For Noah Lovell, a moment of global crisis became an opportunity to set out on his own as a web developer. In early 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced millions into lockdown, Lovell made the decision to return to web development—something he’d loved since his early teenage years, but hadn’t considered pursuing as a full-time job.
After finishing college in 2021, where he studied graphic communication, theater, and English literature, Lovell wasn’t sure what he wanted to do for work, and as the pandemic continued to bring everyone’s plans into question, he decided to take a leap of faith and finally pursue his hobby as a career.
“I was like, ‘I need something to do. I’ve got all this spare time on my hands,’” he tells me in an interview. “I didn't want to get a job, so I was like, ‘Let's turn this into a career.’ I've been building for about four years, but professionally for the last year and solidly for the last two years.”
Lovell first used Wix as a teenager and returned to the platform for the flexibility it provided him. The elegant simplicity of Editor X and the classic Wix Editor gave him the freedom to express his ideas visually, without the limitations of other website builders. Lovell could iterate quickly, building prototypes at the speed of his enthusiasm, and with Velo, Wix’s platform for full-stack web development, his knowledge of JavaScript could grow and develop alongside the increasingly complex features he was building out for his clients.
“I was kind of thrown in the deep end. I had been in contact with a few other developers, so I messaged them and asked, ‘How do I do this?’” he says. With help from free online resources—namely the Velo forum, Discord, and various channels on YouTube—Lovell was able to move beyond writing simple “Hello World!” messages in the JavaScript console and deliver beautiful, feature-rich websites that regularly exceed his clients’ expectations. And while there are certainly limits to every developer’s knowledge of the tools that they work with, these resources have given Lovell the confidence to take on larger projects that challenge his skillset as a programmer.
“Wix makes it incredibly easy,” he says. “There's no having to set up your own server. All of that is done for you and you just have to write the code. Once you've learned the basics, it's super simple to expand on that.”
We caught up with Lovell to discuss his journey from hobbyist to full-time web developer and how Wix and Velo have allowed him to grow his JavaScript skillset, providing even more value to his clients.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q&A with Noah Lovell, Freelance Web Developer at NoahLovell.design
Q: How long have you been building websites? What’s your background? And what was the impetus to get started with web development? What was the first site that you made?
A: I've always had a passion for technology. I just love getting my hands stuck in tech. I think about four years ago, I was looking at how to build a free website and came across Wix. I played around with it and found it interesting. I was maybe 14 or 15 at the time.
And then at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, I started college and started building websites. I was like, “I need something to do. I’ve got all this spare time on my hands.” I didn't want to get a job. So I was like, “Let's turn this into a career.” I've been building for about four years, but professionally for the last year and solidly for the last two years.
Q: Did you start with Wix and Velo from the beginning? What was the process like with the earliest sites you were making?
A: I initially started with Weebly, but it was just limited in terms of what I could do. It's much more structured. You don't have the freedom of moving things around on a page. When I discovered Wix, I thought, “This is pretty awesome.” I was just doing things that 14 year olds do, like, “Let's build a little website about me.” It never got launched or anything. It was more for the fun of it at the time.
Q: What were some of the first clients that you were doing? And what kind of sites were you building for them?
A: So when I started professionally last year, my first client was a preschool that rents the building of the church that I attend. I was at the end of my time at school and I was like, “I see you've got a Wix website, it's not great. Do you want me to do something with it?” And they were like, “Sure!”
Shortly afterwards, the church that I attend had a subscription for the platform they were using that was coming to an end. I was like, “I can build this for much cheaper and it's gonna look better.” That was my second client, and we transitioned the site [onto Wix]. Within about a month we went from one platform to another completely, building a new site from the ground up.
Q: So you're building those sites from Wix? When did you first encounter issues that required you to learn Velo and learn JavaScript?
A: Interestingly, I was approached by a client about an SEO audit. They were incredibly pleased with the service that I had offered and were looking for someone to add a new feature to their site. This feature would bring up a text box when the user moves their mouse over an image and close the text box when the user’s mouse moves away from the image.
They asked, “Do you know how to do that?” I was like, “Yeah, I can do that.” We jumped in a discovery call, where they started listing all of the things that they were after. They wanted to rebuild this form and needed this [specific] functionality. They wanted this interactive map that brings up information about the location of different sites.
I was kind of thrown in the deep end. I had been in contact with a few other developers, so I messaged them and asked, “How do I do this?” I also read loads of articles. My journey with Velo was to be chucked straight in the deep end.
Q: You had no programming experience beforehand, right? JavaScript is your first programming language?
A: I had written maybe five or six lines in it in school, to print “Hello World!” on a HTML [webpage]. But this was the first first project.
Q: That's super cool. So you were using the forum? What other resources were you using to learn?
A: The Velo forum that was the first place, and then I was just on YouTube researching how to do this. Now subscribed to maybe 10 different channels that specifically do Velo-related stuff. That's where I learned a lot of the basics of it and it's just grown from there. Once you begin to understand the basics, it's easier to build upon that. And then obviously, the Discord.
Q: I know that you're also part of the Editor X Community Leader Program. Is there any overlap there with using Editor X and Velo, and with the classic Wix Editor and Velo?
A: The thing that's great about the Wix Editor and Editor X is that they both use the same foundations. You don't need to learn a completely new language, it's Velo. And once you've learned it, you can put it into both sides. There's a power and responsiveness with Editor X. And a depth that you can get with Velo. The custom stuff that you can add when they're put together, it's just a behemoth. It's absolutely powerful.
