Function first

One of the weird things about building websites, which I’m sure is repeated across all manner of disciplines, is showing them to people. If you’ve done your job right then all the clever stuff you spent all night working on it completely invisible. When you excitedly show your loved ones the thing that’s been driving you insane and keeping you awake they’re invariably unimpressed because, hey, it just looks like a boring website. It’s like the joke about ducks. “The trick is to make it look as easy as possible while, underneath, you’re paddling like hell.”

But people can only understand that which they can understand, and unfortunately, by accident or design, the workings of the internet is deemed something that normal, ordinary people cannot understand. It’s for geeks and borderline Aspergers sufferers alone.

Which is, of course, bollocks. Yes, programming requires a certain mindset but you’re not required to be a nerd to apply the Internet effectively. It just needs you to be a thinking, intelligent human being. Which, if you’ve managed to do anything with your life, you probably are.

I’m writing this because another arts organisation has launched another website which, in my professional opinion, is not very good. I don’t want to pick on them exclusively as the same mistakes are made over and over again and they are not doing anything unusual. What I want to do is make a general point using them to illustrate it.

The Lombard Method is a space in Birmingham run and occupied by a group of artists. It’s essentially a shared studio with space for projects and exhibitions. It looks like this:

They recently launched their new website. It looks like this:

It looks nice, it’s kinda fun (the Sputnik image moves across the page) and it’s got all the information you need to know about the space, who’s in it and what they do. So why am I disappointed with it?

Unlike the websites for the similar artist spaces Grand Union and Eastside Projects, which are simple brochure sites build on the tediously popular Indexhibit platform, The new Lombard effort is built on WordPress. WordPress is ostensibly a blogging CMS (content management system) but with a bit, or a lot, of tweaking you can use it to run any kind of website you like.

Putting WordPress, or any other professional standard CMS, on your web server is like sorting out the utilities for your house. It provides the basics like plumbing, electricity and water but also deals with the post, telephone, internet and council services (garbage collection, etc). And it provides a secure doors and windows so people can’t easily break in. In short, it gives you the functionality you need so you can get on with living in that space without worrying about it.

What it doesn’t do, on it’s own, is make your house look nice (for that you need a decorator) or comfortable (and a trip to Ikea). Sure, it comes with the basics for living, and you can get by on them, but people like their homes to be their homes.

Have another look at that photo of the Lombard studio. It has everything they need to do what they do but it’s not all fancy. Some basic desk, ad-hoc partitions, clean-but-worn floors. They’ve taken an old factory space and installed the living-standards equivalent of WordPress. When it comes to their studio they understand what’s important. Getting work done is important. The luxuries can come later.

If the Lombard folks were idiot artists, the sort of Nathan Barley morons who are doing art because it’s a cool thing to do before the trust money runs out and they have to get a proper job, they wouldn’t be in a shabby warehouse with bits of plywood. They’d be in some overpriced, overdesigned omnifuctional post-media lab with beanbags and unnecessary Mac Pros. Style over substance.

But they’re not. They’re demonstrably there to work hard and the studio, from the practical utilities to the social and intellectual atmosphere, is a means to that end, not an end in itself. And most of the artists I know in Birmingham are like this. Which begs the question:

Why don’t artists approach their websites in the same way they approach their studios?

With the Grand Union website they can be forgiven for not knowing any better. A lot of artists use Indexhibit and it’s very easy to set up and use. It can’t actually do much but for getting basic information onto the web it does the job. But the Lombard website is built on WordPress yet doesn’t make use of the utilities it provides. If you’ll excuse the bluntness, it’s like plumbing in a toilet and crapping in a beautifully designed bucket.

I don’t know who built the site. I don’t know what level of expertise they have or in what area. I’m probably looking at their work with the same condescending eye professional web designers look at mine and I want to be at pains to say this isn’t an attack on them. I’m sure it fits the criteria they were given. The problem isn’t the site build – it’s the criteria. And the solution, as so often, lies in educating the client.

A while back I did a workshop at the Moseley Exchange on getting a basic web presence. The audience was people who ran their own businesses and used the Exchange’s co-working space. A lot of them were designer/makers and artists with working on tight margins at the dawn of their careers. My pitch was pretty simple:

At this stage of your career you’re not ready for a £1000 a month studio in Digbeth. You’re working here or in your kitchen making do with what you need rather than what you might like. You should approach your website in the same way. Do not pay a fancy designer for a pretty website – make do with free and cheap tools until you can afford to pay for pretty.

The priority must be to make it fit for purpose. Ask yourself what your website is for.

• Is is there to make you look cool?

• Is it there to satisfy a funding requirement to demonstrate activity?
• Or is it there to tell the world what you’re actually doing and help you connect with you peers and audiences?

If it’s the first two then there are plenty of digital illustrators who will relish the chance to take your money for a bit of style-over-content. Making websites that look good is fun and you end up with something that, at a glance, seems very impressive.

But if it’s the third one then you need something that functions. That, at it’s base, is not inherently sexy and cool but which lets the fact that you are sexy and cool be communicated to the widest audience possible. It needs to be plumbed in and connected to the grid. It needs to be registered with the post office and on the bin rounds. In order to allow your interestingness to spread it needs to do all the boring stuff. It needs to serve as a means to an end.

And that’s what so very frustrating about the Lombard site. It’s nearly there. The pipes and cables are in place, they’ve just been inexplicably disconnected. Where’s the RSS feed? Where’s the search? Where’s the News page?

When something is so very nearly right it’s way more frustrating that something that’s just useless. The Lombard site needs just a couple of tweaks to make it fit for purpose, and that, plus the fact that I care, is why I’m picking on it here. But so many people make this mistake when they’re commissioning websites. They somehow don’t apply the same degree of thought to it as they would other aspects of their life.

The look of your website is important. It does serve as a marketing tool and you should give its appearance the same level of care and attention as you do your posters and flyers.

But it’s also so much more than that. It’s a communication medium, a work space, a social environment and a news outlet. It’s where people go when they want to connect with you in some way, be it directly, intellectually or as part of a broader dialogue. And in many cases it’s the only way people can connect with you.

Tools like WordPress (and yes, there are many others available) help you realise that potential by making things as easy as plugging in a toaster. But it’s all for nothing if you don’t see the point of toast.

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Yes, I sell my services as a budget WordPress-based website builder, and yes, I sell to the Birmingham arts and crafts community, and yes, I’d hope to get some business of the back of this slightly ranty post. But be assured I write this primarily as someone who engages with Birmingham artistic scenes and is frequently annoyed by the disconnect between lovely approachable and generous people and their cold, standoffish and generally useless websites. It is my mission to change this.

You can ignore everything I say, you can write me off as a web-obsessed cranky nerd, but please, before you make any investment, both time and money, in your online presence, think about what it’s for and make sure it’s fit for that purpose. Otherwise you might as well not bother.