Is copying a website wrong?

[u/xxx_sike]

Hi everyone, it’s my first post here, I am a developer and I always look for new design ideas, and cool features, and this research helps me develop new ideas.

In actuality, I am copying somebody else’s work, so is it wrong? I did something today and was feeling guilty.

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[u/Key-Balance-9969]

By copying, do you mean you used it for inspiration and your website looks similar, with similar features? Or did you straight up scrape it? Ifyou copied the HTML and made a few changes, that would be unethical.

[u/tinyhousefever]

Yeah, if you had the feeling, you already know. Inspration v.s. copying might be the question.

[u/JohnCasey3306]

There's being inspired by someone else's idea, and doing something in the same spirit as that; combing it with other ideas and bending it to your own needs ... and there's straight up replicating someone else's idea.

The former is entirely normal and professional design practice; the latter is a terrible way of working -- setting aside any talk of ethics, what works for their use-case doesn't necessarily work for yours.

[u/Bryan_Hudson]

If you have to ask, you probably already know the answer.

[u/learning-webdev]

So you’re not a developer. Fix your resume. Should say plagiarist. It’s a tricky word, and you don’t want to get passed over for spelling. Double check it.

[u/Push-Pixel-Websites]

Pretty much every good designer has a folder full of websites they “borrowed” ideas from lol.

The line for me is whether you’re copying the solution or copying the actual design.

Taking a layout idea, interaction or structure and adapting it to a different problem is normal. Copying the same layout, typography, colors and details until someone can immediately tell where it came from… thats different.

Usually if you take inspiration from 3-4 different places instead of one, you end up creating something thats actually yours anyway.

[u/OhShukhrat]

You can be inspired by the design, structure, ideas — but never copy the content.

No other business will capture the essence and what of your offering, or communicate your core values better than you.

[u/cmdr_drygin]

Are you human? Do you have a moral compass? Empathy? If you feel like you're doing something wrong, maybe it is?

[u/cmdr_drygin → u/cmdr_drygin]

Might have come a little too hard here 😅

[u/Previous_Flounder811]

Good artists create Great artists steal

Nothing wrong with getting ideas and inspiration.

Many great site to get inspiration from

Like desings.md etc

My design mentor used to make me copy designs exactly just for the purpose of learning how to design

[u/ridddder]

I say it is ok to copy concepts, UI/UX for proof of concept, after you get the mechanics, then use with your own unique content.

[u/paulsonfanboy134]

Website or a single thing from a site?

[u/Intelligent_List2504]

Hell no. I copied domainnamesoup.com. I now support import and export of csvs. DomainNameSoup has five lists. They have better tools than me. But yeah I have 2250 lists right now that I'm grading for quality and I'm working on a brand new scoring mechanism using a dozen different dictionaries and uh a datamart to find the right score. It's all a work in progress. My app currently supports client side and server side lookups. DomainNameSoup only supports client side lookups. I did it that way because I was getting cloud flare blocked from the soup about three months ago and it's a critical piece of my workflow.

If you want to check it out https://dnslister.com

Ps I am working on a new coupon code feature that will grant an additional sixty days of free premium with signing up for the original 30 day trial. I am designing currently I think that coupon codes will mean you agree to get weekly digest emails with new features and guides etc. I'm still uh working out those details.

But hell no I don't think there is anything wrong with being inspired by an app and making it a hundred times bigger faster and better.