Introducing Assemble-A-Site

We’ve discussed previous how much a website should cost, and we’ve explored ways the Black Square has tried to reduce these costs by creating industry-targeted packs. We have realised, however, that there is an enormous market out there for websites that are super-cheap, and we asked ourselves, “Is there any way, any way at all, that we could provide quality websites to this market as well?”

Our answer to this is the Assemble-A-Site project. We are attempting to develop a system that will allow customers to build their own websites. The idea being that if we remove all human interaction, we can reduce the cost of the website to something totally affordable by anyone at all. Revisiting the five major aspects of good website development:

The system works like this: the client will create an account on Assemble-A-Site, and we will provide them with the basic structure of a site for a base cost of about $10 (USD) per month. The client will then select from a large pool of additional skins (designs), modules, page layouts and content blocks to construct the functionality they require for their site. Each of the additions will add a small additional charge to their monthly bill (between $0.25 and $5). The charge includes hosting and a domain name.

Skins

The skin of the site controls the design, global layout and the look-and-feel of the site. Each site can only have one skin at a time, but changing skins is easy. Each skin defines a range of variables that allows the client to customise and personalise the look-and-feel of their site.

Modules

The modules add additional functionality to the site. The basic site can manage a menu, and add simple content pages to that menu. Additional modules are required to do anything else. There are modules, for example, to add a news manager to the site, allowing the client to add regular news articles without clogging up the menu. There are product catalogue and online shopping modules to allow for e-commerce.

Page Layouts

The care system will allow for a standard layout and a special home page layout, but many sites will need a much larger range of content layouts. For example, a page may require a right column for supporting documentation or a photo gallery. A client may add as many additional page layouts as they want to their system.

Content Blocks

Content Blocks allow the client to add basic content to a page. The core system comes with a small range of standard Content Blocks, which will allow the client to add the most basic formatted content, but additional content blocks can be added to add pre-formatted contact details, enquiry forms, blog feeds, adverts, and a great many other specialised forms of content.

Many modules will also provide content blocks as part of their package. For example, a news module will include a News Feed content block, allowing the client to add a feed of the news to any page on the site.

Our idea with Assemble-A-Site is to provide a framework to the general public for a nominal fee, and allow them to build their own websites. We will attempt to use our experience to guide the inexperienced to build their own quality websites. The websites, on the whole, will be a far lower quality than our custom-written sites, or even our website packs, but we believe that there are many people out there who will accept the restrictions and limitations of these websites in return for the affordability. This product provides the ability to create websites to a whole range of people who, previously, had no chance of being able to afford one.

This is our idea, and the Assemble-A-Site project has begun with great enthusiasm. We have encountered challenges along the way, and I’ll deal with some of those in the very near future.