Gotta be user-editable

My small web design & development business has recently shifted focus completely and I’m super excited about what this means for my clients, my business and the future. When I began working for myself in 2003 my job was to create great websites and be available (often seven days a week) for edits and updates. Those changes were emailed to me by clients, I then fired up trusty Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Flash and got the updates done as quickly as possible. About 70% of what I provided was ongoing service. It was a challenge to respond to requests as quickly as expected – especially when a lot of requests came in simultaneously – and getting away on vacation was really tough. I did teach many people how to use Flash and Dreamweaver but for most folks, the learning curve on those apps was just too steep. In the same way that we don’t need to know how a car works in order to drive one, I’ve always felt that one shouldn’t have to know xhtml & css to be able to maintain a website. Finally,  with a new breed of user-editable website platforms I’m seeing this come to pass and the old 70% service model is (wonderfully!) shifting.

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