Dreaming of a Custom-Built Website?
A custom-built website is designed from scratch without the use of templates and is tailored specifically to your business.
Owning a custom-built website is often the ultimate dream of many website owners. Free of any constraints and starting with a blank canvas, you can let your imagination and creativity guide you to design a website that is unique, cool, and exceptional. At least, that's what we are often told. But is it true? Or does this dream have more to do with wishful thinking than reality?
Before we try to understand custom-built websites, I would first like to explain how websites generally work and what components are required for a web page to appear in the browser of an online visitor.
The Magic Four
Every web page, large or small, needs four components to deliver content to a user. These four components are your code with your content, the web server that stores your code, your domain name pointing to the web server, and finally, the web browser, which retrieves the code from the web server and displays it. Now, let's go through them one by one.
Your code. A web page typically makes use of three code languages at the same time: (1) HTML, the HyperText Markup Language, structures your content in elements, defining paragraphs and headings, or embedding images. (2) CSS, the Cascading Style Sheet, formats the HTML content by, e.g., setting colors and font sizes and building the final layout. (3) JavaScript, a scripting language for web browsers, can dynamically update content or animate images when certain events occur, such as clicking an icon or swiping with your fingers.
Your web server. A web server, in its most basic form, stores the code of all your web pages and transmits it to a web browser upon request. Web servers are powerful computers with an operating system, often a Linux derivative, running special server software, for example, Apache.
Your domain name. A domain name is a clear-text address to the web server that stores the code of all your web pages. The domain name points to your content.
Web browser. Web browsers, such as Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari, or Microsoft Edge, are software applications that run on smartphones, tablets, or desktop computers. They access and display the content of web pages.
Since web browsers and domain names are beyond our control, custom-built websites use code and a custom configuration of your web server to create a unique user experience for your content.
Reality check
With this simple "magic-four"-framework in mind, we can now see if custom-built websites still hold up to being a dream or if they can also develop some nightmarish features.
Total design freedom can be pricey. In theory, you can start your website on a blank canvas and dream about each cool feature you want to have. In practice, however, your design choices are somewhat limited if you're planning to earn money with your website. Your budget may be one limiting factor. The second factor can be your users. Are your users eager to embrace your cool new features? Unfortunately, there is no way of knowing with certainty beforehand, if your users will love a particular software functionality. Therefore, web designers develop different versions and test them extensively in so-called A-B tests. But these tests are time-consuming and can also be pricey. To keep the development cost down, web designers, therefore, tend to steer their clients towards proven layouts that usually work with the typical user but, as a result, create boundaries that significantly limit your design freedom.
There is no such thing as bug-free software. Ask any programmer, and they will confirm it for you. As hard as you try and as rigorous as you test, there is always a scenario, as unlikely as it may be at the moment, that will cause a software bug in the future. It is absolutely normal, happens at the most prestigious companies, and is just part of software development. The only question is how you are going to deal with it. Since you cannot leave your website broken, you will have to address the error. But changing the code costs money. So, if you have a custom-built website, you need to be willing to allocate some funds each year for troubleshooting and bug-fixes.
Software ages quickly. When you program a website, you will need to use proven functions that are available in software libraries. Some programmers utilize entire software frameworks, such as WordPress, Bootstrap, or Drupal. At the launch of your new website, every software package will be in sync with each other and with the browsers displaying the content. Now, fast forward two years. In the software world, two years is an eternity since security patches and bug fixes come out at least every three months, and major software releases once a year. So, in just two years, your custom-built website is already two major releases behind and has missed a minimum of eight software patches for each library or framework you have deployed. After only four years, your custom-built website is hopelessly out of date, and virus scanners are likely to flag it as a "dangerous website."
Cybersecurity. With the rapid growth of online shopping and banking, cybercriminals are improving their tactics so quickly that they always seem to be one step ahead of the defenders. They ruthlessly exploit software vulnerabilities, patch level inconsistencies, or server misconfigurations to try to steal information or extort money. To counter these threats, software companies release security patches very quickly. If you have a custom-built online store, deploying these security patches immediately after they are released is critical. Should you decide to delay the implementation of these patches, don't be surprised if your site gets blacklisted.
SSL-certificates do expire. There are probably only a few things that will bring your heart faster to a standstill than when your browser warns you that the SSL-certificate on your site has expired. But what is a Secure Sockets Layer certificate? Such an SSL-certificate, which is tied to your company and issued by a 3rd party, is a key installed on your web server to establish an encrypted connection between your web server and your visitor's web browser. If this key has expired, the connection between a web browser and your web server is no longer secure. If you have a custom-built online store, sales will likely plummet as a result. Whether you acquire the skills to periodically install such an SSL-certificate on your web server yourself or hire a specialist to do it for you, it is crucial in today's world to keep this encryption key up to date.
Your web server also needs maintenance. Web servers are no longer in your basement. They are in the cloud, and you rent as much storage and computing power as you need. After just a few seconds, your virtual web server is configured, and you are ready to install your web server software. However, it is your responsibility to update the operating system and the Apache web server software regularly. Again, you can learn how to do it yourself or hire a pro to do it for you.
I hope that this reality check has shed some light on the inner workings of websites and that total design freedom has its price. The main question now is: are you ready to pay for it too?
What is the alternative?
Your requirements have led you to custom-built websites with all of their costly and time-consuming maintenance work that is inevitably associated with them.
On the other hand, customers of platform providers like Squarespace or Shopify do not have any of these maintenance challenges. These customers neither rent server space nor buy an SSL-certificate. They also do not need to install security patches on their websites. These platform providers do all of this for their entire system. But there is a tradeoff here too. You will have to learn to live with the features that Squarespace and Shopify provide in their templates.
Although these templates are very powerful and structured in configurable blocks, they come with the disadvantage that you may not get everything you imagined in your dreams. The benefits, however, are immense, let alone the monthly subscription price, which is a fraction of the cost of a custom-built website.
Conclusion
Personally, I like custom-built websites and love to think about new features. I also enjoy tinkering with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to realize them. However, I also know that running a custom-built website takes a lot of time and money. Commitments that rarely make sense 90% of the time.
