Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Profs and Basic Websites

Rei Tang asked on twitter: what's with profs and really basic websites?  A few quick and dirty answers:
  • Building a more than basic website takes time and skill.  Since there are few incentives for flashy websites, why bother?  Developing skills takes time.  I used to have some web-skills but focused more the past several years on production (writing) rather than spiffy-fying.  
  • Many profs are have no skilz.  The middle generation of profs might have done some web-writing earlier and had added whiz bangs at a time where the whiz bangs did not work well across different browsers and, more importantly, slowed the loading.  
  • No, most of us do not use RAs for this as our RAs are busy doing research that we need, not styling which is a luxury.  
I have been meaning to revise significantly my website (SS) but I have been delayed as I needed to learn a new program (I relied on Frontpage until Microsoft let it die).  Now I am waiting for my new job with a new server and a new software package.  But my focus will not be on making it anything more than functional (hopefully not unattractive).  Why be more than basic?  Since I am not trying to max pageviews with my webpage so that the advertising dollars roll in, I am not sure what folks would want in a prof webpage.

So, tell me: what do you want, what do we not provide?

1 comment:

Jacob T. Levy said...

I acquired the habit of writing my own html back in the stone age, so I've never bothered to learn (or even buy) any package like frontpage. As a result, my webpage will always use the very latest in 1995-era code and style. (Frames, even!)