How do website builders work
Website constructor is a cloud or desktop resource, which contains ready-made templates, CMS-engine and hosting. Work is carried out in a special visual editor or console, where you can add and remove blocks. Some functions are connected with plugins and extensions: you can connect / disconnect them if necessary.
Working with the site builder consists of several stages:
- Modeling the structure. Coordinating the type of site: business card, online store, catalog, information resource. If it is multi-page, there is a detailed structure: menus, sections, subsections, etc.
- Setting up pages. Selecting the background, fields, fonts, harmonization of the overall style of the site.
- Filling the content. Adding photos, pictures, texts.
- Check performance. Through a visual editor or direct link in another browser.
- Placement on the network. Connection of the domain and indexing.
Pros and cons of website builders
Let’s start with the advantages:
- Speed of operation. If all the materials are ready, from the beginning to the creation of a finished resource will take only a couple of hours – the time to select the template, adding content to the page fields.
- Savings on programmers, layout designers and designers. You do not need to pay for the services of a programmer – you can handle the designer even without knowledge of HTML.
- Savings on hosting. When you create a website with the designer you can buy a unique domain and hosting at a lower price than when they are purchased separately.
- Themes and design. To develop a design, you just need to choose the desired theme and adjust the color scheme. You can change the design in just a few clicks.
- Ease of optimization. Most designers provide special extensions for SEO and automatically prescribe all the necessary tags on the page. For example, in WordPress this is YoastSEO, RankMath, SEOPress, and in uCoz – SEO module.
- There is no need to do testing. All templates have already been tested before, and therefore fully functional.
- Adaptability. Themes take into account adaptive layout: the site will look good on all devices. For example, in Google Sites, uCraft, Tilda, Site123, WordPress. But this is only in the built-in themes. If you remake the theme on your own or rebuild the page from scratch, the layout may already be broken.
But, like many other programs, designers have their own disadvantages:
- You can’t build a complex resource. To create it, you will have to connect a lot of plugins and extensions – this will slow down the loading speed of the site. And some plugins can conflict with each other, this, too, must be considered when connecting. For example, in WordPress often conflict Rank Math SEO and AMP for WordPress – two useful plugins, which, when combined can bring down half the functionality: broken layout, stop working buttons.
- “Move” to another builder just can not work, you have to rebuild the entire site.
- In free versions functionality is often cut, and therefore you have to buy a subscription to the constructor.
- It is impossible to connect a second level domain without a subscription. In free versions, you can not make the site address site.ru. All free designers put your resource on its subdomain, and then the site address looks like this (for example, Tilda): site.tilda.ws.
- Low level of protection compared to the quality with self-written sites.
With the designer does not have to spend a lot of time to create the site. But you need to understand that the free designer it is not suitable for complex resources: aggregators, large stores, sites with a personal account of the user. To use these features will always need to buy paid access.
Free versions often have limited functionality with no possibility of fine-tuning. Nevertheless, for simple solutions, a website on the constructor will be ideal.
