About a month ago, I read a headline in the Post Status newsletter called “Let’s No-Code This Thing and All Go Home.” It linked to an article that stated:
Tools to build complex full-stack products without code are reaching an inflection point this year. They’ll quickly transform how products get built and who gets to build them – and open the gates to a new, more diverse wave of product creators on the web.
The whole topic, and especially the phrase “No-Code” itself, got me really excited, and it made me want to build a WordPress site with absolutely no code and see how it went. So that’s what I did. This article presents my eight main lessons and takeaways from the process.
Notes on the Project
Here are the details of what I actually did for the no-code project I chose, how long it took, and what the result was. Feel free to skip straight to the eight takeaways if you’d like.
What “WordPress Without Code” Means
No part of the development process requires reading or writing PHP, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or any other technical language.
Hey Fred,
Just stumbled across this article which doing some research.
It’s been quite a while since knowing how to code was a requirement to build WordPress sites, just like what Patty said.
I’m an ex-developer myself but I can’t remember the last time I actually had to go into code more than tweaking a few hooks here and there.
And I’m in several Facebook groups where many people have no clue about development yet churn out site after site that are excellent all-round sites, especially in the “informational” category of sites.
That’s obviously a good thing and clearly what the industry wants.
What this means for developers, or those who felt that they had an advantage takes to know how to code up to a few years ago, is that they need to find new ways to differentiate themselves, because clearly it is no longer enough of an advantage to be able to “code a WordPress site from scratch”.
People want working websites after all, and if working with current no-code tools makes them cheaper (because it takes less effort), then the old guard needs to pivot and keep offering value add in a different way.
Cheers
David
Interesting, but this is how most of us build websites for small clients all the time — more than “brochure sites”. I often write a few lines of CSS, but that’s all, and often not even that. It’s been this way for about 5 years.
Yo Fred,
Thanks for this article and thanks for WPShout, all of your amazing content and of course – the courses!
Just my simple opinion and observation – I’m very skeptic over the superiority of Beaver vs. Elementor. I think you should consider Elementor again, since it truly is great. I’d actually LOVE your thoughts and impressions cvomparing those two. The statement that Beaver builder is a clear winner was astonishingly surprising for me. Just saying… I haven’t touched beaver builder as much, but as per my impression – Elementor is in fact better. I haven’t fiddled with Beaver builder enough tbh and I’m not sure what’s Elementors Beaver themer equivalent is, but I’m quite sure there is one 🙂
Anyway – Thanks again for sharing and for all the great content,
Keep it up and God Speed!
Astra as the theme with Beaver Builder as the page builder is an awesome combo.
Great article. I know how to code but find that most projects are too small to build everything from scratch. No code tools make it easy to get the main parts of the site put together, after which I can customize with code to add the little tweaks not possible with no code solutions.
I agree with your assessment that these tools have advanced considerably in the past year or so. They output reasonable markup, aren’t reliant on messy things like shortcodes for layouts (well, most of them aren’t) and are generally pleasant to use. I moved away from Beaver in favor of Elementor, mainly for the outstanding design capabilities of Elementor compared to Beaver. Beaver is still pretty amazing…just wasn’t a good fit for my projects.
And a shout out to Pods which literally lets me make any kind of content I want and create layouts with their template system. Phenomenal plugin that doesn’t get nearly the credit it deserves.
Great article, Fred! My only question: how *clean* is the code after all the editing and revisions and updates and fiddling in the front end? After being burned repeatedly by supposedly WYSIWYG editors that littered the underlying code with a ton of unnecessary code and introducing millions of potential glitch points, I still find myself perusing auto-generated code for weirdness and cruft. Have you looked under the hood at the resulting code base to see if its as clean as something you crafted by hand? Or at least clean enough?
This reminds me of why it’s sooooo hard now to find tutorials that show you how to make something for WordPress without a template or plugin.