WEBasONE Manifesto
What is WEBasONE?
WEBasONE is a vertically-integrated, continuously improving, scale-ready, product website platform. Currently, it goal is not a DIY platform.
A survey of 400 small businesses found that 27% want to do it by themselves and others want help.
WEBasOne as a Product Platform
Our primary goal is to provide a trained integrator who will be able to meet real-time online or face-to-face with clients to design an interactive custom website. With COVID-19, the future of website design will be online. WEBasONE is well-positioned to fill this need.
Horizontally-integrated platforms integrate popular technologies to attract developers and charge a service fee. Google Firebase and Microsoft Azure are examples of these types of platforms.
Vertically-integrated product website platforms integrate a selected stack of technology that create the best value for end customers.
“Good artists copy. Great artists steal.”
WEBasONE is a vertically integrated product platform by integrating/stealing existing and new technologies.
A software project is usually limited by the scope of problems that the creator envisions. This usually limits the lifespan of a project. As users give feedback on issues not previously seen by the creator, the project improves. Yet, this type of improvement is usually incremental.
Backward compatibility is the enemy of software improvement, but it is the lifeline of a project.
Since starting this project 16 years ago, I have gone through many iterations without the burden of backward compatibility.
I have selected a set of common full-stack core technologies: CSS, JS, PHP, Bootstrap 4, JQuery, VueJS, Yii2, Linux, and Apache/Nginx.
WEBasONE also integrated popular open sources tools: tinymce, svg-edit, imageMagick, and more. It is ideal for final assembly of image, svg.- Create, compose, transform, and add text to images
- Compress images, css
- Import svg icons to construct final svg
WEBasONE is a one state process. When using WEBasONE, the user has one role including designing, developing, and managing roles.
Website development can be a complicated process. It takes lots of iterations to finish. Two questions to ask is (1) How fast can you iterate? (2) To what extent you can iterate?
When create a MVP, how much codes can be reused afterward? With one state process, WEBasONE makes the process very efficient to create the final product.
You are welcome to do custom design by yourself. It does not have fancy drag and drop, but is very different from existing platforms in the market. Trying is believing.
WEBasONE platform is also a training platform. We provide instructional videos and documents. Users should be able to develop a general understanding of how to use the website after several hours.
WEBasONE Server Design and Scalability
The approach of WEBasONE is KISS – “keep it simple, stupid.” We use an entire Linux server.
Each website is stored entirely within a directory. This makes duplicate, backup or migrate to a different server just a simple directory copy.
There are several benefits of separating the managing server from the host server:
First, as much as possible, the pre-process of the website will occur on the managing server. Only the dynamic contents are processed on the host server. Most of the WEBasONE website is a simple PHP file. This makes WEBasONE a high-performance website that can easily share hosts. Even in the case of multi-language websites, each language page is a separate file.
For example, if a webpage contains multiple items (i.e. bio, slider, or shopping cart items), integrators can update the items to the managing server and store it in a file. When updating the website, the pre-process is listed in the form of a HTML, JavaScript, JSON, or PHP file. It can effectively serve hundreds of items easily. This would be sufficient for typical and high-performance websites.
Another key benefit of storing the entire website within a directory and separating the managing server from the host server is scalability. One key to scalability is the decoupling and isolation of components.
Scale-Ready Websites
There are two types of scaling: scaling by increasing server capacity or scaling by multiplying. WEBasONE scales by multiplying. When scaling by multiplying, the managing server can easily manage hundreds or thousands of average websites. For example, a VSP server with a dedicated 2 CPU/4G/80G costs $30 per month and can handle more than 250 websites. It will take minutes to set up a server by duplicating an existing server. It is also possible to set up a host server by duplicating an existing host server. The cost of a VSP host server starts from $5 per month. It would be very easy to upgrade the server to fit your needs. Also, shared hosting is easy, because most files are simple PHP files. This would reduce the cost even further.
Once we have one successful setup, we can duplicate it. This limits the amount of servers that the host company needs to provide.
Continuously Improving Websites
WEBasONE separates content from format as much as possible. Websites created by WEBasONE won’t become outdated because we make it possible to easily modify and update the following:
- color scheme or recompile the bootstrap 4 theme
- website design
- size of layout
- navigation style
WEBasONE is a continuously improving turnkey website.
