Page builders might not be a good idea(silvestar.codes)
silvestar.codes
Page builders might not be a good idea
https://www.silvestar.codes/articles/page-builders-might-not-be-a-good-idea/
57 comments
I once clicked on a restaurant website. It was plain text on an empty background. The only content was their address, phone number, hours, and a link to a PDF of their menu.
The site asked for forgiveness and assured me that it was "under construction". But it was already perfect.
The site asked for forgiveness and assured me that it was "under construction". But it was already perfect.
That is pet peeve of mine, getting annoyed by rando pizza places having web page like they are some fancy restaurant.
Landing page like SV startup, photo gallery.
Hell, give me the menu and phone number, you can drop photo links of your food somewhere in menu.
Landing page like SV startup, photo gallery.
Hell, give me the menu and phone number, you can drop photo links of your food somewhere in menu.
My sole objection is I'd prefer a non-PDF menu, especially when on mobile.
Also: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website
Also: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/restaurant_website
Here medium to larger businesses are not the size as those in the US, but many of them here use page builders as well. There has been quite some backlash to the 'professionally coded web-presence'; long and frustrating processes and the end result is less maintainable than if they had used a page builder so it has to be redone every so many years because 'the tech is outdated' aka the team moved on.
I am in the position of "managing" for clients a fleet of ~200 websites built with a page builder. Every clients has the key to the kingdom and websites have diverged from their original look and feel. The brand recognition we sought for them is all out the window and steering back the whole fleet to a uniform design is impossible. The page builder allowed them to change everything and so they did. It's now up to a point where thousand of regular articles that should have been written with the standard editor have been written with the page builder and just can't be exported/migrated to a new theme.
Of course, it's an extreme but still...
Of course, it's an extreme but still...
We worked with a large EU firm with multiple offices in every EU country (and a few outside in larger Europe); their headoffice had a bespoke CMS made for them; a huge monster of a thing that was very costly.. The goal of the head office in doing that was to make sure there is consistent branding and design across all the company in all the countries. This inability to not 'stand out' as a company annoyed the branches so much that they all use wp or pagebuilders for the site; cheaper, faster, customisable etc. The cms is only used in the originating country. No-one ones this uniformity that management wants.
Also extreme I guess, but we did a lot of sites for companies where a single company has > 1000 sites (branch, departmental, intranets etc); the head office always starts with 'this is great, we want a cms that has a few templates and we don't want anyone to steer away from that', only to have the complete opposite a year later. We gave up telling them upfront a long time ago as it made us lose the pitch (seems we don't trust our product), but we have 0 companies in the past 20 years that stuck with 'uniformity / brand recognition' lark across the board. With or without page builders.
What I do not like is the waste of content; even when you use custom stuff (wp or what not), you can still make sure the content is stored in json/markdown or something in a central cms.
Also extreme I guess, but we did a lot of sites for companies where a single company has > 1000 sites (branch, departmental, intranets etc); the head office always starts with 'this is great, we want a cms that has a few templates and we don't want anyone to steer away from that', only to have the complete opposite a year later. We gave up telling them upfront a long time ago as it made us lose the pitch (seems we don't trust our product), but we have 0 companies in the past 20 years that stuck with 'uniformity / brand recognition' lark across the board. With or without page builders.
What I do not like is the waste of content; even when you use custom stuff (wp or what not), you can still make sure the content is stored in json/markdown or something in a central cms.
Why can't the content be extracted? This makes little sense to me, as you could just even extract content from raw HTML by crawling the websites.
Once they get into the builder for the page they add all sort of widgets, accordion, tabs that only make sense in the builder theme, etc.
> I get that the original post is basically a sales pitch, but there is huge value to be had from page builders and it's dishonest not to mention it.
