WebAsOne
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WebAsOne Manifesto

WebAsOne is a vertically-integrated, continuously improving, scale-ready product website platform.

A survey of 400 small businesses found that 27% want to do it alone, and others want help.

WebAsOne as a Product Platform Our primary goal is to provide a trained webmaster who can meet in real-time online or face-to-face with clients to design an interactive custom website. Users can use the UI design website too. 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.

In WebAsOne's world, the website is asone. From one and expand to others - a top-down approach.

Most website builders in the market use a bottom-up approach. Focus on building a beautiful website because it appeals to end customers. Expanding more web apps is very difficult or needs to rewrite entirely. Usually, scale is not seriously considered at the beginning. With this approach, website builders can receive revenues first. There is nothing wrong with this approach, but there are many issues to encounter as the company grows. 

Why not have more customers as soon as possible? Investors or business people want to see the customer list. The more customer you have less you will be able to innovate. The cost of innovation will explode. 

Expand WebAsOne with current website builders' fancy design is totally doable without code rewrite. This is hard. WebAsOne is reaching a turning point now. WebAsOne is also scale-ready. Currently, there are 6 UI designs and 6 management servers. Because all servers are independent of each other, we duplicate to serve more.

Vertically-integrated product website platforms integrate a selected technology stack that creates the best value for end customers.

"Good artists copy. Great artists steal." WebAsOne is a vertically integrated product platform that integrates/steals existing and new technologies.

A software project is usually limited by the scope of problems that the creator envisions. This usually determines the lifespan of a project. The project can improve as users give feedback on issues or features not previously seen by the creator. 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 standard full-stack core technologies: CSS, JS, PHP, Bootstrap 4, JQuery, VueJS, Svelte, Yii2, Linux, and Apache/Nginx.

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 are
     (1) How fast can you iterate?
     (2) To what extent you can iterate? When creating an MVP, how many 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 designs by yourself. Visit one of the management websites to try it out.

WebAsOne Server Design and Scalability, The approach of WebAsOne, is KISS - "keep it simple, stupid." The complete website, asone-website, is stored entirely within a directory within the management server. The website in the hosting server is the output of asone-website. Other than that, some web apps need to be updated on the hosting server; all changes are made in asone-website and then updated to the website on the hosting server.

Asone-website is stored in a directory, which makes duplicates, backups, or migrates 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-processing 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 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), the user can update the items to the management server and store them in a file. The pre-process is listed as an HTML, JavaScript, JSON, or PHP file when updating the website. It can effectively serve hundreds of items quickly.

This would be sufficient for typical and high-performance websites. Another critical 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 copying an existing one. The cost of a VSP host server starts from $5 per month. It would be straightforward 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 number of servers that the host company needs to provide.

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, users insert content into the root page nodes. Next, content is inserted into children's page nodes. When updating a website, the content inherence is used to construct the final website PHP files. To construct pages, children's pages inherit the contents from the nearest parent nodes. Empty nodes will not be seen in the final website file. The initial HTML tree is vast, 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 an HTML tree, and its final product is a website. To create a website, you will always go through the entire process to the extent 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 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 and continuously improving turnkey websites.

A Case Study of a WebAsOne Website Let's say a small business owner needs to build a custom website with an online membership subscription service and a simple shopping cart to sell products. Using instant online chat, the users can create a custom live website. 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.

Using a Top-Down Approach At a macro-level, WebAsOne is also an integration IDE, not ideal for initial 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 edit 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, the iteration cycle will start by disabling the original navigation output to switch to a new navigation style. Once you add and customize a new navigation style component, you can instantly update the website to see the change. To switch back, 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 copied version. The macro IDE can switch components easily. WebAsOne sees from a top-down perspective first, end-to-end next, and 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 an instant interactive design with a client. If webmasters cannot 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 improvement or growing system. Currently, WebAsOne is SuiteCRM-integrated. We will continue to find open-source designs that can help with the workflow from a 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 fantastic value to end-users. The WebAsOne business model looks for entrepreneurs to co-start website businesses. This win-win solution provides the best value to end customers and entrepreneurs. Through collaboration, continuous improvement from WebAsOne and entrepreneurs will have a multiplying effect because ultimately,

"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.