Web Design for Dummies

Spend any time surfing the Internet or checking the weird stuff that comes into your spam e-mail box, and you'll see all kinds of offers like "Design a website for free," or "Be live on the Internet in minutes."

All good-sounding things are too good to be true, right? Nothing's free, and if you're a web neophyte like me, nothing's easy.

For the past three weeks I have been working on a new Internet site for New Life Community Church. Since I was new to the project and just wanted to get something up and running, I went into "task mode" and have been working feverishly while not working for pay.

After running into a couple of dead ends, I decided to use the online design tools, hosting, and domain registration of GoDaddy. GoDaddy is an Arizona-based company founded by Bob Parsons, who used to own a thriving software company in Cedar Rapids called Parsons Technology. I worked for Bob for two years (well, not for Bob, but for the guy, who worked for the guy, who worked for Bob). GoDaddy also has a production/design office in Cedar Rapids, which employs a few of the old Parsons programmers.

GoDaddy's big come-on is "cheap and easy." Too good to be true?

Well, it is pretty cheap. I have the domain reserved for two years, the web hosting and design software for a year, and the capability of 400 alias e-mail accounts, all for $150. The site can have as many pages as I want to design and seems to have good storage capacity for something as simplistic as a church website.

Is it easy? Kind of. Designing the site itself was not hard. With a few steps backward here and there, I was basically able to guide myself through the tools without a lot of anguish. As you can see, the site isn't anything special, pretty simple and clean.

The transfer of the domain name from RegisterFly to GoDaddy was harder than it should have been. The two companies kept telling me they were waiting on the other one to send the right transfer authorizations. Of course, I had no way of knowing who was telling the truth. All I know is that I had to make a few too many phone calls and e-mail inquiries to call the process "easy."

GoDaddy says that you can use their web-based design tools even using 28.8 dialup. Maybe you can, but you wouldn't want to. No, no, no. Even with my broadband connection I think the tools work a little slow. But then again, my 5 year-old laptop computer isn't winning any processing awards.

This is the first day the website has been live. But if I were to judge the GoDaddy "cheap and easy" claim, I'd give it a B+. If the site proves to not accidentally crash, or lose my photos, or be offline for a week, I'll upgrade the grade to an A-.