What's dishonest is this passage:
> For example, a large number small of businesses just want simple page displaying their working hours and some pictures of inventory. If you go to a "professional development agency" and ask them to build you a site with just these features, you will get a quote for 200 thousand dollars upwards (speaking from experience).
edit: unless the agency preemptively fired problematic clients :), take the hint
What's dishonest is this passage:
> For example, a large number small of businesses just want simple page displaying their working hours and some pictures of inventory. If you go to a "professional development agency" and ask them to build you a site with just these features, you will get a quote for 200 thousand dollars upwards (speaking from experience).
edit: unless the agency preemptively fired problematic clients :), take the hint
What is dishonest about my example use-case and personal anecdote?
You make it sounds like it's the norm and pass it as a valid argument but it does sound more like a passed down urban legend, not even personal. Or what went on is something more like "a buddy of mine contacted that big agency for their small one-page website and he was told they don't take projects under 200k because they work for big clients and big complex projects, lol can you believe they ask 200k for a small website?" and that became "agency asked 200k for small website" anecdote.
Anyway, this anecdote doesn't fit with the field and it's at best a really rare exception, not representative and not relevant. So I found it dishonest to bring it up like that in this context.
Anyway, this anecdote doesn't fit with the field and it's at best a really rare exception, not representative and not relevant. So I found it dishonest to bring it up like that in this context.
Then there are others where you go pay 10k and get a WordPress spaghetti that no one else is willing to take on because it just is done completely out of standards of WP.
So how do you as a small business owner even know whether the agency you pay 10k is giving you good and maintainable code?
in 2 years when you want changes you'll realise that no one wants to work on this or if they do, they will ask much more, and the previous agency might be willing to take it on, but they will have the leverage to ask even more.
So how do you as a small business owner even know whether the agency you pay 10k is giving you good and maintainable code?
in 2 years when you want changes you'll realise that no one wants to work on this or if they do, they will ask much more, and the previous agency might be willing to take it on, but they will have the leverage to ask even more.
> So how do you as a small business owner even know whether the agency you pay 10k is giving you good and maintainable code?
Like in any other industry: you network and connect and consult with people before knocking on any random agency door.
I don't ring a random plumber, I ask a friend or two if they know someone who's reliable.
Also, you need to add maintenance to your budget.
Like in any other industry: you network and connect and consult with people before knocking on any random agency door.
I don't ring a random plumber, I ask a friend or two if they know someone who's reliable.
Also, you need to add maintenance to your budget.
I don't know about dishonest, but it's ludicrously unrepresentative when there are tens thousands of agencies that specialise in doing quick one pagers or ten pagers for very little money, sometimes as a loss leader to try to sell them other stuff.
It's like insisting that you won't get a car to take you to the supermarket for less than $200k based on experience of enquiring about the availability of cheap runarounds but only at supercar dealerships
It's like insisting that you won't get a car to take you to the supermarket for less than $200k based on experience of enquiring about the availability of cheap runarounds but only at supercar dealerships
don't those agencies use the page builders though?
Think most of them use WordPress, which may or may not fit into people's ideas of page builders. tbh most of the OP's criticisms about composability and maintainability and feature completeness don't really matter for five page sites anyway, but an agency using a CMS template likely has the advantage of having some idea how sections and inheritance etc work, and more design skill in creating and using building blocks than the DIY-er.
And if you actually need something hand rolled using authentic vanilla HTML and artisanal node frameworks you can still get it for less than $200k :)
And if you actually need something hand rolled using authentic vanilla HTML and artisanal node frameworks you can still get it for less than $200k :)
for the use case youre describing, there are about a hundred listings on Fiverr (agencies participate there too) that will get the job done for $1000.
What page builders are any good these days (let's assume the use case is your nephew example)?
For wordpress: Elementor (easy to use, easy to find devs for it) and my personal favorite Thrive Architect (and their other plugins), that I like because of all the nifty marketing tools, ease of a/b testing. Both of these are visual builders, in a WYSIWYG sense. (There's also Divi, which is popular, but in my experience it somehow creates slow/laggy pages.)
Many thanks!
I think the article misses the point that people just want to get things done. Particularly this point is so naive:
> using a page builder doesn’t make you a developer.
