I can’t take credit for all of this as I’m using a pre-made theme, but I’ve added some of my own flourishes to it and brought over a few elements from the old theme. I think this is much cleaner, though, and more readable. The last thing I need to do is get the front page sorted so it’s static, then move the blog part to it’s own section. A friend is helping me set that up now.

I also added a new theme to my Tumblr blog (yep, back to using that again, too). It doesn’t match what’s here, but I think it’s spiffy enough. I’m also going to start crossposting between Tumblr and the blog again now that I understand better how Tumblr works. I won’t crosspost everything, though. Just a few posts that I want to highlight. I still wish there was a decent Tumblr crossposting plugin.

Other than that, I’ve got my Twitter all set, my Facebook in order, and even a profile over at GDGT. Once the front page of this site is done I think I can stop with the fiddling and finally get down to posting some content.

Web design is hard.

The other takeaway is quite possibly that my theme sucks. Any little thing that wants to be wider than the sidebar gets its way, despite my protestations. I did not design this whole theme myself — I just heavily modified an existing one. I might consider switching, but I really love the look of this theme and want to keep it.

I’m wavering between dusting off my web design skills and just whacking this theme into shape, finding something similar but better coded, or just calling Stephanie Leary and offering to pay her to do it right from the ground up.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Can’t see it yet? Then I’ll tell you: services that give the impression that it’s a good idea to build a business website using templates^[1] are lying to you. That’s right, lying. Universal template-based websites are rarely a good idea for anyone, and certainly not businesses.

You run the risk of your website looking just like a ton of other people’s but with slightly different colors or a different picture in the corner. Plus, I’ve rarely come across a template service like that which results in good-looking websites. They claim they’ll make the site building process easier, but easy too often means so simple that you might as well use MS Frontpage for all the good it will do you.

Not all small businesses have the money to hire fancy web design firms and it’s true that the president’s nephew probably isn’t the best way to go. But do not make the mistake of thinking that those are your only two options. There are tons of independent and freelance designers who will not charge you as much as a firm yet will still do a good job. If you’re really, really in a budget crunch, a college student studying design will do you better than a template site.

So please, whenever you see a commercial such as the one above: run away. Run away screaming. Because sites like that may seam easy and a good deal but it is all a horrible lie.

Notes

1. This is different from websites that use WordPress templates. Though you do want to make sure your WP doesn’t look like everyone else’s, you can still use a template made by someone else and tweak. The kind of templates I’m talking about are generally for non-dynamic sites. And sites shouldn’t be non-dynamic, anyway.