Bashers, Haters and Cry Babies - Don’t Hire Them!

Posted on August 20, 2007
Filed Under Design | 1 Comment

Before you hire a web designer!

Jealousy is an interesting animal. It causes people to lose their mind, bash or make false claims and even seek to damage the very object of their jealousy.

Today, after spending nearly an hour on the phone with one of my clients I was amazed to find that people acting in jealous desperation have such little contact with reality or the element of consequence that I’d almost safely assume them to be sociopaths for lack of a better term.

What happens when emails contain such violent, profane and threatening content as to make one stand back in utter shock and amazement? What happens when jealous or confused competitors seek to publicly defame or disparage the competition? The answer! The pursuit and propagation of FRAUD.

If you are a prospect looking for web design professionals, one of the things you must always do is LISTEN to the attitude, the voice, the arguments and the possibilities presented to you before you ever lay down a single dollar in hiring a designer. Bashing is nothing new, but such personalities should be actively avoided.

I remember just 18 months ago the attitudes I encountered by executives and other industry professionals regarding open source products. Listening to them in developer groups put down Andrew Eddie or Ryan Bonham for their product visions has yet to yield a single valid claim. I sit in and listen patiently as I outwardly agree with them long enough to fully weigh their ignorance. Tragic really.

Today we see guys like Andrew Eddie, Louis Landry, Johan Janssens, Scott Isaacs, Ryan Bonham (and the list goes on) are now icons in the industry with open source products so successful that the US Government uses some of these products. Corporations who once considered spending tens of thousands of dollars come to the realization that Joomla will do the task. Open Realty alone can compete with some commercial solutions I still maintain and suggest to clients and its fully FREE!

I’m ashamed at myself for falling into bashing rhetoric from the influence of a person that has nothing good to say about anyone or anything for that matter. I’ve been guilty of giving open realty its fair share of critique and criticism as well as other products. Although brief and a bit distracting, today, I have no problems suggesting with bias the use of many of these products.

Today it just didn’t settle well with me to hear someone out there spending so much energy bashing my work only to discover that the very template he is using is one I was contracted to design for a large template house. Naturally claiming it as his own. I laugh at such things and make a note of it. My personality is such that when I think about it, the annoyance gets me motivated to give some response which you see herein.

Real Estate Web Designers and Moral Ethics

I truly despise seeing a person get ripped off and I hate it even more when a designer or design company bashes other designers in an attempt to justify their own faults.

I’ve been in this business long enough to see some interesting things and although I rarely do work for individuals I do hear about individuals suffering at the hands of unethical self proclaimed professionals. Nothing is more frustrating then having to tell a person that I can come up with no logical reason why some internet professionals say the things they do but can usually point out that money would likely be the greatest motivator.

When a web designer or developer makes you feel guilty for hiring them, I’d say its a problem. Therefore my quick suggestion for the day is this;

What to look for before hiring a web designer - web professional

Here is a few of my off the cuff top tips of types to avoid. Naturally they are in no particular order.

A Negative Bashing Attitude: If they have nothing good to say about anyone but themselves you will never succeed with them. PERIOD!
Its always a bad idea: When I encounter designers that tell clients their ideas are stupid or can’t be done it annoys me. I can write paragraphs about this but I’ll just summarize by saying this. Unless the opposition is well founded, then its not likely true. Its just a cheap way for the unskilled to make excuses why they cant do something. (SOMETIMES)
Open Source Sucks: I’ll just say that these people are deliberately indifferent to the truth. Some open source is bad but a qualified expert would know what to suggest and what not to. Custom solutions may very well be the answer but they are not the ONLY answer.
Demonic Possession: Yeah, its a bit funny but articulates the point well. People who hold your domain hostage along with all the work and or things you hired them for are just people to avoid. I encounter web designers who will register a domain, design or develop a site and somehow believe they own it. Didn’t you pay them to do a job for you? If you hire me to build a house, pay me for it, shouldn’t you own it? Its tragic many feel justified in by never delivering passwords, never give you access and then maintains an attitude of full possessive control. Naturally you feel guilty requesting any changes because this person has you as his residual meal ticket for every request you make. Avoid these people at all costs, because it will be AT ALL COSTS if you don’t.

On a final note, bias would have made my list but bias really isn’t always bad. I have a bias for many of the products I suggest but I’m not close minded toward other options. Bias can be a great way to evaluate your designer and his / her attention to details regarding proficiency with the solution.

I’ll cover more on this in subsequent posts as my annoyance level falls back a tier or two.

Flash Page Turn Corner Effect

Posted on August 19, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News | 10 Comments

Flash Page Peel / Page Flip Effect Script:

Our advertising script is the most effective type of page peel or page flip flash effect on the market. Modified to work with a select few open source applications, the page peel advertising rotator is effective in bringing to life advertising options on your domain.

