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spliced graphics sites vs content based sites

Here's where the chasm opens up between graphic designers who make websites and usability-oriented web developers. We draw pistols, take 10 paces and...

Let's start that again. Hmmm.

So you want to make a website and you're a dab hand with Photoshop, so you whip up a gorgeous layout at 800x600 then use some purpose-designed software such as Adobe's ImageReady or Macromedia's Fireworks to slice it into little bits, embed it in fixed-size tables and Oila! You have a website!

Good for you. It probably looks fine on your computer. It may even work for your friends, who have similar systems and screen resolutions. "My, doesn't it look pretty!" they say.

A year later, you think about updating it. The text is way out of date, but you couldn't be bothered updating it as it needs a complete rebuild every time you want to even change text (as the text is actually a graphic). Still, what's the point in rebuilding it, as the only people who ever saw it were your friends and they got bored with it after a week as there was never anything new on it. It never ranked in search engines and no high-profile sites ever showed any interest in linking to you, the bastards. Ha, they wouldn't know a good site if you rammed it down their throat ten times (in fact, you tried that, but they never answered your emails requesting a reciprocal link).

If you're happy with that sort of site and those limitations, then go for it - and you don't need any help from me. In fact, most of what I've said up to this point is irrelevant, as most of it was about making sites that will work for just about everyone.

The sites I teach people to make are at the opposite end of the spectrum from ones designed as a fixed layout in Photoshop. The sites I make are content-driven. The words are text, and I use graphics as design elements. Although this attitude started off as a semi-political statement long before anyone talked about "web usability", it's had some rather nice spin-offs. My sites rank well. In fact, I get over a million hits a month on a number of my sites without any advertising or active promotion on my part. The single most important factor in my getting this sort of traffic is that my sites not only HAVE content that people might be interested in, it's in a format that search engines can easily see.

Some basic problems with spliced-graphic based sites: