Years ago, I had a vision while speaking to a Mac user group. I realised that each person in my audience had a hobby or a craft in which they created wonderful and unique treasures ranging from hand-carved birds to quilts or poetry.
And many in the audience possessed specialised skills that would be invaluable to others, if only they could get the word out. In the vision, I saw them all conducting business over the internet with personalised and co-operative websites wherein they sold their services and creations to the world.
In the vision, they were all fulfilled and living happily ever after. The young folk had mentors and the seniors had plenty of money, and so on. You get the picture. It was a win-win situation for all.
Unfortunately, ever since I had this vision, the path to that particular nirvana has become rocky.
Setting up a small business website is more difficult than ever. Five years ago, there were close to a dozen wysiwyg (what you see is what you get) editors, which made creating simple business webpages relatively easy. Today, there are only a couple left. There are the .Mac-type sites that are pre-formatted and allow you to post photos and text easily, but these sites are not particularly useful for hosting a small business, club or non-profit enterprise.
This was brought home to me recently when the webmaster for an association I am active in retired. The membership wanted him to post updates more frequently and in a more timely fashion - for no money.
