Website development

[fullyautomatix]

I've done commercial contract work on sites built on both WordPress and Drupal.

The WP one was pretty weird, actually: we only used WP's admin as a content management system, because the various people within the organisation who would be producing content were already familiar with it from other internal uses of it. The usual public-facing parts of WP weren't used at all. The content was then extracted over HTTP via a JSON API (provided by a WordPress plugin) by a Node task running as a cron job and rendered into static HTML using server-side jQuery (yes, really), as well as being used to plug the same content into a PhoneGap (now Cordova) mobile app

I was not responsible for coming up with this unusual workflow, which I suspect reflected the desire of a certain person at the client's to just do some stuff with these various technologies. (I did try to shoehorn XSLT in there, because I like XSLT, but sadly it proved to be impractical to fit it in anywhere )

The Drupal stuff was more straightforward commercial sites, where my involvement was mainly limited to putting together HTML templates, CSS, and JS for the front end.

: That is the most bizarre set up I have come across. Well done trying to sneak in XSLT as well into the mix. I bet someone currently is trying to support the whole thing and is tearing his hair out

[Whorty]

Plenty of favourable comments here and elsewhere about WP, Drupal etc. so I can only conclude that the expert who charged my sister almost £4000 for an awful WP website that took nearly a minute to load every page was just a total idiot. Every image was present in multiple sizes, up to 13!, WTF that was about I have no idea.

Ouch - sounds like a rip off monkey can you not go in and fix it for her? WP is fairly easy to play with, especially if a standard free theme has been used.

[xoggoth]

Plenty of favourable comments here and elsewhere about WP, Drupal etc. so I can only conclude that the expert who charged my sister almost £4000 for an awful WP website that took nearly a minute to load every page was just a total idiot. Every image was present in multiple sizes, up to 13!, WTF that was about I have no idea.

[Whorty]

Some interesting comments here guys - thanks

[Pete Marsh]

I did a fairly simple WP website. It was pretty easy, once I'd tooled around with it for a couple of days, especially as the host did 1-click install. The site had an e-commerce plugin though, which was a major pain to get working. This was in 2010 so the e-commerce side may have improved by now.

I'm indifferent at best wrt to graphic design, so I bought a $20 'theme' that took care of that (atahualpa I recall).

WP is great for fairly simple websites, which is why it's so massively popular.I think I'd use Joomla or Drupal for something bigger though.

[NickFitz]

Anybody on here work as a website developer using tools like Wordpress or Drupal? I've had a play with Wordpress and built a site tweaking a theme (nothing special) and a mate of mine has just launched a magazine style site, so it got me wondering .... does anyone actually make money out of Wordpress development? Or are most sites self built?

I've done commercial contract work on sites built on both WordPress and Drupal.

The WP one was pretty weird, actually: we only used WP's admin as a content management system, because the various people within the organisation who would be producing content were already familiar with it from other internal uses of it. The usual public-facing parts of WP weren't used at all. The content was then extracted over HTTP via a JSON API (provided by a WordPress plugin) by a Node task running as a cron job and rendered into static HTML using server-side jQuery (yes, really), as well as being used to plug the same content into a PhoneGap (now Cordova) mobile app

I was not responsible for coming up with this unusual workflow, which I suspect reflected the desire of a certain person at the client's to just do some stuff with these various technologies. (I did try to shoehorn XSLT in there, because I like XSLT, but sadly it proved to be impractical to fit it in anywhere )

The Drupal stuff was more straightforward commercial sites, where my involvement was mainly limited to putting together HTML templates, CSS, and JS for the front end.

[Spoiler]

I have made money out of building websites, kind of !

I started messing about a couple of years back when I needed one for a company we started. Initially paid an outside design company to do it, and that introduced me to WordPress. I then maintained it and learnt enough to re-skin it (using a new theme).

Then built a small ecommerce site for my wife's company just to get some more practice. Oh, the joy when it got it's first online order

I've just built another site for wife's company to replace their existing sites. And for this she paid me actual money!

Agree that if you have a basic techie ability, you can spin up a WP site pretty easily. You also don't need to be a graphic designer (I'm certainly not) as you just pick a theme which matches closely to the look you want. There's plenty of plugins to add/modify functionality. The main coding I do on sites is CSS to style it.

There are opportunities out there to earn money as some small companies don't have the technical ability in-house, but I don't think I could personally make a full-time living out of it.

[yasockie]

I paid $20 for Wordpress theme customisation.
I got my money's worth - sent a PDF and they pounded on it until the WP website looked like that.
The code wasn't too clean but it is working fine for some 5-6 years now (the site gets very little traffic nowadays)

[GlenW]

If, like me, you're poor at making things look good with CSS try here.

[d000hg]

I used WP with a pre-bought theme for plan B site, but then hired a freelance web-design guy to help me make a few modifications and fit page content in where the theme wasn't as flexible as needed, using raw HTML/CSS.

[eek]

I think it's easy enough for anyone with technical skills to get something up and running, but it can take time to tweak everything so it's just right. I'd be tempted to go with an outside company if I want a really snazzy looking site because I know my graphic design skills aren't up to scratch.

+1 wordpress is click, install and works 99.99% of the time. The difficult bit is not getting it working but getting a design / template you or the customer wants. That is something I will leave to others as my design skills are not good enough for that.

[DannyF1966]

I think it's easy enough for anyone with technical skills to get something up and running, but it can take time to tweak everything so it's just right. I'd be tempted to go with an outside company if I want a really snazzy looking site because I know my graphic design skills aren't up to scratch.

[Whorty]

Anybody on here work as a website developer using tools like Wordpress or Drupal? I've had a play with Wordpress and built a site tweaking a theme (nothing special) and a mate of mine has just launched a magazine style site, so it got me wondering .... does anyone actually make money out of Wordpress development? Or are most sites self built?