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General Discussion

Posted by Peter Feaver
Peter Feaver
5,829 Points

Where to start working without back-end knowledge?

So although I am a newbie at all this I have somehow landed myself 5 payed clients for 5 different sites. These will be the first professional websites I have created that aren't purely for my own pleasure. I was also offered to make an eCommerce site for another client but I had to say no because I don't have the level of knowledge necessary. Which brings me to my point. How do front-end developers and designers really work when they don't know back-end code?

The sites I've been asked to make are not complex, just static sites really with nothing too complex. But one thing I would like to do is, for example, make a small contact form. I can easily make a form using html and CSS but its useless without PHP or some server side languages no? For now I could just bypass this form and instead just list an email adress for example. But eventually I will want to make bigger and better websites.

I have thought about wordpress as well (I have never used wordpress or know that much about it) but isn't wordpress kind of well, not really web design at all? In that you buy a template that someone else has made etc etc. You don't really build anything right?

So is there a way to make this work?

1 Answer

Aurelian Spodarec
Aurelian Spodarec
10,801 Points
Aurelian Spodarec
Aurelian Spodarec
10,801 Points

There are people that write 'WordPress code'. SO you would create your own template with code.

You could probably go with PHP and start from there. WordPress is great for blogging platform and such. For websites like facebook or treehouse, a better option is pure PHP or soemthing like Laravel5 and such.

ANd how did you find them?

Also, front-end, usually know some back-end. I sit on front-end now days all the time, but I know some PHP and WordPress. I could make my self a blog, maybe an e-commerce site with WP. If i really really wanted i could do something with laravel or PHP too, but i spend time on that as well.