I hate the new web and I hate how every single website is the same recycled design with slight differences. Every white box has some smaller slightly grey box inside of it. It's not like these boxes serve any purpose though, because the contents of the site is normally a whole lot of nothing.
The first 50% of the page is taken up by a massive stock graphic that serves no purpose other than to be a placeholder, since we already established that this site hosts nothing interesting whatsoever.
Below this, you're most likely to see some giant wall of text about the page, using intimidating words to make the average person assume the company is owned by only the smartest and most sophisticated company. A company who not only hosts a whole lot of nothing on their site, a company who not only makes 90% of their revenue by selling your data, but a company who takes credit for assets stolen straight from open source projects, drag-and-dropped onto their Wix template looking ass excuse of a website.
It's ironic that these website designers are payed thousands of dollars to make these sites.
With HTML, you have everything at your fingertips. You can make your site look like and contain ANYTHING. And if you don't want to spend time doing that, there are tools to do it for you. Yet, you pay someone to WASTE their own time just to rewrite the exact same layout that has been done a million times before.
I personally don't like wasting my time, especially if it costs me money.
If you want to advertise your company, it is important to put in the work to make your efforts be worth it. You have to make sacrifices if you want things in life.
I know big companies like Facebook have so much money they can do whatever they want with, but its not just these companies that do it. Even small businesses chose to make their site in WIX, Squarespace, Carrd, all of these website builders which give you absolutely no freedom to create something to represent yourself.
And isn't that the point of having a website? To represent yourself, or your company? To make people WANT to look, and remember their experience fondly, and want to revisit, and want to support you? Because it doesn't feel like that. ESPECIALLY with the way sites handle ads nowadays.
Yeah, needing enough money to keep your website going is important. But it's a waste of the time if the ONLY thing your site is hosting is ADS!
People should choose whether or not they support you, they shouldn't be forced to. People shouldn't have to be forced to turn off their adblock BEFORE visiting a site. It's basically just saying "Hey, if you want to know what this site has to offer, you have to pay me. But I won't show you what you'll be seeing here, you'll have to pay beforehand. And if you don't like it, well tough luck!"
And viewing ads IS a form of payment, even though it's not from your own pocket.
You should put effort in towards a project if you want that pay-off. If it's a good site, people will support you.
How do you think Neocities has THOUSANDS of websites on it yet its a free and adless service? Because it's a good service that people enjoy and want to support. They CHOOSE to support it. If your site isn't getting the publics support, maybe no one in the public actually likes your site to begin with! Maybe you should accept it!
It's not like we can go back though, because if something is locked behind a pay wall, people are more open to wasting a few minutes viewing brain-rotting ads since they already know it's easier for them.
But back then, people CHOSE to support websites because ads as we know it, didn't exist. And people weren't aware of an "easier way" to view this content.
Aparently it's more convenient to sell your personal data to strangers than it is to pay 3 dollars a month for a subscription, to which the money goes directly towards the creators of said service, directly benefitting you and the host.
That's a fair trade off, baby!