5 Mistakes New Web Designers Make

Posted on February 16, 2007
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The difference is in the details.

I admire anyone willing to take the plunge in business and set out to achieve their goals and dreams often with little more than a single wing and a prayer. Many of my Photoshop students, fresh out of school frequently find themselves in risky situations in web design that can easily be avoided by simply understanding a small inventory of fundamentals. Simple things to remember what to and what not to do. We all know that solid fundamentals regardless of application really never die, they last in spite of change or advances in technology sort of like a trusty ole axes in a forest full of chain saws. So what are these mistakes web designers frequently make?

1) Tragically Ugly Web Designer Sites

Its difficult for anyone to pass themselves off as a serious web designer while brandishing an ugly web site featuring an even worse looking portfolio yet we encounter this on a daily basis.

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New Template Design Kit!

Posted on February 15, 2007
Filed Under Template Design Kit | 1 Comment

What is the template design kit?

Some of you may recall my Template Design Kit v1.0 that I released free about two years ago on my old site. For those who didn’t see it, the Template Design Kit is a design tool for newbie Photoshop users breaking into the web design business and provided a sort of quick start guide. The kit basically included flash video tutorials built using Macromedia Captivate® and a few hundred support files, actions and other Photoshop elements wrapped into a nice download package of about 50 meg. It was intermediate, quickly assembled, and far from truly complete and would have likely been abandoned had it not been for two important reasons I demonstrate below.

I hate when things disappear

We’ve all bookmarked something we intended on visiting again and again only to discover that the site is gone, the resource has been removed or the account has been suspended. I kick myself many times for not just CTRL + S and saving the page in a folder. Well jaredritesigns.com has fallen to similar fate now that I accepted an offer to stop using my former site from a large jeweler of the same name we turn a lemon into lemonaide and move on. So that was my first reason or motive to keep the Template Design Kit available. Tossing jaredritesigns.com I can live with even though it had a high PR rank but the one thing I knew I’d regret if I tossed was the Template Design Kit. So, two of my associates and I decided to rework the original concept and build the kit into something all together new or should I say newer yet. With an estimated final release being VERY LARGE in size, my major concern was how to distribute such a large inventory of thousands of files and videos effectively, or should I say CO$T effectively.

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WordPress 2.1 Real Estate Listing Plugin

Posted on February 11, 2007
Filed Under Real Estate News | 6 Comments

WordPress Real Estate Listing Manager in development

After a year long consideration and exploration, I decided to proceed with a WordPress plugin as the alternative to creating a self contained listing manager.

WordPress is often chosen by Realtors and Real Estate professionals as a marketing tool used to provide current fresh content on their websites. The ease in which a WordPress can be managed by novice webies is certainly a key motivator. With more and more of my clients using a blog as the main website content manager known as “The WordPress Loop” it only makes sense to add a listing manager to this already valuable tool for Realtors a logical choice.

I’ve contracted a PHP developer to begin the project and hope for an early summer release as a NON commercial FREE plugin or product. The database foundation has been laid and the database tables installer completed.

Without letting the cat out of the bag per se, what I’m seeking to achieve is a simple listing manager that will allow the input, management and display of real estate listings in your blog. Naturally there will need to be field manager and an installer for database tables, but the idea behind our motivation is to create something that works with RETS and IDX type Realtor solutions from MLS’s around the nation. A key component of this project is the database foundation which has been the starting point where I’ve put most of my energy on this project. It will follow database normalization to the 3rd level for sure and the 5th eventually, this as a foundational procedure will greatly improve performance when compared to other listing managers. I’ll get some more detailed specs later in the month.


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