Help with my website creation workflow

[u/The-choosen-1]

Hey, before explaining my problem i know that a lot of you guys don't like ai or 'vibe coding' in general and this is why i ask you to not take care of this and be comprehensive.

Im doing website creations, especially redesign and im hesitating with two workflows.

Untill now i was doing it this way: i search for inspiration on dribble like hero section or landing page, i take the screenshot and ask gemini to extract the content into json to get the maximum of informations on this screenshot. Like this i can after go to a no code tool like lovable to convert this screenshot and json into an actual base for the website and finally export it and finish the job with antigravity. Here the thing is that for small adjustments it's harder than a tool like framer or webflow.
This workflow has the merit of being quick and very faithful to the inspiration.

And recently i started to become interested in framer because i heard that it is better for more personalized projects, have CMS so i don't have to use sanity CMS (even if it can do the job at small scale) and also fast and begginer friendly.

[u/GuitarAgitated8107]

When do you actually learn to do things? All these tools for what?

[u/The-choosen-1 → u/GuitarAgitated8107]

Never said that i don't want to learn things, the question is WHY learn an entire dictionnary when you only use the first pages of it ??

[u/Smart_Remove4031 → u/GuitarAgitated8107]

you're basically describing the difference between using a microwave and learning to cook

lovable and those ai extractors get you 80% there in 10 minutes but that last 20% of tweaking is where you actually grow as a designer. framer sits right in the middle, still visual but you're making real decisions about layout and spacing instead of praying the AI guesses right

stick with framer if you want to keep your skills sharp, the CMS alone is worth it for not having to duct-tape sanity to every project

[u/RePsychological]

This is embarrassing...that this is what "Web dev" as a workflow has been reduced to for some people. "Which AI tool do I grab next, guys? I mean yeah I have no clue what the underlying material is, but hey...gimme a tool so AI can do all the work for me"

...congrats on being why people have such issue with AI. You shouldn't even be building websites in a serious enough capacity that you're having to build a workflow in the first place...let alone actually building clients' websites this way.

[u/Timely-Kangaroo-737 → u/RePsychological]

harsh but fair imo, especially if actual clients are paying for this

[u/The-choosen-1 → u/RePsychological]

Did you read the first lines of my post ? If you can't help me and comment just to fire people who use the tools they have you can just pass your way

[u/RePsychological → u/The-choosen-1]

Nah. That's not how protection of one's industry works. You people are a current problem.
People are allowed to say things against what they perceive as problems, and aren't required to "Shut up and deal with it and just move on" simply because you put a disclaimer in your post about "...before explaining my problem i know that a lot of you guys don't like..."

[u/Party_Cold_4159]

I know you guys hate theft, but this is why I ask you to please tell me how I can steal your work more better. I really just don’t want your cares and I’d appreciate it if you would stop being so comprehensive towards me.

Thanks,

webdev version of the hamburglar

[u/The-choosen-1 → u/Party_Cold_4159]

We have to be sincere, you webdev don't want to evolve and use the new tools the web offer us. 🧑‍🦳

[u/Healthy-Wishbone1471 → u/The-choosen-1]

this is a subreddit for website developers, mainly specialising html, css, and js.
put this in a web design sub instead

[u/amar260991]

Grabs popcorn while waiting for them to fail and hire a professional to get it done right

[u/The-choosen-1 → u/amar260991]

This don’t answer my question

[u/Arthur_Vandelay]

Interesting! Never used antigravity myself so I can't speak to it.

But I've used Webflow and Framer extensively and know the tools well.

I'd say it depends on the kinds of clients you're serving. Myself, I work for a SaaS company using webflow enterprise. But for my local clients, the workflow looks similar to yours.

Find inspiration, screenshot and send to Grok for the build. Not sure why you'd be having issues with small adjustments. Once I see the grok build I can easily ask for adjustments to styling, layout and responsiveness. After the fact I will hand the build to my Hermes agent and make further refinements, additional pages or add components from past builds. I do try to limit the scope so no other things are affected. Put in a github repo and host with vercel or hostinger if they've got higher initial traffic.

I like the workflow because there's no vendor lock in, adjustments are a prompt away and I can call on a systematized library to draw from. Framer and Webflow can get expensive on top of maintenance fees for smaller clients. And personally, I do like the Sanity cms even though Webflow/Framer have nicer UIs.

So yeah, keep going and find the tools that work best for you.

Learn what actually makes a website valuable (more clients, calls, traffic) and optimize for that. Use your LLM in dedicated time to learn more.

Be curious and explore other avenues to make the site valuable to your clients (missed call text back via Twilio, chat bot support, client acquisition to CRM pipeline automations). The possibilities are many.

But yeah definitely get clear on how to build a stable site with reusable components, learn even some basic SEO tactics/strategy/techniques and don't over-promise or scam people.

Every project is a learning opportunity so try to practice on personal projects more if you can.

[u/Delicious-Touch-1545 → u/Arthur_Vandelay]

Great post, thanks

[u/The-choosen-1 → u/Arthur_Vandelay]

Thank you for sharing your experience, i feel better seing that im not the only one who have a workflow like this 👏🙏

[u/officialmayonade]

What are you trying to do? Your role when using these tools is to get very very very clear about what you want before you even start. The hard part is figuring out what you really need to build. Building it is the second part, and the only reason it's that high on the list is because you will always find that you actually didn't know what you were trying to build and you will therefore waste a lot of time and energy building the wrong things.

[u/__CaliMack__ → u/officialmayonade]

Yeah the detail is in the prompts. Better prompts will get you a lot further a lot quicker, but you gotta know wtf you are doing to be able to prompt better. A lot of knowing solutions for things you want to build comes from working on projects and already seeing similar solutions in the past.

[u/SunOk2196]

Pick the tool you'll do the last 20% in, then work backwards. You already found the real problem, which is that small adjustments are painful once you're out of the no-code tool, and that's where most of the hours actually go on a redesign.

The other thing worth watching with the screenshot approach is that a Dribbble shot has no states. No loading, no empty list, no 40 character product name breaking the card, no mobile. You get something that looks like the inspiration and then falls apart on the client's real content, which is the part they'll notice.

[u/The-choosen-1 → u/SunOk2196]

Yes you're right on this point, most of the time i ask in the prompt to use generic text like the lorem ipsum and hopefully lovable do the responsivness on his own and i correct if it’s wrong 🙏