Digimad

Thanks for the replies, by the sounds of it I think it is probably something I will need to work on for a while. Best get stuck in then lol

I have recently been asked to develop a new ecommerce website using Magento. I have never used it and after installing a theme today I realise that as far as CMS goes it looks very complicated. How long do you think it would take to get the hang of it? I am a font end developer really but I can edit php in wordpress and use basic functions. Thanks

Thanks Privileged, very helpful

Ah ok this sounds good, il start looking around for some relevant websites. Thanks

I am working on an ecommerce site in wordpress 2012 with the wp-ecommerce plugin and I need to stop it being responsive. I want to do all of the responsive stuff myself but I cant seem to get rid of the default setting when at mobile pixels. I have tried removing the media queries from the style.css but it didnt work. Any advice? Thanks

I also use px for wrappers and most of the time as long as your site is 1200px on the new screens I find they look pretty good.

Try them all and see which fits your development style best, I love styling so wp-ecommerce is my choice but they all have their good and bad point. Its just whatever suits you best.

What kind of websites would be best to build a relationship with to exchange links? I own a web design/development website and I want to get more backlinks from related websites but obviously I cant exchange links with other web agencies as they are potential competition? Any advice would be great. Thanks

We are looking to do a bit of SEO on the site and arent really experienced in gaining backlinks. The domain name is not that old so we need to get some traffic other ways. We generally just contact companies (within 30 miles) to get most work but we are looking to get some more traffic, does anyone have any sure fire ways of getting some QUALITY backlinks?

Thanks for the reply hostmedia, am I right in thinking Drupal sounds more like a developers toolbox? I mostly centre my work around styling and plugins so I think we are probably better off with Wordress, although lately we have been using a bit more of Woocommerce which is quite nice, although not as easy to style as WP-eCommerce.

Save yourself the time and effort and get a stock photo. Web designers have enough to do as it is! lol Shutterstock has a really good selection you can probably get whatever you need on there and if you want this kind of effect in the link then just apply filters in photoshop. Hope this helps

You can do anything you put your mind to, not overnight but its possible. My advice, learn in depth HTML and CSS and then work on your Wordpress CSS skills so that you can style any theme the way that you want it. Plugins are also your best friend in Wordpress. I only ever use the wordpress bog standard 2012 theme and just style it exactly like my design. Good luck

Id say it depends on how good the site is going to be designed and coded. A really good design should take 2/3 days at least, especially taking into account ux. Coding should probably take 4/5 days solid to make sure the code is clean and even the very basic seo meta tags and alt tags are included and all bugs and browser compatibility is all ok. This is a good approach especially if your getting paid by the hour so a week and a half is probably minimum in my opinion. Although as stated above if this is a personal project most web guys will tell you it takes a lot longer lol.

At Digimad we mostly use Wordpress Ecommerce for all of the online shops that we have created because this is generally the CMS system that everyone knows but recently I have heard a lot about Drupal. I was thinking we could give it a go but im really not sure. Is there anything that Drupal can offer that wpecommerce cant? Is there any point in learning Drupal? Especially if were not going to gain anything from it. Thanks

I like this a lot, especially the colour on the grey background but I would definitely have the first circle white and I agree the K in the first design looks much more like a K. Really nice though, it flows very well. Nice touch with the bubbles also.

google fonts are the most reliable. I tend to go and find a font that I like before I start designing and then put together a header design once I am sure the font will work on with the layout and headers.

Considering you said you'r not a designer thats not bad at all. Needs some more graphic elements and a bit of UX but like I said not bad at all. I do actually really like the colours.

If you are designing you just need to get as much information as possible about what the client wants. Ask about colours, images, layout, font faces and anything that will make the job easier. Then go online and get some reference, look at some similar websites (dont just copy them) take inspiration from certain elements and put together more than one design in photoshop so the client has a choice. Hope this helps

I would use a css fixed position and then just use some jquery .mouseover and .animate for the hover. Hope this helps

Feel free to contact me at hello@digimadmedia.com or through the website www.digimadmedia.com