Website Platforms You Can Start Without Code and Extend Later
Plenty of business websites start with one person, a template and a weekend. If the site works, the business grows, and the site has to do things the template never planned for: a custom quote calculator, a special discount rule, a connection to the company’s inventory system, a members area.
At that point, the platform matters more than the template. Some platforms let a developer add those features through official extension points, the same way the platform’s own features are built. Others leave only workarounds like pasted scripts and edited theme files, which tend to break on the next update. WordPress, Shopify, MediaWiki and Drupal are the clearest examples of the first group. This guide covers how each one works, where newer builders fit, and how to tell whether a platform will keep up as your needs grow.
Start without code, extend later: key facts
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Which platforms let non-technical owners start and developers extend natively? | WordPress, Shopify, MediaWiki and Drupal have mature, documented extension systems. Webflow and Wix have newer developer platforms. Squarespace and Ghost offer more limited paths. |
| What does “native” extension mean? | Custom features plug into points the platform defines (hooks, blocks, apps, modules) instead of changing the platform’s own code. |
| Why does it matter? | Native extensions are built to survive platform updates. Edits to core files or unsupported code can be overwritten or switched off. |
| How common is WordPress? | It runs 40.2% of all websites and 58.7% of sites with a known CMS, according to W3Techs. |
| What happened to custom Shopify checkouts built on checkout.liquid? | Shopify retired checkout.liquid in stages between August 2024 and August 2026. Checkouts that were not moved to checkout extensibility in time reverted to Shopify’s default checkout. |
| Is Drupal still used? | Yes, mostly by large organizations. It runs 0.9% of sites with a known CMS but 6.1% of the top 100,000 sites, per W3Techs. The United Nations, the European Commission and Nasdaq run Drupal. |
| Can you switch from DIY to developer-built later without starting over? | On platforms with native extension systems, usually yes. The developer adds to the site you already have. |
What is native extensibility?
Every platform in this guide has an easy starting layer: an editor, a theme and a library of add-ons. The difference is what sits underneath.
A platform with native extensibility publishes extension points. These are documented places where outside code is allowed to add or change behavior. WordPress calls them hooks. Shopify calls them app extensions and Functions. MediaWiki uses hooks and extensions. Drupal uses modules. A developer writes code against those points, packages it the way the platform expects, and the platform loads it alongside everything else.
The alternative is customization by workaround:
- Editing the platform’s own files directly
- Pasting scripts into a custom code box the platform does not support
- Embedding outside tools in iframes because there is no proper way to connect them
Workarounds are fine for small jobs. The trouble starts when the business depends on them. Platform updates can overwrite edited files, a script can conflict with a new feature, and the next developer has no clear record of what was changed or why.
WordPress puts the rule plainly in its Plugin Developer Handbook: “Don’t touch WordPress core.” It explains that “WordPress overwrites core files with each update. Any functionality you want to add or modify should be done using plugins.”
Website platform comparison: how each one extends
| Platform | How non-technical owners start | Native extension mechanism | What developers write | Hosting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | Block editor, themes, plugin directory | Plugins, hooks, custom blocks, themes | PHP, JavaScript (React for blocks) | Self-hosted or managed host |
| Shopify | Theme editor, App Store | Apps, theme app extensions, checkout extensions, Functions | Liquid, JavaScript, Rust or other languages compiled to WebAssembly | Shopify |
| MediaWiki | Wiki editing, templates | Extensions, hooks, Lua modules | PHP, Lua, wikitext templates | Self-hosted or wiki host |
| Webflow | Visual Designer, CMS | Webflow Apps (Designer extensions and Data API) | JavaScript, TypeScript | Webflow |
| Wix | Wix Editor or Wix Studio | Custom code with Wix’s JavaScript SDK, apps | JavaScript (frontend and Node.js backend) | Wix |
| Drupal | Drupal CMS with the Canvas visual builder, site templates | Modules, recipes, components | PHP, YAML, front-end components | Self-hosted or managed host |
| Squarespace | Templates, Fluid Engine | Code injection, Commerce APIs, webhooks | HTML, CSS, JavaScript | Squarespace |
| Ghost | Editor, themes | Integrations through APIs and webhooks, themes | Handlebars themes, external services | Ghost(Pro) or self-hosted |
Well-known sites on each platform
Each example was checked against the site’s live code at the time of writing. Large sites do change platforms, so treat this as a snapshot.
| Platform | Examples |
|---|---|
| WordPress | NASA, the White House, the U.S. State Department, TechCrunch, Rolling Stone |
| Shopify | Allbirds, Gymshark, SKIMS, Kylie Cosmetics, Glossier |
| MediaWiki | Wikipedia, Fandom’s wikis |
| Webflow | NCR, Lattice, Jasper |
| Drupal | The United Nations, UNICEF, the European Commission, Nasdaq, NBCUniversal, the U.S. Department of Energy |
| Ghost | 404 Media, Platformer |
WordPress: the largest extension ecosystem
W3Techs’ content management survey puts WordPress on 40.2% of all websites. The next closest, Shopify, is on 5.4%.
