kyo:

me: don’t be that guy

kyo: not in those words

me: doesn’t matter

kyo: it’s just a little warning in the footer

me: out of curiosity, does the old version if IE give you a security warning when you click the link to go to the new version? because if it does, i suspect it’s become self-aware and afraid of its own mortality
“nooooooooo fred! I thought we were frieeeeeends”

kyo: it does not. do you really think it’s that much of a problem? i think we should at least try to convince people to switch, plus this layout is impossible to get to work in IE6 (it works, that’s an exaggeration – but there’s no transparency)

me: there are two kinds of people in the world;  people who understand that IE is not the only browser out there and people who do not

kyo: it’s not like I’m doing this on every one of my layouts.

me: the people in the first set (aka your target audience on this issue) don’t know that there are any other kinds of browsers, and they haven’t upgraded their version. do the math, dude. do you think they’re a) going to even notice the footer text much less b) take your advice?

kyo: no i don’t, but if someone bitches to me about how there is no transparency, i will point to that warning

me: that’s just it, THEY HAVEN’T SEEN THE INTERNET OF MODERN DAY

kyo: i don’t think I will change anything

me: THEIR INTERNET IS STILL FROM OLDEN TIMES!

kyo: but I want to try anyway

me: it’s all sepia tone and people in pictures all wear funny hats and high waisted pants. listen, you watch porn on old versions of IE and just see how cranky you wind up. “that young lady showed her ankles!”

kyo: lol

me: “ankle peekers II”

Don’t explode, mind! It’s purple and jazzy now!

1. You want plug-ins that give you sophisticated management tools for things that need it
For instance, ad managers. You just can’t effectively manage advertisements running on your blog manually – it’s way too inefficient and annoying. A plug-in is GREAT for things like this, and these are the sorts of plug-ins you want.

2. You want plug-ins for functions you’re going to use a lot
And, you want to be able to remove or disable them if you won’t be using them frequently. Avoid bulky plug-ins and themes that give you a lot of junk and bloat when you only want one or two of the features.

3. Look for well-tested, supported and updated plug-ins
Not fly by night hacks from people who will never update them again. Remember, WordPress gets updated fairly regularly. You want solid plug-ins that will grow with your site, not hold it back.

4. Avoid plug-ins for functionality that can be easily added into the template itself
e.g. automated picture management by category type. If it’s more easily and simply done through PHP, get over your fear of code. A quick google search will help you find what you’re looking for pretty fast, and some great tutorials to guide you through. When in doubt, WordPress has a huge support community and most bloggers who offer PHP solutions are happy to help you – just TRY to figure it out yourself first.

5. Avoid plug-ins that bloat your install
Adding lots of junk you don’t need and won’t use is a waste. Find individual plug-ins that do what you need.

6. Avoid Russian Nesting Dolls
If a template you want requires x, y and z plug-ins, or worse, an additional content management system for WordPress, you’ve just opened up a big can of worms, and are in for a world of pain.

Caution: May cause disorientation. Do not view while operating heavy machinery.

Yes, nothing bad could come from that. It’s a flawless plan.

In other news, if I see one more config file, I think I might just curl up in a ball and die. Conversely, I started editing some flash files for a client and after a minor freak out, (”Oh my god, I can’t do this. Why did I agree to this? What are we going to tell the client? I’m a complete failure as a human being. Why did I even think I could do freelance work? I hate flash!”), I made all the changes, fixed some issues in the Action Script, and the only thing holding me back from complete success and awesomeness is a missing font.

Any former PR coworkers reading this will laugh. Laugh it up, jerks. At least I only have to deal with missing fonts when I do freelance, so there. Nyah.

Vacation, where are you?

The base tag is the savior of many a designer’s sanity. Go, friends. Discover it again. For it is good.

I’ll start posting again soon. Promise!

1. Blindly following trends
   The grunge look, web 2.0 (so shiny!), hand drawn everything, word balloons, font styles, etc. We have all fallen prey to at least one design trend in our time, if not many. It’s tough to balance what customers demand with what we believe is the best design for their website. That said, please try to avoid vapid, trend filled portfolios. A great example of work is a wide range – one that highlights each client site and makes it special. Great design and standing out from the crowd: this is the goal you should strive for, every time.
2. Avoiding trends because they’re trendy
   Is this a contradiction to #1? Not quite – avoiding the overuse of trends and styles is smart, but avoiding trends just because they’re trendy isn’t. The trick to going from a good designer to a great designer is to adopt genuinely cool and useful design tricks (aka the trendy stuff) and making it into something uniquely your own – and relevant to your client.
3. Resenting W3C
   Yeah, the world wide web consortium are comprised of sticklers. They’re like the British elite, looking down their nose at your use of p tags around lists while they sniff loudly and drink Earl Grey. Don’t let their intimidating documentation get you down. The W3C is the standard for good web design practices, and it would behoove you to utilize their services, rather than resenting them.
4. Digging your heels in when it comes to learning x
   Whether you will just never sit down and learn html, photoshop, javascript, css, php or whatever, you’re doing yourself a tremendous disservice and preventing yourself from competing. I think we’ve all set a limit where we sit down, give it a try, and decide that we’ll tackle everything BUT the really hard thing that irritates us because we can’t figure it out fast enough. Don’t be the idiot savant who just knows photoshop. Gaining a working knowledge of html or css isn’t tough, and it’s tremendously useful to you and your clients. But your partner/coworker/mother knows z and does all the z-related work for you? Consider how much they’d appreciate it if you took a little time to understand just what it is that they do. Just appreciating the effort and skill set that they have is nice, but knowing more about their skill set will improve yours, and probably allow you to make their job a little bit simpler when working together.
5. Trying to convince your client that they’re being stupid because they don’t want to do what you want to do
   Remember who’s paying the bills. It’s admirable to make a hard sell to a tough client because you do know that your idea is going to work spectacularly for them. But there will always be people in the world who really, really love scrolling marquees, flash intros, and embedded auto-playing wav files. Fight the good fight to convince them why your solution is more effective and beneficial, but avoid resenting their insanely stupid demands. If they want to pay for crappy web design, let them. Just don’t put their resulting site in your portfolio.

