A LOT OF Questions about web design (Wordpress/Wix/HTML)

FrankFalcon

Hi all

This post is VERY long and complicated and you can see that I I’m not well up on this topic (bearing on naive) so please bear with me guys. I did search the web to try to find specific forums on website creation but the only hits I got were about adding a forum to your (already created) website

As I said, this is a long read so thanks in advance to anyone that gets to the end  

My family run a traditional manufacturing business in the UK. It has come to our attention a few times over the last few months that we have lost a couple of orders because our website looks pretty amateurish, which we agree with. However, our family are very nervous regarding websites after a couple of bad experiences. Firstly let me tell you about the bad experiences before I go on to ask the more important questions. 

8 years ago we paid a company £2,000 (by credit card) to build us a website. Suffice to say, after lots of chasing, 3 months later they delivered a site so bad it was unreal. The outcome was that they conceded it was very bad and we got our money back off the card company after it was discovered that the website company had folded. However, it took me ages to discover where our site was hosted and to get the hosts to release the login and password details to me. I had to prove I was the rightful owner etc. My family weren’t too happy with me. Undeterred, a couple of years later we discussed building a website with a local company. I must have told them a million times ‘I want to be able to update the site myself on a regular basis as new products arrive and sale items change’. They agreed. We paid them £800 (50% of build cost) upfront and the site was done within a few days. To be fair the site wasn’t that bad. I had now redeemed myself with my family (or so I thought). So, fast forward a few days and I want to update the site by adding and deleting some images. So, I emailed them which is when they told me (by email 3 days later) ‘You just tell us what updates to make and we make the changes on the pages and we then charge you for each update’. I was really taken aback and protested ‘No, I have it in writing that you agreed to build the site and I would end up with a site I could amend myself whenever I wanted. They sort of agreed and apologised over these ‘crossed lines’ and told me their ‘rep’ (who had now left the company) shouldn’t have agreed to let me update my site at will. They agreed to waive the further £800 build cost but I protested ‘That’s all well and good but I now have a website that I can’t update myself, and the only way my site can be updated is for me to message you. You then reply to me that you will get back to my ‘ticket’ within 5 - 7 days and then finally charge me for each amendment. That is NOT what I wanted. After a few emails arguing the toss their stance was on the lines of… ‘Look. We’ve apologised. It was our mistake. In turn we have let you off with the other £50% owing. We are washing our hands of it. And they actually wrote this…’IF YOU WANT TO UPDATE THE SITE YOURSELF I SUGGEST YOU GO AND BUY THE BOOK JOOMLA FOR DUMMIES’. So, I sort of worked it out that the site was created in a language called JOOMLA. I did go on and buy that book but it was just too complicated for me. So, by now my family are even more disappointed with me. So, fast forward a couple more years and I’m telling the story to a mate down the pub. He is a PC Hardware engineer but said he will try and help me out. Indeed, for just a few beers he did a bit of magic at home and managed to build us a smallish site in an environment called Wix. So, as of today I pay wix £29 per month and I have a website that is functional but again I don’t really like, especially the contact preferences that we receive by email. So, I trawl the web and look at some of our competitors sites. They are glossy, clear and informative. Ours is clunky and boring. So, as I am browsing YouTube I heard of a piece of software called HTTrack which lets me completely copy a competitors website.  Now, it’s at this point that I point out that I don’t intend to copy, imitate or plagiarise anybody else’s website. However, I do want to copy the layout, site setup etc. I want my site to look as professional as their sites. I also discovered that there are hundreds of developers on the site fiverr that will copy a site for me. Again, I reiterate that I do not intend to imitate or steal any other companies IP. My site will include my own text and images etc. Now, this is where I get confused and need help. All those people on fiver all relate to a technology called Wordpress. I’ve done a bit of reading and am still none the wiser if I need to go down the Wix, HTML or Wordpress route. One guy on fiverr told me ‘We can copy a site for you and deliver it to you in HTML. For a small charge extra we can then convert it to Wordpress. 

At this point I am genuinely stuck what to do. 

I too want a clear, responsive, modern website but I’m not sure in what format. I think I do want to copy a competitors website over but use my own images, text etc. My thinking in this is that we will retain the same smooth formatting, nice, easy page links etc. is this correct?

What are your thoughts guys? Am I doing wrong? I am not trying to get something for nothing. I’m not trying to rip off anybody’s site.  You can see that I have genuinely tried to work with previous companies and have not been afraid to pay for it but have fallen foul. 

So, to give a bit of an example… I did say it was a long post…

Let’s say my competitor makes Pens. He sells pens of different colours. You go to his homepage for example (www.worldofcolouredpens.com) (which I have just made up at random). and his homepage is clear, bright etc and displays ‘Welcome to world of Pens” he has six image boxes contains images of pens… Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, Black, White. You click an image (for example, Yellow pens) and it takes you to another page showing a gallery of Yellow pens. I can then navigate around, back and forth etc. Thats basically it! Now, I know some folk may say I should spend a little time and create my own website in Godaddy etc but believe me they just don’t end up as professional as the other sites I see. I don’t know why. 

I don’t want to sell anything on my site. I Don’t need any E-commerce tools or pricing modules etc. I simply want a site, similar to our competitors, where you find it. Look at our products. Browse our products and message us for a quote. 

I know I may sound a bit thick but I assure you I am only giving all this information so any answers you give are more tailored. There’s nothing worse than somebody asking for advice and when you give it to them they say ‘Oh yes. I forgot to tell you… this is pivotal to the case’. 

