I often have conversations with friends and family who want websites. I love these conversations and this is in no way an attempt to avoid them, however I’ve realized the advice I give is generic, so I’ve summarized it below for anyone who finds it helpful.

TL;DR: a website builder (e.g. Wix, Weebly, Squarespace) will handle most people’s needs.

Table of Contents

  1. Websites
  2. Domains
  3. Email
  4. When To Hire A Developer
  5. F.A.Q.

Websites

If you want to make a website without writing any code or doing anything too technical, you can either use a no-code tool to build your site or hire a web developer to build it for you. There is a middle ground, with CMS (Content Management System) platforms such as Wordpress, where you needn’t write any code, and you can optionally hire a professional to customize your site. I have a strong bias against Wordpress and I never recommend it, but it is widely used. Website builders are my recommendation for most people.

Website Builders (D.I.Y.)

There are tons of no-code tools that let anybody build a good-looking website at reasonable to no cost. Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, and many other website builders let you choose pre-made themes, customize them and build pages with intuitive drag-and-drop editors. I won’t do a comparison, because I don’t use them, but the folks at PC Magazine wrote a comparison. Blogs and portfolio sites especially, but even ecommerce sites can be handled by no-code website builders. The nice thing is, there is very little risk in starting out with a website builder. If you outgrow it, you can have something custom built, or in some cases, we can even sneak some custom code into the website builder to handle an unmet need.

Hiring A Web Developer

A web developer can build any website imaginable, given enough time. On the other hand, with a website builder you can only build what that product’s creators have already imagined and implemented. Look at the feature lists on a couple of website builders (often they’re on the pricing page), and if they don’t satisfy your needs, you may want something custom built.

Domains

A domain name, e.g. firstprinciplesdevelopment.com, allows people to find your website. I recommend searching for your domain using Google’s domain search because it’s super fast and allows you to see availability and pricing without signing up. Once you’ve found an available domain, register (purchase) it through whatever registrar you like; Google may be convenient if you plan to use Google workspace for email, while your website builder may be convenient because you can manage your website and domain in the same place.

A typical .com domain costs around $15/year and every decent registrar includes WHOIS privacy protection — make sure it is enabled so that your email or other information is not made public.

One last thing: choose a .com if you can, it’s the most recognizable.

Email

Here are 3 reasonable options:

  • Gmail/Google Workspace

    Gmail is free if you don’t want to use a custom domain, and Google workspace is $6/month (at time of writing) if you want to use a custom domain.

  • Proton Mail

    Proton Mail is privacy focused and has free and paid plans. You’ll need to pay around $5/month if you want to use a custom domain. While Google will likely scan the contents of your emails and proton (probably) won’t, don’t believe all the marketing copy: email is not very secure or private, and as soon as you send an email to somebody, what happens to that information is out of your control.

  • Zoho Mail

    A budget option, zoho mail offers a free plan with limited features for a custom domain! However, it isn’t easy to find: search “Forever Free Plan” on this page. Plus, their cheapest paid plan is only $1/month.

When To Hire A Developer

When NOT to hire a web developer: for most portfolio, blog, and primarily informational websites.

Example:

Alice wants a website to showcase her photography portfolio and provide a contact form. She could hire someone to make something really unique and stunning, but she’ll be better off using a website builder, at least initially: this is very much a use case they have imagined. If her needs expand, she can always hire a designer or developer.

If you require user accounts, real-time updates (think games or chat), complex data processing, PDF or other file generation, a mobile or desktop app (that’s another conversation entirely), or anything that the constraints of a website builder don’t allow, you may want to hire a developer.

Example:

Bob wants a website where many photographers can share their work and browse photos based on geographic location, camera model, date and other photo metadata. Bob needs something custom, that isn’t feasible with a website builder. If he has the budget, Bob should hire a web developer to realize his vision.

Whatever your project, I’d love to hear about it, and I’ll give you the best advice I can. Shoot me an email.

F.A.Q.

Questions I frequently imagine being asked.

How much will it cost to D.I.Y. with a site builder?
It doesn't have to cost anything. Anyone can build a free website or create a free email address, however, if you want to use a custom domain for your website or email, you should expect to pay ~$15/year for a domain, ~$5/month for email and ~$20/month for a website builder at a minimum, more if you want to sell goods online.
How much will it cost to hire a web developer?
This depends on your requirements. I advise people to use $10,000 as the minimum they should be prepared to spend. While you can hire developers and designers on fiverr and upwork to complete projects for much less than that, and there are small projects that I would take on for less than that, keep these points in mind:
  1. Recurring costs. If you hire someone to build a website for you, you're going to need to hire them to maintain and update that website when you want to make changes to content, style and functionality, unless they set up a CMS like Wordpress for you, in which case you probably didn’t need to hire them in the first place.
  2. Software developers are notoriously poor at estimating time and therefore, cost. Being off by a factor of 2, 4 or even 10 is common. Having a fixed price contract won't fully insulate you from this risk, because a developer isn't going to do 10 times the work they expected without renegotiating price.
I'm thinking of using Wordpress. Help?
Book a call with me and I'll talk you out of it. Wordpress is powerful, but has a poor user (you) and developer (me) experience. In many cases, what is accomplished with Wordpress is either simple enough that it could be done with a website builder, or complex enough that it shouldn't be handled by Wordpress, and it actually makes sense to hire someone to build something that isn't a security, usability and maintenance trainwreck. Did I mention I'm biased against Wordpress?
Whats the difference between a web designer and a web developer?
Roughly speaking, the designer is focused on how things look and feel, while the developer is focused on what they do. These disciplines often overlap.
What is WHOIS?
"WHOIS isn't an acronym, though it may look like one. In fact, it is the system that asks the question, who is responsible for a domain name or an IP address?"
- ICANN website
What is WHOIS privacy protection?
The ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) requires identifying and contact information (called WHOIS data) to be provided for every registered domain name. Most registrars will provide their own information rather than yours as a free service, but you may have to opt in to this service and they all call it something slightly different.