Macparrot is ALIVE!

I remember a toy Barbie made some number of years ago that stirred a big controversy. Not over the dolls unbelievably small waist in contrast to its rather robust breasts (who really thinks that this look is what American men want anyway?), but because of its little voice chip that said such warm, girl career enhancing things like, “Let’s go shopping!”, and “Math is hard!”. Various women’s groups were naturally incensed that primarily a toy meant for young girls (as compared to the equally unrealistic young boy’s “action figure” toys) were conveying such a negative stereotype. While I understand why they might be so upset, I think that making as big a deal out of it as they did mostly just called attention to a clearly sub-standard toy. However they did get it yanked, so maybe that was their purpose all along.

Sometime later, a group calling themselves the “Barbie Liberation Organization (or BLO), went out and bought a number of these talking Barbies and similarly equipped GI Joes (similar in technology that made them talk you pervs) and swapped their voice chips so that GI Joes would wax poetically about getting their dream house or whether they could ever have enough clothes and the Barbies would scream out, “Vengeance is MINE!” I find all this very amusing (obviously or I wouldn’t be talking about it), but it has little to do with the purpose of this blog.

So why even bring it up? Well, because making websites is hard! You see? It all ties together in a weird blonde Floridian kind of way. I should probably be more direct. Making websites isn’t really that hard. You can buy a domain name from just about anyone and they’ll have all kinds of easy to use tools to make a site. Except that site is going to look pretty much like anyone else’s site that uses the same tools. So how do you make yours stand out from the crowd? Especially on a Mac that doesn’t have a bazillion freeware/shareware/low cost (and usually low expectations) web page makers?

Way back when, I made a family webpage that I hosted on AOL using an Adobe product that has sadly bitten the dust. It was called PageMill and it was incredibly easy. Adobe put it to pasture not long after buying Dreamweaver. Too bad as it was a great program and I can only think about how much it might have changed (hopefully for the better) if they had kept up with it for all these years.

No matter, because as it turns out there are several very good quality Mac webpage design tools out there that are pretty cheap and very easy to use. Sure, you can go out and buy something like Dreamweaver for hundreds of dollars plus all the support tools to make sites from that beautiful. But most of them require pretty extensive knowledge of Java, html, and other coding languages that I know nothing about and don’t have time to learn. What about those people that just want to get their voices heard? They probably don’t have the time to spend coding and testing and whatnot and just want to put out their information on a page that looks good without the problems of learning how to hand code a web page.

I decided to put it to the test. I’ve chosen four different Mac webpage makers and I plan on making the same (or as close as each will allow) webpage. The only other program I plan on using is Adobe’s Photoshop Elements which I can’t recommend highly enough, even for those on a budget. 75% of the full blown program for about 1/6 the cost. I’ll write an article on the pluses and minuses of each, how easy or hard it is to keep up a page, and how to get other people to know about the page and maybe make some money out of it. No, I’m not talking about securing sponsors with banner ads and maintaining a working relationship. I’m talking about your basic Google and Amazon click-through ads. A CafePress site with your logo, stuff like that. Some lend themselves to this easier than others.

The first site is up and live. It’s called MacParrot.com and I made it with Apple’s very own iWeb program that’s part of the iLife 06 suite. Please take some time to go there and click around. Read the content if you like, but it isn’t important. Everything there is simply to have stuff to do. Try the buttons, kick the tires, that sort of thing. Send me email through the link on the page and let me know what you think. Leave comments on a news or blog post (especially the one about my son Guy’s recent health problems which unfortunately is all too real) and let me know what you think. Once all four sites are live (each will have a different url and I’ll let you know here which is which), I’m going to write up my review.