Have you ever dreamed about having your own website? Whether for a business or personal use – think as a Portfolio or online CV – it has never been easier to get a website. But how are websites built? Are there different types of builders? All of this and more will be answered in today’s Magpie Mail!
So, to begin with, where are websites stored? Well, the simple and quite incorrect answer is the internet. Websites are stored on Servers or Hosting Platforms that store the website files and code that is then essentially downloaded and run within your web browser to display its content. However, to build and design these websites, there are multiple ways and builders that can be used.
Website Builders
The current trend that you may see regularly advertised are website builders such as Wix and Squarespace. These essentially run tools in a web browser that allow you to drag and drop website elements in a front-end environment. The code is handled completely by the builder and does not require any user intervention (unless they wish to get into more advanced territory).
The benefits to this method are the ease of creation of websites, anyone can create these without coding knowledge and can actually create some beautifully designed websites!
However, there are a few downsides. This includes the limited nature of these builders, by making it easy to create, these builders must retain a large amount of control which can limit the creativity that can be produced within these sites. There are also the associated costs attached to these builders which can easily rise into the £100’s for just a single year.
WordPress
WordPress is also a term that you may have heard of before. WordPress is a Content Management System (CMS) that you can install and develop a site from. Originally created for blogs, it has now grown into one of the most popular ways to create a website. In 2021, it was estimated that there are over 455 million WordPress Websites.
WordPress is an open-source technology which means that it is free for anyone to use and edit the code of. Therefore, anyone or business can create a WordPress website and host it themselves. WordPress features include Themes and Plugins which allow you to change both the look and functionality of a website.
The issue with WordPress is the difficulty there is to learn to use it. There is a plethora of Themes and Plugins which can help but can also appear overwhelming to new users. There is also considerably more maintenance involved with a WordPress site.
Saying this though, some of the biggest sites on the internet use WordPress as a foundation, such as Time Magazine & WIRED – proving that it is trusted by some major players in the internet space.
Custom Built
Finally, there are custom built websites. These are largely reserved for the biggest companies in the world who have departments of employees solely working on maintaining these and introducing new features. Think websites such as Apple.
We hope that this has given you a greater insight into how websites are created! If you would like to discuss having your own website created by use, please get in touch!