Frustrated with the state of things..

I decided to start writing a book! Hopefully I'll finish it one day.

Watching what other people write as web applications has started to really irritate me. I can't understand what's so hard about the basic principles. Making an application easy for both the end users, and the people who manage the content (assuming that the content changes). Writing a content manager which shows the results of a table with the label of each column before every record? Seriously unreadable stuff!
Then for laying out the content of a selected record, doing it horizontally across the page instead of down the page.

These people have jobs, and make good money writing these completely unusable systems. I'm the last person to have design experience. I can't design my way out of a paper bag, but I have learned what users like. They like larger fonts, easy to read, plain layouts and fewer pages. For this I'm only referring to content manager interface design, not the front end user interface.

Basically the book will cover the following:
- Finding out reasons why the web site will exist (Sales, Marketing etc)
- Domain name choice (very important!)
- Basic hosting
- For shop sites, how the transaction will be processed
- For marketing sites, best way to get the message across
- Writing an easy to use, content manager, or using a framework or ready made CMS
- Simple rules for Database Design
- Design considerations (I won't actually write this part...)
- Site architecture
- Advertising (On the site.. if you must)
- Advertising (How to get people to find your site)
- Simple analytics (Setting goals for what you want from your site)

I'd like to write a whole extra part which focuses on email marketing, but it's possible that should be a sequel.

In the meantime, I need to get started on my introduction!

Introduction

With a history of over 10 years writing web site and applications, and watching while others struggle with what feels simple to me, I decided to write it all down.
My goal with this book is to make something that anyone with a little know how, and enthusiasm can put together a simple web site that works. Easy to use for both end users, and the people who manage what goes on the site itself.
I will spend more time talking about interface design than anything else, because I feel this is often overlooked when people create websites. Look and feel are very important, but without an easy to use intuitive interface that is all for naught. The focus is to get users to come to your site, and once they are there, enjoy their experience enough to come back. It's possibly you won't complete your goal (sell them something, encourage them to join in marketing campaigns) the first time they visit. If you make the site compelling enough, they can return, and on that visit you have another chance to capture their attention.
Too often I find myself surfing the web, looking for something in particular, only to find I'm rejected by a site. Either it's too hard for me to find what I want to buy/research, or the barrier of entry is too big.
As a user, people get tired of entering their credit cards and login details to tons of different sites. There are alternatives! Some of them better than others, but I'll describe them all, and you can choose the best option for you.

I'm excited to share with you so many details about making a web site that will make it great! What I won't do is describe the exact code to write. Everyone has their own style, and comfort zones, plus when talking about custom CM's, amazon, paypal etc, I'll include the examples the come with the software, but won't go into detail about syntax. There is some assumption that you want to write your web site using open source software. If this is not the case, there is still a lot of valuable information about architecture, interface design and usability that you can use to make web sites correctly.

So who is this person telling you all about how to write a web site right? Hi I'm Jeni. I started writing web sites back in 1996, but have experience writing in other programming languages before that. My first real project writing for users was creating a MUD (Multi User Dimension). Basically it's a text based adventure game. Writing the game involved me in the entire SDLC as well as dealing with users comments and complaints on a daily basis. Definitely it was a lot of fun, but I could see that there were ways the interface was failing for the users.
THEN frames were added to the HTML DTD, and my life changed forever!

...

I wrote a ton more, but I switched to using Open Office, as that way if Blogspot decides to not play nice I'll still have a copy. More on it tomorrow! Must write 1,000 words a day.

BFN