Would you use Vue + Quasar to build a Marketing site?
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Well my friend, everything you said, is what has been going on in my head. Discussing it here has certainly helped to clear my head.
Here are my recent findings:
Wix - for developers has a new editor called Editor X (in Beta). Which allows you to build sophisticated UI fully visually, than coding HTML & CSS.
For developers, they also allow you to write JS code and access outside REST APIs, build collections and use it in your UI. You can even do full CRUD with backend. So they give you “some” components for that.
Unfortunately, since Wix backend system servers millions of users on virtual machines, Wix overall experience IS VERY SLOW, especially on Mobile. This is a huge turn off to consumers going to your Marketing app where the marketing app also provide live data from REST service.
Their tooling and Dev framework is nice, but they’re over utilized.WebFlow - A much more advanced platform to build UI, CMS and eCommerce. You get a great editor, API access, Live CMS from DB or your REST service.
The issue is, it has a steep learning curve. It’s great for those who want to become “WebFlow” masters and freelancer. Webflow is perfect for those group.
In my case, I’m a software engineer who builds backend & frontend systems as a full solution. And sometimes the marketing CMS that is not fully static. For example my new project, the marketing site needs to fetch live data to show to prospects who visit the marketing site. IT IS THE DATA that attracts the prospects, not static content.
This post was mainly to address this case, where marketing site is like half marketing and half app.And that brings us to your last point, which was my original question. How about building a hybrid marketing/application system using Vue and Quasar. Vue & Quasar, provide all the components we need to build such system. Logically makes sense. But is there something out there that is faster to build? To me Wix & Webflow would derail my main path of building LoB solutions. I’m not a freelancer to website designer.
A very good example of such Hybrid system is amazon.com. If you study it carefully, you see how they blend marking info with live data from their Ecom. where you learn about products and shop at the same time.
My projects needs consumers to go to the site, to experience a “Marketing site” and if they’re logged in, they get a lot of “Application” features.My latest thought is merge my App with Marketing all built with Quasar, using Lazy loading to differ loading when needed. This is my ultimate desire.
Thanks for reading…
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@qyloxe
I’m interested in why you rate this:4- live data - option 2 - the data are refreshed after user action (filter, select, click on chart) UMD - 3 SSR - 2 SPA - 5For an SSR site, doesn’t Vue take over after the initial load of the page from the server side?
Eg. after the initial load an SSR page becomes the exact same thing as the SPA.Therefore I would rate this category the same for SPA and SSR…
Or do you disagree?
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I agree with your point. I was thinking of the same. The initial load of static content would take longer, but if I underestand it correctly, for live data should be the same as SPA.
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@mesqueeb said in Would you use Vue + Quasar to build a Marketing site?:
@qyloxe
I’m interested in why you rate this:4- live data - option 2 - the data are refreshed after user action (filter, select, click on chart) UMD - 3 SSR - 2 SPA - 5For an SSR site, doesn’t Vue take over after the initial load of the page from the server side?
Eg. after the initial load an SSR page becomes the exact same thing as the SPA.Therefore I would rate this category the same for SPA and SSR…
Or do you disagree?
option 2 - with SSR you have to reload pages because there is seldom a need to just watch on one q-table
so with every page you will need to download whole dataset, there is non trivial reverse proxy confguration in terms of cache etc., in result your backend/API will be much more complicated and tied to your production solution.With SPA you can have many data categories kept locally (In memory), you can denormalize them with vuex-orm, you can refresh, reload only single records or data changes or new data after user action, you have access to more client oriented data libraries - even GraphQl or pouchDB or anythin, you have very trivial reverse proxy configuration and production server, you have simpler rules for access control because basically you just need to authorize simple endpoints of API calls and there are also more technologies to choose - oauth, jwt, own tokens etc.
