[kickscondor]

Well it's dangerous to give people the tools to design themselves - it's a rare skill and very difficult to blend it all together into a cohesive community! I think many startups of the 2010s saw Myspace design as a disaster.

We're hoping that by having some default color palettes and some common patterns and fonts - as well as limits to paddings, margins and border sizes - that it helps people stay in the ballpark of what a Multiverse post looks like. (Kind of like how you can spot something made with LEGOs from a distance.)

But whatever - creating ugly things should be part of the world. Looking forward to the future of 'ugly', 'bad', 'shoddy' design on the Internet. <3

[ehnto]

> Well it's dangerous to give people the tools to design themselves

Having built a site builder before, I think you are on the right track. I think you're right to limit the design scope people have access to in order to manage Multiverses' brand image, I wouldn't recommend otherwise. What you've got is much more platform than blog/site builder, the network effect is going to rely on people wanting a "Multiverse" site and that's going to be a particular aesthetic.

In general though, there is a saying in music when someone makes a mistake: "It's only music, nobody died". I think the same could be applied to the web in general, and personal sites especially. Things got reaaaally boring after the "Flat design" trend of the 2010s powerwashed the web of anything remotely interesting, and as much as it brought in good UX and design patterns it also stripped out a lot of character. It'll be nice to see people try on their design pants again.

[kickscondor]

Wow - this is a very encouraging post. Thank you! If you happen to still be reading - what was the site builder you worked on? Have you written anywhere about your experience on that project?

[dentemple]

On the other hand, a ton of us got our start in web design or development due to the freedom of sites like Myspace and Geocities.

[glitchyowl]

yeah im one of the kid that is eternally grateful to sites like myspace and geocities

[Hedepig]

In the context of hobby websites, the choice of the word "dangerous" is pretty extreme.

[kickscondor]

"Disaster" is also hyperbole.

[Hedepig]

That's fair enough, I'm in agreement. I think what I should have communicated (as dentemple did) is that the benefits outweigh the consequences.

[kickscondor]

Absolutely agree with you as well. I do think it’s “dangerous” - or perhaps it’s better to just call it a “tradeoff” - because you give people greater power over the design of the site. But obviously a tradeoff we’re all willing to make.

[Hedepig]

This comes down to the fact that learning design, UI, and UX is far harder than learning to code. And that nobody who uses a tool cares how good or bad the code is if it works okay.

Whenever I have looked into learning the design side, I've found it far more difficult to find a good set of resources to go by.

I probably didn't look hard enough