People who are using page builders are not doing to pass the arbitrary qualifications of being a developer. They just want to get something done and getting a developer to create a performant page is just so much more expensive. Even within big companies some departments leverage these because getting developer bandwidth is just too expensive for most of these use cases.
> using a page builder doesn’t make you a developer.
People who are using page builders are not doing to pass the arbitrary qualifications of being a developer. They just want to get something done and getting a developer to create a performant page is just so much more expensive. Even within big companies some departments leverage these because getting developer bandwidth is just too expensive for most of these use cases.
It’s a wrong assumption and a marketing trick of all major page builders.
For a one-person business, sure thing, maybe go with it.
For all other use cases they are a liability, and a time consuming effort by people that shouldn’t be spending their (precious) time building a website for the first time.
As a web designer / FE developer and wordpress developer, I am happy they exist because they’re great business. The client starts with one template picked at random based on the wrong assumption that what you see in the frontend is tied to the template, two months in they realize that the marketing claims of Elementor or Divi or whatev where BS, and get frustrated about the unholy mess they’ve made. That’s when I get usually called in - mostly via word of mouth - to “fix the mess”. What I usually do is guide the client through why having a custom theme with flexible repeatable components is a much better idea. Then we sit down and we make a complete content outline to better structure what they’ve been scattering around the site in different pages with no separation of concerns between content, structure and graphic design (99% of the time this is really the problem they didn’t know they needed to solve first!). After that, I get to refactor the site into a lean, SEO-friendly structure, and finally I can sell them a small retainer for maintenance, because they finally understood that two hours of their time are worth MORE than a few hundred dollars they pay to a professional to keep the machine humming
So I guess yeah, thanks DIVI and Elementor?
As a web designer / FE developer and wordpress developer, I am happy they exist because they’re great business. The client starts with one template picked at random based on the wrong assumption that what you see in the frontend is tied to the template, two months in they realize that the marketing claims of Elementor or Divi or whatev where BS, and get frustrated about the unholy mess they’ve made. That’s when I get usually called in - mostly via word of mouth - to “fix the mess”. What I usually do is guide the client through why having a custom theme with flexible repeatable components is a much better idea. Then we sit down and we make a complete content outline to better structure what they’ve been scattering around the site in different pages with no separation of concerns between content, structure and graphic design (99% of the time this is really the problem they didn’t know they needed to solve first!). After that, I get to refactor the site into a lean, SEO-friendly structure, and finally I can sell them a small retainer for maintenance, because they finally understood that two hours of their time are worth MORE than a few hundred dollars they pay to a professional to keep the machine humming
So I guess yeah, thanks DIVI and Elementor?
Yet there are countless of business and small businesses who were able to leverage just from page builders and spin up their business viably and cheaply.
> Getting to know page builder doesn’t make you a developer (leave the job to a professional).
Not only is it naive but based on the sad, self-centric failure to understand the original purpose of the web as a means for publishing hypertext.
Not only is it naive but based on the sad, self-centric failure to understand the original purpose of the web as a means for publishing hypertext.
That makes it sound completely naive but I think that conclusion would be too rash. it seems like the author has some audience in mind. Perhaps himself after trying a page builder.
It seems to me that this part of the article is a swipe at young people using page builders to create websites in hopes of passing themselves off as a developer.
I find this whole thing thoroughly unconvincing. Page builders provide enormous value for a modest price. If you run into an insurmountable problem with one, you could rebuild your whole site on a different platform (including manually copying over all the content), and then do that again a few more times, and still spend far less than you would having an agency develop a bespoke site with the latest trendy tech that will be obsolete next month anyway.
The fraction of businesses that need something really custom/special is vanishingly small. And the fraction of businesses that need a pixel-perfect design and consistency across all their pages is tiny, too. Your customers don't care about that crap nearly as much as you do. Just keep it simple and make the information they're looking for easy to find.
I'm a software engineer. I love building stuff. I can make kick-ass web stuff if called upon to do so. But please, don't waste your money paying me to build something you don't need.
