What are the pros and cons of using a web template versus building a site from the bottom up?

Question

I've talked to a few people, and I've heard differing opinions. Some say that building a website- in this case, a tourism site for my hometown- using HTML, CSS, and Javascript that I've written myself, as much as possible. Having started from that mentality, I find even using a Javascript library a little worrisome. However, others say that I should be using ready-made web templates. When it comes to quality, what's the general opinion of the community?

Answer 1

For a start Community templates and contributed code is pretty useful and gets you up and running. You can look into open source projects like Drupal which can be a good start for you. YOu can then modify your theme and features.

If you have a very interactive website you might need to build something which scales very well and use some frameworks.

Coding everything yourself (building everything yourself) can be an option for later on when your requirements are very specific and there is not community solution.

Answer 2

If you have the time, I suggest building the site entirely yourself without using any templates. You'll have complete control this way and will learn a lot in the process. However, if you need the site completed more quickly then using existing templates is the way to go. In terms of quality, either way would be fine, though again, doing it yourself allows you to control the amount of time and detail you put in.

Answer 3

Using templates makes it easier to maintain a consistent look-and-feel for the entire site; additionally, if the templates are automatically merged with content (through server-side scripting or a Makefile-like system), any changes to the template will propogate to all pages.

There is no requirement that the templates belong to the community either. Even if you want to hand-code everything, you can hand-code the tempates and merge system, getting the benefits of both worlds (full control and consistency).

Answer 4

The major benefits of frameworks are:

1. Speed of implementation, maybe even faster than the infamous 'six-to-eight weeks.'
2. Community framework-specific knowledge, either here or on Drupal/Wordpress/Zend forums.
3. Limited need to re-invent the wheel, the majority of requirements of a site will probably be already-implemented (natively or by plug-in) for a mature framework.
4. Security, there's a good chance that the framework you choose (depending on its maturity) will have addressed the major security concerns, and many of those that you don't know about.
5. Consistency of design, there's a good chance that the framework will either simplify the work required to 'skin' your site, or implement a thematic model of some kind.

The major benefits of self-coding, that I Can think of off the top of my head, are:

1. Absolute control over the code, you don't have to wrap everything in a thousand divs for 'legacy reasons' (unless you want to, obviously).
2. Experience, writing a website of your own is a fantastic learning exercise.
3. You can be as secure as you want, though this carries the risk of over-looking a great many risks.
4. Your site is probably more light-weight (in terms of MVC code) since everything is tailored to the precise needs of this one site.