The halloween horror of the web industry

I was talking to my wife the other day about work. She is in the same industry as me, although she’s more a graphic designer, whereas I’m more of a programmer/nerd. She’s also inherently happy, whereas I’m a natural grumpy git.

Anyway, the point is we were both talking about how hard our industry is at the moment. She’s recently had to take a small pay cut as well as reduce her hours to help cashflow . Although things aren’t that bad for me, there has definitely been a noticeable drop in sales over the last few years. This is partly due to the recession, partly to do with it being such a saturated industry but mostly it’s to do with the way the internet has gone thanks to social media and also companies like Wordpress, Wix and other “web in a box” companies offering nice looking and fairly functional websites for next to nothing. I’m sure there are people out there who will blame climate change and Brexit as well but those people probably aren’t worth talking to.

My wife made a fairly valid point that, although things are looking a bit unsettling now, these cheap template sites are probably just a fad. Sure they look quite nice now but they all look the same. You look at most modern websites built or re-designed in the last two or three years and they all follow the same template: A big banner across the top (usually with rotating images), three featured boxes underneath and a bit of text. This is a layout that works well on all devices.

The thing is that in a few years, people will probably get bored with having a website that looks identical to every other site. Also, website visitors might start looking at sites and thinking “you know what, these people obviously haven’t spent much time on their website because they’ve just used a template like everyone else, so what does that say about their attention to detail and general interest to do work?”

In a few years time, it may very well be that people start ditching Wix and Wordpress and all these other annoying companies that are trying to put hard-working web developers out of business. It may well be that they will start wanting unique looking websites. It may be that tastes will change again and people will stop thinking that websites with a big banner image and three boxes look nice.

Of course there is the argument that, if people are used to having nice looking and fairly functional websites almost instantly and for next to nothing, why would they want to go back to paying someone lots of money to develop something different?

At the end of the day, the future of the web developer is uncertain. People are always going to need programmers and they are always going to need designers but is the world going to need as many and will it still be a lucrative industry to be in? Will I be sat here in five years time doing this job and asking people if they’d like a new website, or will I be stood behind a counter asking people if they’d like fries with that?

What are the best blogging sites?

The Datapartners Daily Blog about blogs: 10 of 10

For someone like me who designs and builds websites for a living, I could build my own blogging platform. In fact I did have a blogging app at one stage but it was one of many things I shelved because I simply couldn’t compete with the big players.

So what are the best blogging platforms out there? The most popular ones are Wordpress and Google’s Blogger and there are benefits to using both. Wordpress allows you to build a much more professional looking website and there are a huge number of mobile friendly templates out there. My only complaint with Wordpress is the admin is verbose, unintuitive and I think it’s a tiny bit crap. I’ve used Wordpress a number of times over the last few years for a handful of projects and I usually end up swearing a lot.

I prefer Blogger (well, that’s obvious isn’t it?) Firstly, I’m a big advocate of everything Google. Secondly, whilst it is a lot simpler and not as good looking as Wordpress, it does exactly what it says on the tin. Also, with the blogging network, it’s a lot easier to get found by other bloggers.

Of course there are others. The likes of Wix, Squarespace and Tumblr all offer some good features. Plus Networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn also have the ability for you to write notes and articles so that is always worth considering. The advantage of doing it through a social networking site is because publishing it automatically shares it with your network.

My personal recommendation is Blogger, especially if you want to earn some pocket money. Google’s AdSense is by far the best and biggest pay-per-click advertising medium out there and it’s very quick and easy to get ads hooked onto the site. The trick is getting people to click on them without violating Google’s terms of service. So please don’t click on the ads on this blog… #ReversePsychology