It has been over a year since I have tinkered around on this blog in terms of the design. So, I thought it was about time to get a new design here. It is a totally new design, which I designed from scratch, by myself, and was coded by xHTML Master (Awesome services, highly recommend) into a wordpress blog. Some of the new features are a brand new logo to give a new identity to this blog, new colors, all RSS Subscribers can easily subscribe via E-Mail or regularly, which the links can be found on the top right corner. And made the site advertisement friendly, and not to mention unobtrusive.

(Old Design left and New Design right)
Please feel free to add some of your thoughts and comments on the new design, as they will be greatly appreciated, even if you have negative comments I would love to hear them to better improve the design for the readers. Also please email me or leave a comment if their are any bugs you find or just something that doesn’t work correct.

Clients come in many shapes and sizes, and of varying intelligences. Some say some things that upon hearing, you just realized you’ve made a mistake. This list goes over the top ten things that you never want to hear from a client.

10. “Can you make it more web 2.0?”

The term Web 2.0 has thrown the design world around. It’s meant to represent user participation, a simple aesthetic and great functionality. Some clients however have it in their head that to be successful they need to have shiny buttons, huge text fields, tons of gradients and some reflections. Not so. You want web 2.0? Make a great, accessible site that does something for people.

9. “Can you make it tech?”

Stop, and glance down at your watch. It’s 2007. Complicated and intricate interfaces with wires and glass orbs and little lightning bolts are totally 2004. don’t get me wrong, when done right it is amazing, but there are few people with that ability, and they either don’t freelance or are way too expensive. (more…)

This is second and final part in a series by Connor Wilson on getting into the web design ‘game’ as it were. This part will focus on the front end/client side coding part of things.

First things first, a clarification:

• Client Side: code that is executed by the client’s (user’s) browser, like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the likes. You can see the source code of client side languages.
• Server Side: code that is executed by the server and sent back out to the client in the form of HTML/text, like PHP, Ruby and ASP. You can not see the source code from your browser. This article will not deal with server side languages.

This will be all about the client side languages. Mainly (x)HTML and CSS. I will also be assuming you have no prior experience, and have no idea what either are. Please also note, this is not a tutorial on how to make a web page, rather a guide from one experienced person to someone wanting to learn how to learn, essentially. (more…)

This is part one of two in a series by Connor Wilson on getting into the web design ‘game’ as it were. This part will focus on the design part, and the part two will conclude with the client side coding end of things.

One of the hardest things about web design is getting over the first hurdle. Making your first design is one of them, and making it come to life is equally ground breaking for someone new to it all. As someone who has been through many websites in all kinds of levels, all kinds of techniques and styles, I’d like to share what I think is the best way to go. The following tips are mainly general and might not work for everyone but remember- you can succeed in this. You just have to give yourself and your talent a shot. (more…)

Last week I posted about a bunch of websites that offer resources and tutorials for designing your site with CSS, but before you take that step you have to make one of the biggest decisions about your site. What will it look like? The color scheme you decide to choose can make or break your site. If you have great content, but it isn’t very easy to read because the colors clash, people won’t stick around long enough to read your content. That is where a site like Dailycolorscheme.com comes into play.

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I’m not a professional web designer by any stretch of the imagination, but I do enjoy messing around with design and coding techniques. I also love learning about the latest and greatest techniques of web development, so these last few weeks have been nothing short of amazing for me in regards to examples and resources for web design. Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) is a concept that seems so simple, yet doesn’t get used to it’s fullest, or often correct, potential, and with that in mind I’d like to share with you some of the best resources and articles dealing with CSS that have permanently made there way into my “webdesign” bookmarks folder.

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