Wappler Ambassadors - tell us your story!

Thank you for sharing Paul! And for the compliments of course!

You have a great story! We will shorten it a bit for the website only - hope you don’t mind :slight_smile: - you always have the same problem with lengths :wink:

No problem at all. Lol. The story of my life. Haha

Wow, when does the full book come out, Paul? lol

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Mwahaha. I opened my wappler invite and the profile story I created already said. Long winded. You all knew what you were getting into. Haha.

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I think we can count this bit as @ben’s story:

Chad McComas Story

As the CEO of an agency, I’ve always had to ask myself how we can become more efficient, cut overhead, get new employees onboarded quickly, and keep pushing quality forward. Where web design & development is concerned, this has always been a thorn in my side.

To understand this, you should know that I’ve built over 2,000 websites since 1996. My clients have included micro-businesses, Inc. 500 corporations, and even the Fortune 500. In that time, I’ve used a vast number of web builders, written novels of PHP, HTML, and CSS, and spent a lot of time finding a way to meet all the goals we need as a company.

This has gotten easier as we move forward in time as there are more and more web builders popping up. There are many options available today and you would think I’d be happy about this, but I’m not. In truth, I find it all very frustrating.

For instance, at its core: WordPress is very simple and does a very specific thing. If you need anything above and beyond that though, you’re going to need plugins, themes, and theme-builders. On the surface, this sounds fine, but, it introduces a lot of inherent problems.

First off, there’s the issue of plugins and themes. Remember that every time WordPress is updated, the plugins and theme generally need to be updated too for security reasons. If the item is no longer maintained by the developer or the developer isn’t staying active with their cycle – this can seriously lead to your website not working, getting defaced, redirecting to phishing websites, spreading malware, or worse. And this is serious business because it seems that every time a system - that requires independently developed add-ons - is updated; It gets one step closer to failing.

Another issue is licensing. You can easily spend a small fortune on a website just getting all the plugins you need to do the job right. This is compounded by the fact that every plugin has a different licensing scheme, a seemingly arbitrary pricing model, and worse: Just because you bought a lifetime license doesn’t mean the plugin will continue to be maintained.

Let me step back for a moment and point something out here. Content-Management-Systems are extremely limited by nature. Consider that even robust theme builders like Visual Composer have a slew of additional plugins you can buy to add more functionality. In other words – plugins have plugins (and I’ve seen plugins of plugins have plugins too!).

These systems have a very limited scope of what they can do. To further prove this, consider that it is considered “best practice” to have plugins for standard things such as SEO, site speed, and security. To be clear: You need plugins to add standard functionality to these systems.

Don’t get me wrong; WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and other content-management-systems have their place. With a few minor exceptions, I just don’t think they are right for professional developers and designers.

That begs a question: What about online builders? There’s Wix, Weebly, Shopify, and a growing list of other online builders. How do these stack up? Well, the issue with these should be apparent. They are severely limited in what they can do, and sure, they have add-ons just like any CMS does, but you’ve already seen the problems that creates.

That leaves me with three more programs: Webflow, Pinegrow and Dreamweaver.

All three of these are the best option out there compared to everything I’ve mentioned thus far. Webflow and Pinegrow have a very streamlined interface that gives complete control over your CSS. In addition, Webflow allows you to create CMS items whereas Pinegrow allows users to design WordPress themes. Neither program allows truly dynamic content though. And as an aside – I really don’t like Webflow’s pricing model.

Dreamweaver, on the other hand, was headed in the right direction and then Adobe seemed to make some nonsensical decisions. First, they dropped a lot of important features from Dreamweaver and now, Adobe seems to have no real roadmap for web development in sight.

They tried Edge Reflow and Muse. Both seemed geared towards the same demographic as Pinegrow and Webflow, so it is a little curious that neither program became a serious investment of Adobe. Instead they dropped them rather quickly.