The fraction of businesses that need something really custom/special is vanishingly small. And the fraction of businesses that need a pixel-perfect design and consistency across all their pages is tiny, too. Your customers don't care about that crap nearly as much as you do. Just keep it simple and make the information they're looking for easy to find.
I'm a software engineer. I love building stuff. I can make kick-ass web stuff if called upon to do so. But please, don't waste your money paying me to build something you don't need.
The only issue i find with your proposition is that one could simply rebuild a whole site on a different platform: while that is true, one does not own or hold the code for the site as built using a website builder afaik (correct me if im wrong) and hence it is difficult to get similar results as the one on the "current" builder and takes up extra labour, where hiring a website builder and maintainer will ensure the ownership of the code.
There are many things that can be done better by experts.
But to double the quality, you multiply by 10 the cost.
E.G: I wanted to start writing again. I had an idea for the entire structure of the site, and pretty neat features I only could get if I coded it myself.
Then I started to feel like writing, so I wrote. As usual, it took hours, then I had to go back to my life.
I was now left with the choice of not publishing for months, and being frustrated in the writing process, or just use a ready-made platform.
I chose the latter. I went to substack. And publish the first of the 3 articles I already wrote. Next week, I will be able to publish the next ones, and write more.
Because it turns out I want to write and publish more than I want to code a publication platform. No matter how awesome the platform was going to be in my head.
So page builder are a very good idea. Because we don't live in a universe without constraints, and most humanity has to make Pareto choices.
It's just a trade off, as usual in IT.
But to double the quality, you multiply by 10 the cost.
E.G: I wanted to start writing again. I had an idea for the entire structure of the site, and pretty neat features I only could get if I coded it myself.
Then I started to feel like writing, so I wrote. As usual, it took hours, then I had to go back to my life.
I was now left with the choice of not publishing for months, and being frustrated in the writing process, or just use a ready-made platform.
I chose the latter. I went to substack. And publish the first of the 3 articles I already wrote. Next week, I will be able to publish the next ones, and write more.
Because it turns out I want to write and publish more than I want to code a publication platform. No matter how awesome the platform was going to be in my head.
So page builder are a very good idea. Because we don't live in a universe without constraints, and most humanity has to make Pareto choices.
It's just a trade off, as usual in IT.
>I am referring to the WordPress and Shopify ecosystems here
>The content is not reusable (you cannot reuse content on other pages)
Not sure I understand this. Platforms like WordPress certainly have widgets, reusable blocks, shared headers/footers, and so on.
>The content is not reusable (you cannot reuse content on other pages)
Not sure I understand this. Platforms like WordPress certainly have widgets, reusable blocks, shared headers/footers, and so on.
I think their objections are deeper than that. I haven't used wordpress for ages, but they're talking about 'drag and drop builders' which I'd associate more with wix or Squarespace than wordpress.
Fundamentally, I think the issue is that it's very hard to achieve modularisation, especially via a gui, if the client doesn't understand or care about it.
Fundamentally, I think the issue is that it's very hard to achieve modularisation, especially via a gui, if the client doesn't understand or care about it.
WordPress has drag and drop theme "builders" (Elementor and others.). He is probably referring to that.
Maybe what they’re referring to is your own content? Can you create your own reusable blocks
> The content is not reusable (you cannot reuse content on other pages).
> The design is not consistent (pages often don’t look the same).
> The site is not maintainable (change on one page doesn’t propagate to other pages).
> The content is not maintainable (the content cannot be easily extracted from the database).
> The site is not very performant (page builders load a lot of extra assets).
All the above depends on the tool that's used. I've set up many sites that had page builder features but didn't have these drawbacks. Certainly there's many other tools out there. What OP seems to be talking about are page builders that output and store raw html.
> There’s always a missing feature (page builders cannot solve all your problems).
True, but that goes for literally anything you can use to build websites, all the way down to the HTML spec. And extending the page builder is often possible with professional help.
