I have been spending a lot of time thinking about starting my own website. I would really like to start with a fork off my blog, which thanks to my viewers, is starting to pick up some steam, but I really want the website to be more than just collection of my thoughts and opinions. It needs to be interactive, engaging and informative. I want to build a site that people want to use for the sheer joy of it!
I don't know when exactly this idea started, but it would probably be around the time I signed up for Udacity's web design course. It was handled by a Reddit co-founder and it was a truly amazing class! I urge all of you to check it out and slog at it for a few weeks. (
link)
Websites are this generation's primary form of art. There really isn't a better way to connect, collaborate and make something beautiful than putting it on the world wide web. That's probably why everybody ought to know how to build a website. It is easy to build a good website, but incredibly hard to build a great one. As my own blogging experiences have taught me, it is too easy to build a fort just for yourself and self-righteously languish in a forgotten part of the Web. That is easy, but deeply unsatisfying.
Forget the monetary side of things, even from a professional fulfilment POV, having a sucky website bites, hard. So designing a great website is not just about the content, but the way you package and present it. It involves a lot of trade offs and lots of experimentations. It's a great challenge!
I don't consider web design to be a primary career option at any time, but I think it is a great place to spend some time tinkering around. What do you think?
PS:
This is a video about a group of guys who started a pet project website. Really nice watch.
