ctrlaltdel_despair

Thanks that's great

That's how I work - I develop other peoples designs. Hence the coding guys as apposed to the designing guys. On my portfolio the only site's I've 'designed' myself are The motor company one and the Guitar one. I was looking for feedback on this site in particular as it's done for a friend with a tiny budget that is absolutely non negotiable. It's basically his old design (not by me) put through a CMS with additional content added. I am looking more into learning about design and doing my own designs. My background is purely as a coder - html, css, javascript & php. The resources you mention sound helpful and I would really appreciate something like that - just as I would help out anyone getting in to writing their own code.

That's probably why I'm a developer. I'm looking for tips on design and the first thing I've learned is that designers are rude, obnoxious and unhelpful. I was looking for feedback on the site not an attack on my ability. You should learn the difference between providing feedback and criticism, and in all fairness just don't bother commenting if you have nothing to offer.

Yeah I guess it's also a shame a banana is not a pear!

Yeah I here you. Thanks for that. I tried to keep the focus on the rotating images at the top and keep the rest really simple but I think it's 'too simple'.

Hi guys and girls, I'm just looking for a bit of general feedback on the latest site I've developed. The brief was for the site to follow their original design but more information needed to be added and a general bit of a re-vamp. It also had to not cost too much and be put through a CMS. With costs in mind I didn't go down the responsive route and tried to keep things as simple as possible. I like to use modX for my CMS sites so it is running through modX revolution 2.2.12. Site URL: www.ghfisheries.com It would also be interesting to get some feedback on a ballpark costing for this kind of site if anyone is willing to contribute. Thanks, John

Magento kind of goes like this for me. Hmmmm, nope. Ahhh, nope. Maybe......, nope. Ohhhhh, nope. This time, come on baby! Nope. ... Ermm, maybe if I just. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! ... ... Eh, what's this checkbox? WOOHOOOOOOO! That happened today when trying to set up a pretty complicated customer group pricing rule that also needed to allow special offers to be included.

Probably a little a few to be fair. For all those nightmare clients there are some that understand whats doing on and how much work is involved. God forbid the cheap client approaches a swiss web designer/developer lol

What is the worst thing you've ever said to a client? I was giving a ball park figure the other day (ball park = way too cheap and probably not worth getting out of bed for) when the client laughed and told me that his bespoke eCommerce site developed in asp.net cost less than what I was proposing for a re-design, some SEO and a bit more admin functionality. Now. I am a really friendly guy. I'm polite, enthusiastic, approachable and lots of other things I don't know how to spell! But I told this guy straight - "that's why your website is s$%& mate! You've paid an Indian freelancer - who has now disappeared - $300 for something that looks like my dog designed it, performs like it's on dial-up, is not in the first 100 pages for a google search for your top keywords and is about as secure as a s$%&house door in a gale! What's more you've now realised it looks crap and is probably losing you loads in potential sales and you want someone to give it a look of professionalism and class, get it ranked higher in search engines, wade through the asp to try and figure out whats going on and do some bespoke development to improve it, and you want me to do it for the same rate as someone who lives at the other side of the world?" I think it was the asp.net bit that set me off. He hasn't called back yet anyway bless him. Then there's the ones who want you to develop 'facebook2' which also incorporates twitter, while implementing a marketing and SEO compaign all on their current website which sells (for arguments sake) tofu. "Social media is the new thing, so it's got to have people on it talking about products and tweeting. It also needs to be ready next week and the budget is £150. Ideally if you can get it done faster though we would want to spend less. Obviously it goes without saying we want responsive design for cross browser cross device compatibility. If you can deliver on this there will be more work in it for you as well." - "Can you pay me in vaseline? Sounds like I'm going to need it!" These people have no idea how busy I am trying to get to the next level on candycrush. They clog up the phone with their noncense, while I miss important calls about claiming back PPI, claiming for an accident I've never had or my industrial noise hearing loss application! Some days I even have to make high level decisions such as color:#000; or color:#333; Obviously I'm exagerrating a little bit - not many people call! Well - sleep time. Then tomorrow I'm off to see a 16 year old wannabe mechanic. He's repaired a puncture on his bike before, so the £30 for parts and labour i'm paying him to change the breaks on my car should be money well spent. I'll see if I can get him to change the tyres and do a service for that price as well I think. If I tell him I'll probably come back to him when I want the cambelt changing he might run the hosepip over it and bung me a free air freshener too!

Wow I haven't posted in this thread for way too long! I've gone through a period recently of In Flames - Sound of a playground fading. That album properly got stuff done for me lol - loads of 12+ hour shifts are credited to it. I've played guitar for over 20 years and also teach, so I've also been listening to a wide variety of genres there - old school stuff like BB King, Albert King & Freddie King through to more modern stuff like Vai, Satriani. Can't beat rocking out while working hehe

Sorry I'm only just posting on this now. In terms of content managment systems I favour modX. In my view modX is a 'proper' CMS and not a piece of blog software that has developed into a CMS. I would also say that if a user is struggling to add/edit content using modX, they would only struggle further with wordpress. In terms of migrating an HTML/CSS/JavaScript design to a modX template, I personally believe you have a lot more control. Validation and performance are also much easier in my view. It's probably more of a personal thing, but everytime I check the source of a website and see wp-content I kind of shudder. It just seems that there are so many different stylesheets and javascripts being loaded in the head all of which increase load time. With modX you can create exactly what you need and not a mass of stuff your site probably doesn't even use. I've also started to see clients refusing wordpress sites from other companies recently.

