Current state of web development - where do I start?

Kaos-Industries — Mon, 06 May 2019 00:22:52 +0000

Hey there,

I learnt HTML, CSS and JS a few years ago with the intention of going freelance as a developer, and although I'm not there yet I still try and keep up to date with the industry via newsletters and the like, and the passion is still very much there.

I was recently approached by a local non-profit charity to create a website for them for free. The site needs to be developed before an upcoming event, which is in under a month, which means that learning whole new languages is out. The content will be largely basic - the most complicated it will get is probably hosting some videos and taking payment for donations, but it's highly important that the end product looks beautiful and modern.

I don't feel like I'm technically incapable of the task since I do a lot of both design work and command-line tinkering in my day-to-day - my problem is that with the current state of web dev being as breakneck and fragmented as it is, I'm simply overwhelmed as to where to start.

I know they need a CMS, but I don't know which one would give me the most amount of freedom whilst only requiring HTML, CSS and Javascript - does such a platform exist?
Do I need a front-end framework?
I've never actually taken a website live before, so where do I even start with the back-end?
Are there any other considerations I may need to take into mind?

I'd really appreciate being brought up to speed here and pointed in the right direction. Thank you so much in advance.

DEV Community: Kaos-Industries

Current state of web development - where do I start?