
Wix Code - dna_polymerase
https://www.wix.com/code/home
======
jszymborski
Man-oh-man did that take a while to load...

You can always tell you've landed on a wix site when you're faced with blank
screen for a while.

Edit: 10MB... this page is 10MB.
[https://i.imgur.com/uAoc05H.png](https://i.imgur.com/uAoc05H.png)

~~~
WhitneyLand
But who cares? I don’t think their users do, and Wix is growing.

Everyone here is disgusted by it because, it is in fact disgusting from the
perspective of a developer.

I spent a few hours with with wix earlier this year while needing help a
family quickly get a funeral site up they could hopefully have some chance of
maintaining themselves. Getting started is actually pretty slick. The designer
software is easy to use and gets a basic decent looking site up extremely
fast.

Towards the end of the few hours I was hitting roadblocks left and right.
Artificial limitations, edge cases not supported, things that could have been
fixed on a real site trivially.

Still, what they’ve built, what it in turn allows pretty nontechnical people
to build quickly, is impressive. I think it may have been possible to do
better on performance and flexibility without compromising for other users. My
guess is it’s not mostly because they are just not obsessing on that part
much.

~~~
flukus
> But who cares? I don’t think their users do, and Wix is growing.

Do Wix users even realize? If they're building their own website then they
probably have enough of the javascript cached that they don't realize the
performance issues.

For other end users though, they care, they just don't know what's wrong or
they can't articulate the problem. They think their computer is getting to
slow, or the networks bad, or they have a virus. They'll use vague terms like
that because they don't know there's 20MB of javascript running. If a wix site
is slow then they're more likely to blame MS or dell or their ISP than to
realize wix is the problem.

~~~
mercer
I've found that many users of Wix and (shitty) Wordpress themes don't care,
and are very happy to get a site for a fraction of the cost to get it made
'professionally' (or free, if they just do everything themselves).

I've also found that there's been a steady uptick in clients who are having
some success with/through their site, and who suddenly _do_ start caring, for
all the reason that we are all aware of (performance affecting SEO, bad mobile
experience, the 'visual page builder' not being able to do what they want,
etc.).

While it's not always fun work, I do think there's a huge market there for
'people like us'.

I'm not sure what a good analogy would be in other businesses, but perhaps
it's a bit like someone with a limited budget starting a cafe with IKEA
furniture, finding success, and now having both the need and (some) means to
actually buy furniture that can handle the demands of cafe use.

And that's not even considering the huge number of potential customers whose
Wordpress site got hacked and who need a solution _NOW_.

What I like most about this situation is that it's not even entirely bad.
Perhaps sometimes it _does_ make sense to start a bar with IKEA furniture
because the chance of success is so small. I honestly tell many potential
clients to not bother paying me for a good, fast site because all they really
need at this point is a decent-ish Wordpress theme or Wix/SquareSpace site.

EDIT: I'm not saying Wix specifically would be an option I would suggest to
clients. My experience with it hasn't been too good, and I'm sure there's
similar and better options.

------
eropple
Database: some proprietary key-value thing. No performance descriptions. API
documentation that looks written for people who are dimly familiar with APIs.
"Dynamic Pages": whatevery CMS-ish CRUD frontend. "User Input": forms that
dump data into that database. It doesn't get better from there.

This is even more of a lock-in trap than Wix (and its similar competitors,
like SquareSpace) usually is. These people want to _own_ you and whatever
you're making. Avoid.

