All shapes and sizes
Maintaining web sites has its own particular satisfaction, and one day I’ll write about that. But there’s a particular buzz that comes from completing a site.
In a sense, of course, no web site is ever complete, though some are abandoned. A live site is a site under construction (which brings me back to that thought about maintenance). But there is a moment where the client approves the work we’ve been doing behind the scenes, and we can raise the curtain on a new site, and start inviting the public in. I’ve recently done this for two sites, and they couldn’t be more different.
Daniel Fox is the author of a new fantasy series. The first volume, Dragon in Chains will be published in the US in January. Since ‘Daniel Fox’ is the pseudonym of a British author, he has no plans to visit the US to promote his book, so it’s doubly important to have a web site which will do that job for him – but at present the book is not yet avaulable, and it’s difficult to say anything about the pseudonymous author! So the site is a single page, with plenty of room to grow.
SixSix Design is a design consultancy with a substantial portfolio of past work to show off, and the site has a complex structure – a main page leads to a set of menu pages which in turn lead to examples of SixSix’s services. Working with a designer is always stimulating, too – we have such very different strengths! The client’s graphics have to be converted into material which will work on the web, and attract hits from the search engines – but the resultant page is distinctive and visually striking.
I couldn’t ask for a better demonstration that the web is no place for a ‘one size fits all’ approach!