Building a web site today is a far cry from what it was when I first started back in the 90s. Back then every page had to be optimized for 14.4 kbps modems, mostly all text with a very small image here and there. Today with nearly limitless bandwidth we can use high resolution graphics for backgrounds and avatars and have high definition video embedded right in the pages, real time video chat, all kinds of wonderful and amazing stuff!

Back then, you also had to know how to code. If you didn't code it yourself, you had to hire someone that could. As a webdev I was bombarded with "here are my documents, can you convert them into a web ready format?". I had to convert so many word docs and spread sheets into html and tables, scan in photographs, compress 10mb .wav files into 50k .mp3's and all kinds of stuff.

These days there are many good free solutions that everyday users can feel comfortable with, typing or copy/paste their text docs into wysiwyg word proccessing text editors and clicking a button to upload your music or video and hit save, and its done!

At first I was worried that this web 2.0 thing, where people are creating their own free website with comfort and ease, would put me out of business. However, it has not been like that that. As it turns out, most of these free solutions are very limited in scope and you get what you pay for. If you want to customize your content or have it do specific things other than the original design offers, you still need developers and site builders to streamline and customize your solutions. So, here I am, 16 years in and still in high demand.