~~~
ioquatix
When I see "tables" from a "database" in a web browser, I have a good laugh. I
know it's not that impressive but our smallest non-trivial "table" has 100,000
records and our largest over a billion. Good luck trying to use a web UI to
manage that. Parse was like this too - and they had a 1000-record limit in
their APIs. Good times.

~~~
flukus
It seems like just about every javascript table library I come across expects
the filtering, ordering and paging to be done client side after retrieving all
the data. The make for some nice looking demo's but then I have to explain to
management (or other devs sadly) why things are so slow.

------
eranation
On a side note... tried to use their beta sign-up page. Form looks very
pleasing to the eye, but, sorry to be that guy, it's all sorts of terrible.
What annoyed me first was that the tab structure of that form was all broken,
instead of going to the next field, it just went to a random field down the
road. It also was not responsive, it felt almost as if someone just dragged
and dropped it on a visual form designer or something, you see where I'm
getting at. I hope that form was not built with Wix Code. *

A quick look at the HTML confirms, all fields and labels seem to be positioned
absolute, each. Might be a good workaround for an MVP form builder, dragging
on a grid and using absolute positioning is the easiest way to develop a
visual form builder I guess... (although I think a tabindex property would
have solved the tab issue, and a simple algorithm sorting divs by top / left
would have been able to do it automatically, but this is just MVP).

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe nice HTML doesn't matter, maybe they can fix the tab
stop problem, maybe responsive forms are not important to most customers. But
everything I was taught is wrong in a web form exists in the form that asks me
to sign up for a beta to a tool that builds forms without coding.

Maybe this is the way to MVP... maybe that form was built by an intern. Maybe
accessibility is not important for a beta (or maybe I'm the only one pressing
tab when filling forms) but this just reeks bad web design practice all over
it.

*EDIT: Yep, I guess it was, at the bottom it says: "This Website Was Created with Wix Code". Maybe the genius idea was just to build a fixed grid, forget responsiveness, and solve 99% of the problems of a WYSIWYG editor. All in all they built an MVP and I'm just ranting on HN, so perhaps they are onto something...

~~~
jlg23
I once ported a site designed in wix to plain html/css for a friend. Advice
from the bottom of my heart: Wash your brain with soap after looking at the
markup wix generates. Sandblasting might also be an option.

~~~
dom0
Sandblasting doesn't actually work that well with soft, spongy materials.

~~~
fencepost
> Sandblasting doesn't actually work that well with soft, spongy materials.

Is the markup Mythos-level bad? If so, sandblasting might still be
appropriate.

------
stevenjohns
Wix is a terrible company filled with some of the most incompetent people.

Once I reported a notorious scammer who was using their platform to their
support team. I provided tons of information (including investigations from
the press) and explicitly told them not to pass on my details. That was
actually a precondition before I had revealed any information, and they
ensured me that they will not pass on my details.

What do they do? They treat it as a DMCA request and give the scammer every
single piece of information they had on me (which included my phone number). I
woke up to a voicemail on my phone from the scammer saying he's "going to find
you motherfuckers" and "kill all of y'all".

After asking why the hell they did that, they basically told me to piss off
and denied doing anything wrong.

~~~
Can_Not
Do you think wix would be legally liable for sharing your personal details to
a malicious actor?

------
suyash
Staying away from this service due to their horrible Terms and Conditions.
Read carefully before you sign yourself up for something you might regret
later on.

In short: All your code and IP belongs to WIX.

[https://www.wix.com/code/home/terms-and-
conditions](https://www.wix.com/code/home/terms-and-conditions)

\-- AS IS from their T&C ---

By participating in the Beta Stage, you hereby assign to Wix without any
additional consideration, all right, title and interest to your Feedback and
all proprietary rights therein, including, without limitation, all patents,
copyrights, trade secrets, mask works, trademarks, moral rights and other
intellectual property rights.

You acknowledge that Wix retains ownership of all right, title and interest to
the Wix Code, including without limitation, its design and documentation,
derivatives and versions thereof, and all intellectual property rights therein
and thereto (including without limitation, all patent rights, design rights,
copyrights and trade secret rights). If requested by Wix, you agree to execute
and deliver any documents, statement, instruments, recordings or filings
deemed necessary by Wix to protect and preserve its right, title and interest
in and to the Wix Code under applicable law.

\----

~~~
kevindong
"to your Feedback"

Pretty sure that just means that if you submit feedback, that feedback becomes
property of Wix [0]. From a laymen's interpretation of that paragraph, your
content remains your own.

\---

The second paragraph sounds pretty standard for a SasS company.

\---

[0]: They explicitly define 'Feedback' in their T&C as follows:

> In consideration of the non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable license
> to use the Wix Code granted to you by Wix subject to the terms hereof, you
> agree to serve as a “beta tester” of the Wix Code and to provide Wix with
> useful input on the Wix Code, including on any problems, bugs, failures,
> deficiencies and other challenges you may have encountered while using the
> Wix Code, and other input and ideas you may have on how to improve, enhance
> or upgrade the Wix Code, or any other feedback you may have and deem
> relevant (collectively “Feedback”).

------
__bjoernd
Unfortunate naming from a German perspective. 'Wixen' translates to 'wank/jerk
off' here...

~~~
Zekio
well luckily it is probably based on the surname Wix which is based off the
english word "Wicks"

~~~
tyingq
There doesn't appear to be much of a story behind the name.

