In the last post, I wrote about how to create a website using a content management system called Wordpress, as well as testing it offline using a little app called Local by Flywheel.

Today, we're going to get a little less utilitarian, and a little bit more philosophical, as we explore the why's of creating a website, and how that affects the way we design and build one up.

So let's get to it!

Why Create a Website?

In this day and age, one might ask, “Why would I want to create a website?” After all, we have numerous available social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and others that set up entire platforms so that we can spend less time making our own sites and more time engaging with audiences that flock to these platforms.

There are two basic reasons: customizability and censorship. And of course, both of these two reasons are related to the freedom of expression.

The first one is pretty clear. Every social media website since the fall of MySpace have centered around a single template with which its users can create and interact. These templates are usually pretty decent, aesthetically, and match the design of the platform of origin, but generally constrict what users are able to do. For example, Twitter doesn't allow users to type in more than 140 characters in each 'tweet'. Instagram only allows sharing pictures and video, while disallowing any links to be put in accompanying descriptions. These limitations serve the specific platforms well, but leaves users who want a bit more hanging dry.

By creating and designing your own website, you basically have an unlimited customizability and freedom in expressing what you want on the Internet. This is actually the main reason I began to redesign and recreate my website (I had one from a few years back that I stopped maintaining). While I enjoy blogging and writing on Coil, there's a few restrictions on formatting that have prevented me from really doing what I want on cite. This coupled with the fact that it has changed very little since almost two years ago when I started helped me to realize that I really did want to have my own website to make my posts exactly how I wanted them.

The second reason, and perhaps a more important one today, is the issue of censorship. Whether you like or dislike the personalities that are being de-platformed today, what should bother everyone is that big tech is actively censoring people without even attempting to hide it anymore. Just recently, from the mass erasure of the US President's accounts from Twitter and Facebook (and almost every other account on big web platforms) to the booting of the Parler app from Apple, Google, and Amazon's app stores and web services, it's not difficult to make any argument for creating your own platform or website, if only to save yourself the headache from having to do it later if the censorship overlords come for you.

So how do we go about designing our website? In the first part of this series, I went over themes and plug-ins, but I didn't really explore how that all works together. So let's dive in!

It's all about the User Interface

Let's look at four popular websites: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, pictured comparatively below:

We typically use each of these sites for different things. The main use-case for Facebook is to connect with friends and family. People mostly go on Twitter to get small snippets about news items they're interested in with people around the world. Instagram is used to advertise aesthetics and appeal for people so others can see a certain 'lifestyle'. Tumblr is a bit of a mishmash of all of the above, but behaves mostly like a curated site of shared interests (or memes, ha!).

However, did you know that there is a term for these websites outside of the usual umbrella term of 'social media'? These four sites are actually within a genre of sites called 'microblogging' sites. All of them are, in reality, exactly the same. After all, you can use Facebook to look at news, and Twitter to chat with your friends, or Instagram to just curate through your interests.

But we tend to use them differently simply because of one thing: the User Interface.

While some of us may type in the same words or post the same pictures or upload the same video in each of these platforms, most of the time, we change how we interact with each of these places because the user interface is geared towards a specific thing. We would probably talk to our friends and family a bit different than we would to the general public (Twitter vs. Facebook). We would try to be more aesthetically minded when posting pictures on Instagram, or attempt to pack as much punch into our tweets since it's so succinct.

Each of these platforms has a UI that serves to cater towards certain behaviors.

Applications for Our Own Websites

When we are designing our own websites, we want to keep these things in mind, as well. What is the thing that I want people or users to do most with my website? How can I design my site to cater towards those needs?

Let's say I want to create a micro-blogging site. As discussed above, there's a lot more to these kinds of social media sites than what's on the surface. If I'm creating a micro-blogging site, I also want to figure out how I want my users to interact (e.g. through short texts? through photos primarily? etc.).

For example, gfam.live, a social media site that's like a photos-only version of Twitter, has a rule that users can only post selfies. The actual site also is just a split page between user posts and a big welcome page with a smilie. This has created user interaction centered around more intimate subjects, as people post more about their lives and families than products or politics.

The gfam.live website

On my own website, I've decided that I want people to easily be able to see recent posts I've made, while also being able to navigate to the different subjects that I have written or will be writing about. I also wanted easy access to my music page and a helpful “Welcome” that orients people when they land on my home page. That “welcome” changes into a summary of the current post when they are reading any specific blog or essay I've written.

My own website so far

As I wrote in my previous post, the great thing about Wordpress is that there is such a large variety of themes and plugins that it's easy to find something that will at least be similar to how you want the interaction of your site to be like.

Final Thoughts

What I've written so far may be a lot to think about. The easiest thing to do, of course, is just to get started. Just like my website has evolved from its previous iterations, most websites evolve with time as their owners realize how they want to interact with their audience.

And, of course, the other great thing about Wordpress is that it's easy to change your website as your tastes evolve. Since its management is based around posts, pages, and themes, there's no limit on what you can do and how you can do it. Just start, and even with very little experience, anyone can really design a website that they want in very little time.

In the next part, I'll be talking about web-hosting, and the services we can use to publish our websites for the world to see!