What Every Print Designer Needs To Know About Building Web Sites

When Desktop‘s editor approached me a couple of months ago about writing the feature article for the May issue of Desktop magazine, I was a little apprehensive.

On the one hand, it’s an honour to be asked (I’ve been writing a column about web design for the magazine for over a year now, and they haven’t asked me to stop, so I guess I’ve been doing something right). On the other, I was pretty nervous — unlike the online world, reader feedback about a print article is few and far between, so I’ve never had any affirmation that my articles are written at the right level for that audience, other than the editor continuing to give me a new deadline each month.

Additionally, the scope for the topic was potentially huge — “Getting On The Web: What Works and What Doesn’t”. It was a topic that I felt comfortable writing on, so I figured I’d give it a shot, and began fleshing out the article well before my deadline. As it turned out, I had to ask for an extension to get it finished due to my wife having some unexpected emergency brain surgery, but I got it done in the end.

Getting on the web has never been easier for end users interested in publishing photos, chatting with friends and dumping random thoughts for the world to savour, but building a professional website is as difficult as it has always been.

The article was given the title “wwwdotme”, and an abbreviated version has been published at Desktop’s web site (although you can read a full version on SitePoint). Hopefully it will be some food for thought for print designers who dabble in the web without realising just what is involved.

posted: 02.05. 2009, 23:45 (0)