My brother’s in IT. Retired thankfully!
I say that because he should’ve put a mattress in his office – he just never knew when to put boundaries on himsel!. And when he got home, a neighbour or church friend would call. If I was his wife, it’d be constant eye-rolls. One Christmas day when I was visiting him and his family, I accompanied him on one such call and sat outside in the car for what seemed like hours. I mean who had the audacity to call him on such a public holiday and expect he’d leave his family to sort out a computer. Open your friggin presents, drink egg-nog, eat your roast, surely you can’t expect anyone’s on the clock for your Tiktok updates. Truly unbelievable the kind of mentality that some people have.
But how does that bring me to my topic of website design? Well, I daresay, I am one of those who deigned to impose on my brother to design a website for my business. But, whoa, before you get on me about double standards, in my defense … well, firstly my request wasn’t made on Christmas Day or any other holiday least that I can remember. Secondly, I offered to pay for services rendered. That’s a great incentive right? Thirdly, he was retired and this wasn’t the run of the mill my computer is slow and software is not loading kinda issues, this was a challenge, unlike anything he’s faced before. Least I think so.
What does he do? He agrees to do it. I’m elated, he’s in South Africa, I’m in the U.S. this is cool, I’m on cloud 9 and we’re making magic (least he is) and with such distance between us, things are possible in the cloud, though I still don’t full comprehend how that all works. But, after what seemed like 9 months, I’m no longer bursting with enthusiasm on that cloud! There’s no website. All there is is a dotcom url that I started.
What happened then? I think he just had too many things going on in his life. Maybe he had a hard time saying no to me and just about anyone else. The initial annoyance lasted maybe a month and then I thought that’s it, am outsourcing on Fiverr.com. But my wife convinced me I can do it and thus began my labour of love, that am slightly embarrassed to mention took months to complete. Thing is, I’d never done it before and thus began my YouTube lessons.
What did that labour of love entail? Well, I did a search and settled on a couple guys that had quite a few hits on their tutorials, am talking from the tens of thousands to the hundreds of thousands, with as large subscriber bases. Website supremo Ferdy Korpersheok, a Dutch guy was my go to resource on YouTube.
It wasn’t easy. I’d follow along religiously, create pages then would abruptly scrap them. I’d also create posts then delete them entirely. I’d download plugins then scrap them altogether. Of course there were easy, ready-made templates that I used but adapting them and changing colours and fonts was somewhat fun, but they too just didn’t feel right. But the biggest headache was putting all that effort in and you find that when you test in on an iPad or cellphone (called responsive mode,) it looked like it was designed by a six-year-old kid.
After much perseverance, countless hours, cups of tea, coffee and beer, grey hair and a hole in my chair, I can finally say: “I’m done! Finished! Kaput!”
With hindsight and I speak to the uninitiated, if you’re designing your own website and you have the time and patience go for it -it’s a fun quest if that’s your thing. If not, don’t bother you can find good help and cheaply on Fiverr.
