I’m working on a website right now for my mother. I’ve done many professional websites in the past three years, and so I am finding this process pretty easy. For some examples of websites I have created (or co-created), check out:
http://skywyatt.com/testing (website for my cousin, a local country/western singer)
http://pegagogle.com (theme not finished)
http://openplanner.com (co-created)
http://shedio.com (simple theme)
http://www.britbornbajan.com (first professional website)
I don’t use a WYSIWYG editor for creating website, although I tried Dreamweaver in the past. What I do now is start with a tried and true tested theme, and modify it. My experiments with creating my own web themes have been somewhat successful, but my wife’s artistic eye has definitely been helpful here.
The process of creating a website for me has moved away from the design and layout of the website, which I keep separate from the functionality of the website (which to be honest I find a lot more interesting). What has surprised me about building websites is not the difficulty of the process (there are some extremely difficult problems to solve, given the complexity and variety of web browsers on the market) but the length of time it has taken me to start being good at building websites. I’ve been working at it in my spare time for over 4 years now and I still run into problems I need to do research to solve.
