Ben Hunt, a talented designer and web developer who's done some nice work in the past, has a new, very popular, webdev tutorial site (Web Design from Scratch) that dishes out information about each of the following:
- Basics
- Design Process
- Opinion
- Business
- Goal-Oriented Design
- Graphic Design
- Site Architecture
- Accessibility
- Usability
- Copy Writing
- Production
- HTML
- CSS
- Javascript/DHTML
Noticeably absent from the list, or any of the articles contained therein is a single mention about the single, most important factor in webdev - building traffic... Seriously, you can have the most incredibly well-thought-out, perfectly designed site and if no one is coming, you're doing much worse than the table-laden, spam-ridden, link-selling profiteer who stole his design and built it in Frontpage 98.
I keep wondering when the world of web development is going to accept the idea that websites are supposed to be "visited" and not merely imagined. I don't think newspaper, magazines, TV or radio ever had this type of issue. It's hard to imagine a TV set designer making everything flawless for a show that no one will see - media is about traffic and until a site can find a way to profit without eyeballs, this kind of resource will always seem shallow and poorly thought-out to me.
Hey.
5 years later, and we now have an SEO section on webdesignfromscratch.com, as well as a full web design course, which covers SEO in great detail. Better late than never!
I guess it could be just me, but I thought that since he's covering webdev so broadly (not just design, but usability, scripting, business development, marketing, etc.) he could at least include something on the topic.
It wouldn't even need to be on SEO (although more designers thinking along those lines would certainly be positive), it could be on web marketing or building traffic, etc.
Why would he talk about SEO? Is that because I give recipes on my site that I should teach you how to use your fork when you gonna eat the dish you prepared?
I like that he kept the site's focus on design.
Adding sections for building traffic/marketing/webdev would have diluted the site, imo. I say keep them seperate.
Now if his website was about building a successful web site, then leaving out topics like building traffic would be wrong.