It's meant to be easy … really easy. Yet something always seems to get in the way when it comes to building a website in 10 minutes or 15 minutes or even 60 minutes, using the countless numbers of web design packages on offer.
With many of them, you may well end up getting seriously stressed out, cursing, frustrated, resentful and bewildered. The supposedly 'idiot proof' templates, drag and drop features and funky widgets are just not working doing what you want them to; your temperature reaches boiling point and you're tempted to smash your laptop against the wall and just give up.
Reality taunts you and you are always resigned to the fact that the promise of creating a website that will attract millions of loyal visitors, wins a hatful of design rewards and makes you a millionaire overnight – on a hope and a dream – is just crazy nonsense .
The truth sinks in that with no experience or training whatever in web design, you really should consider making baby steps with a simple site and modest ambitions, rather than leaping head first into an impossible dream. It really is easy, putting up one page with a logo, some text, images and widgets, and virtually anyone can do this is literally a few minutes.
However, to build credibility and engage an audience, with a 'bullet proof' site, web design should have considered a marathon and not a sprint. Modern tools and do-it-yourself platforms may make building a website simpler than they use to be, but the process should be seen in the same way as building a house. For a dwelling, a novice builder would normally need a blueprint, a structure, the fixtures and fittings and then the design features (eg paint, wallpaper, carpets), while for a website, a newbie would benefit greatly from having a wireframe or template , editorial content, graphics, logo and lots of creativity. And time. Lots of time.
Think of it this way, if you work in any type of profession, it's reasonable to expect that you would have studied hard to achieve a degree of competency and would most probably have backed this up with on-the-job experience. The same applies to web design, whether you're building a website from a template or from scratch.
So the advice is, to avoid stress, depression and tears when building a website, take time to learn how to use the tools, enjoy the experience and go from mediocre to marvellous, one baby step at a time.