Everyone has a preferred web page and a favorite design. We are impressed by some websites, but we also dislike many. We try to incorporate what we've seen and experienced about other websites, into our web design, often copying large portions of other sites vault market. While this might help achieve a short term objective of creating a site that is pleasing, it may not be the best option in the long term. This article explains why copying the code of another website can be harmful to your site in the end.

Security Flaws

When you copy code from another website and copy it onto your own, you are also copying over the flaws and vulnerabilities with it. That means you could expose your website to several threats and exploits which you might be ignorant of. The majority of website designers use template based code or reused code snippets for pages, such as menus, banners, slideshows, and even animation. There aren't any changes or modification made to the code . Instead, they just adapt it to the specific requirements of the client. They are unaware that in the event that a security flaw is discovered in the code, their client will also be affected. Once a website is made and is then accessed, little attention is paid to updating its code, or to replacing the old technology with a new one, offering little hope for security. Our client's site was attacked more than three times in a single month because the developer kept restoring the old site which contained an insecure menu system. Despite numerous warnings and inconveniences they were completely clueless of the best way to address the issue and correct the menu.

Efficiency

Large corporations usually have websites that are carefully designed, proportional to the web hosting resources they have. That means their systems are capable of handling high-speed animation, massive processing of data and large amounts of visitor traffic. Copying and pasting their code onto your website could drastically decrease the effectiveness of your site, making it to deter visitors rather than attract them. An example of this can be found by an upcoming online retail shop, that attempted to incorporate features similar to Amazon in their own site. They didn't realize that Amazon had servers of massive size that had a lot of RAM and Processing Power, which Shared Hosting was not able to compete with. The site began to rank lower and served pages with a lower speed, because of the stark difference in what they wanted the website to accomplish as well as the resources provided to the site.

Copyright Infringement

Copying the source code of a site is illegal and a Copyright violation. Large companies can sue their competition in case they copy their code thus claiming damages in the thousands of dollars. Even in the developing nations like India, China and Brazil copying source code is widespread however enforcement isn't as robust. In all three countries, copyright violations are an offence that is punishable by law and the penalty can be severe. In India the police are able to search and seize computers as well as devices that copy website code, without a warrant from a magistrate. This has drastically reduced copyright violations when it comes to software website source code is concerned.

SEO

Although there is no concrete indication to show that if your site has copied source code then search engines could penalize you as a result, there is a significant possibility that your website will not perform as well as the website from which you have copied. If you copy content from a web page and apply it on your site Google is likely to lower your score. However, as was mentioned earlier numerous large websites, which serve as our models have taken great care when designing their website specifically. The website was specifically designed for their website as well as their business, their branding, their audience and the environment they operate in. It's exactly like a tailor-made suit, that has been designed according to the particular dimensions of the client. It's not going to fit as well on anyone else.