WordPress users range from one-person businesses to NASA, which publishes on WordPress, including its Artemis II mission photos.
Non-technical owners start with a theme and the block editor, then add features from the WordPress.org plugin directory, which lists more than 70,000 free plugins.
The developer path runs through hooks. In the Plugin Handbook’s words, hooks “are a way for one piece of code to interact/modify another piece of code at specific, pre-defined spots. They make up the foundation for how plugins and themes interact with WordPress Core.” There are two kinds:
- Actions run code at a specific moment, like when a post is saved or an order is placed.
- Filters take a piece of data, change it and pass it back, like adjusting a price or rewriting a title.
Developers can also build custom blocks, so a feature like a quote calculator or a product comparison shows up in the editor as a block the owner can place, configure and move like any other. The owner keeps using the editor they already know, and the new feature appears in it.
WordPress can also run headless, with WordPress managing content and a separate front end handling display through the REST API. That lets a site move to a custom front end later without retraining the people who write content. WordPress as a backend for modern web apps covers that setup in more detail, and the blog’s WordPress category collects the rest of our WordPress guides.
Shopify: apps and extensions instead of code edits
Shopify is the commerce counterpart to WordPress. Owners pick a theme, customize it in the theme editor and install apps.
For several years Shopify has moved custom work away from editing theme code and into structured extensions. Its theme app extension documentation says they “allow merchants to easily add dynamic elements to their themes without having to interact with Liquid templates or code,” and that apps built this way “don’t edit theme code, which decreases the risk of introducing breaking changes to the theme.”
For logic that runs during a purchase, Shopify offers Functions, which let developers “customize the backend logic that powers parts of Shopify,” such as custom delivery options, new discount types and cart validation. Functions can be written in “any language that can compile to WebAssembly (Wasm), although Rust is recommended and strongly preferred.”
A business does not need to publish an app to the Shopify App Store to use any of this. Shopify supports custom apps installed on a single store and built for one merchant’s needs.
What the end of checkout.liquid shows
Shopify Plus stores could once customize checkout by editing a file called checkout.liquid. Shopify’s changelog announced that those customizations “will no longer work for in-checkout pages starting August 13, 2024,” and warned that “checkouts that aren’t upgraded on time will be automatically upgraded to an un-customized, out-of-the-box Shopify Checkout.”
The rest followed in stages. Per Shopify’s developer documentation, checkout.liquid was sunset for the Thank you and Order status pages on August 28, 2025. Script tags on those pages were sunset for Plus stores on the same date and for non-Plus stores on August 26, 2026.
Stores that had built their checkout around direct code edits had to rebuild those customizations as checkout extensions or lose them. Stores that had used the extension system from the start had nothing to migrate.
MediaWiki: a ladder from templates to extensions
MediaWiki is the software that powers Wikipedia, and Fandom’s fan wikis run on it too. Organizations also run it for internal knowledge bases, product documentation and community wikis.
It is a less obvious example, because installing MediaWiki takes more technical skill than signing up for Shopify. Once a wiki exists, though, it follows the same pattern as the others, in unusually clear steps:
- Editing. Anyone who can edit a page can contribute.
- Templates. Power users build reusable templates in wikitext, like infoboxes and navigation boxes, without touching server code.
- Lua modules. The Scribunto extension, which has supported Lua since 2012, lets technical editors write scripts as wiki pages for logic that templates cannot handle.
- PHP extensions. Developers write full extensions that hook into MediaWiki itself.
At the extension level, MediaWiki’s hook system runs extension code “at the appropriate point in the main MediaWiki code,” for example at login or when an edit is saved. Extensions are registered in an extension.json file. MediaWiki’s extension developer guide also tells developers to leave core data alone: “Make sure the extension doesn’t modify the core database tables. Instead, extension should create new tables with foreign keys to the relevant MW tables.”
More than 1,500 extensions are catalogued on MediaWiki.org.
Webflow and Wix: hosted builders with developer platforms
Webflow and Wix started as visual builders and have since added real developer platforms.
Webflow Apps come in two forms. Data clients “sync data between Webflow and other platforms,” like connecting the CMS to an outside database or sending form submissions to a CRM. Designer extensions “run directly inside the Webflow Designer.” Apps can be published publicly or privately “to create custom solutions for your organization and select clients.”
