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Hand-coded website refers to webpages (homepage, subpage) that were manually made or coded by humans who knew front-end back-end programming languages. Drag and drop (DADs) embody ready to use websites that don’t require coding skills on the user’s end. This ready to use website will offer an interface that you can drag and drop widgets to form a normal looking site. While a DAD, site-builder, WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get) sites are easy to use, they do come with unexpected and nasty consequences.

Drag and drop websites aren’t free

WYSIWIG sites, while they let you sign-up and build your own blog, eCommerce, you’ve to face some strings attached with your free status. Depending on the company, a DAD site will have these premium features (only available to paying users) and other things you might not expect.

Premium

• SSL certificate

• SEO

• Professional site name

Other additions for free users

• Advertisements (that could be intrusive)

• LImited access to some widgets

Easy to maintenance

Human-coded websites are easy to maintain due to access to their source code (unlike the DAD sites). Bugs will always come due to the complexity of the source code. And if that happens, you have to deal with minor and major issues that may affect appearance or functionality. Self-coded websites offer troubleshooting maintenance.

Hand-coded sites are more secure

Drag and drop sites use the same source code: the collection of HTML, CSS, libraries, javascript, PHP, and SQL. A hand-coded site that uses different styles doesn’t depend on a single and unifying source code which are prone to tech-savvy hackers.

Total control over your site

A site builder is likely hosted by the same DAD company. If you want to switch to another web host, you might not get the metadata. For this reason, you’ve to start from scratch again. When there’s a bug, you’ve to call their technical support since you can’t do anything besides configuring settings under your free subscription.

You know your code

The last thing you want to happen is to find yourself in a situation when you don’t know to fix the lines of codes creating havoc. When you’re the author of a certain homepage, you’ll know what you can do since you’re the one who wrote those lines of HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP.

Your site will look more professional

While WYSIWIG websites are capable of making great-looking sites, their hand-written counterparts will always beat them on the advance or large scale level. You can’t build a professional website out of magic. It must come from the skill of the team of web developers. And it didn’t happen overnight.

Your site is more relevant to your clients

Why do customers hire website builders? Because they can’t do it. If they have time and they can do it, they will code for themselves. Using a DIY site for your clients will make you appear as if they have wasted their money. That impression that they can DIY is dangerous since these customers can settle for low-quality sites that can jeopardise their security.

The bottom line

There’s nothing absolutely wrong with using drag and drop websites since they have their own pros. But, if you just rely on them, you’ll be missing the wonders of hand-coded sites. The best is to be versatile and know your audience and needs.

Tags: CMS, draganddrop, handcodedsite, web, websites, wordpress