> Getting to know page builder doesn’t make you a developer (leave the job to a professional).
Developers are not by definition a professional in all aspects of page creation. A user well versed in, say, WordPress, will know about the drawbacks as well, and know how to mitigate them.
I'm not a big fan of page builders myself, but there's a place and time for these tools. I'm currently working with a team to implement a 1.000 page website in contentful and react, based on similar thinking as OP. It's an absolute shit show and it feels like being the hostage of 'professional developers'.
In the end the most important is to choose the right tool for the job, and there's a place for these page builders.
All the above depends on the tool that's used. I've set up many sites that had page builder features but didn't have these drawbacks. Certainly there's many other tools out there. What OP seems to be talking about are page builders that output and store raw html.
> There’s always a missing feature (page builders cannot solve all your problems).
True, but that goes for literally anything you can use to build websites, all the way down to the HTML spec. And extending the page builder is often possible with professional help.
> Getting to know page builder doesn’t make you a developer (leave the job to a professional).
Developers are not by definition a professional in all aspects of page creation. A user well versed in, say, WordPress, will know about the drawbacks as well, and know how to mitigate them.
I'm not a big fan of page builders myself, but there's a place and time for these tools. I'm currently working with a team to implement a 1.000 page website in contentful and react, based on similar thinking as OP. It's an absolute shit show and it feels like being the hostage of 'professional developers'.
In the end the most important is to choose the right tool for the job, and there's a place for these page builders.
I simple mix and match. Almost all page builders have shortcodes or codeblocks in some shape way or form. I can do easy things the easy way or use code plumbing where necessary. Pick the right tool for the job is a skill by itself I always found (that and everything takes twice as long as you think it does)
Page builders are only seen as bad ideas when you have better ideas to choose from. In most cases, hiring a professional is not a viable alternative to doing it yourself.
And since none of the problems presented here are new or unique to sites built with page builders, it follows that the others ideas don’t actually solves them.
And since none of the problems presented here are new or unique to sites built with page builders, it follows that the others ideas don’t actually solves them.
The advantages out weigh the disadvantages. There are more layman than professionals. And worse yet profs are taking longer and longer to build simple websites.
Hello, founder and CTO of www.shopstory.app here. None if these arguments apply if you build page builder right. I believe we're on the right path.
First, it works inside of headless CMSes. It means that you get all advantages of structured content and yet add sprinkles of unstructured content when you need on top of that. You can always connect structured data into visual blocks built with Shopstory.
As for design consistency we build everything around design tokens. Not only fonts and colors but also page margins, grid gaps etc. Also, you will soon have permission system where designers can build templates but editors can't modify visual properties.
The bottom line is that I believe in the future we won't need to make a tradeoff between visual vs structured. You can have both at the same time and just fine tune the system to whatever direction suits you better.
First, it works inside of headless CMSes. It means that you get all advantages of structured content and yet add sprinkles of unstructured content when you need on top of that. You can always connect structured data into visual blocks built with Shopstory.
As for design consistency we build everything around design tokens. Not only fonts and colors but also page margins, grid gaps etc. Also, you will soon have permission system where designers can build templates but editors can't modify visual properties.
The bottom line is that I believe in the future we won't need to make a tradeoff between visual vs structured. You can have both at the same time and just fine tune the system to whatever direction suits you better.
> The design is not consistent (pages often don’t look the same).
I don’t think site-level consistency is as important or prevalent as you’d think.
I don’t think site-level consistency is as important or prevalent as you’d think.
It's simple, page builders allow users to do it themselves and it allows the page builder platform to have high margins - they are CHEAP to run and entirely predictable.
The few page/site builders that use dynamic data, such as Duda (in part) and Builder.io very much reflect the cost difference, from 10€ of standard page builders to 99€-449€/mo for builder.io.
I'd say that there are builders that solve every one of his points, but they are very costly.
