Every mistake being made on web sites was made on PCs 15 years ago, minis 20 years ago and mainframes 30 years ago.

HTML and XML are based on SGML. SGML is based on GML. GML was born in 1973 in IBM. If you were using IBM mainframes 25 years ago, your were using the same technology as web pages. Back then you would have called it Script or similar.

The 14 year old kids building web sites will not listen to you so let them make the same mistakes then fire them. You can then get someone with real experience.

The web industry copies the PC industry which copies the car industry. American car manufacturers introduced disk brakes as a very expensive option in the 80s. European car manufacturers had already introduced disk brakes in the 70s as a way of lowering manufacturing costs but the Americans found a way to get people to pay $2,000 extra to get the cheaper product.

The disk brake was invented about 1890 so the car industry is very slow to introduce anything new. If you think the computer industry is faster, why do we still have serial ports? My teacher learnt about them when he was a kid and they were not new then. USB was obsolete 24 years before it was introduced.

Web site development is the same. Everyone is developing, developing, developing. The desperate buy expensive packages that are no help. Go back to basics.

• Plan
• Observe
• Measure
• Test
• Feedback to plan

After several loops through the traditional path, you can start development.