Brainwrap Web Design has been in business for over 10 years, but in many ways this is like starting my own website all over again. The general content is pretty much the same, but everything under the hood (coding language, server configuration, site features and so forth) has been completely overhauled. Hopefully I won't have to do this again for another 10 years--this one has been a major project...
The most obvious changes, aside from the cosmetic tweaks, are the addition of a bevy of so-called "Web 2.0" features such as this blog, social media links (Twitter, Facebook, etc), and the RSS feed.
I should note that I've put "Web 2.0" in quotes because the truth is that there isn't any true, single definition of what that term means. As Wikipedia (itself an example of "Web 2.0" at work) defines it:
The term "Web 2.0" (2004–present) is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing,interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities,hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups, and folksonomies. A Web 2.0 site allows its users to interact with other users or to change website content, in contrast to non-interactive websites where users are limited to the passive viewing of information that is provided to them.
Of course, there's also a better definition of what the term means: Nothing whatsoever, a pure piece of marketing jargon, according to the guy who actually invented the World Wide Web in the first place:
Perhaps the most common criticism is that the term is unclear or simply a buzzword. For example, in a podcast interview, Tim Berners-Lee described the term "Web 2.0" as a "piece of jargon":
"Nobody really knows what it means...If Web 2.0 for you is blogs and wikis, then that is people to people. But that was what the Web was supposed to be all along."
So, call it what you will--"going web 2.0" or simply getting around to a long-overdue update of my own website, I've finally done so.
