Today’s random insight: Websites are like tins of beans

Oh wow, do I come out with some random things sometimes.  Like the time I once asked my fiancee about the Turkish language.  French and Spanish, for example, have masculine and feminine words in their vocabulary, but Turkish and Chinese don’t.  Their word for “he” is the same as the word for “she” and the word for “it”. No gender differentiation whatsoever.  So my thought on that?  ”Turkish language is a hermaphrodite.”  I kid you not.  So what is today’s little hint of randomness?

Websites are just like tins of baked beans.

Hear me out on this one, I’m sure some designers have come out with something similar.

Basic one page sites

Basic, one page, HTML sites are your Smart Price or Value tins – just plain and simple beans, nothing special about them whatsoever.  You can add anything you want to it yourself and you can dress them up however you want, but it is still just your basic baked beans.  Likewise, a one page website can be dressed up and have all sorts of transitions and Javascripts and embedded YouTube videos and whatever you want in it, but it is still just a basic, one page, HTML website.  For some clients and for some designers, that’s enough.  For some students, Smart Price beans are enough.  I’m not knocking the sites, don’t get me wrong, it’s just … nothing technically special or robust.

Multi-page / non-HTML websites

Multi-page sites or PHP driven sites are like your Heinz tins that are fortified with iron and vitamins or with reduced salt or even with a sauce that isn’t just tomato sauce (you might have smokey BBQ sauce, for example) – you add little extra bits to it, but at the end of it, no matter how you dress it up, it is still just a tin of beans, still nothing special about them whatsoever. Likewise, your website can be in PHP, have multiple pages and can have forms, groups, anything.  It is still just a website, only slightly more technical.

Content managed (CMS) websites

A CMS driven site is your tin of baked beans and sausage – it’s no longer just a tin of beans, you’ve added sausages into it, you’ve added an extra ingredient to it, you’ve changed the product completely.  To some people, it’s a full meal, but it is still basically a tin of beans. Just with sausages in it.  A CMS driven website is the same: it’s a website, but with an administration panel attached.  Whether it’s WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, phpBB (yes, even message boards manage content) or your own system, you’ve added that extra product to it, that extra side to it.

(images sourced from British Online Goodies – http://www.britishonlinegoodies.com/)

Yes, it is random.  But, to me, it works.  And, just like all award winning random thoughts, it came to me in the shower.  But what do you think?  Have you used any other analogies?  Have you got a better analogy?  Do you not believe that, even in its simplest form, that websites and design can not be constrained by analogies like this?  Let me know in the comments below.  In the meantime, I fancy some beans on toast.