starter — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 06:08:11 +0000

I would go with predefine templates with some simple customisations, althought its great to let them do what they want , but you probably still want to keep a overall general feel and consistance, Persoanlly I find most people just want to get thier data up and presented nicely and persoanlised like uploading thier own images mainly, I quite like the way yahoo did thier 360, some sites I stumbles across before is quite terrible in my opinion when you go from one profile or page to another its completely different in such an extent I wonder if I was still at the same site.

andy206uk — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 17:01:32 +0000

Hi,

The tool doesn't create a whole website. Just a very specialist tool for use on the websites of a specialist (but large) type of website. The users will likely be 'mom and pop' types who don't have a clue about design. I don't think in it's current form it would be of any use to students, but I suppose it could be with some modification (that would likely be a separate site however).

LenBradshaw — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 16:42:27 +0000

Hi:

Your "niche" might be bigger than you think. Have you thought about the possibility of this becoming an educational tool for elementary or high school students? In that case, I think the users should have the ability to design to their hearts content without any restrictions or interference. When a child or young adult creates his or her "first website," what might look like rubbish to you or I would be a thing of great beauty to those just learning what the internet is all about. What do you think of that?

andy206uk — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:35:05 +0000

This service will be free for an entry based product with limited options and around $15 a year for a pro version. Without going into too many details, it's a niche service that will allow a certain market to add a very useful tool to their existing websites, something that currently is only available in a crappy basic version not really designed specifically for their needs or as expensive bespoke code on a site by site basis that would require a 3rd party to implement.

Griffon — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 23:06:29 +0000

andy206uk;212500 wrote: I'm really leaning towards a predefined set of templates generated by me at this point and perhaps adding the 'create your own template' options in the future once the app is actually up and running...

That sounds like the best idea - a bit like blogger in fact.

Have you decided what marketing model are you going to use? Free for very small sites with a fee to upgrade perhaps?

I've sometimes been surprised how expensive some template based sites are for the customer. Also I've occassionally been asked to design bespoke sites for people after they have become disappointed, and incidentally felt ripped off, by template style websites. One client had recently been charged £150 per year for a very second rate product. For that money he could have bought FrontPage and built something he wanted in almost the same time it took to learn how to use the template driven site.

I've also wondered whether there was a good template based web site design system I could offer my clients. I've no idea how feasible this is but I'd like to be able to buy the php code to host on my server that would allow my clients to build simple websites. Maybe if you're thinking big you could offer this or maybe have people like me as affiliates sending customers to your template based system. I'm probably re-inventing the wheel here. I've noticed everytime I think of something like this, someone's already doing it!

andy206uk — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 20:51:02 +0000

Well the site is commerical in nature. It's aimed at very small mom and pop type businesses. I've designed the appearance functionality around templates but I've been contemplating allowing users to create their own templates. The thing is, I just know that if I let people create their own templates that they'll create something really god awful (white text on bright yellow backgrounds and stuff!).

I'm really leaning towards a predefined set of templates generated by me at this point and perhaps adding the 'create your own template' options in the future once the app is actually up and running...

Megan — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 20:02:09 +0000

I think it all depends on the audience you're targetting. Will the audience want to fool around with a lot of stuff even if it looks like crap? This is the difference between myspace and other social networking sites - myspace lets them do everything. Others don't, but users of facebook and others that do that don't seem to mind. They may even prefer something that restricts their choices so they get something that looks nice. I suspect users would like it if you could help them create a nicer looking page - like if you had only nice fonts to choose from, or helped them pick a nice colour scheme or something.