tips – Page 3

My Design Process

November 27, 2007 By Thord Daniel Hedengren

I’ve been designing websites since 1996, albeit them not being very pretty at the time, of course. None were, actually, something you might or might not remember, depending on your age. Most of my design during the 90s and early 00s were for my own benefit, projects I started. At one time I had 37 gaming websites running (in Swedish), which was madness of course…

Anyway, post-dotcom and I’ve found myself doing a fair share of design work for clients. This last year’s been a good one for me, so I thought I’d share my design process with you guys. Maybe it’ll help you organize your work a bit better. Or not.

First, Consider the Problem

To me, every design is a problem. That means I need to evaluate it, turn it around, and assess every possible kink in the design. This could include making decisions that I know are easy to implement code-wise, especially if it’s a time-crunched job.

This is also when I figure out what the design want to say to the visitor, and take the directions given by the client.

Second, Bring Out the Sketchbook

I do design sketches by hand, usually pretty rough ones these days, before I even fire up the workstation. Doing the sketches by hand can usually make sure you won’t run into dead ends, forgetting about important elements and things like that. It’s a very visual way to see how things fit together.

When sketching by hand, I find that it helps drawing the various parts of the design as squares. They’re not necessarily squares in the final design, but it’s a good way to see how well these element add up, and make sure there’s balance in the design. You don’t want the one side be crammed with small stuff, and the other just have one big element – unless they fit, of course.

Sketching by hand helps, and actually saves time. Still, I must confess that I fire up Photoshop right away more and more often, but that’s due to the fact that I’ve got a very clear idea of how the design should be. Sketching by hand certainly helps unless you’ve got a very clear image of what you’re doing.

Third, Do that Mockup Thing

When you’ve got a concept, it’s time to start mocking up the design. I never go straight to the code, but then again I rarely really finish the mockup either. It kind of depends on the client.

Anyway, I mockup the design, more or less. I use Photoshop for this, but some people prefer Illustrator. There are a bunch of other pieces of software that you might prefer.

Fourth, Time to Code

I might not be the one doing the actual code all the time, but most blog designs are coded by me. My editor of choice is Coda, thanks to the included FTP functionality mostly.

I get a version up and running in Firefox first, then I use VMware Fusion to bug test in the various versions of Internet Explorer, Opera and so on.

Finally, Deliver and I’m Done

That’s about it. Delivery is usually a zip file with some instructions. I rarely do implementation work myself, and if I do I make sure the pay for it is good since there’s the possibility of things going wrong that might end up not being my fault, and I really hate that.

That’s my process. How do you go about when designing websites?

WordPress Tip: Disable and Remove Unused Plugins

November 21, 2007 By David Peralty

As WordPress continues to evolve and change, and your blogs grow as well, you may no longer use certain plugins, but forget to deactivate them and this could lead to a huge security issue down the road.

WordPress 2.3 and above has been great about letting you know when there are updates to certain plugins, but if you ignore this update message, or if there is no update notification, and you leave a plugin active, you could be opening your WordPress blog to being compromised.

Plugin authors don’t always think of everything when creating their plugin, and I would hate to see anyone have their blog be hacked due to a vulnerability in a plugin, so please, if you aren’t actively using and updating your plugins, remove them, as you will be closing potential security risks.

I know it is something not widely talked about in the community, but there is no reason to have four or five dozen plugins on your WordPress blog if you are only using three or four. I try to stay away from using extra plugins as much as possible, and I also steer away from any plugin that isn’t actively developed.

If you follow my advice, you will have taken another step to protect your blog, and in this day and age, that is never a bad thing.

I also highly recommend updating your blog to WordPress 2.3.1 if you haven’t already, and making sure you back up your blog both before and after the upgrade. If your blog is compromised, a working data backup can reduce the data loss.

Guest Blogging, Woe and Dismay

August 27, 2007 By Connor Wilson

Recently, more and more blogs are voicing their not-so constructive thoughts on guest blogging. What’s the beef? Some say the quality just isn’t there, but whose fault is that? You know, having another blogger write an article for you doesn’t have to be a half-assed attempt at link bait.

Guest blogging is to write, free of charge, one or more articles on a known contact’s blog as a favour. Benefits include a little traffic and recognition, maybe a link or two if you can make it relevant.

That said, to assure the quality of content remains and your readers don’t get bent out of shape, I present you with some tips, as a guest and as a host. For this to work both sides must be in mutual competence. Before we get into that, let me share with you my definition of guest blogging.