 _" Back at the beach, the three brainstormed what to name their new company.
Staying true to their idea, they had two requirements for the name: they
wanted a three letter word that started with a “W” and something that was easy
to remember"_

[http://www.rewindandcapture.com/why-is-wix-called-
wix/](http://www.rewindandcapture.com/why-is-wix-called-wix/)

------
donohoe
I generally avoid Wix like the plague and that seems like a good reason.

One more reason: [https://ma.tt/2016/10/wix-and-the-
gpl/](https://ma.tt/2016/10/wix-and-the-gpl/)

------
SOLAR_FIELDS
Though this obviously isn’t the kind of thing that will appeal to the average
HN reader, Wix does appear to be having success in the realm. How many of us
have a friend or three that wants to bootstrap a small business but can’t
afford proper web design/dev skills and are smart enough to figure something
like this out? You might argue to them “learn how to code and do it properly”,
but there is a group of people that are a large subset of the above group of
which no matter how you try to educate will have some sort of allergy to
writing actual code. This product is for them.

Side anecdote, in college nearly 10 years ago I had an entrepreneurship
professor that singled out Wix as one to watch for a good success story. I
guess he was right on that bet.

~~~
coding-saints
I think the answer these days should be "hire a programmer". Never would I try
and do a profession I did not understand, especially if it had something to do
with profit/income. While WIX does have a nice community paying for their
WYSIWYG, I would advise anyone to pay an experienced developer to
create/maintain their site over doing it themselves.

~~~
Silhouette
_I think the answer these days should be "hire a programmer"._

The difficulty with that answer is that the market for web development is
becoming bimodal.

On the low end, you have the site builder tools: Wix, WP, Squarespace, and so
on. These days you have to include Facebook pages in there as well. You can
set up a basic online presence for next to no money with these, and in most
cases you can buy a reasonably professional-looking theme to make your site
look decent for not much more. Of course you're limited to common features and
have few opportunities for customisation, but does a web page announcing your
local church events really need any more?

On the high end, you have bespoke development. Someone like me, or no doubt
many others on HN, can build you a site that does more or less anything and
adopts whatever distinctive branding you need. However, we're going to charge
about as much for an hour or two of our time as the whole thing costs with one
of the site builder tools, and your final bill is going to have at least two
more zeroes on it to do roughly the same job and probably more if we're doing
anything that makes it worth using us in the first place.

There isn't much room in between any longer. The days of getting your
neighbour's kid's school friend to build your company web site for $500 are
gone. The site builder tools have commoditised the low end of the market, and
for that kind of money they'll probably offer better results, while no agency
nor even any established freelancer is likely to get out of bed for a gig that
small.

In short, hiring a professional doesn't really make sense for a lot of small
business or community web sites any more. Either you need something truly
unique and customised, in which case you need the time and money to match, or
you're probably better off just using a site builder if you don't have the
resources available to do it in-house.

------
jtchang
I know lots of SMBs that use Wix. It's a solid platform to get started but can
be kinda slow and hard to work with at times.

For some background they are an Israeli company and a few years back they
opened up a Wix Cafe space out near dogpatch area. It was totally free with a
focus around the Wix platform (kind of like how Amazon has AWS popup lofts).
It went away I think but the idea was pretty cool. Hell I didn't mind the free
space.

~~~
elsurudo
I'm sorry... can you explain that second paragraph? What is a Wix Cafe space
with a focus on the Wix platform? what are Amazon AWS popup lofts?

------
nickstefan12
If you're looking for a website builder that doesn't load megabytes of
JavaScript, lock you in to the platform forever, or feel like a Fischer price
toy, check out:

[https://www.brandcast.com](https://www.brandcast.com)

------
ertemplin
Wow, that has to be the worst website I've visited in a very long time. The
page was white for about 10 seconds, the videos were laggy/stuttering, the
moving content below the first video had random black artifacts popping up.

------
foota
"Home page was delayed by 14ms due to code" _crying emoji_

------
yoodenvranx
I feel kinda sorry for their German sales/advertising team that has to deal
with their own company name. "wix" sounds _very_ similar to "wichsen" which is
a vulgar term for "to masturbate. I don't think their service will ever be
popular over here because of that name.

When I saw the title "Wix code" my brain automatically translated it into
something similar to "jerk off code".

~~~
dna_polymerase
Well they actually try to use that as a marketing gag [0].

"Million people jerk off daily" "Jerking off changed my life."

[0]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AKDZmsy5yo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AKDZmsy5yo)