I use the Google Page Speed Insights too. I seem to get anywhere from 91 right through to 100, depending on the circumstances. My main website is slightly penalised because I have a 3rd party live chat on it but it still scores in the mid to high 90's for both mobile and desktop - www.the-coding-guys.co.uk I was happier with this one though - www.leedsguitar.co.uk - just tested now at 98 mobile and 99 desktop. I've actually had it 100 for both at times. Do you think it makes any difference in terms of SEO? The way I see it is that if the site loads really quick people are more likely to browse it. With more people using mobile and tablet devices aswell, it makes sense to optimise this way. Another tool I've been introduced to is sitebeam. You get 10 free reports then it's £40 a month. It's way more than just a speed/performance test though.

Cheers, I'll look into both of these.

I would say loading 4 different versions of jquery won't help! I would hazard a guess and say that at least 50% of the scripts being loaded aren't even being used.

When the opening track on Koi No Yokan kicks in I know I'm going to get some serious work done!

Hi guys and gals, Do you have to fill out timesheets or complete an online timetracking thingy? I have recently started working from home for my employer. We were using an online timesheet system but it has various flaws to it. What I'm really looking for is the following: Ability to add clients Assign blocks of work/time to clients Something that calculates time per client Ideally online or emailable so my boss can see it Available for free/almost free Does anyone use anything like this? ... and yes I hate filling it in but when it comes to invoicing and also estimate some form of timesheet is hugely helpful! Thanks

I love listening to music while working. I have a really varied taste from chilled trance right through to what I would call my favoured genre of metal (and all it's variants). I generally put youtube on and pull up albums on there. Yesterday involved Fear Factory - Obsolete, Creedance clearwater revival - best of, Deftones - Koi no yokan, The Byrds - best of, Deadmau5 and Beastie Boys - Hello Nasty. I tried listening to the radio once (radio 1) but after hearing the same track for the 4th time decided it wasn't for me. It all depends what work and what mood for me. Today I've had no music on at all but I've been working with Magento/PHP e.t.c.

I doubt anything was signed as they were mates. Edit: Nothing was signed but my mate has it documented in email that he paid for the domains.

Hope someone can help with this. A friend of mine has a small website for his business. The business in question makes very little money but basically earns him a living. I built a new website for him, which is obviously stunningly beautiful lol, and I also host it. However there is an issue with the domain names for the website. The original developer (also a friend of his) registered the .co.uk and .com's on my friends behalf. My friend has paid for the domains right from registration but they are registered in the previous developers name as he didn't bother changing any details. Initially the original developer had agreed to point the domains to my hosting. He also raised the issue of how much it would cost to buy the domain names from him. Now here lies the issue. Is he within his rights to charge my friend for these domains, given the fact that they were registered and paid for by my friend? When I looked into the value it's basically worthless to anyone else. I think the appraisals for both combined were around £300. Anyone had a similar experience? What was the outcome?? Cheers.

The ongoing support is a huge aspect of this. If you develop a site using something like ZenCart or Magento then you will find a multitude of developers who can undertake little bits of work when required. A bespoke system will require an expert (most likely the original developer) to create add-ons or updates. If you are ademant on learning this yourself then you have years of learning ahead of you. You have to start with Html and CSS. Then a browser scripting language like Javascript. You will probably then want to look at Javascript libraries like Mootools or jQuery. Then you can look at server side scripting - php or asp. The quickest way for you to get something like is by using an OpenSource solution like ZenCart, OpenCart e.t.c. However you're then looking at needing the knowledge of how to customize these. HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP at the very least. Zend framework also. Rallport use the analogy above of an electrician. I believe an Electrician in UK takes around 4 years to become qualified. If I could have built a bespoke, fully functional eCommerce solution 4 years after starting learning web design/development I would have been laughing. I would also hazard a guess that Rallport works amongst a team of developers who create a bespoke ecommerce system. Not just one guy sat coding lol

Thanks for your reply Jason. This is completely irrelevant to cost as I'm paid a salary. More I need to be able to quote accurately so I don't risk losing the boss money. I think one thing that would have definitely helped would have been to set a deadline to have received all material from the client.

I've always thought about quoting an extra day for any snags e.t.c but do you think you risk losing the job by quoting too high?

Hi Guys/Girls It's something I've brought up on here before and something I still struggle with - Estimating design time. The problem I have is that someone else does the designs and I then work from the PSD's. I feel if I was doing the PSD's too I would be able to give a better estimate, because I'm designing with HTML/CSS in mind. I'm just after a bit of advice really. We will have an original discussion about the website: rough amount of pages, cms or static website, various other specifics. I would then give my estimation as to how long I think it should take. My latest example of this was (providing I had all the designs and all the content) 2 days. That was to set up a Joomla 2.5 site with about 8 pages and a custom designed template. I received all the content in dribs and drabs via email and in total this took me more like 3.5 days to complete. There was also a few alterations to the original brief. One major flaw was a piece of jQuery I have written and used seemed to conflict with another modules jQuery so that took me a bit of extra time to figure out. Out of all the designs I've coded I think I've underestemated on 2 or 3 but then the goalposts do seem to change quite a lot. Cheers.

Back up, Back up and Back up! At least then once the client has destroyed the beautiful creation you can put it back to how it was lol. I've noticed a lot more people enquire about CMS now because someone they know has a website they can update themselves. We normally check they can use something like Word to a decent level but we do also have a user guide on modX and the features we use within. It's then normally just a case of altering/adding anything specific to the individual clients and also making sure access levels are set properly.

I felt a bit funny about posting this at first but I've just got to share it with you. Not just a site but a website design company? http://www.meadowcroftconsultants.co.uk/index.htm