The History and Evolution of Website Builders

Our lives today literally revolve around the Internet, and every day we come across numerous websites each with its own unique UX and UI designs, intuitive interfaces and engaging, high-quality content in the form of pictures and videos all intended to capture our attention. But it was not always this way.

In 1991, the first website came live on the web. Manually written using hypertext mark-up language, the website utilized only sixteen colors, the pages were in single columns, text-based and connected by a series of hyperlinks. In 1993 through mosaic, the world’s second browser, the first image on a web page was actualized.

Over time, software such as Microsoft’s frontpage were developed in 1995 to help design webpages. By 1998 Dreamweaver even with all the criticism it received established itself as an industry leader. But as the industry evolved to World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards its popularity begun to dwindle.

Websites and web design, in general, have undergone a lot of evolution over the years bring with it some flexibility and easy to use tools in the form of website builders that made the construction of website possible without the need for manual coding. But what exactly are website builders?

Website builders refer to software or programs that facilitate the creation of websites and ultimately your ability to establish your unique domain name and make your presence known to the world. Website builders were unimaginable before, and it was nearly impossible to create a website in a matter of hours. However, today all this is achievable and can be done without technical skills or the need for coding.

You can design an interactive website that meets your needs and delivers to your target audience effortlessly. Website builders today exist in two forms; online and offline. Online website builders are entirely web-based programs that are run on the servers of the web hosting company. Examples of online website builders include Weebly, Wix or WordPress. Most of them consist of a drag and drop feature that makes them user-friendly and the resulting website to be aesthetically pleasing.

The companies that host the websites also provide technical support and tutorials to help get users websites up and running fast. Offline website builders exist as computer programs or packages that you install on your computer and use to create pages that you then publish on the host. Examples of offline website builders include Rapid Weaver.

Their nature makes them more fit for professional website designers as it since it is a requirement that the user has knowledge regarding Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). Unlike online website builders, they mostly do not have any technical support, and it is up to the user to figure it out. But albeit the lack of technical support, they are more malleable than their online counterparts.

Early websites

After inventing HTTP, URL, HTML and other vital elements that form websites as we understand them today, Tim Berners-Lee created the first website in 1991. Early websites were difficult to make and creating them was a big challenge since they were written manually in HTML. This meant that it was necessary and extremely essential that the specialist have deep knowledge of programming languages in addition to web design skills.

But even then, it would take about two to three weeks for the specialist to create the website which by today’s standards was still far from perfection. The websites then experienced many issues since elements such as simple texts, photos, buttons, and even backgrounds had to be inserted manually. With time creating the websites inevitably meant having to hire professionals to build the websites. Some of the difficulties of the early websites include;

  • They had really bad quality images, pictures, and icons.
  • There experienced constant breakdowns as a result of unreliable hosting
  • Building a website was quite expensive, and the lack of specialist did not help.
  • They all had extremely unattractive designs and no UX features. They featured blue links, white background, and black-aligned text)

Despite all the weaknesses as with most inventions, the world was wowed by them as they could nevertheless get the information that they needed. By 1998 Dreamweaver was the most frequently used website builder, but in 1999, GeoCities with all is slowness and bulkiness quickly gained popularity as it helped more and more people create text-based websites whose features included visuals and text that changed color. At that time these features were considered to be advanced but, ten years later GeoCities became obsolete as it was unable to keep up the pace as the world of web evolved.

Websites Today

Since the early 2000s, the evolution of website builders has been rapid. Companies such as Squarespace and Homestead moved away from the offline website builders and begun to create online website builders as users were no longer limited to offline software builders only.

Today HTML5 and its counterparts, CS3 and Javascript are considered to be the current web standard. Consisting of a range of features such as <video> and <audio> syntactic features and scale-able vector graphic (SVG) integrations. HTM5 has paved the way for website builders such as IM Creator that is capable of creating beautiful, highly functional and responsive websites. Platforms like Wix, Squarespace, Weebly amongst others are why today you can create a website without the technical know-how or even coding skills.

Today’s website builders feature to drag and drop features that take away a bulk of the difficulties that early websites faced. They also integrate W3C technology that delivers a good number of tools for editing and customizing websites. Some of the other features of today’s websites include:

  • Add-ons and features such as SEO settings, eCommerce tools, widgets, and third-party integration capabilities.
  • Different themes and layouts that users can now choose from a selection of templates for business, portfolio, company’s page, blog or any other types of the website.
  • Affordability; creating websites is no longer an expensive affair, and even companies and individuals with limited budgets can find an option that suits and meets their needs.
  • Ease-of-Use; aside from the drag and drop feature that also promotes ease of use, it possible to change and customize pages, add content, remove or change elements, change fonts and background effortlessly.

With the rise of mobile devices, the necessity of optimized mobile viewing has become the core issue for website builders. They deliver mobile responsive templates that ensure smooth website running on any device despite the carrier, OS, screen resolution and other specs.

The Future

Due to several reasons, predicting the future of website builders may not necessarily be easy. Some experts claim that the future of website builders lies in page-less, “native” websites, ones that stray from the archaic “print” format that websites grew from and moved to experiences that can only exist on the web. If we’ve learned anything from history, it’s that evolution is certainly an uninventable outcome.

We shall definitely witness advances in HTML5 or the introduction of other HTML versions say maybe 6, or 7, CS3, and JavaScript which will facilitate further impressionability on what we have today. Considering that changes in many fields and industries are being influenced by artificial intelligence, the likelihood of this being the reality for website builders is just as high as creators figure out ways to implement artificial intelligence into technology.

As easy as it is today to create websites, once Ai has been implemented, the future is expected to be even easier. Users will be able to define the content they wish to display while the AI-based platforms compile the said information.

The platform will suggest colors, blocks, section and other elements that meet the users’ needs based on the information provided. Finally, the website builder will finalize the process once the user has approved the AI’s proposed layout of their website.

Conclusion

It has repeatedly been proved and demonstrated that existence or online presence of a brand can help the brand grow and be successful. Website builders and their subsequent evolution has made this a reality for both small and big brands online.

However, there is still a cohort of people and even brands that are yet to capitalize on the opportunities that are afforded by the Internet. While this is a surprising fact, it is not uncommon. As a brand seeking to enter into the online space, you may probably find yourself questioning when the right time is to use a website builder and gain an online presence.

The answer is now. Technology is evolving quicker than anyone would have imagined and for beginners and individuals who are not skilled with the technical know-how, the future is bound to be even more exciting as website builders become less and less complicated but more approachable. The website builders will be the ultimate tool for anyone seeking to gain an online presence with minimal or no coding at all.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *