As much as websites have gotten easier, there's still some things that you have to know how to do. Knowing HTML is a good place to start. Knowing how to compress images for web display is a good second skill. If you don't know either... Let's just say that you're driving on bald tires. You can probably go for a few hundred miles, but I'm not riding in the car with you. If your site is a blog and somebody else designed it for you, you can probably get by posting new articles, but if your site is more complicated - like a shopping cart, for instance - you're eventually going to need some backup. You really have two choices... » Read the rest of the entry..

I get this call all the time. A client was just contacted by email or by a salesman on the phone. They were promised that they could get a higher ranking in Google if they paid some "service"... and the rate wasn't cheap. If you gave me half of what you're about to pay them, I'll increase your Google rank and keep you there.

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I'm not sure where people are getting their information. Is it "common knowledge" that you can start a website that nobody has heard of, sell some banner ads, and retire in the Bahamas?

If that's the case, the common knowledge is wrong. The only way you can sell banner ads is to have a wildly successful website. You know... tens of thousands of hits. That's a few more than your friends and family. It's very, very, very unlikely (like winning-the-lottery unlikely) that you will be able to have a successful, ad-based website right out of the gate.

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Stop me if you've heard this one before. With any large-scale project, whether it be building a website or building a house, there's three things that everybody wants: 1. Make it Cheap! Nobody wants to spend a lot of money. This is the #1 request of clients who want website, but it holds true of just about everything. Why do people shop at Wal-Mart? Probably not because of the Quality! 2. Make it Quick! For most website projects, clients want the thing to be done "yesterday." Now, I'm going to give folks the benefit of the doubt here. I'm sure they realize that a website can't magically materialize out of nothing. Right? Please? Tell me they don't think this stuff is easy. Right? 3. Make it High Quality! Everybody wants their website to be the best. Everybody wants their project to be the best thing since sliced Spam (you can get it sliced?!). Better than FaceBook! Bigger than eBay! More profitable than [insert billion dollar company here]! Are you ready for some tough love? Are you ready for some common sense wisdom? No. You can't have all that. » Read the rest of the entry..

As web designers, we see it all the time. The “I want to be unique and different, but I want my site to look JUST LIKE that site I just saw that is selling the same things and has the same concept as I do…” (Did that sentence even remotely make sense?) A cynical person would say that there is no individuality left in the world, “you can’t reinvent the wheel, you can only improve it; yadda yadda yadda.” While that is true, you can appreciate other websites and take artistic pointers, you don’t have to copy. Ask yourself how the designer or owner of that website would feel if they were to come across your website and see that you had copied their vision right down to the logo, color scheme and tag-lines. » Read the rest of the entry..