How a Website is Built, Part 1

I've read plenty of interesting analogies used to explain what building a website is like. I've even written a few myself. From various points of view, a website could be compared to a car, a house, a cellphone, a movie, or all kinds of other things. I've even heard a website compared to a clown (don't ask). Most of the time, these analogies are striving to find the most effective way of emphasizing the time, cost, complexity or purposes of a website project. Rather than construct yet another metaphor around that point, I'm just going to come right out and say it: Building a website is a complex task that takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. But that's not the really interesting part, is it? more >

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December, 2009
Building a new website is a big deal. It takes a lot of time and effort from many people. If you were expecting to simply place an order and be notified when your site is done, you should be prepared ... more >

November, 2009
We are all librarians now. I'll back that statement up over the course of this article, but if you're already picturing a stern, bespectacled woman who might shush you at any moment, think again. Toda... more >

October, 2009
Most often when we fail to achieve the results we are after, it is due not to inadequate effort, but to doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons. We tend to set goals far more easily than we deter... more >

September, 2009
The epitaph on Buckminster Fuller's tombstone reads, "CALL ME TRIMTAB." In life, he used the trim tab, a very small attachment to a boat's rudder that controls its speed and direction, as a metaphor f... more >

August, 2009
In his book "What Leaders Really Do," John P. Kotter defines management as "coping with complexity," a discipline that emerged as a necessary component of operating large, complex organizations. Just ... more >