When my first domain went live in 1997 things were very primitive. Coding had to be learned and designs were basic. Over the years since my now many sites are still plodding along as they are mainly text with a few images. The development of my first one went on for some years and grew into 20 or more pages. Over that time much has been learnt and companies now offer pre-loaded designs with easy to do graphics.
What my sites have that they don’t offer, however, is originality. Because they are basically my own designs from scratch and the coding is a little complicated nothing in the lists of pre-designed pages comes even close to them.
They are my sites done my way and easily recognisable by any viewer as such. They stand apart from the mob and will continue to do so for many years to come.
When my son required a site and he had no former knowledge of designing a web page he turned to a company who supplied him with everything. He developed the site and had it up and running in around 24 hours after the domain name was propagated. He thinks he is a genius and has even done one for a company that paid him for it.
Things have certainly come a long way and the thrill of being online with a site that expresses your brand and allows interaction with its visitors is a dream come true. In the 90’s the most you could hope for was supplying an email address for feed back.
Along with the articles I write now and the huge quantity of material published under my name it is always on page one of Google, and probably other Search Engines. This is the other goal of good web design as the more pages and the more links the higher it is rated. That means you are more likely to be seen when someone puts in a key-word that leads back to your topic.
Whatever one puts on the web the times have certainly changed and the miracle of the Internet has strengthened. With people now graduating in IT and computer science there are a lot more great things to come.