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Have a fucking website

otherstrangeness.com

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Re: Have a fucking website

#391

Post by lotsofpulp »

bigfishrunning wrote: post #373
lotsofpulp wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Referring to a person rich enough to buy human labor as “time poor” is interesting because poorer people working 12+ hour shifts who don’t get paid time off or holidays would consider themselves “time poor”.

Sure, poorer people are also very busy, but i think the GP poster is using "time poor" to refer to people for whom time is their most scarce resource. When i was a kid, i couldn't afford to buy all of the toys and games i wanted to, but i had plenty of time with the toys and games i did have. Now as an adult i can afford to buy whatever i want (within reason), but life gets in the way of me enjoying those things. I t…

> Sure, poorer people are also very busy, but i think the GP poster is using "time poor" to refer to people for whom time is their most scarce resource.

This is the framing I am talking about. Surely, the scarcity of time for a poor person who has to do shift work until they are probably dead is a little more scarce than a rich person who chooses to play the game longer than they have to to put food on the table.

I would have written cash rich to refer to people who can afford to buy other people’s services in the quantity/quality being referred to above.

>Don't try to paint willful employment as some evil.

I don’t know what you’re referring to, but obviously poor people can’t afford to buy anywhere near as much (or as high quality) human labor as rich people.

Re: Have a fucking website

#392

Post by _verandaguy »

My two cents: I'd love to have a site. I've been involved with web technologies since the early/mid 2000s, when I built my first site in elementary school.

I've picked up hobbies since then that lend themselves well to sharing online, but right now, with the amount of LLM-related scraping happening, I have no intention at all of hosting anything I've made by hand, be it code, photos, recipes, etc.

These bots make their own ground rules -- "just put up this special robots.txt thing" -- and then ignore them, requiring tools like Anubis to be created, maintained, and kept constantly up to date, and for what? So the plagiarism machine can plagiarise more? Copyright courts have apparently just checked out on this, so I'm not at all confident they'll do anything about this.

To be clear: my ego isn't so huge that I want my name plastered everywhere, on everything I've ever touched. I believe strongly in the principle of not getting your shit scraped online and then churned out into something that these LLM companies can (eventually? presumably?) profit off of (or at least turn into investment, in the short-term). These companies have done terrible things to the state of public discourse and I do what I can to avoid feeding the beast.

Re: Have a fucking website

#393

Post by oflannabhra »

Arainach wrote: post #14

Someone wrote and deleted a comment saying > I don't get it. LLMs are supposed to have 100% bridged this gap from "normie" to "DIY website." What's missing? This is an all too common thought process among technologists, so: Where to even start? Well, let's start that every single "AI" company is massively overhyping everything to try to avoid any unfortunate realizations about the emperor's clothes regarding their Ca…

I know a twelve year old kid who is proactively using LLMs to build websites for lawn-mowing businesses, calling them up, asking them if they want it for $200, and closing deals in seconds.

I know it sounds far-fetched, but he does all the work up-front before even contacting them, using logos and info from Facebook or Google. He's cleared several thousand dollars so far.

I get that the owners aren't going to be the proactive ones who have the awareness, time, or vision for doing this, all your points are valid. However, AI has definitely changed the calculus here--I'm glad I'm not a web dev anymore.

Re: Have a fucking website

#394

Post by twodave »

dazc wrote: post #345
twodave wrote: post #317

For some things I get this. Restaurants? Yes. But other things? Landscaping? Electricians? Plumbers? I’d much rather speak on the phone with someone who is going to come on my property and do work. I could care less if they have a website because that’s just marketing for them. I source almost 100% of these types of workers via referral from friends/family.

I used to work in construction in a previous life and always said I could judge how good a tradesman is simply by their appearance. The same goes for their website. If they have pride in their work it will show; if they do just about enough to get paid it will also show.

Interesting. I'd personally rather them be great at what their job actually is and not waste time on a website. I think the best tradesmen don't need a website because their work (and their happy customers!) speaks for itself.

Re: Have a fucking website

#397

Post by monooso »

_verandaguy wrote: post #392

My two cents: I'd love to have a site. I've been involved with web technologies since the early/mid 2000s, when I built my first site in elementary school. I've picked up hobbies since then that lend themselves well to sharing online, but right now, with the amount of LLM-related scraping happening, I have no intention at all of hosting anything I've made by hand, be it code, photos, recipes, etc. These bots make the…

> I have no intention at all of hosting anything I've made by hand, be it code, photos, recipes, etc.

Do you publish any such items on platforms you don't own (you specifically said you "have no intention of... hosting anything")?

Re: Have a fucking website

#398

Post by nnf »

lleu wrote: post #300
janalsncm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, setting up a website is a pain. But in reality there’s only a handful of things people care about for your restaurant: what, when, and where. Put up your menu, put up your hours, and put up your location. And a phone number.

I specifically tracked this problem and built https://lleu.site to try and get businesses in my city off of social media. Built a menu editor. Has a built in blog and image galleries. Events calendar and event posts. Has a single page simple mode and multi page editor. Contact form with message intake and forwarding. Easy UI that I don’t change underfoot every quarter so its consistent. Works on mobile and low powere…

I noticed users in the United States can't sign up. ("United States" is not in the list of countries in the required Country field, and it's also excluded from "18. Regional Service" is the Terms of Service.) Is that intentional? It could be part of the reason for the slow uptake.

Re: Have a fucking website

#399

Post by cucumber3732842 »

tarekabi wrote: post #378
carlosjobim wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Other than basic description and contact info that's all 99% of small businesses need I disagree with this popular notion. A website should be a fully functioning sales system, so that it helps ease the admin burden of a small business, and also helps them get more sales. Take the most common small businesses: Restaurants and accommodation. Both of these can save/make thousands of dollars per year by having their ow…

This is exactly the problem we kept running into. The website exists, the traffic comes, and then it does nothing. A visitor at 11pm has a question and leaves because there's no one to answer it. The "Book a Demo" button assumes they're already sold enough to commit to a 45-minute call with a stranger. Most aren't. The website being static is the real failure mode, not the absence of one.

This is exactly what I'm complaining about. Your average small business website doesn't need to do any of that. It needs to "be Facebook" as in provide a place to post static details, contact information and content updated on a limited basis.

Doing those things doesn't add enough value beyond what Facebook offers to be worth the cost and maintenance burden. You keep trying to sell these people a fancy Mercedes station wagon when what they want is a Dodge Journey.

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