Sam here, welcome to my website. What I want to do with this article is talk a little about how I think technology has changed website design and implementation over time. My background was in information systems, systems analysis, and software development.

My first exposure to the World Wide Web (Web) came in the mid-1990s at Youngstown State University (YSU). I was an undergraduate student and worked as a student consultant in the university computer labs. Someone handed me a printout of some HTML and it seemed so strange, but I had previously worked with Windows help files and was aware of yet another markup language: SGML. Then I realized it was some kind of new markup language. That day, I discovered that the university was working on its first website.

Back then web pages were all HTML and modern graphical web browsers hadn’t even been invented. Eventually, there was Mosaic on X Windows, but undergraduate students at YSU didn’t really have access to that. That first YSU website ended up being character-based. That was such a long time ago.

Those early websites were so simple that you could create a web page with a text editor. Over the span of three decades, the process of creating web pages went from dead simple to nearly impossible. Since the 1990s the underlying technology for creating web pages (HTML, CSS, Javascript, et al.) has become so complicated that it’s not approachable.

Today web pages are often packaged into templates and used with a content management system or DIY website builder to create websites. These apps hide all that complexity from us and handle all the technical details. We no longer need to understand all the different web technologies. DIY website builders make it possible to visually create your own website.

Building a website is now something that nontechnical people can do for themselves.

Technology never stops solving problems. This is a pattern I’ve seen before. The desktop publishing revolution in the mid-1980s comes to mind. Before this time, publishing a good-looking report or printing business cards was something you needed to subcontract to a print shop. Today it’s something you can do for yourself. Technology helps people do more for themselves.

There are even no-code and low-code options for software development. Application development and web development are finally inching their way towards being a DIY process. Webflow is an example of a tool that hides most of the technical details and scripting associated with designing and building a custom website.

I have been saying for a while that hand-coding applications is ridiculous and a big source of unnecessary complexity in software development. The very beginnings of great tools to automate and eventually eliminate most hand-coded applications are finally beginning to emerge.

Another reason that DIY website building has become more attainable is that website design has evolved, over time, to become less convoluted. Websites today are less laden with graphic elements. Web pages are flatter with fewer hard edges and utilize repetitive grid constructs for layout. Fonts and color schemes are emphasized more. Images are of central importance. Standardized design methodologies like Google’s Material Design and Apple's Flat Design underscore the shift to a minimalist aesthetic.

These minimalist design trends with soft edges and delicate color pallets and with simple layouts are easy to package into website templates that can then be utilized to quickly build new DIY websites. Grid layouts with text and images and with the occasional icon or other graphic flourish are easy to modify to your needs. In a nutshell, it’s pretty easy to create a good-looking website today.

Let's assume for a minute that regular people can create websites. Why would they want to? Maybe to have more control or to save money or to save time. Getting a website created by an agency can be a significant expense for a newly established business. Keeping a site up to date can also be expensive. Beyond the cost, maybe some business owners would like to bypass the bureaucracy and just be able to get it done. Control is power, after all. That power can set you free to evolve your company website as you see fit.

DIY websites are probably best suited for small companies that don’t have a big budget for a website and marketing. I think sometimes medium-sized companies also benefit from a DIY approach because it allows the marketing department to bypass the software development team and control the site creation process. Less time spent in meetings discussing bit-twiddling details with techies equals more time to focus on marketing and sales strategies. This may sound cynical, but the technological advancements that make DIY website creation possible can be empowering to business leaders.

DIY website builders like Squarespace, Wix, Webflow, and others do have a learning curve. I guess the best way to describe it is to say that they have made it possible for non-technical users to create websites, but they haven’t necessarily made it easy. You just need to understand that it’s going to take some time and effort to learn how to use these tools.

I’ve already said that I worked for a few years as a software developer. One of the things you have to accept as a developer is that you will never know everything and that you will forever be learning new things. Research and learning new things are just part of the job.

Using these website builders is kind of like that. You will need to learn new things and overcome challenges. It’s not as complicated as software development, but you do need to accept that you will often not know how to do things and have to dig in and find the answers to challenges that will spring up.

We can never know how to solve all the problems that will arise in our lives. What we have to do is develop a good set of skills for problem-solving. We need to know how to find answers to these challenges that will inevitably arise when we are trying to create a new website.

Products like Squarespace, for example, have great documentation, but you need to know how to use it effectively. Google will be your greatest resource of all when trying to solve problems.

Learning, after all, is a lifelong process.

