll free: 844-VIC-FONT (842-3668)
Have you requested your free website audit yet?August 8, 2017 at 10:29 am #210124shamblinMemberMr. Font,
I'd like to thank you for your honest and thorough response. I should have explained in my post that I've been learning theme development at TeamTreehouse. I'm learning to build a theme from scratch and its been interesting learning how all the pieces fit together. KnowtheCode seems like it might be a better option for me, being that it goes into more depth. Thanks for sharing the link.
So, just to be clear, are page builders even useful to developers who have a deep understanding of wordpress? I understand that they may fill the theme with shortcodes, but could this code be a useful starting point where the developer could clean up the code and make it less "bloated."
This is just a thought, so please correct me if I'm wrong. (You've been a developer longer than I've been alive.) I feel like there are a lot of small business owners who don't want to pay for all the bells and whistles, but just want a good looking, functional website. The reason I was thinking about using a page builder, was to cater to this type of client. If it only takes me a fourth of the time, I could charge them a fourth of the price. I don't plan on making this into the focus of my business, but is this a viable option?
Thanks again,
Kyle
August 8, 2017 at 10:41 am #210125John HoganMemberHi Kyle,
In my opinion it is always better to learn how to code rather than rely on page builders. Page builders may seem like a fantastic tool but they really do add unnecessary bloat which affects speed and performance.
The other draw back to page builders is that they are somewhat restrictive in what you can and cannot do. I get a lot of sub contracted jobs working on sites from agencies who are stuck with functionality or design issues that they cannot carry out with something like Divi or Visual Composer. I would imagine that those agencies probably charge a lot of money so they can afford to hire a developer in that situation, though, so maybe they don't care so much.
That's not to say you can't build websites that way, plenty of people do. Just be prepared for situations that you may need to move to the coding side of things to get the website running how the client wants, and if you can't do it be prepared to pay for someone who can.
Hope that helps,
John
Web Developer specialising in custom Genesis themes.
@Hogan_Web_Dev | hwdOctober 12, 2017 at 9:54 am #212462khoffMemberHi, I'm new to this forum but not new to WP. This is the only searchable result I've found about Gutenberg-related information. Anyone here know about Studiopress preps for the new core release?
October 14, 2017 at 8:43 am #212524Victor FontModerator@khoff: We are all community volunteers and have no affiliation with Studio Press. Unless you can find someone that works for them, this type of information isn't available to us until it is released publically.
Regards,
Victor
https://victorfont.com/
Call us toll free: 844-VIC-FONT (842-3668)
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