[Techtalk] Helping non-techies with websites -- any experience?

[Miriam English]

Hi Akkana,

I've had to help a number of technophobic friends with their websites. 
Now I just suggest they use Wordpress.

Personally, I don't like Wordpress. I think it's way too much work. It's 
far easier to use simple HTML, even if people shy away from hand-coding 
and opt for something like Mozilla's Komposer, or the Composer part of 
Mozilla's Seamonkey suite, letting them use something like a 
wordprocessor to layout their pages. But something about this makes 
technophobes throw up their hands in horror, even though it is far, far 
simpler. It has long been a puzzle to me.

I've had a blog on LiveJournal for many years, which I moved to 
Dreamwidth because LJ covered their users' sites in advertisements, 
whereas Dreamwidth vowed to keep clear of ads. LiveJournal also became 
grindingly slow, due apparently to constant DDoS attacks by the Russian 
government (a lot of Russian activists have blogs on Live Journal). 
Additionally, I like the fact that Dreamwidth is staffed almost entirely 
by women. Setting up a blog on either site is child's play. However 
people seem to rarely read or write blogs anymore. They use facebook and 
Twitter. It seems to be the triumph of superficiality over substance. 
(Now that just makes me sound old.).

Not long ago one of my wonderful young nieces saw me reading a tech 
article consisting almost entirely of pages of text. She wrinkled her 
nose and expressed her distaste. I asked what kind of page she liked, 
and she showed me a page with almost no information, but filled with 
giant, colorful images and flashing advertisements. Oh dear. I suspect 
this is why technophobes opt for Wordpress. It's all about the appearance.

One of the websites I most often visit has recently revamped to look 
more glamorous. Unfortunately it has so many hefty scripts embedded that 
they bring my computer to its knees. Sadly the only way to visit the 
site is with a script-blocking add-on in my browser. This seems to be a 
growing problem. Wordpress is a drag on my computer, though not yet 
significantly so, however give it time. It will. My site, which my niece 
thinks is ugly, loads instantly, even on old, slow computers on slow 
dialup connections. It has no scripts, no trackers, and images are kept 
to a minimum, even though I'm an artist.

But all this seems completely lost on technophobes. I've asked some why 
they want to drive a car without bothering to learn first. They just 
give me funny looks.

Best wishes,

     - Miriam


Akkana Peck wrote:
> Hi, all --
>
> Do you help non-techie friends create websites? With image galleries?
>
> I have several non-techie artist friends who would like to set up
> websites to showcase their art, as well as other friends who want
> an easy way to maintain websites for organizations they volunteer for.
>
> I'm never sure what to tell them, because I'm a geek and my own
> website is HTML with a smattering of PHP, Javascript, CSS and Python
> as needed, hosted on a VPS that my husband and I admin.
>
> There are simple drag-and-drop type sites like Weebly, but what I've
> seen of those suggests that they're a hassle to maintain if it gets
> beyond a few pages, and they don't offer many options for styling.
> However, Weebly and GoDaddy do say they offer drag-and-drop image
> galleries.
>
> At the other end, one friend is wondering if she should host at
> Wordpress.com, because she wants a professional looking site and
> likes all the styles they offer. I've helped a little on a site
> running on Wordpress on another server, and although I mostly stay
> away from the Wordpress admin (I mostly write backend PHP code for
> them) I do see what goes into choosing and installing plugins and
> themes, and it looks like a lot of work. Is that a lot easier when
> the site is hosted on Wordpress.com?
>
> I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets asked about setting up
> websites. What do you tell your smart but non-techie friends?
> How about your extremely technophobic friends? (I suspect these
> may be two different answers, and I'm interested in both.)
>
> Thanks for any insights!
>
>          ...Akkana
>
> _______________________________________________
> Techtalk mailing list
> Techtalk at linuxchix.org
> http://mailman.linuxchix.org/mailman/listinfo/techtalk

-- 
There are two wolves and they're always fighting.
One is darkness and despair. The other is light and hope.
Which wolf wins?
Whichever one you feed.
  -- Casey in Brad Bird's movie "Tomorrowland"