Website question

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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on April 1, 2016 at 10:27

There is so much it's hard to know where to start :)

Learning to code isn't running a business otherwise lots of coders would be rich. Here's a course that teaches you how to write an AirBnB 'clone' but really, do you need it?

Wordpress claims to have 50 million websites - one quarter of the entire internet.

It's free and has ready-made solutions for a huge range of 'vertical' markets, usually by means of adding 'plugins' which themselves are normally free (often with a 'pro' paid-for version). Thus you can build almost any relatively straightforward application in Wordpress with the bonus that, if you recognise that most applications are pretty much doing the same thing, you'll find a community of users who are ready to help each other with issues and problems that result in improvements- the essence of the 'open source' approach that has brought about the success of Wordpress.

Almost all computing is based on amending a database - it's the 'chequebook' application that has driven the industry forward since Turing. Air BnB is just a booking application, thousands and thousands of which are in use now and have been written over the centuries. Plugins like the free Wordpress Events Manager can create a site that books out a resource and Woocommerce can deal with the money.

If you change what your application does so as to fit in with what Wordpress does well (in one of it's 'vertical' markets) then not only will you slash development time but you'll have access to a pool of coding talent and be able to give back to the community.

I think that a mistake people sometimes make is to see their application code is totally unique, so have it hand-crafted. You wouldn't make your own high-street shop, you'd require your shopfitters to use off-the-shelf components and tailor them - do the same with software.

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