CF.Digital in simple words about what's under the ‘bonnet’ of the site

The age of information technology is so short that it's hard to imagine how humanity has moved in such a short time, just by giant leaps and bounds, from the end of the Web 1.0 era (early 2000s) to what we see now on the pages of our favourite websites. Each of us has thought about it at least once, but not everyone has an idea how it works.

Nowadays, a business or an idea without a website is just a stall at a village market. Any product needs attention and care. To attract and retain the attention of a potential customer on the information space, you need a powerful tool. At this point, the question arises: what to use to achieve your business goals? Let me make a reservation right away: each task has its own technology. There are a lot of them now, and each one is certainly worthy of a separate article. I will only focus on the technology stack that we can be sure of in the next 5 years. Although 5 years at the current pace of the trend is a long time.

In practice, there are many options for website implementation. I will try to reveal the essence of free ‘CMS’ (content management system) and ‘CMF’ (a system written on a framework to solve the necessary tasks). In fact, this topic has many subtle nuances, and only a superficial analysis will not bring clarity. The best solution in this matter is a clear understanding of the tasks that the resource should solve. For the sake of clarity, let's look at several scenarios.

A website assembled ‘on the knee’

A conditionally free product: 5 minutes for a savvy system administrator to dig into the engine settings and display a standard template. And, voila, the site is up and running, no need to pay anything. Everyone is happy. Another option is to agree with a web studio or a freelancer who will build the same free engine in a few days or a week, in a more professional way. Perhaps they will even make a more or less unique design. However, the implementation of specific logic that this engine does not provide out of the box will be very questionable. It all depends on the conscience of the developers. And the deadlines here often start to ‘burn’.

Professional assembly on crutches

Another option, more balanced in terms of price, time and quality, at the same time, there is a fear of choice. In this case, a wider range of tasks that the resource should solve is taken into account, but the system itself imposes restrictions, which cause a number of difficulties that can later become a very big obstacle to development and support. Some of the functionality ‘sewn’ into the system itself is simply not always necessary for the project, and another part may not interact correctly with third-party components. The site is ‘partially programmable’: some of the functionality is implemented on boxed solutions, while the other part is added by hand. The price is already ten times higher than the previous version. The implementation period of the assembly is considerable: at least a month for the normal adaptation and integration of corporate design, the implementation of the logic and tasks that the service should solve.

Yes, it is a service. I started with Web1.0 for a reason. Technologies allow not only to provide information, they provide a full-fledged service to the user: geolocation, online communication, payments, interaction with third-party services, and in the near future - integration with other smart devices, virtual and augmented reality in the browser. This is what is currently possible with native mobile applications.

Off-the-shelf solutions are limited in their capabilities, extensions and prospects. Security is very fragile and its reliability is highly debatable. The speed of work is deliberately low due to the overload of modules. And yet, the lion's share of ready-made solutions that can be used in their purest form, without limiting your product or idea, are written in one programming language. The main thing is to be confident in the service and its future. The only advantage that developers do not pay attention to is the cost (very cheap). Customers are happy when they buy such a website for the first time, but everyone knows what happens next: a low-quality product consumes the entire budget.

A website as an elegant sculpture

Simply put, a software platform or framework is like a root for a tree that can grow in any direction, acquiring new, unique functionality. The service implemented on the framework is not subject to the restrictions of hundreds of thousands of additional add-ons. Support can be provided by any php programmer who has a sufficient knowledge of the language and has good experience in programming. PHP frameworks are widespread enough to be confident in them as a tool and not to worry that after the next update of the plugin, the entire database will go into the hands of a competitor. Because all the functionality is pre-checked and tested, ensuring reliability, performance, and peace of mind.

In business, you always face a choice. The main thing is to weigh up all the risks, assess the possibilities and choose the option that can provide the most effective solution to your problems. And with the choice of tools for your website, I repeat: the main thing is to bring the ‘goal - tool’ model to the forefront. And then your business expectations will coincide with reality as much as possible.

Vladimir Yarmolenko

Front-end developer at CF.Digital

The material was published on Sostav.ua