I was thinking about websites and what makes them tick. There are ten major aspects of a website, and they’re all pretty interconnected. Like a machine or an organism, the entire thing won’t function well or properly without most or all of these elements. I will discuss each aspect in no particular order – remember, these are all vital to the process.

Content

Content is what makes or breaks a website. You can have the most beautiful, functional website in the world, but without content, you pretty dead in the water. Whether your content is interactive videos and games to keep visitors engaged or informative copy, content is vital. This may seem obvious, but a lot of my clients don’t consider the importance of their content. The fact is that for many businesses, the first interaction a customer has with them is on their website. What you present to your visitor is vitally important, every time. This is vital for advertising, rank and SEO.

Relevance

If the content is irrelevant to the visitor’s needs and purpose in visiting your site, it’s useless – and may actually be damaging. When users type words into a search engine and get results that seemingly relate to that search, they expect the resultant website to fulfill their needs. Whether they’re looking for information, a product or service, if your website fails to give it to them, they’ll be frustrated and your rank will suffer.

Effectiveness

How often do visitors do what we want them to do? If we understand why they’re visiting our site and we’re attempting to meet their needs (relevance), but they can’t achieve that goal because the site is not well organized or functional, we have a big problem. How simple do we make it for the visitor to contact us, purchase goods or click on ads? The user’s goal is important, but we can’t forget our own goals in the process.

Monetary Value

How valuable is the website, in dollars? What revenue does it bring in? Has it surpassed expectations, or failed to meet them? Based on data we get through analytics, we can apply the data to maximize leads and revenue. Remember, leads are money.

Rank

Forgetting buzzwords and industry lingo for a minute, what’s the primary purpose in having a website? Being found by people who will enjoy our site, buy our products, support our advertisers, or become service customers – right? The point of having any website is to be found by other people – people who are relevant to us for some reason. Whether we want them to like us and pay attention to us (Myspace, bloggers, musicians, etc.), buy our products, engage us for services, or enjoy our content and click on the related ads we feature, we want them to find us. In order for them to find us, we need to play ball and build a good website that will gain rank, using analytics.

Analytics

This is such a popular buzz-word, and so many people are already using analytics without realizing it or are intimidated by the charts and graphs (and, oh god, Math), associated with it. Instead of being intimidated by analytics, let’s think of analytics as a catch all term for the data we want in order to form conclusions about our visitors, our website, and the effectiveness of what we do. Analytics report everything from how many people came to the site, how many people completed a transaction and how they got there. Analytics also deals with effectiveness. The data gained from testing which design/copy/structure is more effective is also analytics. Really, really powerful and cool analytics.

Application of Data

This is how we interpret the data gained from analytics. It isn’t always easy, or obvious. Interpretation of data requires some pretty snappy analytical thinking. It is vital to be able to think really out of the box to figure out why people do what they do, and how you can better engage them. But analysts of this kind of data aren’t magical or psychic (okay, maybe a little bit). Using more analytics to gain a bit of qualitative data. This may seem weird, since analytics primarily deals with numbers and pure, chartable data. Qualitative data is still a big part of analytics, and it requires just as much analytical thinking to get some really useful answers – and apply them. Think surveys.

Organization (UI)

This applies to both front-end and back-end interface. Whether you’re using a CMS or hand coding the entire site, you need to be organized. The design must be navigable by visitors. At the same time, you need to be able to modify the site quickly and effectively, without having to undergo a huge task every time you need to make a change, either to the content or the design of the site.

Function

It just has to work. Cross browser, cross platform, it has to work. No buggy scripts, no weird errors, no inexplicably blank pages. W3C validated.

Design

Last, but certainly not least, the design is the look and feel of your site. It conveys a message through color, graphics and composition. All the analytics people just zonked out, but this stuff has a method and a system, too. Understanding the kinds of people who will be using the site will help determine how the site should be designed. How should it appeal to them? What will engage them? Content is only half the battle.