Weebly

Place for questions and answers for all newcomers and new coders. This is a free for all forum, no question is too stupid and to noob.
Post Reply
User avatar
srachit
Posts: 291
Joined: Sat Jan 05, 2013 6:10 pm

Weebly

Post by srachit »

Hey!
I have a project that I need to work on and was hoping I could get some pointers on where I can start at it. So basically, I need to recreate weebly.
Could someone point me in the right direction (in terms of libraries or if its easier with plain JQuery/HTML5) to create something like weebly? A website which lets a user drag and drop elements like text/images etc and then edit that information.

Also out of the tons of requirements I have been given, I do not understand these two, so if someone could quickly explain to me or point me to an article that better explains them, it'd be very helpful!
1) Your project should be served via a webserver, not static files (from a local machine). You can use any language/webserver you want.
2)The first time a user authenticates, their information should be persisted in a datastore. In addition to their user information, they should be given a random auto-generated API Token.

What does persisted in a datastore mean? Does it just mean to save it in a database?

Thanks for anyone who can help out!
User avatar
Jackolantern
Posts: 10893
Joined: Wed Jul 01, 2009 11:00 pm

Re: Weebly

Post by Jackolantern »

#1 just means that it needs to be dynamic. Static pages don't really even need a server. They can just be placed in a directory with network access and they will be served. In practice, no one really does that anymore due to security issues, so even static pages are served through a web server.

#2 Yes, it just means add it to some kind of database or other kind of data store (such as a key-value store like Redis). Many web frameworks come with the ability to store user sessions in a database with a simple config option.

As far as the other question, I am not that familiar with Weebly, but after looking it up on Wikipedia, it appears to be a website that allows people to drag'n'drop websites together to build them. A decent and fast option would be to employ jQuery with a nice drag'n'drop plugin for the editor and allow the user to build-up a data file that will represent their final product. The page they are building would have to be emulated inside the editor, while the real page would only be created once you "compile" it by sending the data file to the server, where your server-side code would write the actual page to output to the user.

It could become a pretty huge project. Is this for a client, or a school project? If it is the latter, you need to find out how close of a remake they want. Because clearly a 100% remake isn't feasible as a school project. If it is for a client, you probably need to get a good idea of what features they want. A WYSIWYG web page editor could end up being a pretty big project.

Also, if it is for a client, you may want to look into a client-side Javascript framework, because a relatively decent clone of Weebly would likely get out of hand pretty fast in jQuery alone.
The indelible lord of tl;dr
User avatar
srachit
Posts: 291
Joined: Sat Jan 05, 2013 6:10 pm

Re: Weebly

Post by srachit »

Thanks a lot Jacko!
Post Reply

Return to “Beginner Help and Support”