Please remember - this is my observation in the specific context of OP question - I can easily think of different situations where I’m totally wrong ha ha
Anyway, Quasar is great because you just have those options. It is amazing, that even if you choose one option, changing your business in the future to the other will not be a total nightmare (ok, should not).
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I think @mesqueeb is right. You shouldn’t have to reload a SSR page. Any data could be changed reactively and you won’t need to rerender or reload the page.
@Ben-Hayat
I think using Quasar with a proper backend is definitely a good option, but probably a lot of work for a single developer. The ‘best’ way would be to collaborate with other developers needing the same functionalities and create an OS project.
For example, I’d guess that a CMS built with Quasar is something a lot of people could use, but someone has to do the heavy lifting to set something up.
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@stefanvh said in Would you use Vue + Quasar to build a Marketing site?:
I think using Quasar with a proper backend is definitely a good option, but probably a lot of work for a single developer. The ‘best’ way would be to collaborate with other developers needing the same functionalities and create an OS project.
For example, I’d guess that a CMS built with Quasar is something a lot of people could use, but someone has to do the heavy lifting to set something up.The CMS, is only a byproduct of the main app and is not my main app or I should say bread & butter. So it would distract me to spend more time that I need.
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I get that, it was just an example of functionality which I had been looking for but could not find for Quasar. In your case, I cannot imagine that you are the only person on this planet that needs the marketing functionality. So the challenge is finding the right people to set something up. If you intend to learn a new skill or language in order to create this new marketing app, using an open source framework (Vue) seems better to me personally than a vendor locked solution (Webflow). I’m also sceptical about visual editors as things might look great once rendered, but the actual code can be a mess. Personally I like the simplicity of Vue and knowing exactly what it does.
For your application I think the main concern is how you would implement the backend logic. Quasar and Vue will pretty much work out of the box if used correctly. A database, multi-tenancy, ACL, backups, API etc is much more complicated to implement. The ‘easy’ solution would be to use a framework (e.g. Laravel), but my experience is that you always run into something that you need to do a bit different than is supported. And ‘hacking’ the functionality into the framework usually causes more problems than it solves.
As qyloxe said, ideally you should know exactly what you want to implement and how you want to implement it before choosing a tool to use. This in my opinion is the main challenge.
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You’re right and that’s why I’m looking at all the parts that would make up the solution.
So the past two days, I created a comparison sheet doing my project in .Net + Vue, vs. Firebase (as a full service) + Vue.
This has helped a lot to see what’s in-front of me, what I have to do on my own and what the platform offers out of the box to get the solution up and running.I saw a fairly large and advanced commercial app written in Vue (they wrote all their own UI components) and when I asked them how they get the app to load so fast and everything snappy, they said they use lazy loading to break down the app to modules that users need.
And that has been my direction too. A small module that just loads the core of the app first, to see if user is logged in or not. If not, then the marketing module gets loaded. If yes, the basic consumer module gets loaded. From there, if user needs Admin features, Admin module will get loaded.
So, doing so, I can incorporate a mini CMS feature set right into this app, and not using Webflow or Wix or anything else. Just Vue + Quasar.
I can’t load PDF file, but here is a screen shot of some of the items from comparison sheet.
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Seems to look good to me. I have no experience with Firebase myself but I think it’s a common solution with Vue so it looks like you are on the right track. Perhaps you should resort to Discord if you have any specific questions regarding backend, Firebase etc.
Good luck with your project :).
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@stefanvh
Thanks;I did some monthly pricing estimations last night and wasn’t so bad.
Firebase from ground up was designed to be a complete backend APP solution for development & deployment. So Vue style or Flutter style apps fits perfectly into package.
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@Ben-Hayat said in Would you use Vue + Quasar to build a Marketing site?:
I did some monthly pricing estimations last night and wasn’t so bad.
