Well a happy new year to you all! Let’s hope that 2013 gives us all success and some spare cash for a well deserved break by the time summer comes around đŸ™‚
I realise I’ve not been around for a while I’ve been having my usual ride on the peaks and troughs of the design world and even though it gets a bit ‘troughy’ at the end of the year for me I create my own peaks by tackling my own projects. I thought it was high time to address the lack of my own website…
And herein lies a problem…
I have the photo shoot of my work complete, a design for my definitive website ready (really?! it’s only taken me two years to get it to this stage!!!) and now I’m in a huge quandry about whether to get a programmer to take it from it’s roots and start the long haul of programming – which these days has to include responsive technology (that’s the stuff that allows you to view on computers, tablets and telephones and turn it any which way you choose) and links to social sites and blogs, plus a content management system so that I can update the work.
Or, go with a build-yourself site company who already have code written and caters for responsive viewing and which will also allow me to update my site with it’s ready made content management system. So I’m now stagnating over the pro’s and cons of each which I thought I’d share with everyone – lucky you!
The first route allows me freedom of design as there is no template that I have to fit in with. I can have text where I want, calls to action on every page and enough text for the search engines to find me in cold searches. All well and good, but this has to be programmed from start to finish and have the ability to be seen in the middle of the page on any screen any way we turn it. Of course this translates into lots of hours of programming and a a rather large bill for the hours of work that my programmer will truly deserve by the time he gets through it which will most likely be several weeks.
The second route allows me to use any one of of several pre-designed templates (all of which are very nice and each adaptable to a degree, but us designers DO like to be able to personalise everything to make it more ‘ownable’) It allows me to add content at the drop of a hat which means that I can keep my site updated as soon as I have new work to show, and of course it is readily responsive. I can have my own domain, I don’t have to have the site build company’s name on it (as in powered by Joe Bloggs) it links immediately to all of my other social sites such as this blog, twitter and facebook. And the cost of hosting is very reasonable indeed. I will do all of the work myself which means I don’t need to pay a programmer – but then I do need to find the time to do it.
And just this weekend my very good friend Dave dos Santos who works for some of the biggest names in London (and who knows everything about websites and what rocks) gave me the name of a build-it-yourself web company which does all of the above AND allows my programmer to go and tweak the code to get it personalised for me.
I think I have found a little piece of heaven.
Watch this space – my site will be launched this year, just don’t bug me too much about when…
And since I am trying this on me, it may be that I will be able to use this for other clients on budgets or who don’t need fully blown websites like The Daily Mail for content control or Continente for shopping basket dominion!
Designworks! 