Digital Media & Design

That can be an intimidating question, do I build my website or hire some else? Well my first response would be ‘Don’t build it yourself, hire me’ I could use the work, now while that might be good for me, if you don’t have the budget, it’s not good for you. You really need to ask yourself some questions, do I have the skills to learn and most importantly do I have the TIME. If you are a quick learner and have some descent computer skills and of course the time, then I say you can do it. There are a lot of good products out there now that make building a website a whole lot easier then it used to be, take for instance Joomla or WordPress, two very good CMS or Content Management Sytems that offer Templates or Themes that can help with site design and deployment and they are both FREE, yes that’s right I said FREE, that is they are both an Open Source Project and their basic software won’t cost you anything, just your time to learn them. Now WordPress started out as a Blogging software but I’m sure you have come across a lot of websites that use WordPress and didn’t even know it, they look like a regular website and not a blog. Joomla has emerged over the last couple of years as one of the most popular CMS software out there, I’m sure I would get an argument about which is the better Drupal, PHP-Nuke etc, as a mater of fact there are so many different ones out there it’s a little mind boggling. But I’m not here to argue about that, I just landed on Joomla, liked it and decided to stick with it and for me it works really well.

Now if you have any HTML or PHP knowledge, basically just enough to get yourself into trouble, then one of these CMS programs will be just the ticket. But be prepared to be frustrated, mad and perplexed. I still through a good ‘hissy fit’ now and then because there is a lot to learn, but if your up to it, it can be a very rewarding experience to see something you built on the World Wide Web.

So as I continue on in the next several week we’ll explore some of the important do’s and don’ts when it comes to building your own website.

Thanks for listening!

Well I don’t know how ‘Big’ this start is, but it is a start. Being in the Website Design and Development business you run across all kinds of good and bad practices which after time and many errors, start filtering down to what really is good or bad when it comes to designing, developing, and deploying websites. In an attempt and hopefully not a futile one, I intend to share some of the knowledge I have come across over the years in developing websites, because sharing knowledge with each other makes us, well, better.

I really don’t believe that I will be giving away all of my secrets and as far as the competition goes there’s enough work out there for everyone. It’s really for my clients, if they can grasp a better understanding of the time and effort it takes to not only build a website but to maintain and promote it, how their participation in the process will so greatly enhance the success of their website that they will do just that, take the time to write a blog and provide Fresh Content for their website because frankly who knows their business better then they do?

So now it’s up to me to ‘put up or shut up’ and practice what I preach because for me it is a Big Start and now I have to keep it going.

Thanks for listening.