Firebase from ground up was designed to be a complete backend APP solution for development & deployment. So Vue style or Flutter style apps fits perfectly into package.i wonder how much of your excellent work is similar to problems of other developers, who didn’t even heard about Quasar? Maybe it is another “marketing” haha oportunity, to tell people, who are attracted to Firebase, that there is some ingenious solution called “Quasar”? Maybe even a bigger support for Firebase in Quasar could bring those people here?
I do not work with Firebase, I’m rather “dedicated server farm” guy, but such solutions where much of development is already opinionated as in Firebase are quite alluring.
So, my (open) question is - if there are more people who need to decide similar as you, how can we bring them to Quasar (in the context of Firebase)?
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I like the way you think and see things out-of-the-box.
Yesterday, Scott & I were making comments on FB JS group (almost at the same time, saying the same thing), and I compared Quasar, like a car that can drive on the road, can float and swim in the water and cal fly as well, yet still looks like a nice car. But but people don’t appreciate that with one car, they got a boat and a plane.I approached Firebase two years ago, and because I really didn’t need it, I didn’t appreciate how much it offers, until I did all that work myself in .Net to realize, it’s already done, called “Firebase”.
People go build their own UI components or resort to something quick & dirty to get some work done then they need to do SSR, or Desktop or PWA or native. And that’s when the light goes off in their head, oh “Quasar”, does all that for me out-of-the-box.
Quasar is appreciated by senior developers. Most juniors like something quick and flashy. But time will teach them what’s best.
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@Ben-Hayat said in Would you use Vue + Quasar to build a Marketing site?:
and I compared Quasar, like a car that can drive on the road, can float and swim in the water and cal fly as well, yet still looks like a nice car.
ha ha nice one - Quasar is an UFO
It looks as there are needed already cooked and polished complete examples for integration of Quasar with Firebase capabilities. The whole templates, where one could just download/clone them, and there is a complete app where one just needs to put their own CONFIGURATION instead of CODE.
That would bring my attention at least. haha Why? Because some developers (many) are just afraid of a vendor lock with solutions like Firebase and this fear is multiplied by the need of time investment for learning new technology and even more multiplied by the fear of bad business decision. If one could have a 90% complete app template, then the business side of this decision could probably weight more.
This is another $0.02 that Quasar just needs a marketplace for templates, solutions or integrations not only for just a simple components. Imagine, that you could have such an example of app integration with Firebase and it will be maintained from both ends - kept up with Firebase goodies and kept up with ever changing influx (which is awesome) of Quasar versions. This is a whole new market for intermediate developers who like Quasar and Firebase but do not need to build a specific apps/solutions for specific customers. Oh sweet dreams…
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@qyloxe said in Would you use Vue + Quasar to build a Marketing site?:
This is another $0.02 that Quasar just needs a marketplace for templates, solutions or integrations not only for just a simple components. Imagine, that you could have such an example of app integration with Firebase and it will be maintained from both ends - kept up with Firebase goodies and kept up with ever changing influx (which is awesome) of Quasar versions. This is a whole new market for intermediate developers who like Quasar and Firebase but do not need to build a specific apps/solutions for specific customers. Oh sweet dreams…
In my [many] years of being a software developer, I’ve seen this happens as a product comes to market and it’s a good product. Then as it gets more and more traction, then you see a new bread of developers jump in and build infrastructure solutions (like pre made homes to put together as you wish) and people buy these pre made solutions and take off with it.
Look at Salesforce or some of these EComms and etc.
The hardest part for the vendors is to support these products, as others take them to different directions where things could go wrong and blame it on original foundations.But, both Firebase & Quasar both went GA in 2019, so I say, the night is still early…
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I have been working on a templating solution in the form of an app extension for Quasar. Currently I’m stuck on how to integrate dynamic content. Unfortunately, there is no standard for the communication with the backend. I’ve been using json-api but that does not cover authentication for example.
I’m wondering what your thoughts are on what is the most convenient way to implement this @Ben-Hayat @qyloxe .
For example, if Firebase provides authentication, how do you login (which routes, payload, responses) with Quasar? Any standards you use?
