I think my ‘career’
as a web designer is now officially over. I taught myself to do web design in
Microsoft FrontPage when we took over the Universal Studios Japan Alumni site (www.usjalumni.com) in 2001. We’ve
maintained it ever since.
This was,
without a doubt, the easiest software in the world to use. Everything was
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). I didn’t have to learn HTML code, and I
could preview exactly what the site would look like when it went live. I began
building other sites, including our author site, using this tool. They weren’t
fancy, but they were user-friendly and provided information.
Unfortunately,
in 2008, Microsoft in their (IMHO) questionable wisdom, decided to stop
supporting the product. However, it kept on working, and I continued using it.
I built the
site for our writing group (www.lagunitawirters.com),
the one for our friends Len and Luanna Rugh (www.rughfamilywriters.com), and the
one for our artist friend, Bob Schwenck (www.schwenckart.com)
using it.
For quite a few
years, we maintained our church website (www.sjcpres.org) on it as well. Fortunately, a
couple of years ago, the church hired a professional to redesign it, and we got
out of the web site business—at least for that site.
We tested the
website for our high school class on FrontPage, but a friend designed the final
version in HTML code. (www.ahs64-alumni.com)
I am very grateful, not only for her friendship but also for her considerable
skill and talent!
I also built
our original writing website on that platform (www.lornalarry.com), but several years
ago, our Japanese son twisted my arm to let him redesign it. Thank God he did,
or it would be going the way of the dodo as well.
When I chose
hosting for my sites, I picked GoDaddy. They were one of the few hosting sites
to continue to support FrontPage extensions after Microsoft abandoned the
program. They have continued to run my sites. That will stop next month for
several of them (www.usjalumni,.com, www.lagunitawriters.com, www.rughfamilywriters.com, www.schwenckart.com). We’ve been notified
that they are shifting to a new hosting platform and will no longer support FrontPage.
I don’t know whether this means they will all go away as of that date or some
of their pages won’t look right or what.
I spent all
morning (starting at three a.m.) exploring the alternatives, but none of the
existing programs will allow for straight conversion from FrontPage, and all of
them would require a substantial learning curve.
Six years ago,
I took a class in Dreamweaver. I received an A, but discovered I loathed the
program. It was much too complex for the kinds of sites I worked on. And it
also would not allow for direct conversion.
I am now
retired—at least I’m supposed to be—and I have no desire to take on mastering a
new program. So I guess those sites will just go away unless I can find someone
to take them over.
I won’t pay
anyone to be webmaster for these. It's not worth it to me. Two belong to groups with numerous other
members, and the other two belong to friends.
Does anyone
have any suggestions for going forward? I’d still like to be able to tweak the
group sites from time to time or at least make suggestions or contributions.
Has anyone else faced this issue?
