Opinion

One of the unsung pleasures of creating websites is the contribution you are making to the future potential of a website.

This past weekend Real Free Websites had a major redesign, moving from a more traditional design to a design more in-line with the Web 2.0 look. See what changed and what we kept!

As spam levels continue rising, all of the big players (Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL and Gmail) have been ramping up their spam detection and becoming more aggressive in their rejection of emails. Undoubtedly people have benefited from receiving fewer spam emails, but it seems at least in Yahoo’s case that valid emails are also dropped. Unbelievably, Yahoo stands to gain from overly-strict email verification.

Some people think that they can throw together a website in a few minutes. “It’s just like putting a Powerpoint presentation together, and anyone can do that.” Well, no, it’s not at all like that.

There are many free templates available on the internet, varying in quality from very bad designs to extremely beautiful and functional designs. Templates certainly have a role to play on the internet and are ideal for those looking to create a website quickly and cheaply and who are not afraid to meddle with some code. However, if you are trying to create a website that will be taken seriously, you need to consider a customized website.

Whether by accident or design, several of our clients have taken the approach of a gradual development of their website. One client in particular, Avatar Languages, followed a path of website design that may be enlightening to those thinking of creating a website.

Has anyone noticed the recent proliferation of lists online? Almost every blog has an article broken down into a numbered list. In an age of short attention spans, it seems people prefer their content to be bundled together and spoon-fed to them. The comfort of a limited list is that, you can scan it, absorb it and feel satisfied that you have digested all the key points relevant to that topic. This warm feeling is misleading.

It is often with reluctance that we throw in our bid and jump on the bandwagon. If you were not one of the pioneers, you may have sat back and hoped that the new fangled fad would die out. When it did not and went from strength to strength, you could only look on and wish you had joined sooner. Eventually, there may have come a time when you could no longer ignore the importance of the “fad”, and with a grimace, that is when you climb aboard.