The few page/site builders that use dynamic data, such as Duda (in part) and Builder.io very much reflect the cost difference, from 10€ of standard page builders to 99€-449€/mo for builder.io.
I'd say that there are builders that solve every one of his points, but they are very costly.
Almost none of the complaints are true of Webflow, FWIW. It's by no means perfect, but there are many use cases where it is a much smarter decision than contracting or hiring a site engineer.
Sprinkle in some custom widgets as needed and you can get pretty far (albeit not with optimal page speed performance).
Sprinkle in some custom widgets as needed and you can get pretty far (albeit not with optimal page speed performance).
> And that is the seventh problem: using a page builder doesn’t make you a developer. Developers and users don’t think alike. Developers’ brain works completely different, and it is always trying to solve problems in the most efficient way. Experienced developers predict and anticipate problems way before they emerge.
Someone should let the WP Core devs know, because the page builder SaaSes have been eating their lunch delivering on business website needs while Automattic lurches from one disaster to another with their "dev-friendly" Gutenberg full site editor.
Someone should let the WP Core devs know, because the page builder SaaSes have been eating their lunch delivering on business website needs while Automattic lurches from one disaster to another with their "dev-friendly" Gutenberg full site editor.
I use page builders every day despite being able to code, I think they're great but they all suffer from the same issue. The developers of the page builder tool need to decide what you can change and what you can't, and it's purely subjective. If you make absolutely everything editable you've just replaced editing CSS with a GUI (more or less Webflow) and you can't hand over a complex UI to a non-dev. I don't know how you solve this problem.
Replace the word "Page" with "GUI" and this could be an article about Visual Basic or HyperCard from thirty years ago.
Paying Web "Designers" Might Not Be a Good Idea. This is just a sign of their dwindling business.
I thought "web designers" were already out of business just like "web masters".
Nowadays these are "UX/UI designers" who most likely will also be not that needed soon.
Nowadays these are "UX/UI designers" who most likely will also be not that needed soon.
Page builders and LLMs are the future. There was a time when that wouldn't be as plausible, but the web is reverting back to being a place to dump text and media, and host restaurant menus, in which case it begs the question why we need so many web developers.
not so sure about LLMs or what parallels they hold with page builders
Looks like dark mode is broken under firefox, the top banner shows white text on a white background.
https://imgur.com/a/vlQQBDZ
https://imgur.com/a/vlQQBDZ
Getting to know page builder doesn’t make you a developer
This is outdated and suppose you are writing yet another bad page builder. Most argument apply to any technology that do not make a proper use of a component based architecture, code generation or static rendering. For instance Plasmic is adamant to allow compatibility with modern framework such as Next.js and even has been a pioneer in the field of static personalization, a very performant approach.
Thanks for the mention of Plasmic!
Indeed, I believe there's a lot of innovation to be had by page builders - Plasmic's approach is to blur the lines between the codebase and the visual editor, so we try to directly confront the myriad issues laid out by three OP.
Indeed, I believe there's a lot of innovation to be had by page builders - Plasmic's approach is to blur the lines between the codebase and the visual editor, so we try to directly confront the myriad issues laid out by three OP.
I've long been building the contrary position. Our industry has taken massive steps backwards by not embracing content creation tools in our pipelines. Imagine if game devs insisted on art being hand crafted triangle by triangle?
Poorly written article with poorly written arguments. What this person doesn't like is bad page builders, which is reasonable. But they seem completely unaware of what is possible in modern page builders.
This was written by ChatGPT, no?
But this use case of simply getting some content accessible on the web is the primary reason why page builders are so popular :)
For example, a large number small of businesses just want simple page displaying their working hours and some pictures of inventory. If you go to a "professional development agency" and ask them to build you a site with just these features, you will get a quote for 200 thousand dollars upwards (speaking from experience). With page builders, you can get your nephew to build you a site during school off-season and it will be infinetly better than having no site at all and still probably do the job well enough as a professionally built one.
I get that the original post is basically a sales pitch, but there is huge value to be had from page builders and it's dishonest not to mention it.