INTRODUCTION> Virtual Volunteering : Other Approaches : Copyright

Introduction

I've been building sites for awhile now, and I spend a lot of time working online. I have very strong views regarding the web and what makes a good website. As you may have noticed, I'm a bit of a minimalist compared to most professional web designers.

Even in my commercial web design, I keep the bells 'n whistles to a bare minimum. In community-based sites, I think it's even more important. My personal web-politics can be summed up as:

Knowledge is power, and the web can bring that power to the people.

I have readers who are in remote locations with 28K connections, students who have anti-virus firewalls that won't allow them to download Plug-Ins, and the list goes on. I go into more detail about why a site should be kept functionally simple on retrokat.com, if you're interested in my little rants. Ironically, I love high-end technology and my qualifications are in Multimedia (digital animation, 3D graphics and all that flashy fun stuff) - but my fundamental concern for access and equity on the web prevents me from making THOSE sort of sites. You know, the ones that only work on a Pentium 4 with a cable-modem and the Moon in Jupiter.

On the other hand, unless you're a major site like Yahoo, text-only sites are REALLY difficult to get traffic to, especially repeat traffic. A site has to be interesting enough to stick in people's minds and maybe even (joy of joys) get bookmarked.

By making this site, I hope I can encourage those who are just starting to make websites to at least consider the politics before they go basing a site on technology that will exclude less fortunate readers.

My desire for including everyone on the web means that I will also show you how to build a site on a small budget. In fact, you can do the whole thing for free if you don't mind advertising appearing on your site. You may even be able to use the site to raise funds for your community organisation.

In return for me providing you with this advice, all I ask is that you consider passing any knowledge you have on to others. Volunteering your services, even if it's virtual volunteering, is a good thing.

If my views on web-building don't suit you, perhaps I can help point you toward sites that may be of more assistance to you, ones with other approaches. Regardless of the type of site you want to do, I'd ask you to PLEASE respect the copyright of others.

You can either read this entire site in a linear way (like a book) by following the "next page" arrows, use the sitemap to find articles of particular interest or the navigation (top left) to skip to the beginning of each main category.

MIT's Open Courseware
ALL materials relating to MIT courses are being made available to the public. For FREE! You won't get accreditation, but you can learn all there is to learn from one of the world's top Universities. Wow! I worship their fabulousness.