Can you make me a website

I meet many people excited to get into the web. They see what others are doing and want to get in too. So, when they see I have a website, I hear, "I'd like to have a website like yours."

For the individual, a personal website for presenting their professional qualifications and experience (not just showing pictures of the kids) is a great tool, and a better way to present yourself. It can be more presentable and approachable than a resume.

The stumbling blocks are:
- what content to put
- how to build it
- how to maintain it

What content to put
As with any project, I say ask yourself:

"What do you want to accomplish, what are your goals."

With the personal website you can expand on the dry bullet point of your resume to actually SHOW accomplishments, not just mention them. So if I were answering this question, I would say, "I want to clearly present my accomplishments in a visually engaging manner."

How to build it
Building a website still seems like black magic. Somehow it just gets on the web. Or in the days of TV, somehow those little people got into your box. Today you can blindly pay someone who is an expert in the 'black magic' of websites, or you can take a leap and make one yourself.

Two great services now exist for making websites as easy as 'drag and drop'
- Weebly an HTML, javascript based visual system
- Wix a Flash based site

For the experienced web designer, both have their limitations, but with each new release, there are more advanced settings. These tools practically allow anyone to easily put together a website and publish it very quickly, using professional looking templates

How to maintain it
So you have a website, now you have to keep it up to date. You can keep calling your 'black magic' website builder and throwing money. Or with one of the above tools, you can easily go in and add a page, or drag in another paragraph. The control is in your hands.