The Cobbler's children, as the saying goes, are unshod. Not because the Cobbler can't make shoes, but because he's busy making shoes for everyone else.
Likewise with my own web presence. I've been building websites professionally for clients for several years, but until now I haven't had a professional website: the web presence for Metamorphic has been hanging off my personal site at isaac.freeman.org.nz. And that site's running on the Wordpress content management system, which is a very fine content management system, but not the one I've been recommending to most of my clients. That's been bugging me, and I'm glad to put an end to it.
The Need for Feed... back
This site is running on Drupal version six, the same software I use for most of my clients' sites. As I use it day-to-day, I'll be taking careful note of what works for me and what doesn't, and I'll be making corresponding changes in the way I deploy Drupal for clients. I keep a full working Drupal site on my own hard drive as a master, and when I'm building a new site I start by taking a copy. I'll be updating the master site based on what I learn here, and the changes I make will flow on to clients as I build new sites.
But this isn't the only kind of feedback I'm looking for. I'll also be looking for insights into the social process of designing and running a website. And in fact, this site changed my thinking on web design long before it was actually built.
The Plan is the Product
There's a fashion at the moment for "agile" development methods, where you don't make fixed plans, and you figure out the design as you go through discussion and experience. This style of design is fine where everybody is involved on a reasonably equal basis, and has time to be intimately involved in the process, but it carries a considerable risk. It doesn't matter how agile you are if you're not sure what you're trying to achieve. I went down several blind alleys designing this site, and it was only when I pulled back and addressed some fundamental decisions that I was able to proceed.
These decisions were all about branding: I needed to clarify what I was selling, what kinds of clients I wanted, how I'd be different from other web design firms — all the fundamentals that so often get overlooked. This insight, and several fine lunches with Sam Strati at RedK, led to the Web Plan. I'd previously been treating specifications as necessary preparation before the main work of building a website. Now it's the central product Metamorphic provides: a coherent plan first, and a website only after that. And of course, once I'd clarified my brand, the website's design flowed naturally.
I'm looking forward to seeing what further insights come from running this site. And I'll be applying what I learn back to the sites I design and build for clients.
This will, of course, not apply to clients who already have finished sites from Metamorphic. This is an area I'll need to think about. On one hand, one of the principles I'm maintaining for Metamorphic is that there's no lock-in: clients can run their own sites, and don't need updates from me. On the other hand, updates are cool, and often make sites easier to use. I'm considering offering an annual update service as a separate fixed-price package, but it'll need some thinking about.
And in fact I'm using aspects of the agile approach right now with one of my clients. It happens to be a good fit for them because the nature of the site really does require them to be closely involved.
