I am the webmaster for my site. Always have been and always will be. I have been authoring my own site since 1997 and have helped to create other sites. These days it is very easy to create a web site but when I started out, it was nothing less than confusing.

 

At the bottom footer section of my web site after the copyright notice, I have religiously included "Patience running dangerously low". This expression came from early attempts at a web site when I struggled to upload it to a server and get all the links to work. I came frightfully close to throwing in the towel many times.

 

The Front Page Years

In the mid-1990's I acquired a copy of Microsoft's Front Page 97, their WYSIWYG HTML editor. My early web sites were a dog's breakfast of information. At one point including my address and telephone number on the site until someone reminded me that anyone could access this information. My ISP at that time provided 50MB of server space for web sites. It was a frustrating and difficult process then to upload pages and files. 

 

I regret now not keeping some screenshots of some of the early pages. They would have been a tremendous source of humor (to you) and embarrassment (to me).

 

Back to Mac

With the return of Steve Jobs to Apple and the release of Mac OS X, my interest in Apple returned and in late 2001 I purchased the new PowerBook G4 (and on the same day bought the first generation iPod). However, at that time there were no HTML editors for Mac as good as Front Page so I continued to manage my site on a Compaq desktop, eventually using Front Page 2003. In 2004 I purchased a copy of Dreamweaver for my Mac but never did understand how to use the program effectively.

 

By mid-decade, new options were available to edit on the Mac, including iWeb as part of iLife in 2006 and Rapidweaver, both Mac-only applications. iWeb was very user friendly but I disliked the fact you couldn't create sub-pages and the templates were too ubiquitous. By 2006, I was using Rapidweaver and really enjoying it. 

 

The Cloud

One thing I did not like about Rapidweaver was the fact that the software and all the files resided on a single computer. Since I was operating from multiple computers, I wanted to switch over to editing in the "cloud". No matter which computer I have and no matter where I am, I want to be able to edit my site. If you blog a lot, you know what I mean.

 

In the spring of 2010, I had started to move my email to Gmail, following my expansion of using Google Docs. I wasn't familiar with Google Sites and found it initially not user-friendly but I experimented with it and grew to like it. I find it helps to get the site simple and uncluttered. 

 

I am now using WIX for my site and like its simplicity yet power to build a robust site. 

 

Lessons Learned
 

• Web sites can be exciting at first. But they require ongoing maintenance and commitment to keep content fresh. If your site still has Christmas photos on the top page in July, people will know the content is out of date.

• If you don't want to have the chore of frequent updates, keep the information on the site fairly static. Add links to blogs and photo sites where you might be updating input more frequently.

• Less is more. It is tempting to add a lot of content to each page. Local weather, animated GIF's, photos and so on. Keep it simple and avoid a visual assault on the viewer. White space is good.

• Inspect what you expect. Check your site page by page for errors. Trust me, they are there and people see them. Also, check on different browsers and different operating systems. What looks impressive on your MacBook may look very different on Windows.

• Stick to web safe fonts. That funky font you selected for your site might not be loaded on other computer browsers and in my experience... will show up in the worst available font.

• Everyone everywhere can see your information. Be prudent about what you post. Never post anything you wouldn't want your mother to read.

• Tell the truth. Someone, somewhere is going to know what is fact and what is not.

• Have some fun with your site and let it reflect your personality.