After seeing the quotation from the web design firm my mom’s thinking
of using, I have gotten sufficiently annoyed about the current design.
I will apply my one-hour hacking challenge to
http://www.adphoto.com.ph tomorrow. That is, in one hour, I will try
to whiz through as many improvements as possible.

It’s been enough time that I’ve forgotten what their design looked
like. I’ll sit down tomorrow and hack up something small and simple.
Neat. No frills. Clean and elegant, though, and search-friendly. It
won’t get picked up by the search engines right away, but I’ll see
what I can do about that also.

If they think the design resembles theirs too much, I can modify it.
<shrug> Still, better to have code I understand than autogen
code I don’t.

Some insights:

– Websites can be tweaked over time, just like software. I can improve

it incrementally. I should think of it like planner.

– I wanted a professional design firm because I wanted a real

copywriter to go over the stuff. I don’t want people to just
copy-and-paste blocks of text from the company profile.

– I also wanted someone to do the initial implementation so that I can

just do maintenance, which I enjoy. If I’m sufficiently annoyed,
though, I can just evolve the site. One of the most effective ways
to get me to do something is to make me annoyed enough with the
current situation.

– Design: As long as it isn’t horrible, it’s okay. People will visit

for photos and information, not for website design tips.

– Future: Stock photos CMS, delicious-style tagging. But not now.

Small hack forward.