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Have a fucking website

otherstrangeness.com

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Re: Have a fucking website

#421

Post by mlrtime »

abustamam wrote: post #296
mlrtime wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't even find a phone #? How about calling and asking? How do you know this place even exists without any information? This is the opposite of old man yelling at clouds, it's young people complaining about the dumbest shit. If the article writer is reading this, I feel the opposite. No, I don't want 1000 different websites. I like to use consolidated feeds. No More Websites!

> You can't even find a phone #? How about calling and asking? Wait what? How does he contact the website if he can't find contact info? I don't disagree with your point BTW — not everyone needs a website. But at the same time, a business often needs to meet customers where they are. If they're OK with losing a small subset of customers because their business info is only on and some people don't use said platform, t…

>Wait what? How does he contact the website if he can't find contact info?

The same way you find the website, you google it. I have never had a problem getting a phone number of a business that doesn't have a website. Am I living in bizarro world? Why does a small business need a website just to provide a phone #?

Re: Have a fucking website

#422

Post by kelvinjps10 »

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…

There is now platforms that make it as easy as social media sites. wordpress shopify etc

Re: Have a fucking website

#423

Post by kelvinjps10 »

Gigachad wrote: post #182
avhception wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For many local places here, the only way to get the menu online is if a customer posted a photo of the menu on Google maps or something. And 1/3 of the time, that photo is too blurry and off-angle and whatnot to even read properly.

I can’t help but think what this means is just that the menu isn’t that’s important as a marketing tool. If having an up to date website and menu resulted in a noticeable boost in business, every restaurant would have it. Average person either finds the place through google maps or a TikTok video, checks a few photos of the food or venue, then goes. Doesn’t matter what the exact menu is because there are plenty of op…

I think it's important for customers and they usuallly post the menu in google maps thing, basically the customers are doing the labor of the business owner and the business owner as he still gets the results he doesn't do it

Re: Have a fucking website

#424

Post by lotsofpulp »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #344
threetonesun wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the demos of booking travel using AI are hilarious to me. This used to be a job a travel agent did, and planning a trip was either a fun conversation or you could be like "send me somewhere warm" and let them do it. Is it cheaper now that you can swear at flight booking software yourself, and scream at the hotel when they cancel your rooms that you got from a third party site that went through some other inter…

> Oh sure, all the web searches and ads are targeted in a way that you're going to end up at the same place a travel agent would have put you, but you can perceive the freedom of choice along the way! And you can enjoy all the risk and liability for mistakes made along the way, too, which is where the actual optimization happened in the economy.

> And you can enjoy all the risk and liability for mistakes made along the way, too, which is where the actual optimization happened in the economy.

And you can enjoy overpaying for a lower quality vacation if your travel agent is unscrupulous and getting kickbacks from vendors.

That is the actual optimization that happened, I can do more research and communicate directly with vendors.

Those that don’t want to are still free to pay extra for a travel agent.

Re: Have a fucking website

#425

Post by lotsofpulp »

whatever1 wrote: post #364
TeMPOraL wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Oh sure, all the web searches and ads are targeted in a way that you're going to end up at the same place a travel agent would have put you, but you can perceive the freedom of choice along the way! And you can enjoy all the risk and liability for mistakes made along the way, too, which is where the actual optimization happened in the economy.

Similar example in the grocery stores with the self checkout. In the past if the employee did a scanning mistake, worst case the manager / customer would be mad. Now that you do it yourself if you mis scan organic tomatoes as regular tomatoes you are freaking going to jail. Ok exaggerating a bit, but having shoplifting in your record can be life changing, specially for immigrants

> Now that you do it yourself if you mis scan organic tomatoes as regular tomatoes you are freaking going to jail.

If this happens, it’s a problem with the judicial system, not self checkouts. I highly doubt it has ever happened, though.

Re: Have a fucking website

#426

Post by LatencyKills »

mlrtime wrote: post #418
LatencyKills wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I'm looking for a physical place I usually just look at Google maps. Ah yes... I'm sure that is what 99% of people do. /s You don't like reality... and that's fine. You do you. But, most businesses do need a web presence if they want be be discovered by the majority of potential customers.

They actually don't. Especially one that doesn't do any e-commerce.