For the Guest

Being paid to write a post and guest posting are two different things. If you’re getting paid, you’re a writer for that site. If you’re guest posting, you’re simply a friend doing another friend a favour.

If you’re emailing another blogging asking to write a post for them, have a headline or topic in mind. On the other end of things, if a blogger asks you to help them out, work with them to come to a mutual agreement on a topic you both agree you can write a great article on.

The whole link bait and guest posts ordeal is one myth I wish I could abolish. Unfortunately there is a trend of guest bloggers making poor attempts at gaining traffic from Digg and other viral sites. I don’t want to take any shots here, but in the commentary category my creative freedom somehow needs to be heard. The ‘make money online’ niche is a big one. The guest blogging in this niche is absolutely horrendous and because this whole area reaches such a wide audience, everyone gets a piece of it.

The poor guest posts in the MMO sector are due to misunderstandings between inexperienced bloggers. I’ll say it: 95% of MMO online blogs are John Chow rip offs thinking they’re going to be rich tomorrow. This produces hundreds of incompetent people without blogging common sense. I know you were thinking it 😉

For the Host

First thing is first: should you squeeze a contact for a guest post? Keep in mind, while pulling a favour in, you might be called to return it in the future, if your guest isn’t returning it to you. This isn’t always the case. Personally, my blog is under my name and I would never have someone write a post at their own discretion for me. On the other hand, I do the occasional guest post, asking nothing in return. That’s just me though, many people are quite on the contrary.

Next, you’re not going to want to pick just anyone. Somebody in your niche, or close to it, is obviously the best bet. As someone who is design/blogging focused, it is a little awkward trying to fulfill expectations on a business blog.

For the record, when a guest post is quite sub par and readers know it, it’s on the host. Why? As a host (the blog owner for the not so observant) it was you who chose the writer, or approved it. Don’t pick any random person who asks.

Look at their previous guest posts if any.
Read their blog. I say skip it if they don’t have one.
Do they have something to plug? If they have an ulterior motive for leveraging your site, skip it.

The perfect candidate is one who writes eloquently with experience without being intimidated by the myths surrounding guest posting. Added bonus for having a popular blog in the same niche.

In the End

Don’t be afraid of guest blogging. It can be a three way of pleasure (err, in the blogging sense) for the guest, the host and the readers. It’s not for everyone, but if you think it is for you, do it right. It seems as if the present is a shaky time for guest blogging, but a little common sense goes a long way.

Connor Wilson is surprisingly enough a blogger also working as a freelance designer.

Inspiration from Within School Walls

August 21, 2007 By Devlounge

It approaches. The humidity takes a slight drop for a few days, and you can feel a refreshing feeling in the air. The leaves on the trees are still green, but a small portion fall to the ground and dry up. August is drawing to a close and September is coming. Another school year is upon us.

Many, if not most of you are way beyond this point. But for me, my final year of high school looms just a few short weeks away. The last few weeks of summer always seem to play with you – you know as days go by you are getting closer and closer to the start of a new school year, which puts a damper on the “fun” the last couple weeks of summer should really be about. Time is quickly running out, and before you know it, the 10 weeks of summer have vanished.

As soon as the school doors bust open, my motivation to do much design work usually seems to slam shut. Especially early on, that first month always seems to be a motivational killer. School requires a major refocus of time and effort, meaning books and school work take the forefront and Photoshop begins to collect dust.

Up until last year, it was that very reason which usually led me to take very few clients over the course of a school year. I usually did most of my client work in the summer, and let it take the back seat once fall hit. But beginning in my junior year, the on and off periods flip flopped. Last year, I found myself gathering ideas all day long, in various forms, while sitting in the back of a classroom. Pens, pencils, and pads are good for a lot of things.

The truth is, you don’t need a fancy to do list application or Photoshop in front of you to get your ideas down and out there in the open. I spent a lot of time throughout last year using the back pages in notebooks to draw up ideas for new sites, client work, and just about anything else I could think of. I’d sketch out design concepts (including some of the ones that later became versions of Devlounge), and label different sections with numbers, including notes on what I planned to fill each section with and how I could get it to work. Then, whenever I got the chance, I’d go into Photoshop and create rough mockups of my sketches and save them, so that even if I didn’t end up putting them to use, I’d have the ideas stored up for future work or projects. It turned out to be a fairly productive method, which explains why I took more clients last year during my “busiest” year of high school.

