Web of Thoughts

It’s fantastic that nearly everyone who has access to the internet has the ability to create a website.   With so many free tools available it doesn’t take someone with a computer science degree to have a web presence.  The Internet gives us the means to collaborate and share information across the globe quickly and efficiently.  While this can be a positive when used for the right reasons, it can also be a tool that can spread hate, violence and false information.  

Take the recent example of a hacked AP twitter account and the hacker’s posting false information that the White House has been attacked.  Our stock market responded by plunging on the news before recovering after learning that this was false information.   It’s all about the content, and because of how easy it is to post information online web users need to do their diligence before accepting the information they read on the internet as the truth.

If you build it they will come?

It’s usually not that easy.  While creating a simple website is not a difficult thing to do with all the available tools online, it does take time, knowledge and most importantly good content to drive users to your website.  Some of the benefits of building a website yourself is you have all the control and you can drive the vision for your website.  When building it yourself you will develop enough skills to not be afraid to update your website quickly and often.  Cost is also an obvious reason to build it yourself.  If it’s a simple website, it can be built quickly and on the cheap.  There are a large number of free content management systems available online that make building even complex websites very easy.  Two of the most popular CMS packages today are Wordpress and Joomla.  Both are open source with many features and have a huge developer community behind them.

The main reasons to hire a professional are determined by the complexity of your website, your lack of expertise, and how much time and patience you have.  Most web developers at a minimum will charge a few thousand dollars for a simple website and updates will also be an extra fee.  Hire a professional if you have an aggressive timeline, a complex website, have no desire to learn new or existing web technologies or have no clue about web security or search engine optimization techniques.

Usability and Accessibility

Both are extremely important when designing a website.  Usability refers to how easy it is to find information on your website.  It’s all about the web interface you built and how effective and engaging your design is to the user.  Usability includes the concepts of Readability and Legibility.  If large amount of text on your website is easy to read then you have good Readability.  If your navigation is simple and straightforward and short text is easy to read then you have excellent Legibility. 

Accessibility refers to how well your website presents itself to people with disabilities and does it follow (WCAG) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.  When designing it’s important to keep in mind that your website will be accessed by people with physical disabilities such as vision impairment.  Your website will also be accessed on many different devices with different screen sizes.  When using a lot of multimedia content the web designer has to be sure to include text equivalent of the images to make it accessible.  There are many tools online that can help you evaluate the accessibility factor of your website.  One such example is a free website called wave.webaim.org that can evaluate your website and provide suggestions to make your website more accessible.