After 25 years of using Blogger, I have decided to migrate content from this blog subdomain back to my main website. 

The reason is that a change in the way the Google algorithm works means this blog is not as well presented as it used to be.

For the time being you may see posts duplicated across both domains until the move is complete. I'll then update links and start adding http 301 redirects.

This article has been moved to my main website.

The Content Designer's Agent & Notebook. AIs to point the way.

This article has been moved to my main website.

The Website Manager's Agent & Notebook. AIs to lighten the load.

This article has been moved to my main website.

Agentic AI spells the end of traditional websites.

This article has been moved to my main website.

How to escape the 'Black Holes of Web'.

This article has been moved to my main website.

Tools, Training & Time: How to help web stakeholders do better.

This article has been moved to my main website.

Why 8 basic forms of web content can do (almost) everything you need.

This article has been moved to my main website.

How to benchmark web operations and performance.

This article has been moved to my main website.

Yes, AI is going to eat your website for lunch - but you can set the menu.

This article has been moved to my main website.

Download the most important skills for a web team .

Don't get me wrong. The universe is certainly majestic.

Yet even the most simple video game offers a far more fantastical world than we seem to inhabit.

If God was a game designer, he'd be fired.

Why is that? Why is creation so pedestrian?¹

If we assume creation was truly open in the beginning², surely anything could have happened? Literally anything (logically possible). The degrees-of-freedom must have been almost infinite.

And yet we get just 3 spatial dimensions. 1 above flatland. Yawn.

Why not 4 dimensions? Or 10? Or 100?

It seems suspiciously ordinary.

Of course, in one way it does make sense.

We evolved within this arena and - as many philosophers old and new have related³ - natural selection imposes a structure on our senses and sets a limit to what we can experience.

The result is that we have limited degrees-of-freedom in how we can hold⁴ the world.

But the world itself is not so constrained.

Just 3 dimensions? You must be joking!

In the 'Game of Creation' we humans may be eternally confined to the Beginner setting of Level-1 - but if we can master it, we may just get a glimpse of what lies beyond.

(Read my post about 'Where to start with philosophy', including links to useful podcasts, videos and more.)

The footnotes...
1. Of course, creation is amazingly complex. But compared to the possibility space of what may have been, it is stupefyingly straightforward (at least in the naive sense of how we perceive it).
2. A big assumption I agree, but then again why wouldn't it have been open? Why was 3 dimensions the obvious default (excluding the possibilities of curled-up extra dimensions and the holographic model)?
3. From Immanuel Kant to Donald Hoffman to Anil Seth.
4. Shout out to my main man Hilary Lawson (IAI) and 'closure' theory (I'm a fan).

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A good web team can do 5 things. Now it's time to choose which you want.

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Your website is not an art project. It's a machine for doing things.

This article has been moved to my main website.

The O3 model can benchmark your web team and its capacity to deliver.

This article has been moved to my main website

To create digital services in Plain English, 'the State' must delete itself.

This article has been moved to my main website.

GA4 is a 'Great Filter' - many web teams simply don't need it.

This article has been moved to my main website.

No, your website does not belong to the Communications Team. It's much too important for that.

It's a common misunderstanding. Web managers often have trouble explaining it to colleagues.

You see, we (mostly) don't care about traffic.*

That's for Marketing or Communications teams to worry about.

Our focus is delivery.

Delivery über alles!

A web team's number 1 responsibility is maintaining a stable online presence.

We do this by ensuring the site meets minimum standards (UX, content, loading, accessibility, etc) and is supported by effective operations (publishing, QA, analytics, etc).

Think of us like the production team in a TV studio.

We do everything we can to make sure things go smoothly - the cameras are in place, the lighting is on, the scenery is up, the scripts are proofed, the teleprompter is loaded.

Yet, we mostly don't care if anyone is watching.

That's not our concern - our job is delivery.

Business-as-usual is enough

Modern websites are so large and complex, that simply keeping the show-on-the-road is a huge undertaking.

Any sensible web team will have its own strategy to steer activity. For example:

• UX: Improve the readability standard for the top 5 content topics to grade 6 by end of year.
• Resourcing: Hire x2 full-time content designers by mid-year.

This web strategy is agnostic on marketing or communications priorities. It is only concerned with optimising delivery for users and the business.

Confusion about web strategy

Did you know many websites (far, far more that you might think) operate in the complete absence of marketing or communications goals?

It's true.

They may have vague aspirations about being "world class", but they are totally silent on actions, resources or outcomes.

Annoyingly, web teams are often asked to fill-in and to produce goals/targets for sites like this. That exposes the confusion about web strategy.

Goals for what? Targets for what?

At its core, web strategy is about delivery.

"But what about traffic, reach and engagement? What about communications, marketing and business goals?"

Sure, they are also important and they can be included in the strategy. But first someone needs to decide what they are - and that is not the web team's job (or at least not their job alone).*

* In practice, web teams are usually highly involved in developing communications goals for web and are very interested in traffic. But that is only because web is such a dominant channel. No-one expects the print department to set marketing goals - they focus only on high quality printing.

You might know the story. 

You are introduced to someone at a party. They are very engaging, seem amazingly successful and drive an immaculate car.

Only later do you discover that they sleep in that car and the tank is usually empty.

The car looks great because it's all they have - and they work very hard to keep up appearances.

It's a wretched state to be in.

In a strange parallel, the situation for many web teams is the same.

You probably agree that most government and institutional websites look great. They have slick designs, beautiful images and gorgeous, florid "about us" text.

At first glance they seem amazing!

Only later do you discover that's all they have. There is nothing else. It's almost impossible to do anything useful with them.

Their web teams are in penury. There is no budget for any meaningful development.

The tank is empty.

Learn more about why digital government in Ireland is failing - and how to fix it. 

Stability.

That's why we do it.

Just consider the incredible complexity involved in managing a modern website.

Consider the array of activities, people, skills, teams, tools, technologies, processes and procedures. Consider the ever changing needs, moving parts, critical dependencies, growing volumes, evolving drivers and competing demands.

The reality is that in the absence of a system of governance, things soon fall apart. The examples are endless.

So the purpose of website governance is to deliver stability.

Stability means a web team doesn't have to waste time on fights about ownership, unclear priorities, dodgy processes, etc.

Instead, you have everything you need configured in the right way.

You can just get on with things—and focus your effort on pursuing online goals.

A utopia? You bet it is!

Learn more about it in my Website Management and Governance Masterclass.

(Yes, I love philosophy and ways it can connect with digital.)

(Image credit: Dove on J-J Rousseau's hand. Knoten2010 on Flickr.)