It seems unbelievable, but I launched my Pyracantha website ten years ago, in 1998. Some of the material on the site dates from even earlier, in the mid-nineties when I was doing a lot of research and writing on Zoroastrianism. The Nineteen-Nineties era doesn't seem that nostalgic or remote, but in Internet years, it is ages ago. My website, which was designed in a simple fashion for people on dial-up accounts before the era of broadband, is just plain OBSOLETE.

I mean, it still works, and it still delivers text and images, but its organization and its presentation are dull and hard to navigate by modern standards. I also have not yet added a "buy-over-internet" feature which I have acquired from Google Check-out. I am waiting for some divine revelation from above to descend on me and turn the old Pyracantha website into a beautiful, easy-to-visit, well-designed website which is not dependent on Flash or other bandwidth-eating gimmicks.

I am not a web designer. If I were, I would have already re-designed the site. I kind of know what I want but do not have the technical expertise. My Webmistress, on whose kindness and generosity and skill this whole site depends, is not a professional web designer either, and is too busy with a major day job to spend the time it needs.

Therefore I call upon the few remaining Electron readers to suggest where I might go to find a good design resource for the re-modeling of the Pyracantha site. That would include this Electron weblog as well. I need to create easily accessible art galleries and more showplaces for my art. There needs to be online ordering so people from all over the world can buy prints. I get many inquiries about buying prints, but have not been able to do the transactions either because the inquirers are not in the USA, or because no one under 40 uses ordinary old paper checks any more. I found that last bit out to my surprise when I asked someone why I was losing so many customers when I asked them to send me a check.

See how much the world has changed since 1998? I am perhaps the only person left who does not have a cellphone stuck to their ear all the time, nor do I have a PDA or a Blackberry. (If you don't know what a PDA or a Blackberry is, you are even worse off than I am.) I refuse to succumb to technophobia. If I can't find a web design resource, I will have to somehow acquire enough webskill to do it myself. If I could learn algebra and trigonometry and first year calculus, I could probably learn web work. But there is always the matter of time, priorities, and time management, which is increasingly becoming a pressing issue for me. I could use a lot of help on that, too.

Posted at 9:00 pm | link