Just what we need, another website that tells outsiders that Midland is the home of George Bush and is a great place to start a family. Where does that bring us to now, 50+ Midland websites?

Another not so idle question is "why is our Economic Development Corp. not giving some economic development to local web designers?"

And what's with those auto popup "main page" windows? The one's like AdWhite. Why not just put the info that's on the pop up on the opening page?

Wallace, in response to your first question, the MDC was first and foremost seeking an ad agency to put together a comprehensive package for promoting Midland ED. A website was a big part, but still just one piece, of that package. So the real question is why did the local ad agencies bidding on the job not use local web designers?

In the case of Dominey & Etheridge, with whom I worked to develop a bid, they elected to use Joe's son in Nashville, who happens to be a very capable and qualified designer. I was onboard to provide ongoing maintenance to the site, once it was up and running, in addition to providing input to the design -- primarily from a usability and search engine optimization perspective. I don't fault them for this decision, because the site would benefit from some heavy backend database integration and programming, which I'm not qualified to do.

I don't know how the other bidders addressed the website, although we know how Mary Hunt did it, hooking up with AdWhite.

And, regarding AdWhite's design approach, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for their own site. I think "portal" home pages are bad design from several perspectives, but I also think that a design that works for a "creative" entity can be a little more, um, impractical and still be OK. I will be sorely disappointed if they take that same approach with the MDC site, however. AdWhite (or any designer, for that matter) must consider the needs of its client far ahead of the need to show how creative and cutting-edge it is. Save that stuff for your own site.