November 01, 2016

Although I've built websites using CMS's like Shopify and SquareSpace, when it comes to web design, I prefer not to be locked into a third-party service. The reason is fairly obvious. Even when they are free, all CMS's require doing things their way, which means you will end up spending your time dealing with their system. To me, that's no fun, and it's also not very creative, because learning their system doesn't do much to help me become a better programmer. Doing things on my own is much more interesting and challenging, and the solutions are more broadly instructive and useful for my future work.

Of course, solutions don't come from nowhere, and my modus operandi is not unique. I use some standard libraries like Bootstrap and jQuery, and I consult PHP reference fairly often. For any given problem, before reinventing the wheel, I search to see what other people have shared online. Often I'll download something someone has put together, look it over, decide it's too elaborate for my needs, and then I make my own. w3schools is possibly the most convenient resource for Javascript, HTML, SQL, and CSS reference, and for tricky problems I find a lot of helpful advice on stack overflow.

Next time I'll show how I dealt with Euro VAT and currency conversion rates using PHP, SQL, Javascript, and a couple of simple server instructions.

Regards,
Aaron