Vlad Magdalin

San Francisco, CA Co-founder / CEO @ Webflow Joined almost 9 years ago via an invitation from Bryant C. Vlad has invited William Wong

  • 9 stories
  • 33 comments
  • 80 upvotes
  • Posted to Turned my conference spreadsheet into a website: Fieldtrips.io - what do you think?, in reply to Mike A. , May 08, 2018

    Based on this tweet and this comment, I think it runs on Webflow's CMS ;)

    0 points
  • Posted to Ask DN: Anyone use Webflow for prod?, Sep 08, 2016

    Hey Adam, great question! This is Vlad from Webflow, and I just wanted to point you at just a few examples of our customers running production sites on Webflow:

    If you click on the Projects link in the Designer News footer, you'll land here -> http://projects.designernews.co/ - this was designed and built (and runs in production) on Webflow as well :)

    Also, we use Webflow exclusively for all of our own production sites and apps, which are heavily trafficked. Here are some examples:

    Happy to answer any follow-up questions, but just wanted you to know that Webflow takes a lot off your plate if you choose to really take advantage of the entire platform. We have a lot more on the way to help you take your projects to production, so stay tuned :)

    20 points
  • Posted to Ask DN : What's the closest Wordpress tool similar to Webflow?, Apr 25, 2016

    You might consider using a theme framework like Ultimatum to convert your Webflow designs into WordPress themes. Here's one series of tutorials that walks through the process: http://forum.webflow.com/t/tutorial-webflow-to-ultimatum-wordpress/1382

    1 point
  • Posted to The first grid.io sites have surfaced and they're kinda terrible, in reply to Aikomo Opemipo , Mar 09, 2016

    Yep, and it'll stay that way for a long, long time.

    I'll just leave this here: https://webflow.com/blog/designers-will-rule-the-web (scroll down to the "Design Can't Be Automated" heading)

    2 points
  • Posted to AMA: Vlad and Sergie Magdalin, co-founders of Webflow, in reply to Jaron Saturnino , Jan 13, 2016

    Thanks for the kind words, Jaron!

    What is our team missing if our web design knowledge is solely based in Webflow?

    There are a few things that Webflow still doesn’t have that are widely available if you’re writing code by hand in web design, but we’re actively working on adding them soon. For example, flexbox is a great new way to build layouts, but it’s hard to learn even for seasoned developers (I’ve been writing code for 15 years, and I still have to go look up CSS flex syntax all the time) - so we’ll be introducing a visual flexbox layout builder soon to get to parity with what’s available in CSS.

    Also, we haven’t yet released a way to create responsive websites in a mobile-first approach (where you create the phone design/content first, then work your way up progressively enhancing along the way), but we’ll be adding that option as well.

    There’s also a lot of flexibility you have if you’re using raw code or something like Wordpress plugins to extend beyond standard functionality and components, but rest assured that we’ll have a plugin ecosystem as well :)

    In short, if we do our job right, then the web design industry will undergo a similar transformation as the desktop publishing industry. People used to feel like they were missing out on “bleeding edge” publishing if they were using QuarkXPress because Quark didn’t support certain things that you could do manually on paper (or via custom PostScript code), but once the software matured enough - the entire industry switched over. These days, you won’t find many people doing print layouts manually (which used to be the norm) - everyone uses software like inDesign to get the job done.

    The other thing about Webflow is that we don’t reinvent the wheel - it’s just a layer above HTML/CSS/JavaScript that helps you work with those technologies. Adding a class in Webflow is directly equivalent to adding a “class” attribute in an HTML and adding a selector in a CSS file, so it’s not like we’re creating a proprietary output medium (ala Flash). It’s just a glorified DevTools or Web Inspector, with lots of sugar on top. And you’re learning the concepts behind how the web works (e.g. relative layout, the box model, etc) just by using Webflow.

    So if you’re already at 99% of what your clients need, you’re in a great spot. We’ll get to that other 1% soon enough!

