The interwebs are littered with helpful videos of people demonstrating how easy it is to design and construct a website, fill it with wonderful content, and instantly attract several million visitors. Many of these videos feature a relentlessly cheerful presenter, in a cheerful setting, cheerfully whipping up a complete website in under a minute.
They give you the impression that headers and galleries and menus and pages and posts will appear out of thin air, dutifully arrange themselves in their designated locations, and follow their marching orders to the letter.
This is a dangerous and malicious lie, propagated by morally-corrupt computer nerds, such as Guy Smiley, seen above. In fact, these creative and design elements have all been transparently devised to only look cooperative, masquerading as a cohesive unit which accepts you as its leader. Until, that is, you issue your first order, at which point they will mutiny, scattering in random directions, some of them never to be seen again.
As a public service, the Township of Pigs Gorge has documented its experience with website-making, and we humbly present it to you now. It’s a cautionary time-twisting tale of deceit and dead-ends, temperamental templates, rogue pages, and free-range footers. Buckle up, kids.
Close Your Eyes and Pick a Host Out of the Bucket
After excessive research on the available options, we selected a “host” for our website. The host allows your site to crash at their place, and presumably eat their Doritos, as long as you keep forking out rent in the form of “hosting fees”. Frankly, comparing the services and fees of various hosts is a futile waste of time. The more research you do, the more they appear indistinguishable. Then you find out that dozens of them are owned by the same parent company, and you realize you’ve been chasing your tail.
So feel free to pick the first host that catches your eye. In our case, we chose the host with the nicest online chatpersons. We battered “Andrea” with a rapid-fire series of stupid questions over the course of several hours, which she answered politely and patiently. When we returned the next day, armed with even dumber questions, “Andrea” was still there, rock-steady and ready for more. Of course, we are aware that “Andrea” could be anyone, or everyone, at the service centre. But the second day’s round of Newbie Quiz was every bit as pleasant as the first, which we were willing to consider a positive sign. Admittedly, we were suffering extreme browser-fatigue by then, and willing to accept almost anything as a positive sign.
For the record, our host of choice was Bluehost. We are happy to recommend them, if for no other reason than they were so nice to deal with. They were also astoundingly inexpensive. Even if you don’t want to start a website, sign up anyway. We had a few issues to get off our chest, and you probably do too. Their chatpersons are willing to listen. It’s the cheapest therapy we’ve ever had.
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Build Your Website Out of Recycled Internet Scrap
Hindered by a minimalist development budget of $32.75 and a Tim Horton’s gift card that turned out to be worthless (Thanks, Dennis!), we planned to cobble together our website from abandoned bits of code and stray gifs we found lying around the internet. Bluehost would provide all the raw materials we needed, we were led to believe. So we blew the entire budget on a logo from DesignEvo, because it was super easy to use, and had our favourite pig icon.
Bluehost did provide access to WordPress — the free open-source platform that is the foundation for about a bazillion websites — and, in turn, its vast collection of free templates and plug-ins and widgets and CSS snippets and HTML editors and PHP something-or-others and, we assume, plenty of other things we did not find because we promptly suffered a brain aneurysm. The cheerful nerds had not prepared us for the sheer volume of options. It’s like being stripped naked, blindfolded and turned loose in that enormous government warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Start fumbling around opening crates and eventually you’ll find the pants you need, if you live long enough.
You can pay for a tour guide who will lead you through the WordPress maze, and all the free stuff gets a lot friendlier when you buy the “Pro” version, but we couldn’t afford any of that. We had traded all our beans for a magic pig, and it certainly wasn’t going to be any help. So relying on instinct, and conflicting cheerful nerd advice, we grabbed a few promising-looking doodads off the WordPress shelf, and started jamming them together. If they didn’t quite fit, well, that’s what swearing and sledgehammers are for.
You’re also going to need some “content” for your website, which can be anything from pictures and podcasts, to recipes, articles and videos. Fortunately, just down the road at the Pigs Gorge Content Company, Jack had some content lying around, which he volunteered to donate. So we stuffed that in as well.
Rules Shmules
There are some rules you are supposed to follow. Your site should be “usable”. You should pay attention to “keywords” and “SEO”. You should have some sort of “plan”. But you know what they say. Rules are made to be strange buttered bedfellows. Or something. Let your website take you where it wants to go, we say. Life’s greatest adventures begin with an unrestrained spirit of joie de vivre (“keep the cocktails coming”).
All that’s left is to plug the thing in, retreat to a safe distance, and see if it blows up.
Safety note: Always approach any website with vigilance and caution. It may be hacked. It could have viruses. It might be a front for a Russian intelligence agency, collecting your personal information and targeting your home with hypersonic nuclear missiles. Your best bet is to avoid the internet entirely.
If you’re reading this now, that process was a success. Which is just this side of a miracle, really, given the level of buffoonery that went into it. We hope our report inspires you to pursue this miracle for yourself. As veteran website developers, we can confidently predict this: With perseverance, perspiration, and a well-stocked liquor cabinet, you too can slap together the dumbest thing the internet has ever seen. Making a website is like digging a swimming pool with a teaspoon. Any idiot can do it. All it takes is time.
Have fun!
Harry Blunders, Acting Mayor