Q: I was looking through your portfolio and wanted to ask about some of the sites that you've worked on. You worked on a site for Agritourism.life. What was the extent of your involvement with that site in terms of the scope? Were you using any Velo APIs there?
A: Interestingly, they were the client I was talking about earlier. They were my first client [as an independent developer]. I had done some white label stuff with another agency, but that was my first big project on my own where I had complete control of the process.
The site was built in-house by them; they just needed help with additional features. This site specifically uses a lot of data with the WYSIWYG state of things. We set up cross-page filtering and searching, so on the homepage, you're given various options. When you press “Search,” it takes you to another page and filters all of the locations that they have. On that page, there's more granular filtering. When you head into each property, we've got it connected to Google Analytics, so we can track which product is being clicked on, the amount of times it’s been clicked, when it was clicked, etc.
Behind the members area, we've got a custom form, which powers the whole Content Collection, so each member is able to update their own content, manage their own content, publish their own content, and all of that stuff. To the initial user, only about half of the project is visible because a lot of it is behind a members area. The form is maybe 50 or 60 fields long. It's pretty big, but it does the job.
Q: There are probably restrictions with the memberships, so that members have access to what they’re allowed to change [that aren’t available to every user].
A: Yeah, definitely. That was a big learning curve for me. For people who are starting off, they just use input forms. Displaying the right information back to the user based on what they’ve inputted to the form, ensuring that you can only input one entry to the form—that sort of stuff was a big challenge.
Q: There was also some map integration, which I thought was pretty cool. Was that all custom made with Wix?
A: That uses the Google Map API. I believe we collected each location’s address, which has a latitude and longitude property to it. We sent that information to the HTML component, which places all the pins on the map. The site listens for when each pin is clicked, and then it updates a multi-state box to show the correct information. [The multi-state box] is connected to a data set, and it filters it to the correct pin that's been selected. When you click on that, it takes you into the property page so that you can view that property.
Q: With Black Belt Art—which is another site that I saw on your portfolio—it looked like you were using the wix-members API there as well. What was that process like for building that site?
A: With that site, the client came to me looking for a learning management system on Wix. They said, “We want to display the courses that we've created, and we want members to be able to sign up, pay for them, and then have access to our complete bundle of courses.” I knew that with Wix, there was like the Wix Courses. But it wasn't what they were looking for and didn't fulfill the brief.
So instead, I used the Wix Content Manager. I think there is a benefit in having a platform where not everything has to be coded. I was able to go into the page and say, “Hey, this page is only available to members.” If a member goes to that URL, they're not going to see the information. They're going to be prompted to sign up.
Q: You mentioned the Wix Content Manager. Are there other sites that you have made with the Content Manager?
A: At the moment, I'm building a recruitment site. They currently use a platform that they aren’t happy with—it didn't have the functionality and customization that they wanted. We're rebuilding that and new dashboard pages. I've really kind of dug down into that and I'm loving them.
We're using the Content Manager to house and store site information submitted through the forms. And we're building a custom user interface for the site admins, so that they can manage the content and decide which kind of jobs are available on the site.
The thing with the content manager is it can be overwhelming. And sometimes there are specific instances where we have a status field and it's a published draft, it’s in review, or something like that. And simple things like typos can just cause a whole load of problems. So we've built this custom dashboard, where the user on the site can submit a job. And then the admins will get an email notification to say it has been submitted. They can head into their dashboard, click “Approve” or “Deny”—or they can edit the response before it goes live on the site. Dashboard pages are currently my new favorite thing. And with the Content Manager, they're great.
I'm also currently building upon my own portfolio website. Support is something that I offer to my clients. I built a page on my website called website support. I then embed this HTML element in a client's dashboard, so they can fill out that form [to request support]. The form is connected to the Content Manager [on my portfolio site]. A lot of the stuff that I do is Content Manager-based, it's my favorite thing at the moment.
Q: You mentioned email integration. What technologies were you using there?
A: I'm actually using the triggered emails within Wix. I'm storing the contacts and IDs in the Content Manager and using that information to notify the correct person at the correct time that an action has taken place. For the admins of the site, it's the fact that somebody has submitted a job application that needs to be reviewed. There are two types of members: recruiters and recruitees. When somebody applies for a job, the person who's posted the job will get a notification saying you need to review this application and decide whether to take them further. It’s using the triggered emails.
Q: That sounds amazing. All of the functionality of these major job application platforms recreated with Wix and Velo.
A: Definitely. Sometimes it’s just about having a little bit of imagination and thinking outside the box.
Q: Totally. Are there ever moments working with Wix and Velo where you feel like you're brushing up against the limits of the technology? Are there feature requests you have where you're relying on a third party when you would rather use something native within Wix and Velo?
A: One of the things that I've been looking for within Velo is a templatized thing for managing site ownership from the frontend of the site. I would love to be able to build a site where somebody can put in their email address and be added to the site as a contributor. I know it’s not possible currently, but we can always dream.
Q: Is there anything you'd like to shout out or showcase while we're talking? Or do you have any advice for developers just getting started with Wix or with Velo? What advice do you have for maybe even yourself for when you just were starting this business, or when you were just starting web development in general?
A: I think the best advice is just take that leap and go for it. I see a lot of people who don't know where to start. Wix makes it incredibly easy. There's no having to set up your own server. All of that is done for you and you just have to write the code. Once you've learned the basics, it's super simple to expand on that.
