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A look into another industry
13 years ago
<rant>
So as many of you know I am a web developer professionally, specifically I am what is referred to as a front end web developer. This means that most of my coding focus is on the site and not so much as the content management systems or the server side coding that lets the site function to begin with. I work for one of the largest sites in television entertainment, some people know what site but Im not going to say it here, I know over ten programming languages as well as full knowledge of SEO. So after all that I think Im well qualified to talk about the wonderful world of web development.
Over the past few years I have done a lot of freelance work building web sites for people here and there as well as consulting on large projects and the one thing that is the most common is the sticker shock. Yes websites are expensive. Depending on what tricks, tools, effects, and materials need to produce a small store website can run up to ten thousand dollars. This isn't an over exaggeration, a good website is the face of your business, for many people it will be the first thing they will see, and if the site is terrible, it will be the last as they walk away to another vendor.
Now I know there are people out there that can code a simple website or have used one of the many tools out there that come with the adobe suite or even apple products and say well I don't need to spend that kind of money if I can just do it myself. In a way they are right, if you want to build it yourself by all means take the initiative and do it, or ask a neighbors cousin who built the suite for his wow guild. When your site is done you'll have something out there for people to see, if they can find it on google or if it works in their browser or if it loads quickly on a crappy comcast connection.
A long time ago I was that kid people would come to for a cheap site only wanting to spend 100 dollars, then I went to school and was shown by some of the top developers currently out there that I knew about 2% of what I was doing. When you pay for website its the same as paying for a fursuit, you could spend $500 dollars and get a suit done by someone inexperienced and you could love it, but next to a seasoned suit maker your suit will quickly be forgotten because lets face it, the eyes are a little uneven, and its single stitch made with some cheap off brand fur. No one will remember a badly made site either.
</rant>
So as many of you know I am a web developer professionally, specifically I am what is referred to as a front end web developer. This means that most of my coding focus is on the site and not so much as the content management systems or the server side coding that lets the site function to begin with. I work for one of the largest sites in television entertainment, some people know what site but Im not going to say it here, I know over ten programming languages as well as full knowledge of SEO. So after all that I think Im well qualified to talk about the wonderful world of web development.
Over the past few years I have done a lot of freelance work building web sites for people here and there as well as consulting on large projects and the one thing that is the most common is the sticker shock. Yes websites are expensive. Depending on what tricks, tools, effects, and materials need to produce a small store website can run up to ten thousand dollars. This isn't an over exaggeration, a good website is the face of your business, for many people it will be the first thing they will see, and if the site is terrible, it will be the last as they walk away to another vendor.
Now I know there are people out there that can code a simple website or have used one of the many tools out there that come with the adobe suite or even apple products and say well I don't need to spend that kind of money if I can just do it myself. In a way they are right, if you want to build it yourself by all means take the initiative and do it, or ask a neighbors cousin who built the suite for his wow guild. When your site is done you'll have something out there for people to see, if they can find it on google or if it works in their browser or if it loads quickly on a crappy comcast connection.
A long time ago I was that kid people would come to for a cheap site only wanting to spend 100 dollars, then I went to school and was shown by some of the top developers currently out there that I knew about 2% of what I was doing. When you pay for website its the same as paying for a fursuit, you could spend $500 dollars and get a suit done by someone inexperienced and you could love it, but next to a seasoned suit maker your suit will quickly be forgotten because lets face it, the eyes are a little uneven, and its single stitch made with some cheap off brand fur. No one will remember a badly made site either.
</rant>
That $100 website budget you've been, ahaha, saving up? That'll cover a domain and hosting for a year if you scrape the bottom of the barrel. That's what it takes to put up "Hello World" into a file and put it on a server, ignoring the time it takes to do the registration and configuration.
And the time! Ohhh, people get upset when they hear about the hourly rates that web design teams charge, almost as upset as when they hear how many hours it will take, and over how many weeks those hours are spread out. Clients don't realize that everything you put on a website is deliberate and planned. If only they knew that most of the time on the project was wasted putting together, and arguing with the answers to questions like "How many products are you going to have? Do you want categories for your products? Do you want custom graphics for the categories? Should users be able to search in the store? How are you going to be handling shipping? Do you want to accept payments from PayPal or Google Checkout? Do you want to be able to feature products?" Sure, you could just not ask those questions, until the client calls you at midnight to ask "HOW DO I MAKE PRODUCTS SHOW UP ON THE HOMEPAGE?!"
Ugh. Web design. It'd be awesome if it wasn't for the clients.
The problem then becomes finding a good alternative to having a site custom designed for you. There's plenty of templates out there, but finding the "right" one that works, and then figuring out how to customize it so it doesn't look like the dozens of other sites who also used that template... it's hard.
I guess my only point to making this comment is asking what YOU would recommend to people who want a site designed, but can't afford to have a designer do it for them from the ground up? Are there resources for templates or self-instruction for coding and design that you think would be helpful to people who want to do it themselves, OR (most likely) can't afford to have anyone else do it for them?
Here's a question for you: Is there a way to use Adobe Dreamweaver to develop a PHP/Wordpress site? I tried looking a couple years ago and couldn't didn't find anything, but I'm not sure if there's been anything that's come up since then, OR if you know some secret that I don't.
Thanks for the advice. :)
Helping people understand my hourly rate to teach private music lessons is a real blast.