Welcome to my blog. After working in webdesign for about a decade now, I've finally decided to give in, and join thousands of other people who freely offer their opinions online for the rest of the world to (hopefully) read. :-)
What I'd like to do in this weekly “column” is talk about what goes into a website and offer advice and insight about the process of webdesign.
If you've decided you want or need a website, the first question is are you are going to do it yourself or will you hire someone to design and maintain it for you?
You will find there's plenty of software out there – from the cheap to the very expensive – some of it good, some of it practically useless. And most of it will produce mediocre to poor results if you really don't know what you're doing.
Ten years ago, I stumbled into webdesign when I used some “WYSIWYG” software (pronounced the way it's spelled - “whis-see-wig” meaning “What You See Is What You Get!”) and thought Wow! This is fun! And they PAY people do to this?!
Problem is, while it's very simple to drag and drop photos and type on a screen much the way you use a word processing program or write an email, I soon discovered that this type of software leaves no room for you to refine your work, let alone customize a design or layout.
Before I learned HTML (that's “Hypertext Markup Language” or the code a webdesigner types out that “tells” your computer what to display on your screen), I was pretty much at the mercy of what I initially placed on the page the first time. Forget moving the results around if I wanted to change something. It really was easier to start over from scratch. Either way, it was very time consuming and often frustrating.
Why hire someone to do it for you? Because if you want a quality product, you hire a professional. But take your time and do a little research. Not every every webdesigner is truly “professional” and over the course of this blog, I plan to explain what it is you need to know and look for.
Back to the “WYSIWIG” software for a minute and a story from personal experience. I had potential clients referred to me through an established client who lives in Chicago. (I live on the east coast, in Pennsylvania. But don't assume that makes me “regional.” Thanks to the internet, I'm truly global. I've collaborated with German friends on one website, have had a client in Ireland, and currently my most distant client is on the west coast).
Anyway, back to the potential clients in Chicago. They told me their current webmaster was quitting the business and was giving them plenty of time to find someone to take over their website. What they really wanted was someone who would set up a site, and then be able to show them how to use their “WYSIWIG” software so they could do site updates and correct errors themselves. Thus, they reasoned, this would potentially save them hundreds of dollars in web maintenance fees.
Yes and no! on that money-saving angle. Because, in the course of our conversation, I discovered that their current webmaster was apparently using WYSIWYG software. They had noticed that time and again, they'd ask for updates and he'd make them – and end up with inexplicable changes in the layout or text format he hadn't made - and couldn't seem to correct.
This was an obvious tip-off to me that they had been working with yet another individual who'd bought do-it-yourself software and never learned to truly write (let alone understand) HTML. When you invest in a program like this, you can get the idea that if you can do this yourself. Who needs to pay ridiculous prices to some professional! At this rate, anyone can be a webdesigner! Until, as I said, the software takes over the design process for you and you can't fix the mistakes it makes.
So how do you know you're getting a true professional? Ask. Ask if they write their own HTML (can they code from scratch?). What kind of software do they use? Sorry, but Frontpage is a WYSIWIG program and it generates quirky code. I “inherited” a site written by a son-in-law for one client, and I had to re-code the whole thing because if you really can read HTML, don't even bother trying to figure out Frontpage.
Are they a member of the HTML Writers Guild or the International Webmasters Association? Do they know what the W3C is? And yes, you're wondering, why is this important and why should I care?
If you care enough to establish an online presence for yourself, your business or your product(s), obviously you want to be sure that you've invested your money wisely. Is this website going to do what it's supposed to do? Based on who you choose to design and maintain your website, how can you be sure? Keep reading! I'll be giving you the answers to this and many other questions in the days ahead.
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