Which platform to build website-from-scratch on

Question

I am novice coder and looking for the best place to 'build' my website online. I want to do it from scratch HTML/CSS/JS (using bootstrap), but am not sure what the next best steps are. Specifics about my question are here:

• It will be accepting payments, so will need solid security.
• It will have a client 'login' portal area for them to make adjustments to a couple forms they submit in purchase process.
• 5/6 pages, relatively simple, but will have forms and need to accept payments as only 'interactive' parts of website.

In short - do I build this on top of Wordpress, Shopify, etc - and if so which is best for a project like this? (Is that even possible to just throw a html/css doc on those?) And will that address the concerns above.

Apologies if this is a newbie question but I've scoured everywhere online and every 'build website from scratch' tutorial just tells you to use wix or squarespace, but I want to do it from scratch to get the practice. Thank you all!

Answer 1

Accepting payments and handling logins are both sensitive, easily bungled, tasks.

I have nothing specifically against Wordpress, but as far as I'm concerned, PHP needs to be put to sleep.

I suggest building as much of the site as you can in a Static format like Jekyll. SiteLeaf is an ok service for a static site, and it plays nicely with other tools you might use like GitHub Pages.

For the delicate/dynamic stuff, you would integrate with someone else's service client-side (in javascript). Exactly how to do that depends on all of the details of your project; Shopify might be a good solution.