Bryan Landers:

nail on the head, my friend ;)

nate beaty:

then again, it's also very common for those folks to have no idea of the amount of work involved on their end to come up with *content* to fill that site, both initial content and ongoing updates! (who's getting bitter? haha.)

nate beaty:

i'd also say that 95% of those people that don't want templates but want a fancy site also don't think it's worth the amount it would cost to pay a professional to do the work for them. definitely still a large gray area.

Bryan Landers:

my friend who was a corporate graphic designer for years mentioned he uses this. sounded like it converts photoshop to xhtml/css, which sounded cool...haven't looked at it yet though ;) re: simple web design, the closest thing out there is http://squarespace.com, but even that isn't enough for most people. i've had clients turn that down because: 1. they wanted it 'more custom' than hacking the templates themselves 2. ss doesn't handle your email 3. they don't do ftp. i think it's an impossible thing to fulfill because people don't want templates and yet they can't customize or even set it up it themselves. right?

nate beaty:

interesting. i often wonder why it's so difficult (still) to put websites together. i mean, i live comfortably in TextMate, but for "normal folks", i never know what to suggest for simple webdesign. (as well as ftp/hosting/database/etc -- shouldn't this be dead easy by now?)