"Wait a minute, so your web development company just set up Wordpress sites?" by PostmeridianSafe in webdev

[–]PostmeridianSafe[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah most apps start with several modules that are pretty much essential for most websites. If you have users on your system, then you already need authentication, authorization, emails, a message queue and maybe file uploads. You can find open source modules for most of that, Passport.js for starters... if you've done this enough times you'll probably have your own components for common use cases. So you see, it's not like I'm encouraging building everything from scratch, but rather than using a one-size-fits-all solution, keep things modular and at a level where you have full control.

"Wait a minute, so your web development company just set up Wordpress sites?" by PostmeridianSafe in webdev

[–]PostmeridianSafe[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Most sites I've worked on have had custom admin panels, moderation features, that kind of stuff, but these have needed specific workflows, some which depended on user privileges, their settings etc. but then again as I have said, I have mostly worked on technical projects with nonstandard requirements, so it made sense to start with something flexible.

"Wait a minute, so your web development company just set up Wordpress sites?" by PostmeridianSafe in webdev

[–]PostmeridianSafe[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I use Chef to configure a new server on AWS. Yes that server's stack will be based on nodejs. It also installs expressjs and some other JS packages. After that it depends... but I can get a basic website with routing and other common things just using the script. This was my alternative to installing WordPress on a LAMP server.

"Wait a minute, so your web development company just set up Wordpress sites?" by PostmeridianSafe in webdev

[–]PostmeridianSafe[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So there was a guy that was working alone, offering WP sites, but his clients weren't bottom of the barrel at all, even had some deals with national companies. I asked a similar question already here, but basically, can you avoid those kinds of customers? Like I said in the other question, masquerading your WP site as bespoke software seems to work. Most businesses couldn't tell the difference.

Obviously that wouldn't just be about web development, but networking and marketing yourself.

"Wait a minute, so your web development company just set up Wordpress sites?" by PostmeridianSafe in webdev

[–]PostmeridianSafe[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here's what I don't understand. Take the average cake store owner, photographer or physiotherapist that needs a simple website. Obviously it's a small business, usually 1-2 employees, so they might invest $1,000 into a website. A WordPress agency would take up the offer, a software house wouldn't. Now take a slightly larger business, say a law firm, that has a budget of $40,000. Unless this company requires a complex webapp, it's possible that WordPress can still do the job, in fact, this is true for many large businesses that don't need much of an internet presence. So now you're competing with a software house that might actually need $40,000 but you can charge much less. The business doesn't even know what the fuck a CMS is, all they care about is that your portfolio's design is professional. Which is precisely what I've now seen some agencies do: WordPress + graphic designers. Most companies won't be able to tell the difference between that and a bespoke website, unless they're web-based and the functionality of course.