I build all of my websites on Wordpress now using the Oxygen Builder framework. You can read all about the technologies below....

Wordpress

Wordpress started out life in 2003 as a blogging platform, but now offers an open source framework in which to develop websites, host eCommerce, booking systems, calendars, media galleries, membership sites, you name it. It has gone on to power more than 60 million websites globally and accounts for a third of the top 10 million websites out there today.

It drastically shortens the development cycle from concept to delivery, also has tens of thousands of pre-writted solutions in the form of plugins, and also a vast array of ready-made themes that users can pick up and have a website running very quickly.

in 2009, I started using wordpress for blogging, and then went on to put my first website on the platform for my first business. I have since been juggling themes and manipulating CSS to try to get what I wanted the site to look like, but like with any template-based system, you are held randsome to the designs of the developer, and while many of the themes offer a free version, they're very restricted in their ability to be modified, needing time consuming investigation work and pinpointed CSS or PHP changes to get the theme looking exactly like I wanted it.

There are page builders out there like Elementor or WP Bakery and as of 2019, Wordpress have incorporated Guttenberg page builder into their framework, but you're still reliant on a base theme, or template, and in may cases, the code behind the page builders is vast, it bulks the site and makes loading times pretty long. Not something you want to be looking at going into 2021!

HTML

HTML is the building blocks of the internet, first released in 1993 it is what the internet is made of.

It stands for Hypertext Markup Language and everything you see on this page is here because of HTML.

It's difficult not to be involved with HTML if you are in the business of web development. You either write it manually, or have some help in the form of HTML editors that can auto-complete, or the full on page builders that let you draw the objects or type the text and then take care of the HTML underneath.

But while automated systems and software can take some of the labout-intensive work out of writing HTML, it doesn't write it as efficiently as a developer and page builders can end up leaving a lot of unnecessary bloat behind when formulating your page.

On the upside, if you know what you're doing, you can get a very simple website out in a matter of minutes with icons and pretty complex structure all with a page builder, something that could take you a considerable amount of time by purely writing the code.

Oxygen Builder

Before 2019 I was working with Wordpress and using the themes as a starting base to mould a site into how I wanted it.

Much of the time, I would have to start with a theme that closely resembles what I want, usually a paid theme. Then through CSS, start to mould and change the styling of that theme.

Some themes were generous in what they 'allowed' you to change, others were very rigid, the final output would be very similar to the original theme design, which is great if that's what you wanted, just net very.... original.

When I came about Oxygen in 2019, I was blown away by the freedom in which I was given to build sites. Oxygen doesn't use themes you see, instead when you load the framework up, you're faced with a blank canvas. Then you get to build your site shackled only by your imagination and the confines of HTML and CSS, you can achieve nearly anything you want with Oxygen.

It's basically a method in which to manipulate and control the HTML and CSS, but also gives you the ability to add your own code blocks.

While not as quick as dealing with as theme and a page builder, the scope I now have is infinite, plus the fact that the framework has done away with other developers theme code, and only has the elements I chose, the sites are lighter, and faster. It's a win-win all the way!

CSS

If HTML is the building blocks of the internet, then CSS is the architect.

Standing for Cascading Style Sheet, it was born a few years after HTML and it's sole intent was to strip the styling information out of each line of HTML and put it in a separate file so then you could just simply reference the styling function.

Imagine having to size each brick of a house individually before putting it down, CSS basically sets out the style of an element, say a brick as being a certain colour and dimension, then calling that styling element, say .brick then all bricks would just be called bricks and everyone knew what size and color they need to be.

This is an over simplified explanation, but you get the idea, most of the styling and lately performance of what you see on a page in front of you comes from CSS. This text has been coloured using CSS, it's background has been subtly shaded by CSS, the headline up there has been coloured, and positioned using CSS.

CSS is phenomenal, and with the latest release comes some bells and whistles in the form of animations and more control over content styling.

Javascript

Coming along another couple of years later than CSS was Javascript.

Javascript makes a webpage dance and is behind some of the abilities we now enjoy on the web, from user interaction, webapps, object animation and movements.

It's a high-level language that's fairly easy to translate just by looking at it with may english-word syntaxes making it's use very fast and extremely popular.

Javascript is used in conjunction with HTML and CSS, although the latest release of CSS is enabling a lot of ability that was once-upot a time only available through Javascript, the power and strength of Javascript makes it a formidable programming language for building on the internet.

CSS is phenomenal, and with the latest release comes some bells and whistles in the form of animations and more control over content styling.

PHP

PHP is what Wordpress is written in and alongside MySQL forms the structure of the framework.

It's difficult not to get involved in PHP if you're working with Wordpress as many of it's config files, the plugins, the core structure is all written in PHP. If you need to change something in Wordpress it's most likely that you will need to get involved with PHP to some degree.

Technologies Used

Wordpress

HTML

Oxygen Builder

CSS

Javascript

PHP

WHAT MY CLIENTS SAY

MENU

MY WORK

From my blog