This, like many blog posts, came out of an excellent email discussion with a beloved relative who is setting up her first webpage. Just like the Blind Men and the Elephants I saw very large problem and tried to break it down a little. Therefore I came up with this series of questions which are designed to help the person answering them decide what kind of website they want.
- What will be the focus of the web page? Images? An Essay? Statistics?
- How often would you like to update it? A blog is updated daily while
most small business websites and school websites are updated monthly
or even yearly. - Who do you want to find it? Will is be a resource for women in art? A
family interest homepage complete with family stories? A blog for
people who are interested in listening to what you have to say?
These are front end questions. The back end (admin) thoughts behind them are:
- How much memory will you need? Would it be better to create your own domain and host it yourself?
- What level of ephemerality should I (as an admin) expect? Blog posts are not always perfectly designed or edited because they are like newspapers and pamphlets–ephemera. However a page that is going to be written once and rarely revised, for example that of the Supreme Court of the United States, had better be exactly what the author wants from the get-go.
- This question has a lot to do with how a webpage is marketed. The title will influence who looks at it. If it is a family site, does it even need to be public? If it is a resource for a particular group, they perhaps some simple notifications to relevant groups that the website exists might help the author’s information get out.
Here’s the result at eleanordickinson.wordpress.com
Inspirational Quote:
Saying what we think gives us a wider conversational range than saying what we know. – Cullen Hightower
