Quick thoughts on the state of the World Wide Web.

I have just recently been thrown into the position of webmaster for a university college of 23 academic departments. Obviously this is a daunting task, as many of our departments’ web sites are sadly out of date (circa 1996 style), and are not at all compliant with ADA/508/504 requirements (that will make sense if you’re a corporate or educational webmaster type person).

Anyway, I just got out of a meeting with our campus webmaster, our college dean, and a few other higher-up types. We did discuss my role as webmaster, and what it means for me and for the college, but we also talked about content on the web. The main point discussed however, was that the focus of web sites now has to shifted from cool design to actual content.

A company’s or school’s web site is now the first place most people will go for information. As cool as it was back in the beginning to create a cool looking web site, now the really important part of a site is the content. Look at WritingUp for example. It’s not like its overall look is anything amazing. There’s no Flash, no video, nothing eye-catching really at all. Of course the back-end programming is pretty sophisticated, but visually the site is not stunning by any means. But we’re all here, aren’t we? And why are we here? Content.

So, would-be and professional web designers, keep that in mind. In 2006, the WWW is all about content.