Building a website
It looks a little like this. Lots of shadows and light - tedium and joy. Building a website is full of ups and downs, turns and bends. It’s a little bit here, a little bit there. You want it to just work, but it will not. It’s up to you to pull it altogether. It’s a grand creative and time consuming task.
“Despite recurring fantasies about the end of work or the automation of everything, the central fact of our industrial civilisation is labour”
I’m a long way on from ten years ago when I first tried to build a website. Back then you had to know code, or have a friend who did to bring your vision of a website together. We never quite made it there back then mostly because we talked a different language.
Now its a lot easier for a creative like me to be more in control. The labor requirement is still high but there are a lot more resources to help you out. Indeed there are also many platform options too. My strategy was to just pick one and get on with the uncomfortable process of becoming ‘familiar’ with it. There’s always a new language to learn, tricks to master, and ‘ways of doing’ together.
“I started out all Dolly Parton working five to nine side hustle style but quickly wanted to throw the computer out the window”
Not one to be defeated and with a deadline to deliver on, I threw caution to the wind, perfection out the window and I dived right in. Pushing buttons here, dragging and double clicking there… just willing it to magically work how I wanted it to.
But here’s the kicker with computers and digital skills as a whole though - it doesn’t just work - it’s a constant flow of problem solving tasks and work arounds. It drives me so very crazy so very quickly.
In our fast clicking, instant gratification world, it’s amazing to me that in order to work effectively on the computer - with the tech - one needs to actually slow right down.
“high-speed mobile internet has sent the attention economy into hyper-drive”
To achieve the website you want, you have to be organised, have lots of categorised and formatted images ready to use and also be able to communicate clearly and precisely with your device. In the language the platform you are using understands.
Then you need to spend some quality time together trying to come up with different solutions to so many different little problems.
“It’s incredibly frustrating and fun all at once. ”
A fair bit of trial and error goes into it. As good as it is to do some online tutorials and YouTube clips, it doesn’t get you that far. You just to have a play with it and check in on the tips as you are doing it and search up specific questions. In our heightened state of always needing to be ‘productive’, I find this ‘play’ element very hard to spend time on and justify. It’s not wasted effort though. Through play, trial and error we all learn a lot.
So this is a screenshot of my website still under development.
While I have not achieved the original goal, I have also never written a blog before and now I have done at least six. As I progress I would like to learn more about how to make websites more engaging and meaningful while still looking quite simple and unified. Above all else they have to be easy to use. I will add the shop features and expand my card range as I get these materials together.
It’s messy work but best to muck on in. Who knows maybe you’ll create a masterpiece like this original art piece created by my little girls during lock down.