What We Learned from 1999

Today I was introduced to SquareSpace, the latest and supposedly greatest CMS out there.  Seems I’ve been hearing that a bunch lately, and every couple of months, it seems a newer, more polished CMS is out there, with a website that is designed to embrace the very latest web trends.  And honestly, I couldn’t be happier… or more confused.

Don’t get me wrong, I love using a CMS to manage websites.  Good ones, like ExpressionEngine and WordPress are easy to install and easy to use, and offer an amazing array of tools and features that solo designers and developers like myself have been dying for.  And considering they all use CSS, it makes re-skinning sites a snap.  Ten years ago, none of this existed, and it would cost tens of thousands of dollars to build simple things like a site search and user database.  Nowadays, that can be done for $8 a month.  Unreal.  Goes to show what 10 years of development and innovation has gotten us.

But the game that was once dominated by a few players has suddenly become overwhelmed with new and impressive software.  From older, more structured systems like Drupal and Joomla to lightweight freeware like WordPress and Text Pattern, to proprietary systems like EE, Interspire and SquareSpace, there is plenty to choose from, and certainly an ideal CMS can be found for any job and any budget.  With the maturation of PHP and other open-sourced platforms, the development of cloud computing and the introduction more robust, standards-compliant browsers, it’s beginning to feel like we’re witnessing the birth of a new dotcom bubble. The industry is about to explode, as every designer with any semblance of ambition is putting these tools to great use to build bigger and better projects.  And as for the the developers of these tools, I’m sure the venture capitalist community is taking notice.

Many of these newer systems, Interspire and SquareSpace in particular, have taken advantage of drag and drop publishing, thereby allowing people with little or no design experience to make changes.  Programmers have been developing web-based tools that even the most remedial web user can handle.  Today you can even find desktop background artwork generators online with full editing tools and a huge library of graphic elements. How long before that gets incorporated into a CMS?  Intuit has come close, with a really tepid offering of DIY website design software, and as expected, the results generally look amateurish, formulaic, and… well… terrible. But with newer, better developed tools emerging, and younger, more computer-savvy people entering the workforce, the barrier between client and web designer is beginning to disappear.  A generation raised on text messaging, Facebook updates, and Twittering won’t feel the level of technological intimidation that an older, less savvy users feel, and will make better use of the web for business (at least, we hope). 

But with all these new companies and all these new tools,  it doesn’t take a fool to realize that much of what we see won’t survive the next market purge. And what happens if our proprietary CMS provider folds? What happens if their products are no longer up to snuff, or properly supported? What happens when your data is on someone else’s server, part of someone else’s system, and the terms of service change?  We’ve seen the furor that ensued when Facebook changed it’s TOS, and started using it’s member’s photos in ads.

We’ve all gone from Friendster to MySpace to Facebook to twitter to whatever 2010 brings. Is this trend what shall become of site design and management now? Constantly shifting to the newest and best CMS, hoping that learning their system doesn’t erase all you’ve learned trying to use the five other CMS’s you’ve had to learn in the past 3 months, while worrying if our data is portable and our features supported.

Where does it all end, I wonder.  Will web developers become pigeon-holed by the software we use?  I’m not a web designer, I’m a Word Press designer. I’m an Expression Engineer. I’m a Django Djunkie. I’m a Text-Patsy. No, that’s not the endgame.  It’s even more frightening, and every web designer should show some concern.  With the development of these drag and drop, no experience necessary setups, the ultimate endgame would seem to put designers on a bread line. 

Give it another ten years, and everyone will be able to use their touchscreen TV to go on the web, and create a site – not from some generic template, but from a library of thousands of colors, textures, and stock backgrounds that they can customize, while they drag and drop the content blocks into place.  All with the touch of a finger. 

I’ve got a finger for ya…