How hard is web development?

[AllanScott]

What is more advisable: hiring an expert in web development, or just doing it yourself? I’m a sole trader, and I’m in the process of building a website for my offers. My sister suggested that I hire this web development agency Surrey based that she knows, though I’m a little sceptical because of my limited budget. Is this a good idea? If it is, then maybe I can make some adjustments to my budget to accommodate this. But if I can do it myself, can you tell me how difficult can this be?

 

[2984839]

Web development is easy to do but hard to do well.

Having no idea what your skills are, I would recommend hiring someone, but only someone who will actually do development, not throw together a Wordpress site with a barely modified theme. You could do that yourself, so don't bother paying somebody for that.

Some stuff to think about whether you do it yourself or hire a dev would be security, SEO, performance on older computers, mobile friendliness, flexibility (how hard will it be to add a new section 8 months from now, for example), and obviously the overall user friendliness and aesthetics. You'll need to set up or have someone set up a server, DNS, TLS (don't overlook this; it's essential for security as well as SEO), any backends you may need (SQL, CGI, PHP, etc), and have a way to do backups.

Again though, it's probably better to just hire someone unless you already are comfortable with this or with tinkering with stuff. If that's the case, you can get HTML templates or look into static site generators like Grav to get the boilerplate out of the way. You will want a color scheme and logo that are easy to work with. Photoshop or Gimp experience will be good because a lot of times you'll need to edit pictures to work on your site.

 

[Akrapovic]

What is more advisable: hiring an expert in web development, or just doing it yourself? I’m a sole trader, and I’m in the process of building a website for my offers. My sister suggested that I hire this web development agency Surrey based that she knows, though I’m a little sceptical because of my limited budget. Is this a good idea? If it is, then maybe I can make some adjustments to my budget to accommodate this. But if I can do it myself, can you tell me how difficult can this be?

In your situation I would go to SquareSpace, sign up for free and then check to see if the templates will do what you want it to do. You get a free trial (which will not auto renew into a paid account unless you want it to!), and it's easy for a non-technical person to try.

 

[webchefzinfotech]

See if you are a newbie and don't have any knowledge about web development than you cant do it. Better option would be to hire any freelancer or agency so that you can make your website as per your needs.

If you have basic knowledge of programming and WordPress then you can take help from google and start it.

Good Luck

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

I generally think (most) people spend too much resources on their _first_ website...

Almost anyone could - with very little web experience, just general comupter literacy - build their first site with a tool like Squarespace or Vix and maybe set up some simple email marketing using Campaign Monitor or MailChimp. And if setting up a Vix site and maybe MailChimp is out of your comfort zone, get a front end designer/developer student to do it for you (and pay them for it).

Most times you also want to set up a Google Analytics account, even if you don't think you need it, yet.

Then, as your business, and needs expands, you _may_ want to go for a CMS solution, with Wordpress as a nice starting point (and maybe with a WooCommerce web store), or even a specially built site to suit your needs. And at this point you may want to start hiring professional people to improve design, user experience and/or special features on your site. The main advantage to this approach is that once you start using money, you might actually have some specific goals you want to acheive with your web presence.

Edit, to answer the question: Web development is quite easy to do, but very hard to do well (just like 556fmjoe said).

 

[DanTheMan827]

If you actually want to create a website from scratch by yourself without using a paid service or existing software solution like wordpress, it's quite a bit to learn.

You have to learn HTML, CSS, and in most cases Javascript as well, and if you use Javascript you have to learn how to use all of the frameworks that are available.

Then on top of that, you have to decide whether or not you want to support old versions of internet explorer or only support more modern browsers.

If you want a dynamic website you also need to learn a server-side language like PHP or Node.js as well and how to configure them.

Now if all you want to do is use a template-based service like Squarespace then it's quite easy in comparison, that's generally create a new page, type in the content, drag in a couple pictures, and that's that.