"Free" programs—and their
2 HORRIBLE problems!
There are two horrible problems with free website design
programs:
- There's no tech support, and nobody to turn to when
the instructions turn out to be written by someone with the IQ of cheese.
Worst of all are the programs that look OK. You start
dabbling in one, trying it out. The directions seem OK. So you invest
more time in it, getting further along in the project. Next thing you
know, you've invested 2-3 days in it and then—pow!—you hit
an instruction that is completely incomprehensible. Space aliens must
have put in that paragraph. You try to skip it, but you can't pick up
with what comes after it. You try EVERYTHING you can think of that it
could possibly be. Nothing works. Congratulations—you just wasted
three days of your time—and acquired your first (?) gray hairs.
- Be prepared for pop-up spam – and SPYWARE ON
YOUR COMPUTER!
You know there's no such thing as a free lunch, right?
Well… how do you think the makers of these free programs earn their
rent money? Usually they piggyback spyware onto the free program you download.
"The average user has no idea that he or she is opening
up their entire personal and financial life, down to the keystroke, to
an unknown, often ill-intentioned, third party," according to House
Representative Mary Bono, who's introduced a bill trying to regulate the
thus far unregulated and completely legal practice of slipping spyware
into "free" programs.
Spyware programs can be as benign (!) as tracking your
surfing habits without actually identifying you as an individual; but
other programs will actually give you a hidden "ID" and track
your individual movements. One program (n-Case) will inundate you with
pop-up ads for competitive products to the ones you may be viewing on
your monitor. The program's creator, 180Solutions, says of its website
that 16 million people now have n-Case program on their computers and
that n-Case offers advertisers "a 360-degree view of the user's behavior—24
hours a day, 7 days a week."
According to the New York Times (11/23/03), "Before
long, the mounting collection of adware, spyware, Trojans and viruses
can turn a person's zippy computer into a sludgy, slogging mess."
At which point, most people go out and buy a new computer. Turning "free"
into $1,000 to $2,000 out of your pocket!
How web hosting plans shackle you with their web design
programs!
There are many web-building programs offered by web hosting plans, but you can kiss your independence goodbye when you use them.
Rigid templates
+poor instructions=bad decision!
One person I know tried to use one of the most popular
of these programs for a little site they were putting up that needed some
VERY SIMPLE e-commerce on it. Two weeks later, after FRUSTRATING e-mails
and phone calls to the web hosting company, the company FINALLY decided
that what the customer needed simply could not be done with their program.
Something that came as a big surprise—since their full materials
on that program didn't say anything about it not working in this situation.
The result? A waste of 10 hours and a lot of angst. All for nothing.
Kiss your independence goodbye
If you do manage to use the templates from your web host,
guess what? You're then locked into using them—regardless of whether
you find a better deal or whether you find your host unreliable and unresponsive.
After all, are you really going to trash your entire site and start all
over at another web host?
The unmentioned problem with Expression Web …or Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer? (formerly FrontPage®)
FrontPage® was a nice program. It used many Word commands so it didn't seem as daunting, and you could put up an acceptable site with it. Enter Expression Web and SharePoint Designer (FrontPage was split into two). No more simple commands, no friendly interface. Suddenly, you're expected to understand and use ASP.NET, Microsoft's dynamic web building interactive language. No more low cost, either—Expression Web goes for $299 + SharePoint Designer goes for $299. Suddenly, you'll be spending $600 instead of the manageable $150 FrontPage sold for. And any benefits are still tied into the former, not the latter: FrontPage's easy user interface is gone.
With Expression Web, you can expect the following to happen:
Sometime in your website design you are likely to get stuck with something
beyond what you can easily do. You'll want to add a feedback form, or
a pop-up menu. Big example—you'll undoubtedly want your email address
listed with a nifty javascript program—so that the spammers' computers
can't grab your address from the Internet and sell it to porn spammers.
Are YOU going to piece some javascript into an ASP.NET document? Be honest, now. Besides—it shouldn't cost much at all to have
someone else do it for you... should it?
The problem is twofold. First, none of the website designers you'll contact used FrontPage® in the first place, because it is too primitive for them. Second, no basic web designers use the ASP.NET interface, which has nothing to do with HTML. Instead of being able to pay a regular designer to do this for you, now you have to pay someone who is ASP.NET proficient to create this for you—at three or four times the price. Or they'll pull up your FrontPage files in Dreamweaver, save them, and the FrontPage extensions won't work right any more. You'll now have a site which must be edited in a program you don't
know.
If you've moved to Expression Web/SharePoint Designer, the same holds true, but for different reasons. If you need the tiniest further correction… anything at
all… you'll have to go back to that ASP.NET programmer, or another one and
PAY THEM money to make the change for you. And PAY THEM AGAIN the next
time you need anything changed. Even if you're not cheap—this is
a ridiculous waste of your money—because the one thing you can be
sure of regarding your website is that you'll have frequent changes for
it. Maybe you get a new testimonial you want to add? A new client for
your client list? You've moved? You've added a new product? The list can
be (and will be) endless. (And, frankly, Dreamweaver works with ASP.NET, PHP, ColdFusion, ASP, JSP—it's just not TIED to it. And it's not even close to $600 either.)
How "low cost" web design programs can suck
up all your time!
It takes money to design a program that is "easy"
for the operator. Money that is reflected in a higher cost for the program.
Most low-cost web design programs require extensive HTML
knowledge to make them work. That means you'll have to spend your time
learning HTML and entering code to build your site. The problems?
- If you have to spend hours learning
a new language, why not learn something more useful—like Spanish
or French or Arabic? Unless you plan to become a professional website
designer, there's no need to learn HTML. (Oh, by the time you've learned HTML, everything will be converted to XHTML anyway since it's XML-friendly, and you'll have to learn that, too.)
- You can't just learn a little HTML,
you'll need a lot. And it's not like learning "la plume" means
"pen" in French. You have to learn HOW and IN WHAT WAY the
HTML will do something. In other words, even if you do invest a lot
of time learning HTML, you are still likely to be paying a professional
to do a number of things for you.
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