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@stefanvh said in Would you use Vue + Quasar to build a Marketing site?:
I have been working on a templating solution in the form of an app extension for Quasar. Currently I’m stuck on how to integrate dynamic content. Unfortunately, there is no standard for the communication with the backend. I’ve been using json-api but that does not cover authentication for example.
I’m wondering what your thoughts are on what is the most convenient way to implement this @Ben-Hayat @qyloxe .
For example, if Firebase provides authentication, how do you login (which routes, payload, responses) with Quasar? Any standards you use?This is a too broad question. “Dynamic content” could mean anything, “integrate” is almost a meme word, the “authentication” you write probably means “authorisation”, “convenient” is not a synonym for “secure”. Please just write what are your constraints, what is your expected outcome in specific context, then it would have sense to write anything. Any of us could come with different solutions which could be “convenient” “integrated” and any of buzz words, but without context they all would be wrong. There’s a little learning in this.
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I might power it with ButterCMS (https://buttercms.com - uses Vue too!) and use quasar components for the front end.
It might look a bit too app-like, though - if you know what I mean.
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@walfin said in Would you use Vue + Quasar to build a Marketing site?:
I might power it with ButterCMS (https://buttercms.com - uses Vue too!) and use quasar components for the front end.
It might look a bit too app-like, though - if you know what I mean.
That’s a bit expensive.
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@Ben-Hayat You’ve got me interested in rebuilding my company website using quasar. I’m looking at new Vue based CMSes now.
https://pagekit.com looks interesting too. Vue based so I can probably create a theme that uses Quasar. PHP so it’ll work on my shared hosting. And open source so not expensive.
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@qyloxe said in Would you use Vue + Quasar to build a Marketing site?:
@stefanvh said in Would you use Vue + Quasar to build a Marketing site?:
I have been working on a templating solution in the form of an app extension for Quasar. Currently I’m stuck on how to integrate dynamic content. Unfortunately, there is no standard for the communication with the backend. I’ve been using json-api but that does not cover authentication for example.
I’m wondering what your thoughts are on what is the most convenient way to implement this @Ben-Hayat @qyloxe .
For example, if Firebase provides authentication, how do you login (which routes, payload, responses) with Quasar? Any standards you use?This is a too broad question. “Dynamic content” could mean anything, “integrate” is almost a meme word, the “authentication” you write probably means “authorisation”, “convenient” is not a synonym for “secure”. Please just write what are your constraints, what is your expected outcome in specific context, then it would have sense to write anything. Any of us could come with different solutions which could be “convenient” “integrated” and any of buzz words, but without context they all would be wrong. There’s a little learning in this.
This post exactly describes the problem. There are a billion ways to implement it, but it is not feasible for a templating system to support a billion different methods. I have a working solution myself, but I’m curious how other people approach the same problem and if there maybe is a common solution that would suit most people.
I meant authentication. Authorization happens using HTTP headers, which fortunately is a pretty standard solution but can also be implemented in a bunch of different ways.
So, for example simple blog functionality. There needs to be a way to authenticate the user with an username and password. The authentication returns an authorization token. With the authorization token the user should be able to create a blog post (e.g. POST /posts). Unauthenticated people should be able to retrieve this post (e.g. GET /posts or /posts/1). This post is prefetched in Quasar and then displayed in a QCard for example. JSON-API covers creating and fetching resources (the posts), but authentication and even authorization can be performed in a billion different ways. Personally I am using PASETO tokens and /login and /register routes with simply {username, password} as payload with the appropriate HTTP status codes as response. But there are a lot of other ways (http://www.passportjs.org/packages/).
For a templating system there needs to be some kind of communication standard between the frontend and backend if you want dynamic content (dynamic as in you don’t have to rebuild your app).
@Ben-Hayat I don’t want to hijack your topic so let me know if I have to move this discussion somewhere else.