As stated previously, each website is stored entirely within a directory. Its file storage structure is akin to that of an HTML document tree. To begin, integrators insert content into the root page nodes. Next, content is inserted to children pages nodes. When updating a website, the content inherence is used to construct final website PHP files. The children pages inherit the contents from nearest parents nodes to construct pages. Empty nodes will not be seen in the final website file. The initial HTML tree is huge, making it possible to cover all possible website layouts. However, the final website only shows the tags that have content. WEBasONE uses only one huge template to fit all cases.
During the process, WEBasONE always starts from a HTML tree and its final product is a website. To create a website, it will always go through the entire process to the extent that it is possible. This is a system that I envision WEBasONE to be.
Currently, we have more than 1400 design components. The components can be as simple as several lines of HTML to full-stack apps.
Adding a new HTML/CSS/JS or SVG design component is very easy. Once it is added, it can be shared with others who are managing servers. WEBasONE can be viewed as another kind of IDE.
WEBasONE websites can be duplicated or redeployed with one click. Also, they are continuously redesignable and improvable scale-ready websites. With these features, WEBasONE websites are productized websites and continuously improving turnkey websites.
A Case Study of a WEBasONE Website
Let’s say there is a small business owner who needs to build a custom website with an online membership subscription service and simple shopping cart to sell products. Using instant online chat, a trained WEBasONE integrator can create a custom live website with a client’s input and feedback. The prototype live website can be up in minutes. The client will then have the option to update or upload audio or video using customized shortcuts. To go live, simply register at stripe.com to obtain API keys. The cost is $5 per month. It is a fast SSD VPS host server that can be updated as needed. This is the reason WEBasONE can offer “See your website before you pay.”
Using a Top-Down Approach
At a macro-level, WEBasONE is also an IDE, not ideal for extensive coding development. Most IDEs use a bottom-up approach. For website projects, IDEs generally start from local file editing, debugging, and then adding code to do source control, remote files, local servers, and others. In contrast, WEBasONE uses a top-down approach. We start at the components level and then move to editing the components that include codes. Switching back and forth between components is easy, because users always see the final website by updating the website. As such, the iteration time during development is dramatically reduced. For example, if you add a new navigation style, the iteration cycle will start by disabling the original navigation output. Once you add a new navigation style component and customize it, you can update the website to instantly see the change. To switch back, just disable or delete the new component and re-enable the original.
For live websites, one click will allow you to duplicate and work on the duplicated version. The macro IDE can switch components easily. WEBasONE sees from a top-down perspective first, end-to-end next, and finally, handles at the code level.
Next Steps for WEBasONE
The next step for WEBasONE is to steal thousands of more open source designs or codes and add market proven web applications.
As stated earlier, one goal of WEBasONE is to do instant interactive design with a client. If integrators are not able to complete the design instantly, they can work to find a solution. Once they integrate the new solution (e.g., a design, an application, or process improvement) into WEBasONE, they will be able to design the website instantly next time. This will build our continuous improving or growing system.
Currently, WEBasONE is SuiteCRM-integrated. We will continue to find any open source designs that can help with the workflow from the business standpoint.
We aim to find existing market-proven website applications. It could be a content-based or full-stack application. Next, we will build and scale it using WEBasONE. This will provide an amazing value to end-users.
The WEBasONE business model looks for entrepreneurs to co-start website businesses. This is a win-win-win solution, providing the best value to end customers and entrepreneurs. Through collaboration, continuous improvement from WEBasONE and entrepreneurs will have a multiplying effect, because ultimately, WEBasONE at the macro-level is one company.
“Can existing website building platforms pivot to a hybrid model, or are up and coming startups more likely to leapfrog them by starting with company DNA that makes them strong at both product and services?”
“The holy grail of the platform company is to build an all-in-one website building platform that scales to support millions of businesses.”
From “Why hasn’t the web development market been platformized by DIY tools?”
By Dave Sloan
This is exactly what WEBasONE is designed for.
Looking for entrepreneurs to use WEBasONE to co start a business. Find a type of business website and use WEBasONE to productize it. Our goal is to have different business websites. WEBasONE is one and we are not to compete with each other, but to compensate each other.
As stated earlier, WEBasONE is a self learning platform. You are welcome to try out.