It's easy! Anyone can do it!

 

Even with the best applications, building a website requires great quantities of work. If you’re using a service that allows you to drag and drop elements, and paste your own text, a great deal of work still goes into your project. Although you may not be responsible for the majority of the coding, the formatting, the layout, and other extras, those elements have still been programmed or inserted by another person. If you want your site to meet accessibility standards, there’s a whole series of processes for that. If you want your site to be technically adept in addition to looking good, there’s a variety of other technologies which must be employed, direct editing of the page code (markup language) which must be done, style sheets to create, etc. Even the selection of a domain name, web host, setting up e-mail accounts, and checking links takes time.

 

If you’d like an example of what I’m referring to, view the source or code of this very page, and see how much extra text is needed just to control the appearance of this site.

 

The suggestion that using a “drag and drop” service is all that it takes for a good website is ludicrous; all that kind of thing will give you is cookie cutter crap.

 

In addition to cosmetic and technological concerns, government entities must and commercial organizations should be concerned with accessibility. Is your website comprehensible to text readers, is a logical tab order specified, do the pictures have extended descriptions; is there enough contrast between the text and background and is the text large enough to allow people with vision issues (like me) read the site? Have you provided a text-only version of the site, or have you opted to use proprietary technologies? Although there are programs to test for these issues, they are not infallible, and human testing must also be undertaken. More on this later.  

 

Once you have a clear purpose in mind, the site is laid out to your satisfaction and you’ve given consideration to accessibility, it’s time to compose the content for your site. Pictures, sound, text. Oh, the text!

 

Writing for the web is a different process than writing for print, or academia, or any other forum. Here, the readership expects an essay, not a synopsis, but I still have to confine my comments to five pages, tops. Fan fiction is another arena where the normal rules of web writing don’t apply, since people are coming for the text content. But for an organization, most hits are generated by people searching for an overview of the organization, a jumping-off point, a phone number, an e-mail address. Readers want the page to load in three seconds, they want to get everywhere in three clicks or less, and they don’t want to wade through a flood of words.

 

I start out by writing out exactly what I want to say on each page. I walk away from my computer, go plant roses and throw snails onto the pavement with malicious glee, and clear my mind. Then I come back to the computer, print out my writing, then go through viciously with a red pen, attempting to rid myself of half of the words and unnecessary content. For example:

 

“I write what I want for each page. I start out by writing out exactly what I want to say on each page. Then I go do something else, to I walk away from my computer, go plant roses and throw snails onto the pavement with malicious glee, and clear my mind. When I return, I edit for content, trying to eliminate Then I come back to the computer, print out my writing, then go through viciously with a red pen, attempting to rid myself of half of the words and unnecessary content. For example:”

 

Another trick is to substitute dynamic verbs for adjective and verb combinations:

 

“I start out by writing out exactly what I want to say on each page. I leave walk away from my computer, go plant roses and throw snails onto the pavement with malice malicious glee, and clear my mind. Then I come back to the computer, print out my writing, then go through viciously with a red pen, ridding attempting to rid myself of half-of the words and unnecessary content.”

 

Once the content’s pared down, check for grammar, spelling, and typos. Even though tools do some of this, it also needs to be done by hand. Applications don’t check for homonyms, grammar check can distort the meaning of text, and different problems become obvious when reading a print-out or reading aloud. A website is often the first face the public sees, and first impressions last.

 

Check the website at least twice on your own computer. Publish to the web. Check in at every resolution available, on every browser, on every platform. How does it look? Are your links working? What does your test audience[i] think?

 

If you don’t have time for all of this, you should consider contracting out. There are many qualified website developers who can build you exactly what you want, for a fee. I wouldn’t expect to pay more than $5,000 U.S. dollars for a plain vanilla site, maybe 20 pages, plain HTML[ii] with a little CSS[iii] thrown in and a smidgen of Java Script[iv] for roll-overs and a mail form. It’s been my experience that most of the “bleeding edge”[v] firms tend to want to add unnecessary extras to your site, thereby padding the bill.

 

 There are even more unqualified website developers, who would also be happy to take your money and crank out some garbage on Angelfire for you. You might, if you’re lucky, be able to trade services or find a techie who’s just looking to build their resume. But you should expect to pay, and you should expect to get what you pay for. It’s a service just like any other.

 

In addition to watching out for the con artists, I would also steer clear of any firm that boasts about its technical expertise, promises you the moon, but programs their showcase site entirely in Flash. Flash is a proprietary technology, owned by Macromedia, and is used for animation. To a text reader, Flash looks like one big picture, and the content is lost to anyone who relies on a program like Jaws. While Strong Bad E-mails and Reasonably Clever both rock my socks, it’s also true that those sites are both designed to entertain. Both are personal, non-commercial sites. Neither one is first touting themselves as website experts, then ignoring accessibility issues and part of their target audience.

 

Let me put it another way: If I can’t read your website, if you haven’t provided a text-only version, never mind that it doesn’t look as “cool”, I don’t want you designing a website for me. Because your disregard for people with disabilities tells me that you don’t consider them to be important enough to reach out to. You don’t consider them human. And if, as in the past, I represent a governmental entity, which is mandated to have accessible websites, I don’t want to have anything to do with you, and your demonstrated ignorance of the American’s with Disabilities Act or web standards for accessibility.

 

Even if your organization isn’t required to have an accessible website, it should still be a concern if you’re trying to make money. Do you want to exclude potential customers? Do you want your business displaying a blatant disregard for a large segment of the spending population?

 

But if you can’t pay to have a site built, find another way. Purchase the software you need, and a couple of books, and spend six months working on it in your free time. Please do not put up a pink website with a poorly animated unicorn, “My Heart Will Go On” looping endlessly in the background, and purple text formatted with in-line tags that you slapped together on the spur-of-the moment with code you ripped from your girlfriend’s site. Instead, invest in the Visual Quickstart series, and put up a pale, pale pink website, with a tastefully placed static picture of a unicorn[vi] (please, no stock photos) with plenty of alt tags, black text, and skip the music altogether. I still won’t like your website, but I’ll just ignore it instead of scorning it for its crappy layout.

 

The ongoing costs of maintenance, answering e-mails, updating, periodically checking links, paying registration fees, and paying server costs should also be a consideration when building a website. Even if you have a volunteer webmaster to handle all of that, it’s still not free. Although you pay not be paying your volunteer, that person’s time is still worth money, sometimes a great deal of money if they’re supplying their own equipment.

 

If you can’t afford the maintenance costs, again, don’t put up a website. We’re not even in the realm of website concerns anymore; we’ve entered Business Essentials 101. You must be able to pay your bills. If you do not pay your bills, you can kiss your webmaster, your domain name, your entire site goodbye. If this happens, do not accost your webmaster’s husband at parties, demanding to know “what’s going on with the site,” when said webmaster has contacted you several times about missed payments.

 

In other words, if you’re going to do this, do it right.