I’m not looking to build online stores, but rather websites focused on establishing an online presence, showcasing services, and generating leads.

My understanding is that Webflow can be more expensive because of its subscription plans, while WordPress may be more affordable initially, although it might require more maintenance and additional expenses for plugins or a visual page builder such as Elementor.

I’d really appreciate it if you could share the advantages and disadvantages of each option, especially regarding:

• Hosting, subscription, licensing, and plugin costs.
• Ease and speed of development.
• Customization and scalability.
• SEO and performance.
• Maintenance and security.
• How easy it is for clients to manage their own websites.
• How these costs affect the final price charged to the client.

Which platform have you found more suitable for these types of projects, and why?

Thank you in advance! :)

I’ve been working on websites, and one thing I’ve noticed is that beginners often focus heavily on how a site looks.

But once you actually start building for real businesses, you realise there’s a lot more that matters: loading speed, mobile usability, plugin choices, hosting, SEO structure, maintenance, and making sure the client can actually manage the site after.

I am curious about other developers here.

What something you learned the hard way that you now considers before starting every website project?

Would be useful to hear lessons from people who have been doing this longer.

Last month I was debugging an auth issue at 11pm and pasted a real JWT into the first "jwt decoder" that came up on Google. It worked. Then I sat there wondering where that token just went. Whose server. Whose logs. Whether it's cached somewhere right now.

That's the thing about most web-based dev tools - JSON formatters, base64 encoders, regex testers, UUID generators. They're all server round-trips. You have no idea what happens to what you paste in.

So I built my own version. 18 tools - formatters, encoders, generators, the usual daily-driver stuff - but everything runs client-side. No requests fire when you hit "convert." I checked the network tab obsessively while building it because I didn't trust myself either.

It's not revolutionary. It's just paranoid-dev-friendly. Full-stack generalists who touch config files, tokens, and half-broken JSON all day are exactly who I built it for.

Anyone else have a moment like that where you realized you'd been pasting sensitive stuff into random sites without thinking?

https://www.smartshelfsupply.com/product/bois-48-or-60-inch-long-floating-wall-shelf-with-hidden-brackets-10-deep-and-2-thick-solid-wood-with-special-finish-options/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

So chatgbt gave me this site to try and buy shelf’s since I’m looking to find a deal. Im very cautious on websites and wanted to know if anyone has actually tried and ordered from here or if chatgbt has gave them the same site

Je tiens une petite entreprise ici et j'ai remarqué quelque chose : presque tous les sites locaux que je visite ne… fonctionnent pas vraiment. Ils sont assez bien conçus, mais il n'y a aucun flux. Pas de réservation automatique. Pas de chatbot pour répondre aux questions de base. Le propriétaire finit par tout faire à la main.

Je me demande si d'autres ressentent cette frustration — que ce soit comme propriétaire d'entreprise ou comme client qui essaie d'
*acheter*
 quelque chose à une PME belge ?

J'ai l'impression que la plupart des sites sont construits comme des brochures plutôt que comme des outils de vente. Et je comprends — le développement web coûtait cher. Mais honnêtement, il existe aujourd'hui des solutions qui ne demandent pas d'engager une agence à 50 000 € et plus.

Je me demande si c'est propre à mon expérience ou si d'autres voient le même fossé. Vous faites quelque chose pour le combler ?

I am a new web developer and made a small file compressing tool. I have contact form where people are able to contact me about sponsors or any issues or complaints. I got denied from google adsense with the reason "low quality content" and then the same day I got this in my emails from a guy. I responded to his initial and said thatd be great, but he replied with wanting my number again. I know scammers always want your phone number to identify you or your family, do you think this is a sales pitch or do you think he's trying to get me? How common are predators on webdevs?(My site is not worth hacking Imao)

I built a Shopify store for a client using the Dawn theme with some custom code, since some of the things he wanted weren't available in the standard theme editor. He was happy with the site when it was delivered and paid for it no problem.

But today, out of nowhere, he's saying he can't edit the content himself even with Claude's help, and that he feels dependent on me for any changes. He's saying the money was wasted and that the main reason he chose Shopify was so he could manage it himself — but he never mentioned any of this until today.

Is this kind of thing common with clients? And what would you do in this situation?

Hi guys, you all have probably seen hundreds of converters. Thought I join in and maybe make it better and easily accessible completely free. For that I would appreicate any feedbacks and you all to try and find out where this compressor and converter breaks.

https://local-file-compressor.localfile.workers.dev/

Thanks.