I wonder what was going on in the first web designers mind to create a web design for free? It is clearly too valuable a skill to be given away for nothing. You know,  I take that back. The website design field has become more and more low budget as more and more of these “free websites” are poured onto the web like slop into a trough. I think at least when one had to pay for a design and development of a website they put a little more thought into what they were doing. The internet was still a place for information exchange and websites were something to be proud of. When a designer created a website for a client there was a certain degree of art involved and the designer considered the design their work. The website owner was vested in the quality of their site. They had something invested so it had value to them. As websites became just a “feature” of your hosting package we lost something. Web hosts realized that one pays for a design only once but the revenue stream was continuous with hosting. The designer was effectively cut out of the loop and his profession was degraded to something considered unnecessary. As a result the internet has suffered considerably. Not only has it become an ugly place visually but intellectually it has suffered as well. Now that anyone can have a website, anyone does. The fact that nothing has to be put into building a website has made websites with nothing put into them. These garbage sites stain the web like the carpet of an untrained dogs house. It is shameful what we have done to a great accomplishment of man. What could have been a tool for the aggregation of the combined total knowledge of mankind is now littered with useless bits and pieces of poorly put together sales brochures and porn. The entire internet is little more than a collection of cheap advertisements and incorrect information interspersed with a tiny amount of quality sources of factual data. I truly believe that we can trace the decline of the internet to the increasing ease with which the completely unqualified and shamefully uninformed can put a “free” website on the web. These “free” websites have “cost” humanity more than the perpetrators of this travesty can ever know. Not only has it very nearly eliminated a thriving profession, it has literally destroyed one of the greatest achievements of mankind. Or maybe it’s just me.