Their current offering outside of Dreamweaver is Spark Page. This seems to be an answer to the rise of the unqualified-expert. In other words, it seems that Adobe is trying to appeal to a mass audience with limited software rather than developing a superb program for a qualified audience. And as I said, their dropping major features from Dreamweaver and STILL not reinstating them is just a disaster.

That brings me to Wappler. Specifically, where does Wappler fit in this giant cobweb of builders and does it finally meet the call for a web building program that does everything well? The answer is yes, but let’s look at why this is a little deeper.

First, consider that a CMS is really just a CRUD application, right? You can create, read, update, and delete content with the added benefit of making it look pretty. As we become more and more reliant on the internet, we need the ability to innovate the way the web works – and dynamic content is where that is happening. Dynamic content is critical.

Wappler breaks out of the mold of these systems and allows the user full control over dynamic development. In fact, I cannot think of a single mainstream website that couldn’t be built with Wappler. This is incredible power to be had and the fact that it simplifies all this power is amazing.

Second you also have a very powerful CSS designer, as well as Framework 7 and Bootstrap 4. And none of this is limited or stripped down either. You are getting full-blown capability in Wappler to do what you want and to top it all off – you don’t need a single plugin to do it. In fact, let me put it this way: Every system or program I’ve ever used – I can do what that system specialized in with Wappler. And when I had to hand-code entire sites before because there wasn’t a solution available – I can do that also. This is fantastic and one thing I really love about Wappler is that it generates clean code that is not only secure, but that follows best practices as well.

Wappler also has a very fair licensing model, and more importantly, a very dedicated team that is active with their community daily. This last part is important because they listen to what their users say. If you want to see an addition put into Wappler or have a great suggestion, there is a strong likelihood that it will see the light of day.

What you should take away from this is that Wappler is a new program and already it can do significantly more than everything else out there. As I said, Wappler is also updated regularly with the intent of evolving rather than just bug fixes, and often these updates include user input.

If you want a program that can take your development to the next level - while cutting down on costs and improving efficiency – then Wappler is a great choice for you and your team to move forward. While there is a learning curve to the program, which should be expected, once you start to see how Wappler works, it will open an entire new world for you.

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Awesome Chad! You nailed it! The first two questions we always get on every exhibition we went with Wappler, from the new users were exactly:

  • How is Wappler different from Wix
  • How is Wappler different from WordPress

Now I can perfectly said - you answered those both completely! Even better than our selves :slight_smile:

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Well done Chad, brilliantly written. And maybe just as long as mine. Glad I am not alone in this world. Who else wants to join the long winded team.

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I’ll be doing mine in the next day or two. Too busy at the moment. But don’t expect anything near that length. lol

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Thank you George. Glad I could help. : )
Paul, you should see my love letters. The first woman to read a love letter I had written, I married. I couldn’t believe it.

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I think @Dave have a great user story as well! Hope he is up to speed with Wappler just as the powerful stuff he is done with the DMXzone extensions.

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My apologies for coming in late for the discussion, been rather busy trying to satisfy my customers.

@George, if you are happy with the story, please use it as my contribution. There is a whole lot more to be said, but we can keep that for a next edition.

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Wow thanks George. I’m hesitant to say we have not yet migrated to Wappler just yet. We do have a new Project coming up that will be solely developed with Wappler. I will endeavor to document the entire procedure from start to finish. Will begin with Database schema design, Security implementation, User management, Content management (CRUD), and Deployment to the server. Will try and feature some of the other tools we use such as Workbench, dbForge Studio, and some Server side tips and tricks for those that host their own developments (WHM, Cpanel, Apache, Modsecurity etc).

:slight_smile:

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Just paid for our Subscription :wink:

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Thank you again @psweb, @drymetal and @ben for your awesome stories!

Come on @brad, @TomD, @t11, @michele, @Hyperbytes, @pixlapps, @drymetal, @s.alpaslan, @jimatjude, @mrbdrm, @randyrie, @cavadini, @wld, @revjrblack, @paul, @terrytring, @brian, @oscreative, @turn3636

We need your story as well! Don’t be shy! :slight_smile: - share it with the world!

