The old way: The online brochure
Web 1.0 workflow was like this:
- You write up your web pages.
- You give your write-up and a big bag of money to your web designer.
- Your designer takes what you’ve come up with and designs your website.
- Once the design for your new web content is finished, the files are passed over to the webmaster, who holds the keys to access and update your website.
- Finally, your designed website appears ... and you decide you want to rewrite that first paragraph on the home page, or maybe you find a typo ... and you must go back to step 1 and repeat the entire process.
This is what you might call not at all empowering.
The reputation of the Web 1.0 sites has been that they required a team of programmers before, during, and after implementation. Often custom-built, these one-off sites were expensive since they were built from scratch using proprietary code (programs). With proprietary and/or custom coding, any updates were time consuming and costly.
"Web 2.0": Behind the buzz phrase
The most-basic concepts behind Web 2.0 is that website is in the control of the owner — not an outside web development company. To be sure, help is available from web design companies such as pingVision, but the Client does not end up beholding to the designer for every niggling change. The Client does not spend extra time and/or money in making small adjustments — such as a new calendar event. No. The Client can make the day-to-day updates and adjustments himself/herself as easily as updating a word processing document.
This isn’t to say that there never is any design involved in a Web 2.0-type site — but it’s much easier, because what we (designers) do is design your templates so that every new addition you make to the website content is automagically formatted to fit in with your site’s overall design.
This means that the “Web 1.0” phase of your new website is limited only to the initial setup, or when you want to make design changes to the site. Content changes, updates and additions are things you can do on your own.
Because website owners are empowered to publish whenever they want, the entire nature of what websites are has changed. Content now has become more contemporary, more relevant — more responsive to what’s happening. And because websites now happen in real-time — you write it, post it and people read it — websites have become more than simply brochures. This brings us back to the concept that websites are conversations. We develop websites that open doors to communication, whether within an organization or amongst a community of people.
In real-world application, use of Free Open Source Software affords the ability for individuals, communities, businesses and organizations to use and benefit from software that is continuously being developed and improved, without having to invest in a proprietary upgrade path.