A couple of guys, new to web development, are interested in creating a website prototype for their exciting new idea as part of a campaign to attract venture capital. With very little background in any of the technologies involved in web development, they are feeling their way with a little help from their friends, including me. They just emailed:

Hi George,

If you have a sec will you take a look at wix.com and let me know if you see any problems with using it to create a basic mock up for our site?
(Seems like, for our purposes, it will be much better and easier than photoshop, no?)

Thx George...

Like many folks, these friends have gotten the impression that web development can be made 'easy' if only you can find the right tools. That somehow one can bypass the hard stuff to make a stunning site, just like those other folks whose sites are displayed as examples. Perhaps that works for a site that presents "My Vacation" or "Family Photos." And some restricted-purpose sites, such as a portfolio for an artist of photographer, look great right out of the can. (See my favorite, ShutterBug.) But when it comes to a complex commercial site, with a graphic look, an organization and a feature set all its own, all one can do is make the development 'easier,' not 'easy.' And the limitations that make an instant website-maker 'easy,' are often exactly the ones that make it very hard to get what you really want.

I didn't say all that in my reply to the email. I focused on just getting the desired look in a site that wouldn't actually DO anything except present a series of pages according to a demonstration script. Here's what I said:

I don't see any problems using wix.com (new to me) as a basis for a false-front website.  It's worth saying, though, that the beautiful graphics in the templates are most likely not quite what you'll want, and Photoshop or other imaging software will be required to develop the graphic images you DO want.  The example sites show many examples where a graphically-sophisticated web developer has started with a wix.com template and then modified it, mostly in terms of images and text-as-image.  Anybody can give you a variety of ways to put text on the screen -- on the left, in boxes, in columns, in menus -- but the test of an attractive website is usually not text, in these media-conscious days, but graphics.

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