So, some basic questions..

1. Whats your thoughts guys? Stay with Wix and teach myself how to build a new site in their environment. 
2. Copy over a competitors website and reverse engineer it to include all my own images and text? 
3. What’s this bit about (using HTTrack) to copy another site in HTML but then converting it to Wordpress? Why would anyone want to convert it from HTML to Wordpress. 
4. Is Wix even written in HTML or Wordpress or none of these? Maybe even JOOMLA?  
5. Say I did copy over a competitors site and replaced all text, images etc with my own, does this class as IP theft? Could I get in trouble? because surely I am only using general programming code that is free to use out there. Remember, I am not trying to imitate any other company. I’m selling my own unique products. That might sound like I am answering my own question but what I meant is…If I used Microsoft VB to write a small program and distribute that programme. Even though I used Microsoft’s software (VB) to write my program, I still created the program. This is what I mean about general programming code. 

Any advice guys? Please educate me. 

razord

Hey, I'm a WordPress dev 👋

Honestly, my advice would be to just go to Squarespace and pay them their minimal monthly fee for a site that's super easy to update yourself.

You can go build the site yourself for free, and only pay if you're ready to launch and happy with what you've built, so it's really worth trying it.

[Deleted User]

Agree 100% with the above.

I have my own website that I do in WordPress, is really easy just for a few pages and free templates are pretty decent.

However, my daughter is just starting out in the world of web design for a marketing agency and recommends Squarespace now for simple websites after using WordPress for a while.

sienew

FrankFalcon said:

1. Copy over a competitors website and reverse engineer it to include all my own images and text? 
2. What’s this bit about (using HTTrack) to copy another site in HTML but then converting it to Wordpress? Why would anyone want to convert it from HTML to Wordpress. 
3. Say I did copy over a competitors site and replaced all text, images etc with my own, does this class as IP theft? Could I get in trouble? because surely I am only using general programming code that is free to use out there. Remember, I am not trying to imitate any other company. I’m selling my own unique products. That might sound like I am answering my own question but what I meant is…If I used Microsoft VB to write a small program and distribute that programme. Even though I used Microsoft’s software (VB) to write my program, I still created the program. This is what I mean about general programming code. 

Any advice guys? Please educate me. 

The posts above give some good advice.

But whatever you do, do NOT do this. This is a terrible idea. You can't just copy someone elses website and replace it with your own text and images.

Neil_Jones

1) You really need a.co.uk address.  fredschickens.wix.com doesn't really inspire confidence, in, well anything basically.  Fine for playing with and learning but beyond that...

2) All source code on all websites is freely available.  Right-click -> View source.  There it is.

3) All websites are built in HTML.  All that does is do what you can do already by saving a web page in your browser, only more effective and quicker.  Even Wordpress sites are HTML based.

4) Wix is a website hosting platform.  It'll have code behind the scenes and probably code to generate the website but it'll be more powerful than it looks.

5) In theory yes, however all websites use a standard language for building the pages; you'd just be using the same code and bits but in a different order; it depends more on how much of the other website you ripped off.  If you rip it off 100% and just change the name, then yes you're asking for trouble, but if they used a standard template (like a plain Bootstrap template for example) and did nothing else to it, and you used Bootstrap and did nothing to it, it's harder to prove.

The argument re: programming is invalid; you don't "need" a full blown editing solution to write a program.  It makes it easier, sure (and will be required to compile it) but beyond that you don't "need" it if you know what you're doing.  And anyway if you were never allowed to distribute programs you wrote in a programming editor, well there wouldn't be any need for computers as there wouldn't be any third party programs.

[Deleted User]

Neil_Jones said:

2) All source code on all websites is freely available.  Right-click -> View source.  There it is.

That's not the "source code" for the website though, that is the HTML that has been generated by the web server and presented to the browser.

Ok, if you have a static HTML website then what you say is true, but for anything slightly more exciting than 404, holding page or "my first website" from the 1990s then source code written in another language, maybe PHP, Java, ASP.net will be used and will run on a server to generate the appropriate dynamic HTML/CSS to send to the browser. Also Java script is used on the client as well.

It isn't possible to entirely reverse engineer a website from the HTML/CSS that the browser sees unless it is a static HTML website which is rarely used nowadays and is a pain to maintain.

Neil_Jones said:

3) All websites are built in HTML.  All that does is do what you can do already by saving a web page in your browser, only more effective and quicker.  Even Wordpress sites are HTML based.

As above, no they aren't, the end product sent by the server is HTML/CSS/JavaScript etc but websites are not generally built in HTML at the source (unless it is an old-fashioned static HTML site).

WordPress uses PHP / mySQL at the back end to generate the HTML/CSS/JavaScript you end up seeing in your browser.

For example, you can't replicate the functionality of the MSE Forum just by downloading the HTML from the webpage as you see it in your browser, you would need the unseen code running on the underlying web server which you cannot access from your browser.

Neil_Jones

I think the point I was trying to make became a bit lost.

What I was trying to say was that all webpages (as far as the browser is concerned) is made up of HTML/CSS/Javascript/whatever else.  This is what you see when you do View Source.

The engines on the server that built dynamic web pages via scripts (like PHP, which is what Wordpress is built in) will still generate a bunch of code is what you see when you View Source.  If you set it up right you'll never know or see what's powering the website in the first place.  But the browser still expects to see HTML code to display the page with.

So yes, the "source code" for the website may not be what built it, but it's what was built to create that page at that time.