Are professionally-made websites built from scratch these days?

Question

Do developers for websites like facebook, instagram, twitter, etc. make everything from scratch (with the exception of things like jQuery)?

I've always made web pages from scratch, meaning I write every little thing in between the html tags, even the stuff that I don't need to rewrite. It can take a pretty long time to make a good-looking website from the basics.

I found this tutorial here: http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorials/html-css-techniques/design-a-beautiful-website-from-scratch/

It's a pretty damn good looking website, but do professional website developers really make websites using editors like this, just exporting all of the images and html? I've never tried designing a website using PS, but I have had experience with other WYSIWYG editors (importing stuff I already made into the editor), and usually end up with butchered code and other unintended consequences. It seems to me that since this editor produces such a beautiful preview of a website, it would be really useful as a guide for what to code instead, right?

I've mostly worked on online tools for developers, usually for debugging and research purposes, and most of the design I've done has been to supplement these tools. In other words: Web design has never really been the meat of the matter in my projects, so I think there's a lot to be learned.

Answer 1

Most professionals work in groups of at least three "specialists": a market adviser, a designer, and a coder.

The marketing Adviser "designs" the site (on paper), in order for it to "hit the right audience" and have themost chances of success.

The Designer "designs" the pages, usually with Photoshop or similar, the way they will "look".

The Coder, then takes all that information in and builds the site, HAND CODING (using text editors).

It is not really "writing from scratch": an experienced coder has masses of proven bits-and-pives, functions, modules that he can just assemble and edit to fullfil the requirements (ie, a login system has all the features, just need to change how it will look and some constants).



Large sites, such Y!A and Facebook, have so many coders around that maintenance become too complex, and each "change", usually, introduce "new bugs" ! The whole coding has become soo complex, written by too many different people, that the code is nearly impossible to follow. When several programmers have to work together, very strict rules MUST be applied for the team, such as "writing a PDF for every function" (what the function does, what parameters, what it returns, how it works etc), together with a lot of comments. That is NOT the case with the above mentionned sites, and why they are full of bugs! The new Y!A is a perfect example... (of bad work) :-)

Answer 2

Any true designer/developer does still build things from the ground up, but uses tools and software to speed the process up. While we "can" design and develop a website with nothing more than notepad and M$paint, we have become familiar with and regularly use enhanced code editors (such as with code colorization, highlighting, making it easier to see blocks and incomplete parts) and make enough money to afford higher end graphic programs like Photoshop. (You can't do a hell of alot with M$paint)



And in the corporate world, hardly anyone uses a raw text editor, in my experience. It will either be something more advanced, like Visual Studio for ASP/.NET or Eclipse for JAVA, or at a minimum Dreamweaver. But in those environments, the designer usually just hands the finished html prototype to developers for final implementation. But ANY corporate environment will also use a code management system like TFS or SubVersion, which allows designers and developers to check code in/out, and allows better management of that code to see who changed what and why.



Now if you become versed in a language like PHP and a database like mySQL, you can use a prebuilt CMS style package like JOOMLA, DRUPAL or even WordPress, with all of their built in features like page generation and built-in WYSIWYG/Word-style editors, then "skin" it to look like a custom site. This allows clients to maintain the majority of their own site, as well as add new pages/content, with you on retainer for future edits/expansion and maintenance.

Answer 3

Yes. I get a few PDFs from marketing and build a working site from that. By hand.

Answer 4

I don't think so but since facebook for example is an old site no they've done it all it just depends on needs and features.