7 Reasons Why Hand-Coding is Better Than Site Builders

Website builders are tools that help in constructing websites without manual code editing. They can be categorized as offline and online.

• In the online mode, web hosting companies provides tools which are intended for users to build their private site. The companies allow the site owner to install tools.
• In the offline mode, software runs on a computer, helps in creating pages which can be published on any host.

One will obviously think that this is a better idea because these kinds of systems save your effort and time, but that is not so. Here are some of the reasons why it’s better to code yourself

Writing code yourself helps grow as a developer

First and most important thing is self learning. All the challenges that you face and overcome while developing a website helps you become better at coding. It will add up to your experience, which means one will become better coding expert over time. This will boost up your confidence thus you will be able to face any challenge with confidence.

You retain 100% control over your site and where it is hosted

While developing any site on site builder pages will stay on site builders only. There is no way to transfer them to local system as source code of page is converted into metadata. Most of the services operate in the similar way. This means if you want to change host site to different platform, you will have to rebuild the pages and whatever functionality they contain.

You make yourself irrelevant to clients

The clients can’t make websites, they hire coders for doing so, but they can have the impression that they can do it by means of these web site builders. That is really dangerous because there are number of such websites now days. If you are a coder that must be last thing you want your clients to know. It’s like you are informing them that they are wasting their money by hiring you for a job which they can do themselves.

Understanding your own code

When you are using third party code resources, you have to spend extra time to understand how it works then how you can integrate it and then making out how to change it so it will work as per your wish. In certain cases, one may not understand everything what third party software is doing and it may do something’s which are completely undesirable. There could be chance that, it may do undesirable things of which you are not aware. If someone is good at coding, and writing fresh code doesn’t take much time then building website using third party code creator may take less time. But if you are not good, and you think you can sell websites using website builders, then you are in wrong line of business.

The other issue which one can face is a bug or flaw in the third party code, then one have to spend a lot of time fixing and diagnosing the bug than you could have if it was your own code. The same is true if one wants to change the way it works or want to add extra functionality. Thus, it’s a suggestion to use this great stuff if you are knowledgeable enough. But one can’t deny the fact that by incorporating these items in your design, you are also increasing the rate of complications and risks that come along.

Your own written code is original

Another major drawback with the template usage is their similarity in the sites. There is a great chance that you may find number of sites having a lot in common. And then, once in a while, you can come across sites that have too much in common. There’s nothing wrong to use templates if you are properly customizing them and changing them into something that is completely original, but most of the people are just too lazy to do that. The result of the lacking effort is perceptibly less traffic on the website because they don’t find anything unique in your site.

Your own code is more efficient

Have a look at the source code of any template of the site builders, one can find a lot of metadata that contains hundreds of URL. Having number of URLs indicates a much dependency on external components. This results in the chance of site failure at technical level. Thus less is more, and it’s better to keep things as local as you can to avoid dependency problems.

Iterating your own code is easier

When one writes their own code, there are no restrictions or limits on what one can do. You are the master of it! There are number of things one can do like moving a component in directory structure to make it more secure, to use custom PHP code to encrypt or translate , or to do some kind of fancy database stuff easily which otherwise is a tedious job.

So make a better choice!