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Faydra Deon (@faydra_deon) Jeff, I have to agree with your original assessment, even though Luis Alejandre’s point can’t be dismissed outright, because it does take a designer’s eye to really make websites look pretty. However, without the technical know-how, those with a designer’s eye are still going to miss the mark when using many of these page-building tools, because page builders are limited to subsets of this or that. You can put a slider here or a tabbed widget there or an accordion over there, but will they “fit” within the theme you’ve chosen? Page builders are for structure, but you still need to know CSS, and then which version of CSS, or LESS to integrate these building blocks into the appearance of whatever theme you’re using. That’s where development comes in. It’s not enough just to be able to design. I’ve been doing web design/development since 1999, so I started out 100% hand-coding websites. Then I went from FirstPage to FrontPage to Dreamweaver. I now teach Dreamweaver classes (yes, people still want to know how to use it) and WordPress classes, and I have tons of out-of-work graphic designers who take my classes because they need to know how to create websites. What’s sad is that many of them are under the impression that they can skip the web languages prerequisites (XHTML/CSS/JavaScript/jQuery/AJAX/PHP/etc.) because Dreamweaver or WordPress does it all for you. Just as Dreamweaver and/or WordPress don’t do it all for you when it comes to getting the exact look and feel you want for your site, the building-block tools don’t do it all for you, either. It appears that the bottom line for many developers/companies selling these building-block tools is to give people the perception that they can have it all for almost nothing, and it’s the creators of the page builders or site builders or drag-and-drop builders who are making big money off the ignorance (ignorant doesn’t mean stupid/dumb; it just means you don’t know any better) of people who think professional web designers/developers are just trying to rip them off. Last point, if buying a theme or using a building-block solution was all it took to make the WordPress site you want with just a few clicks, there’d be no need for codexes, support forums, documentation, how-to sites or anything else that fills in the gaps between buying and activating. People won’t hesitate to hire an electrician or plumber when the wiring goes bad or the toilets back up in their homes, but they don’t see the benefit of hiring a web design/developer to create their “home on the web” because of all the “you can do it yourself” ersatz-tools that exist.
Faydra Deon (@faydra_deon)
Jeff, I have to agree with your original assessment, even though Luis Alejandre’s point can’t be dismissed outright, because it does take a designer’s eye to really make websites look pretty.
However, without the technical know-how, those with a designer’s eye are still going to miss the mark when using many of these page-building tools, because page builders are limited to subsets of this or that. You can put a slider here or a tabbed widget there or an accordion over there, but will they “fit” within the theme you’ve chosen?
Page builders are for structure, but you still need to know CSS, and then which version of CSS, or LESS to integrate these building blocks into the appearance of whatever theme you’re using. That’s where development comes in. It’s not enough just to be able to design.
I’ve been doing web design/development since 1999, so I started out 100% hand-coding websites. Then I went from FirstPage to FrontPage to Dreamweaver. I now teach Dreamweaver classes (yes, people still want to know how to use it) and WordPress classes, and I have tons of out-of-work graphic designers who take my classes because they need to know how to create websites. What’s sad is that many of them are under the impression that they can skip the web languages prerequisites (XHTML/CSS/JavaScript/jQuery/AJAX/PHP/etc.) because Dreamweaver or WordPress does it all for you.
Just as Dreamweaver and/or WordPress don’t do it all for you when it comes to getting the exact look and feel you want for your site, the building-block tools don’t do it all for you, either.
It appears that the bottom line for many developers/companies selling these building-block tools is to give people the perception that they can have it all for almost nothing, and it’s the creators of the page builders or site builders or drag-and-drop builders who are making big money off the ignorance (ignorant doesn’t mean stupid/dumb; it just means you don’t know any better) of people who think professional web designers/developers are just trying to rip them off.
Last point, if buying a theme or using a building-block solution was all it took to make the WordPress site you want with just a few clicks, there’d be no need for codexes, support forums, documentation, how-to sites or anything else that fills in the gaps between buying and activating. People won’t hesitate to hire an electrician or plumber when the wiring goes bad or the toilets back up in their homes, but they don’t see the benefit of hiring a web design/developer to create their “home on the web” because of all the “you can do it yourself” ersatz-tools that exist.
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