I worked for a lot of years with information systems. I’ve been interested even longer in the transformation and communication of information. One of the most important things websites do is communicate information to visitors. When Google reviews your website as part of its indexing process, they’re looking for information. They are not going to rate your color scheme or judge your font choices. To me, the website publishing process is first a process of transformation. Expert insider knowledge about your company's products or services is transformed to suit your customer’s needs, and this information must also be presented in formats appropriate for publication on the web. Appearance absolutely does matter for a website, but I don't think it’s the most important element.

After a lot of years working with information technology, I finally have some time to explore and better understand some of the latest technologies being used to publish websites and create web apps using low-code and no-code methods. Learning really is a lifelong process, and I’m very fortunate to be able to make this personal investment in self-growth at this point in my life. I look forward to discovering new technologies that simplify publishing on the web and sharing my knowledge.

There are already a bunch of website builder review sites. I can’t possibly compete with them, nor do I intend to. Instead, I’ll address more broadly the many challenges you may encounter when creating a DIY site.

Thank you for sticking around to the end of this examination of DIY website publishing and what motivates me to understand it. Please consider bookmarking this site and returning again in the future.

Best regards,

Sam Fenstermacher

Canva, if you don’t know, is a tool that opens up the potential of graphic design to the masses. In the very visual world we live in today, that’s a very valuable trick.

The company founders created Canva based on the visionary idea that just about anyone should be able to design anything. They have delivered on that idea and in the process created a company valued at something like 40 billion dollars.

Adobe Systems released Create Cloud Express, an offering that is similar to Canva, at the end of 2021. Many reviews of this new product from Adobe suggest that it’s in response to the success of the competitive product Canva. I only mention this to underscore the difference between these two companies.

Adobe is a mature company with a broad and also, in some cases, dated line of products. Some of their graphic design tools like Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign date back to the 20th Century. These applications had their hour of glory decades ago, and for a very long time have been kept up to date with incremental changes. Incremental change is a big part of Adobe’s business model. Adobe Systems’ release of Creative Cloud Express is an incremental response to the competitive challenge posed by Canva.

Canva, on the other hand, is a young company with innovative new ideas. By democratizing design, they have opened up the field of design to the average user. You no longer need a graphic designer to create the mundane visual elements of modern business. Making graphic design much easier and more accessible to the masses, as Canva has, is an example of transformational change.

Both companies provide value to their customers. The Adobe legacy tools are a good fit for graphic design professionals who have spent years perfecting their design skills. Canva, on the other hand, is the tool of choice for creative individuals who just want to get the job done.

This is sort of a clash between the past and the future. On the one hand, you have the legacy tools and the people that use them, and they purport that design is something that takes years to learn and regular people can’t do it. And, on the other hand, you have the new breed of tools that leverage new technologies and new approaches to simplify graphic design so that it’s something that regular people can do for themselves.

Canva is part of a trend now to transform and simplify technical challenges. Part of a whole new breed of DIY software app that empowers consumers. Another example of this kind of empowering tool is the website creation tool Squarespace. Yet another example of this class of tool would be Webflow, a no-code tool for visually designing websites.

Collectively, these tools empower consumers and entrepreneurs to do more of the technical work of creating a website or a social media presence themselves, and in the process, they can bypass the professional designers and developers that sometimes present an additional challenge to the successful completion of a website project.

In the case of Canva, innovation is also valuable. As the article states, the company is valued at 40 billion dollars.

A few weeks ago I finished a small website job where the challenge wasn’t to make a new site but instead to do away with the existing website.

In this Covid-19 pandemic many small businesses are having to call it quits. That was the story of this job. The business was not making money and needed to conserve cash and wind down operations. They didn’t need the website and didn’t want to pay for another year of hosting and maintenance.

The website and the domain name in question were hosted at Bluehost. For whatever reason the owner wanted to sever all relations with Bluehost. So, the domain name needed to be transfered. Cost was also a consideration.

Moving domains names around can be pretty technical. I was pleasantly surprised how easy the process went this time. What I decided to do was transfer the domain to Google Domains, https://domains.google/, and then set up a Google My Business account, https://www.google.com/business/, for the customer’s business. Releasing the domain for transfer on the Bluehost end was a little complicated, but they did have helpful information that explained the process. On the Google Domains end the process simply could not have been easier. Google My Business is intended to be an end user product. No technical skills required. Infact, once the domain name was transferred to Google, linking it to the Google My Business account was as simple as clicking a button. 

So, in the end the domain name ends up in the owner’s Google account and pointing at their Google My Business account. It really is a win win. The total cost is something like $12 a year and it’s the best domain parking situation I could possibly imagine for a business owner who has ideas about starting over again someday. The process is so simple that a non-technical person should be able to handle the whole thing. Best of luck if you decide to give it a try.