I am getting mixed views on this and would like to hear your opinions please. Some internet gurus are saying that it's counter productive these days to build sites from scratch when there are templates for any site imaginable available for purchase for cheap or you can simply use a template builder such as Joomla to create a custom site. They are saying that the customer doesn't care how the site is built and is only interested in the end result so why bother building from scratch? Your thoughts guys?

In my experience customers do care, they don't want cookie cutter sites built with a cheap template and have their site looking like thousands of others.

Premade templates aren't always that flexible when it comes to accomodating the wide variety of types of content and presentation needs.

Certainly if you want "cheap" then that's what many premade templates cater for but I don't go for "cheap" clients".

Agreed. IMO, if you code/build it yourself from scratch, you know EXACTLY what's in the code and you can do anything you want with it. With pre-made templates, and even CMS systems like Joomla, you are at the mercy of someone else's code and you could spend many more hours deciphering it in order to make changes.

GREAT advice guys [thanks], I guess those are the answers I am looking for. I am going to create a thread to construct a webpage from scratch because I wish to learn what each and every symbol [* or /] means, before I do, please tell me, just how deep into coding one needs to get to build and maintain or make changes to a site? Should the site builder know every piece of coding inside out as I intend to or are there certain things I should skip, maybe never use?

Here's a link that is a tremendous help...

http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp

They also have examples for you to try coding yourself....

Thanks but I have already covered HTML and CSS on 3schools, need to apply it now, what I am asking here is if website builders need to know every symbol and every code to be successful?

Originally Posted by mikehende

Thanks but I have already covered HTML and CSS on 3schools, need to apply it now, what I am asking here is if website builders need to know every symbol and every code to be successful?

No, you really don't, what you/(we) need is practice. Make a template and post it to these forums for us to rate and criticize.

I don't know, what worries me if I don't learn each and every coding line and a customer should have some problem and the coding needs to be adjusted, what I am to do? Some are saying not to bother with the in-depth coding, that you could always go to Rent-a-coder and get the coding help for cheap?

I suggest starting from a framework/wireframe, it's like a pre made layout which you just stick your images/content in. But it's not as locked down as a custom template.

Great idea, I did a search on the net for what you suggested and I came up with this great link which explains it all:

http://www.strangesystems.net/images...ncil-visio.gif

but I am confused as to the purpose of the "stencils"? What's the difference between that and simply drawing your layout on paper?

That stencil is for use with Visio, it's not for web design.