    What should I encourage my team to learn beyond Webflow?

    Oh, so many things! E.g. I’m learning Spanish right now ;) Though I assume you mean in the sphere of web design, in which case I would say the most important thing is solving a problem for your clients - which might mean that you might have to learn some really bleeding edge CSS features (e.g. CSS filters) so that you can offer your clients a unique/fresh website experience. There are so many things to learn in web development though, that even I’m overwhelmed at where to start :\

    2 points
  • Posted to AMA: Vlad and Sergie Magdalin, co-founders of Webflow, in reply to Rafael M , Jan 13, 2016

    Thanks for the great questions, Rafael!

    But unless you start to dig in, you can’t see what’s better.

    Yeah, we need to do a better job of making it more clear that we’re way more than your run-of-the-mill template-based website builder. Webflow is more like an empowering technology that helps turn non-developers into frontend developers (in a smaller way now, but eventually more holistically) and that’s harder to explain then “hey, you can build websites with it!” :\

    How secure and solid is the hosting system of Webflow?

    Very solid, and I would wager that it’s significantly more secure than your typical cheap shared hosting provider because it’s fully managed by the Webflow team. We utilize state-of-the-art services like Amazon AWS and Fastly to make sure that sites are served quickly across the globe, and we’ve had many (many!) websites hit major traffic spikes via Reddit, TechCrunch, Hacker News, etc without as much as a hiccup.

    Why is there not a 24/7 phone customer services available?

    This is something we’re considering, but it’s really expensive to provide this level of service at our stage of the company unfortunately :\ We hope to be able to offer phone support at some point.

    How strong is the company? Are they funded by large ventures?

    Webflow was funded by YCombinator and several prominent investors in 2013, and we have since built a sustainable and nearly profitable business with most of the invested funds still being in the bank (effectively as insurance for a rainy day).

    The majority of startups end up blowing through their invested funds in the hopes that they can raise more and more with every year, but a lot of times that leads to unsustainable spending that forces a shutdown or sale of the company. We’re building Webflow to be around decades from now, because we’ve only built maybe 5% of what we ultimately envision creating for the web :)

    Is Webflow going to be around next year?

    Yes, we’re not going anywhere!

    I secretly wish Adobe or a large company would offer you guys lots of money and conquer new markets!

    Based on historical precedent, this is dangerous territory and might not have the effect you want. Almost every single company that has been acquired (especially by Adobe) ends up discontinuing or severely neglecting their product. For us, we want to stay independent so that we push our vision forward without a set of suits in a board room deciding our fate every quarter based on short-term metrics :\

    Great potential, but I am a little worried to use it as not knowing where the future will be.

    This is a totally valid concern, and as we keep improving Webflow and as the community keeps growing, this will become much less of a worry.

    2 points
  • Posted to AMA: Vlad and Sergie Magdalin, co-founders of Webflow, in reply to Koen Spaansen , Jan 13, 2016

    both

    1 point
  • Posted to AMA: Vlad and Sergie Magdalin, co-founders of Webflow, in reply to Eli Schiff , Jan 13, 2016

    Hey Eli, thanks for the question. Yes! We're considering adding a Markdown element (and corresponding CMS field) to live alongside our existing Rich Text element.

    0 points
  • Posted to AMA: Vlad and Sergie Magdalin, co-founders of Webflow, in reply to Sim Skrebe , Jan 13, 2016

    Hey Simonas, yeah we would absolutely consider it. We've already had two interns from Europe, so let's chat - can you send us more info (and ideally a portfolio) to vlad@ and sergie@ webflow.com? Thanks!

    0 points
  • Posted to AMA: Vlad and Sergie Magdalin, co-founders of Webflow, in reply to Tom Wood , Jan 13, 2016

    Hey Thomas, thanks for the kind words! There's a tiny peek at part of our office in this intro video on Skillshare - we're hoping to have more of our new office up on our website sometime soon.

    0 points
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