Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

"The skill required to do that work simply is not very high."

Sure, if you want an unattractive, uncreative, one-size-fits-all website with neutral or no SEO and no Content Management System in place, and have no desire to attract or keep viewers in your site. 


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Steve Mann
Internet Videographer
MannMade Digital Video
My Email

I`ll make 2 suggestions ....

1) Most small start up businesses have a very limited budget, and are going to look at how to do things the least expensive way they can ( not saying the cheapest, the least expensive ). If they can use a template to get the start of a web presence vs paying ( potentially ) a lot of money for something custom, it makes sense to go the template route until they can budget for something more original and customized.

2) If a customer needs a site that uses databases and requires custom scripting and specialty areas, a template won`t provide that, and blogging and CMS systems may not meet their needs. Due to that, designers and programmers will be needed to make a site that is customized to the customers` needs.

Craig contacted me some time back about some custom programming, which I`m not sure could have been found on the web "ready to go out of the box", as it required different types of functionality. So, we worked together and I developed the backend of it. It`s just an example of something needing to be done that wasn`t readily available for free, so the development end was a requirement.





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M Hall
Website Critique Community
International Society of Curmudgeons

I was just thinking about the Curmudgeon site. Plus, we have totally unusual needs for an eventual signal flag site and shopping cart. What we needed for the curmudgeon site simply didn`t exist. Parts of it apparently did---Michael is the magician, so I don`t know---but even as parts, they weren`t designed to be used the way we used them.

Think about the Wright brothers, and how they used a bicycle shop. They too had a template design, and could do it themselves. All they were doing was building a common bicycle, with just a simple extra requirement---it should also fly.

What it comes down to is perceived value, and even more importantly, the entire concept of "create." Lots of people take what others have created and blithely disregard what went into those creations. They just assume that "they" are doing the building, developing, and so forth. They conveniently forget that someone had to invent the templates and software.

But at a deeper level, without any kind of education as to what`s new, unique, creative, or even distinctive, people can`t recognize the value of that creativity.

Consider the number of people who grew up believing that dinner at MacDonald`s was "eating out," or "dining out," or having a "fine meal" as a treat. The fact that hamburgers are a commodity item doesn`t mean that all food is a commodity.

Not only that, but several innovative restauranteurs have developed ways to elevate the hamburger out of its commodity status. Even so, success first requires that the market in general can tell the difference between a Big Mac and a sirloin steak.