Wix lets developers write frontend and backend JavaScript, with “a fully supported Node.js environment” for backend code, working either in the editor or with their own tools. Custom code on Wix was originally written with Velo APIs, and Wix now recommends its JavaScript SDK for most functionality.
Both are capable, with one trade-off. The platform hosts everything, so custom code runs within the limits it sets, and moving off the platform later means rebuilding. For many businesses that is a fair trade for not managing hosting.
Drupal: Drupal CMS and the Canvas page builder
Drupal is rare across the web as a whole but far more common among its biggest sites. W3Techs’ Drupal data shows it on 0.9% of sites with a known CMS overall, but 6.1% of the top 100,000 sites and 6.7% of the top 10,000. Its share of all websites has fallen from 2.0% in 2015 to 0.6% today, and what remains is concentrated among large sites, the kind run by governments, universities, nonprofits and big companies with complex content and permissions. The United Nations, UNICEF, the European Commission, Nasdaq, NBCUniversal and the U.S. Department of Energy all run Drupal.
Organizations like these tend to have developers on staff, and Drupal earned a reputation as a developer’s CMS. Drupal CMS is a packaged version of Drupal built for marketers and site owners.
Drupal CMS 2.0, released January 28, 2026, ships with Drupal Canvas, a visual page builder where users “drag components onto pages with live preview and real-time editing.” The announcement says there is “no Drupal knowledge required to get started.”
Under that layer, it is still Drupal. Developers extend it with modules, package configuration as recipes and build components that editors place in Canvas. For organizations with complex content, permissions or integration needs, that pairing of an easy start and a deep developer layer is the main reason to choose Drupal.
Where Squarespace and Ghost fit
Squarespace has a developer platform with Commerce APIs, webhooks and a documented spec for injecting custom code. For site features, custom work mostly means code injection, which is available on Core, Plus, Advanced and some legacy plans and is not supported on checkout pages. Squarespace is direct about the support boundary: “Our support team can’t help you add custom code to your site or troubleshoot issues that arise from using it.” That works for embeds and small tweaks, but it is a thin base for complex features.
Ghost is a publishing and newsletter platform, used by independent newsrooms like 404 Media and Platformer. Its integration options include embeds, sitewide code injection, no-code automation tools, theme code and, for developers, the Content and Admin APIs. Webhooks let outside services react to events like a new post. Custom features usually live in a separate service that talks to Ghost rather than inside Ghost itself.
Neither is a poor choice. Both fit best when you expect the site to stay close to what the platform does out of the box.
Why native extensions matter
Updates keep working. Extensions built on official extension points are designed to survive platform updates. Edited core files and unsupported scripts are not.
The owner keeps control. Good extensions show up in the tools the owner already uses: a block in the WordPress editor, an app block in the Shopify theme editor, a component in Drupal Canvas. Day-to-day editing does not require a developer.
Work can be handed off. A plugin, app or extension is a defined package with its own code. The next developer can find it, read it and maintain it. Scattered edits across theme files are much harder to pick up.
You build on what you have. The site that started as a weekend project does not need to be thrown out. New features are added to it.
Where AI coding tools fit
Many site owners now build the first version of a feature with an AI assistant like ChatGPT or Claude. Extension points help here too. A plugin, app or Shopify Function written with AI is still a separate package behind a documented interface, so a developer can review it on its own, test it and switch it off without breaking the rest of the site. AI-written edits spread through theme or core files are much harder to audit. Stable, well-documented platform APIs also leave AI tools less room for error, as covered in AI Code Generation Has a Version Problem.
How to choose a platform you won’t outgrow
Before committing to a platform, ask:
- Does it have a documented extension system, with official developer docs?
- Can custom features appear inside the editor the owner already uses?
- Can a developer build a private extension for one site without publishing it to a marketplace?
- Does it support outside integrations through APIs and webhooks?
- What happens to custom work on updates, and has the platform retired an extension method before?
- If you ever need to move, can you export your content and, ideally, your code?
A platform that answers these well lets you start alone and bring in a developer only when the site needs something new. If you are still at the start, free and low-cost ways to build a small business website covers the first step.
When to bring in a developer
Most site owners reach a point where the add-on library runs out. Common signs include paying for several plugins or apps that each do part of a job, moving data between the site and another system by spreadsheet, or turning down work because the site cannot handle a product, pricing or booking rule.
That is usually the right time for custom development, built the native way. Connor on the Web builds custom WordPress plugins and themes, interactive tools like instant estimate calculators and full custom web applications. The process and pricing are published, and you can get in touch to talk through what your site needs next.
