Sillybean

On hiring designers, FrontPage, and your 12-year-old nephew

[For those coming in from Ma.gnolia, it might be helpful to know, until I get my category tags fixed, that this is part of my web design for authors series.]

The choice between designing a site yourself or hiring someone to do it for you is a lot like the choice between negotiating your novel contract yourself or getting an agent. Having someone else do it is a big expense; no two ways about it. But just how much time are you willing to invest in learning the business of web design? It’s a profession like any other; what the pros do is obvious, but how they do it well involves a lot of training and experience. And this brings to my first big rant.

“My 12-year-old nephew has FrontPage and can make me a page just as well as a designer would.�

Oh, how this sets my teeth on edge. In terms of abject cluelessness it’s the web equivalent of “how much did it cost you to publish that bestseller?â€? Let’s clear this one up right now. I’ve already told you what I think of FrontPage (and I probably will again), so I’ll move right on to the wisdom of hiring relatives, especially kids, to design sites for you.

I don’t think you should have any of your relatives or close friends work on your site. Why? Let me go back to the agent analogy. The person you hire is going to be representing you on the web, in a way. You have to be able to toss around ideas without worrying that you’re going to ruin a relationship if you reject a color scheme. Your designer has to be free to tell you when you’re about to do something stupid, and you have to be able to tell your designer in no uncertain terms whether you like the work she’s doing.

The website is your opportunity to introduce yourself to your readers. Are you seriously going to leave it up to the kid who hates the tuna casserole you brought to Thanksgiving dinner? What if he does a bad job? Can you fire him without sending him to his room in tears and making a permanent enemy of your sister-in-law? Do you even want to risk it?

By all means, have your relatives check out your site when it’s done. Do they think it’s cool? Is everything clear? But don’t hire them to create it. If you’re going to pay someone at all, keep the relationship strictly professional. Otherwise, learn to do the site yourself.

I know of a number of authors whose sites are maintained by their relatives or spouses. Some of the sites suck. Some don’t; one of those linked is among the best author sites I’ve seen. It’s certainly not always true that having a relative do the site works out badly. But when it is true… well, now you have a crappy site and a pissed-off person stomping around your house. The crappy site alone is much easier to fix.