I'd literally bet my house that most people do a simple google search. No one goes to google maps as the first option when trying to find things unless they are in their car. (Well, except for you, of course)

In 2026, companies who want their customers to easily find them will have some type of web presence. I'm sorry that it is such a hardship for you.

Re: Have a fucking website

#427

Post by rembal »

emaro wrote: post #241
happyraul wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I accept that as a software developer, I have a myopic view on it, but it doesn't have to be hard. - Get a domain name - Get a VPS with an nginx image pre-installed - Write a plain text file with the info you want shown (hours, contact info, etc...) Yeah it's not sexy, but it's a start and it can be changed when time and interest allows.

> Get a VPS with an nginx image pre-installed You probably already lost 90% of 'normies'. Most people won't be able to or willing to do that on their own. They could learn it of course, but they don't bother. https://xkcd.com/2501/

For a normal person, the only real words in this sentence are "get", "with", and "image", but the last one does not mean what they would think it means.

Even WIX needs some level of tech savviness, usually beyond 90% small business owners. And Instagram? Well, one of the main points of having a restaurant is to tell your friends about it, so the Instagram profile is more important than actually having a real restaurant.

Re: Have a fucking website

#428

Post by 6510 »

chrysoprace wrote: post #245
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…

To add onto this, I used to frequent a cafe near my old work and had quite a good rapport with the owner. One day I was going for lunch and wanted to check their menu, pick something new and then go order. When I went and ordered it she said she they no longer serve that and couldn't get onto the developer to change their menu on the site. They were a couple working 7 days a week, only taking public holidays off, so…

I think if you are half capable you should just adopt the project and do it for free.

I have a web app that is a html document with an [edit] button at the end. It points at edit.html which has a textarea, a password field and a submit button. (Below is a list of links to all pages in the folder starting with index-) The textarea shows the middle chunk of the html document. You edit it, fill out the password (the browser will do it) and press the save button. It posts to save.php which constructs a new index.html and save a copy as index-2026-03-18.html The link to the copy shows up on edit.html The edit link there points to edit.html?file=index-2026-03-18.html if you save it that will become the new index.html (it refuses to edit anything that isn't "index-\d\d\d\d-\d\d-\d\d\.html")

If each menu entry is: `Beer$3.50` They can just edit, delete or copy and paste it. Simply: `
Beer $3.50` Would work just as well. If they screw up they can put back an older version.

Put your phone number on the edit page. Write some html tags on a napkin. `
`

They want more pages? make the /about folder drop index edit and save.php into it, remind them to make a link to it on the front page and they will figure it out.

Re: Have a fucking website

#429

Post by barbazoo »

Paulo75 wrote: post #309

This is the kind of thing that feels obvious but apparently still needs to be said. I've seen businesses run entirely off an Instagram page, and when the algorithm changes or the account gets flagged, they lose everything overnight. No way to reach their customers, no archive of their work, nothing.

I wish this happened much more frequently actually so people would realize it's not a reliable platform to build a business on.

Re: Have a fucking website

#430

Post by jerf »

markdown wrote: post #275
pibaker wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Squarespace does not just sell hosting. Their main business is selling a CMS and website builder that is supposed to be easy enough for complete noobs to use. You and I know how to build and host websites, ok, but it had likely taken us dozens if not hundreds of hours of learning everything between TCP/IP to ARIA attributes to get here. The average small business owner does not have this knowledge or the time…

> Their main business is selling a CMS and website builder that is supposed to be easy enough for complete noobs to use. Yeah, like I said, it costs close to $0. > The average small business owner does not have this knowledge or the time to learn it. They keep Squarespace in business. My point is, SquareSpace could charge a fraction of what they do and still be rolling in cash. Instead they charge ridiculous fees tha…

I think you're thinking marginal costs. Only charging for marginal costs will put you out of business almost immediately. There are plenty of non-marginal costs that need to be covered, which will make it "not close to $0".

If you think I'm talking nonsense, make sure you know what the term actually means: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marginalcostofproductio... There's a common misuse (unless it has become so common that it's just another definition, if you're a descriptivist grammarian) to use it to mean "small, negligible", but I'm using it in the real business/accounting sense. Of all the industries, tech is among the worst in terms of being unable to charge based on marginal costs; so often our marginal costs are effectively $0 but the fixed costs of what we have are millions to billions of dollars.

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