I’ll probably write something up this weekend. Won’t be near as long as the others. I’m just not that interesting to talk about. lol

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I’m not a native English speaker so i cant write a story but i will talk about my experience before wappler and after i used it for some time now.
i have been developing database driven websites for almost 10 years. my first program to use was Dreamweaver and as i remember it was able to get some simple CRUD website but as soon you want to go further then it become really time consuming and hard to manage and expansive. then i discovered DMX zone extensions and that made my life much better.

but still Dreamweaver was not that great to deal with. even with the extensions. so i left it and started looking for a better webapp builder.

i have tried so many programs and i eventually stopped using them. some where great but require you to sell your soul to afford it. some where too buggy to be used in anyway. and some didn’t offer any improvement over Dreamweaver.

i settled with a program for the last two years called AwareIM (1600$/y). and i developed a website and a mobile app using it. and although it was easy to use it lack the “flexibility” i need. it was a nightmare to do anything that it wasn’t build in it.

and here we are. i saw the kickstarter for wappler and waited (i wasn’t a believer :sweat_smile:)
wappler was promising too much functionality and almost free. it was too good to be true.

but as i used it more and more i just can’t believe how powerful this tool is. one of my biggest issue with wappler is that i keep redoing stuff. every time i have done a task i say to myself: i could do it even better!

surly as the program is still in the first year it need more polishing but it is powerful and usable.

the sky is the limit. there is tons of ways to accomplish the goal you have in mind. its more like drawing a painting now.

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Coming soon! Just a bit swamped with work in the week :grin:

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2 posts were split to a new topic: Tutorials requests

Ok. So I guess it’s my turn.

My name is Chris Turner, and I have been involved in building websites since around 1997. My first web development software was Netscape Composer, then quickly changed to Macromedia Dreamweaver when it first came out. Moved to Dreamweaver UltraDev when our agency clients started to ask for more “dynamic” web sites. I have used Dreamweaver almost exclusively since those days. Wow how things have changed since then.

I stayed with Dreamweaver throughout all their changes. I used Interakt and DMX when they started to enhance the capabilities of Dreamweaver. I’ve been a DMX customer since about 2004 I guess and have purchased over 100 extensions through the years. Thank goodness they really stepped up to the plate when Adobe acquired Macromedia and Dreamweaver started going “downhill”. Their extensions made development so much better and faster. When I learned that DMX was developing their own IDE and platform, I knew it would be a success. It just made sense for them to go in that direction.

So I will tell you what Wappler means to me. I co-own a software company that develops warehouse management systems. I built the first version of our platform in 2005 exclusively with Dreamweaver and DMX Extensions. Now, my full time job is running the company, talking to customers and overseeing our datacenter operations. I have a development team that codes in ASP.NET and they produce 90% of our code for our products. However, they are some parts of our product that I continue to code, and if it wasn’t for DMX with their extensions and Wappler, I would not be able to do it. Wappler, plain and simple, saves me time and that saves me money. It allows me to produce content for my customers in the limited amount of time I can devote to web development. I am able to start and finish jobs in days instead of weeks or months. The other advantage is this community forum right here. We’ve all visited other forums like Stack Exchange but here, we have a true user community where we can ask product specific questions. Where else can you openly communicate with the founder of the company and the support team and give ideas and suggestions… And they listen to you and act on your suggestions and ideas?

I could not have stayed in web development for this long without help from these guys. They make my job easier and faster, and my clients are happy. My team will continue to develop with ASP.NET and Visual Studio, but now with Wappler, I will continue to stay with George and his team for my smaller projects. Just yesterday I received this quote from my contact at a major US retailer:

“This is unbelievable! Even though I should come to expect this kind of work, it is always cool to see. Stacy loved it. Almost moved her to tears because we nailed it so quickly!”

That statement was made possible because of Wappler.

And that is my story…

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