What people do -5- : Building websites

• Part 1 : The Importers, The Internet Auctioneer, The English Teacher
• Part 2 : The Hosteler, The Blogger.
• Part 3 : The Online Gamer, The Travel Journalist
• Part 4 : Write Chinese names, Chinese related blogging.
• Part 5 : Build websites

A website builder is somewhat complimentary to a blogger, sharing many traits. While a blogger’s success mainly relies on his personal abilities for writing, a website builder’s success mainly relies on the control of the tools in use and the ability to build a sense of personal or communal touch.

Ever since I started a few website experiments on my shared hosting I’ve been getting quite a few offers for collaborations and work offers. Most people, so it seems, have a great need for a professional website  or a personal gallery and they lack the time or knowledge to put in the work to get one up and running. When some of my friends saw the very simple Chinalyst and Chinese-Garden, they immediately responded with “oh my god, then maybe you can build a website for me”. Trying to explain to them, most of them IT professionals, that they can build one on their own in a matter of days, is  pointless. People just don’t know how easy it is to get a basic website up and running, or maybe they just don’t care.

Best thing about building websites, I think, is that you can do it anywhere and anytime. If you don’t mind working alone or prefer working at home then this just might be the right kind of job for you. I wouldn’t even recommend taking a course. All you need is someone you know to get you started with explanations of your hosting’s Control Panel and how the  FTP works and you’re ready to go. Sure, you’ll need to know a bit of HTML, CSS and PHP at some point in the far future, but the tools provided today – most of which are open-source and free – are so easy, that you just might get away with a wonderful website without knowing any of those. Design? Art? The web is full of GPL open-source themes and banners that you don’t need your own graphic designer to have a good looking website.

Downsides? Yeah, there are some, which would explain a bit why I’m hesitant about fully recommending this optino (to both others and myself). Building a communal website could be fun and seeing it grow can really make you proud, but a lot of the every day work once a website is about technicalities.

With my simple few websites I get about 10-15 emails every morning with odd questions, most of which are around the bloody differences between Explorer6/Explorer7/Firefox 1.5/Firefox 2/Opera/Safari and the Operating Systems they’re running on. Although it’s only been a few months since it started I’m already lost between all the updates that need to be applied (WordPress turned 2.0.5, Drupal 4.7.4, Joomla is going 1.5 and SMF is now RC3). It gets even more complicated now that the communities are running with hundreds of users so that every small change that I make may and probably will affect things I have no control over. If you take into consideration the extensions/plugins/mods that you applied, then you’re in administration hell and that just might take out all the fun.

Another argument that I can relate to goes something like this “After I graduated XXX and finished my masters in YYY and worked in ZZZ for WWW years – does this really take full advantage of my abilities?”. I think the answer to that would depend on your ability to combine building websites with the things you’re passionate about. Focus around the professional area that you’re interested in and make sure that it relates to something that you love doing. Thankfully, I can really justify to myself all my time invested in the websites I built by knowing that they’re about something I enjoy, whether it’s China related or the targeting the blogging world.

Is there money in it? Not writing from any personal experience I believe that building a basic site should cost about a 1000 US$ and a lot more, 3000-5000US$, for a communal website. Some build communal websites for others and some build those for themselves hoping that they would bring in revenues at some point (which doesn’t occur that often). Me? I just do it for fun.