Archive for the 'Useful Links/Tips' Category

Some people have shown interest in my colour links, and want to get in on the colour knowledge.

http://www.colorjack.com/studio/ - I think it only works in firefox, because it uses clever things that IE can’t handle.

http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php - Simulates colour blindness, well worth checking out if you are using green or red on your sites.

http://www.colourlovers.com/ - A web 2.0 website for people who love colours.

Lately I have happened across a few incredibly useful links, and I thought I would share:

• An article about how to be a creative freelancer by Dave Roman
• An article about creative block/burnout by Scott Berkun
• An article about where to get design inspiration on the tinternet on freelance switch

I have found these links pretty useful lately.

GRRRRRR! I have had soo much hassle with internet access the last few days… I am with Fast 4, who we went with because we didn’t want to get tied into a contract. However, they still want to charge us a cancellation fee. WHATS THE POINT OF NOT HAVING A CONTRACT THEN? Its broken so many times now its not even funny. I’d rather not have a lot of things than internet. Not having internet really sucks when you are a web designer!

Anyway, onto the real post: A lot of my friends are excellent illustrators or animators etc, but don’t really know alot about web design and what is possible.
I made this blog using wordpress, and most of the rest of the site is powered by the features and plug ins that wordpress has to offer. It takes a while and a lot of research to develop and find all of the things that you might need to make your plain wordpress blog into a portfolio so I thought I would gather the knowledge that I have together and present it in an easy to digest blog post. lol. It isn’t easy to make a portfolio in wordpress, but its better. You can update your site from where ever you are in the world quickly and easily without having to have any knowledge of html, new pages are dynamically generated and if you need to make a change you can just make it in the one place.

You can get a free wordpress account from http://www.wordpress.com, but you don’t have any control over how it looks or the plugins that you can use with it. However its very quick and easy to set up and update. There are many themes available for you to choose from although you don’t have any control over it beyond that.

I used the installed version of wordpress which you can get from http://www.wordpress.org. There are so many possibilities with wordpress, it has been in development for a long time and the updates are regular, so it is pretty secure. It comes with Akismet spam blocker, which is great. I have not once had a dodgy bit of spam through, its blocked all the sex comments etc.

Anyway, here are the other plugins that I have used or I think are worth using in a portfolio.

1. Next Gen Gallery- The support for this is amazing, alex rabe seems to be the kind of guy who wants to take peoples suggestions into account to make it better. Its easily the best gallery plugin out there, and it works extremely well.
2. Word tube- For embedding media files, flash, streaming videos, pngs etc. Its by the same guy as next gen gallery.
3. Comicpress- a really easy to install theme for people who are interested in using their blog to publish web comics.
4. WordBook- A great way of getting traffic to your site from your friends on facebook
5. Sociable- Make it easy for your viewers to tag your site through delicious or stumble upon and many others.
6. BloxPress- Really nifty web 2.0 style drag and drop boxes… and its degradeable! I might have used this if I was starting from scratch, but plugging it in later seems like a bad idea coz it might mess with it a bit.
7. Yak- Yak is a shopping cart for wordpress. I have recently installed it, but its a bit complicated. So depending on whether or not it appears here over the next few weeks is probably whether or not its worth it. Otherwise you can use up another database and use Zencart.

Anyway, if anyone has any questions about making a wordpress portfolio, then I’ll be happy to answer anything or enhance this post so that its more useful. Also if you are thinking of going with fast4 internet. Don’t.

Basically I have met quite a few people recently who seem to have got a bum deal from their web designers. I feel as though a lot of people I know are paying a lot of money for something and getting stuff that isn’t really up to what they are paying for. So I thought I would write this to help people make sure that they are getting a good service.

Now I could say to everyone, “I’ll make your website”. And if you do want me to make it, please feel free to contact me, but if you have already employed someone, or I am too busy (lol) hopefully this will help you to make sure you are getting a good deal.

This is going to run over a few of the things that I think are extremely important for web site design and to make sure you are getting a good site. DO your research, if any of these things don’t make sense to you, look them up, “learn the lingo”. It will make it a lot easier to communicate with the designers, and may make them try a little harder.

1. Accessibility, this doesn’t only mean that it is accessible to disabled people, it also means that the site is accessible to people with slow internet connections, various plugins switched off such as javascript, and in all the many browsers that are available etc. Its very important, because you don’t want to lose customers because your site looks rubbish to them, or doesn’t work.
2. Usability, Your website needs to be easy to understand and navigate from a user perspective. If your granny can’t find stuff it then its not working.
3. Coded in CSS, with semantic mark up. No tables. All web designers should be coding in css. Web technology is moving forwards all the time, and if your designer is still using spliced images, spacer gifs or even bad css (css that only works in one browser) its not good.  It is also important that it is coded correctly, so make sure that they do the basics, like put headings in h1,h2 or h3 tags and navigations in lists. If you can’t be bothered, try asking them if it validates.
4. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), It is good practice to do all of the organic seo on a website when you are building it. I.e, title tags, meta data, etc. This is just basic, and will not guarantee you a decent place in search engines. There are many other ways to make sure your site is a high ranker, but this takes a lot of time once the site is live, if you want this to continue then you will definitely need to pay your web designer for their time, or take some of it on board yourself. Its a form of marketing that should be important to any business. You need to make sure that the content of your site is relevent and useful, because that is what Search Engines are looking for.
5. Use of flash, Flash should only be used for banner ads, diagrams, games etc. It shouldn’t really be used for the main navigation. Flash changes all the time, so some people may not have the version of flash that you do. Search engines are only just beginning to crawl flash. Mostly there is nothing you can do in flash that you can’t do with css and/or degradeable javascript on a navigation anyway.
6. Design, I know this is purely a matter of taste, but if you want a modern and future proof website, look around the internet, do your research, find websites that look like they are in fashion, because the last thing you want is an ugly website that looks like its from the 1990s for the next 5 years. Consistency is so important. If your site looks like some sort of mishmash you aren’t going to win any awards. 1 bit of advice I have is, don’t just go for the flashy designer. They might be excellent at making things look pretty, but they also need to be able to code the site properly, if necessary delegate the work to different people. A designer and a coder.

1. Standards, If your webby guy is telling you something you aren’t sure about, check out what other websites do and make sure that your site follows standards that other websites adhere to. For example, a guy I know is setting up a website and he has been told that the best way for the users to make payments is by them paying through their phone bill. No one I know would trust this sort of payment system. And if you look around, the sorts of payment methods that are available are used as standard on all of the big sites such as ebay, amazon etc. It is what people trust.

The web is full of amazing web designers who know exactly what they are talking about, and the web is a big place. Even I don’t know everything ( And I work in a legitimate web design company everyday!) and the web is changing constantly. I am learning new things every day.  If you take these main points into account when you are searching for some one to make your website, you should be fine.

When you decide to get a website made it is your responsibility to make sure you get a good deal, like if you hire a builder for your kitchen. I hope that these comments help you on your way.