So my advice to you high school or early college kids who are still trying to become the best designer possible – don’t let school get in the way of your creativity. Of course set your priorities in the right order, but when you have time for it and ideas come to you, write them down! Whether it’s with words or pictures, it can really help you learn by storing all your concepts somewhere you have easy access to them. Here’s what I recommend:

Extra Notebook – Score an extra notebook specifically for random things, such as sketches and notes. When you finish your work and your sitting there with nothing to do, rather than trying to sneak your iPod up through your sweatshirt so no one notices, take out your “design notebook” and start brainstorming. Get all your ideas down on paper.
Don’t throw away any of your failed concepts. At the end of the year it will do you great justice to have a compiled notebook of failed and accepted designs. You can see what worked and what didn’t, and hey, you might actually learn something from yourself.
Learn from usability mistakes right in front of your face. You’d be surprised, but you can pick up a lot of usability details from objects you use everyday. If you have a recently published text book, compare it to that old one from 1960 in the corner of the room. You’ll notice most books these days are much more clear cut; they draw attention to the important things and fill the pages with a lot more useful information then back in the day. Your likely to see just a bunch of jumbled text in the 1960 edition of the same book, but a lot more whitespace and vibrant colors to draw attention to details in newer editions.

Traffic: Quality vs. Quantity

April 7, 2007 By Connor Wilson

Traffic is one thing that people strive for. Whether it’s using the pillar technique of building traffic over time, or a spike technique to create bursts of heavy hits for a day or two, traffic rules not only the way your website is seen, but it can affect how likely repeat visitors are.

People are like sheep. Lemmings, if you will. People go where other people go. It’s like having a favorite sports team. You either choose it by location, or because someone else, or a group of people have already. You might hear a lot of people saying, “If you have less than 50 subscribers don’t display the number“. I don’t personally go by this theory, but it’s true. If someone likes the content, but sees only 10 other people read it regularly, they’re less likely to subscribe themselves.

Same goes for traffic. You’ll find the less traveled sites need to virally build up traffic to get going. Other sites prefer to use pillar traffic to start up.

Pillar Traffic is when you write quality content over time and your stats and traffic rise slowly but surly. This is more of a ‘sticking it out’ method, but is more likely to work in the long run than any other method.

Spike and Viral traffic are when you get massive bursts that last for a day. This can happen when one of your pillar articles gets a lucky break on a social bookmarking site, or other aggregator. Things return to normal very quickly.

Another option that I’ve seen quite a bit of lately is buying traffic. This simply consists of paying a company/person who will send you a guaranteed amount of visitors your way, everyday. You can get 250 unique hits a day which is very good by any standards, or you can pay the extra buck for 10,000.

The problem with this however is that this traffic is very thin and the visitors do not convert to readers/subscribers, ad clickers, clients/buyers or comments. It’s just dummy traffic that you can do absolutely nothing with. It’s great if you’re trying to sell a site, until the potential buyer asks for your referral logs.

So how do you build traffic, or Pillar Traffic?

There are a variety of ways. But remember: this is not a short term solution. If you’re itching for 50,000 hits a day and now, you better start writing bad stuff about Microsoft and Reddit hoping to get on Digg.

Use search engines to generate organic traffic. Organic traffic is the most likely to come back, or convert. Certain search terms, where people are looking for an answer convert well for ad clicks (contextual), and the new reader will likely come back later to read some of your other content. But…
Make sure the content is there. Don’t even try to get good traffic without good content. This is what I mean by pillar articles. People don’t come back for no reason. You need to give them a reason to come back. It’s like moving away from home. If you move out and make a better life for yourself, then there’s no reason to go back to where you won’t be as happy. (Weak, I know :P)
Getting Spike Traffic is OK. No one will look at you differently for trying to throw in some Digg-bait with your good content. If you get on Digg and receive 50,000 hits that day, at least 50 are going to come back, most likely more.
Get links from sites on the same topic. Who’s most likely to subscribe to Devlounge: someone from a webmaster site like DigitalPoint or a stray HabboHotel player?

The quality traffic that you build is better than thin traffic that you buy. 100 hits of quality visitors will do you more good than 1000 hits of bots and 1 second visits.

In the end it’s all up to you: do you want 10,000 hits today, or do you want to be getting 10,000 hits everyday in a year? Sometimes its better in the long run to forget about the stats now. You’ll also be surprised how fast these pillar techniques work.

Conclusion:

Write good content.
SEO for organic traffic.
Contextual links.
Pillar over Spike.
Spikes are OK every now and then.

My name is Connor Wilson and this is my first post at Devlounge. I hope you enjoyed it and get something out of it. I’ll answer anything in the comments, or email me using the staff contact form.

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