Dont settle for out dated and greatly annoying popup ads and why settle for banner advertising on your site taking up precious real estate that could be used for more productive site features when you can randomize multiple client advertising campaigns with a system that puts the rest to shame.

80% of your ads success depends on one thing.

Its been said by advertising experts that the 80 / 20 rule applies to advertising in a clearly difinitive way that articulates the effectiveness of an advertisement. For each dollar spent, 80% of that dollar is in the headline and 20% in the content body of an ad. Headlines serve one purpose, to draw attention. That being said; can you honestly think of a more effective headline than this Page Peel Flash Effect Script? The answer should be obvious.

Affordable isn’t even the best way to articulate this. How about Dirt cheap pound for pound more effective than solutions costing hundreds of dollars. If $80.00 out of every $100.00 is spent trying to CATCH YOUR PROSPECTS ATTENTION RIGHT NOW with effective CALLS TO ACTION then this tool is as cost effective any can be. My 80% would be to bet on a sure thing rather than throwing darts at a dart board in hopes someone would click my banner.

Open Realty Dreamweaver Template Design Extension

Posted on August 19, 2007
Filed Under Design | Leave a Comment

Still a part of the Rapid Template Design Series I’m updating the shopping cart part of this site for the free download of 3 of my extensions for Dreamweaver.

3 extensions that are currently available;
Open Realty 2.4+ Dreamweaver Template Design Extension
WordPress 2.2+ Dreamweaver Template Design Extension
Joomla 1.0.12 (13) Dreamweaver Template Design Extension

Pending testing and release are the following;
Joomla 1.5 Dreamweaver Template Design Extension
vBulletin 3.7 Dreamweaver Template Design Extension
CRE Loaded - osCommerce Dreamweaver Template Design Extension

Some additional options are available in the shopping cart at time of ordering. Some of those options are as follows;

1) Flash Video Tutorials: basically these tutorials cover the use of each extension that goes beyond the documentation

2) Example Pack 1: which includes example master elements and foundations as examples for your review.

3) Example Pack 2: includes the base back along with some drop in elements like menu sets and sample style guides. A full list will be published when all these items are made available the last week of August.

4) Source Code: includes source code for items that have and offer that option such as our Open Realty Page Turn Gallery and the Advertising Page Turn Effect. Both of these examples are Adobe Flash items and are rather involved.

5) Developer License: Only on three items at this point sorry, all other items licensed on a per domain basis. Dreamweaver extensions are the only items not specific to a domain. Additionally the three items that do offer developer licenses are the Flash Items, the SEO tools, and the Menu generator when it comes available.

For questions or availability please use the contact form to send me an email.

Open Realty Tabbed Navigation

Posted on August 7, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News, Template Design Kit | Leave a Comment

Tabbed Navigation for Open Realty Templates

People like tabs, they like cascading menus and they like clean styled well organized navigation structures. Using tabs for navigation isn’t all to difficult to do for most things as the markup is widely available and easily implemented. One of my favorite of all tabbed type navigation examples is the one published by A List Apart called Sliding Doors A great static tab set with styling for active states for a satisfying effect. But what if you want to use that same tab set in a dynamic environment where tab and or navigation states are all template based. Meaning the navigation elements are not controlled by the database as they are in say Joomla or other applications. Well I needed an answer to that as well having a serious desire to make a tabbed template for CRE Loaded Pro and here is what we did.

Open Realty and Sliding Doors Tab Navigation

Using a static type navigation set like the sliding doors example is that one particular feature of the tabs for active page isn’t exactly a stock feature in Open Realty. Because of this, I recently took a contribution I released last month for CRE Loaded and converted it to work with Open Realty in a no nonsense kind of way that is exceptionally easy to embrace providing a few of your ducks are in a row and you have properly configured your Open Realty installation.

What I’ve done is simple. I take a small chunk of PHP code and determine the URL of the pages I have matched to my tabs and then dynamically set the active state of that particular tab based on an array. Did I lose you? Well here it is in bare bones basic terms.

If you have a tab set with links like Home, About Us, Contact, etc… and you want the active tab to show active when on the about.html page or any other for that matter then when we edit the tab control file by adding the target landing page to the array and then add the link in the tab and your done. Could it get any simpler?

This little technique then gives you the ability to have a nice active state for pages in a templated environment like Open Realty. I’ve used it with other template engines where pages and or active link options are not provided by the application as you can see in the IDX example HERE. When you download the example or visit the site example you can see that the tabs are set to active on each appropriate page. Before you say big deal dude, how is that a challenge, take and download the sliding doors example from A List Apart and examine the code yourself. This solution will not rock the world but it sure does make an Open Realty template shine with a design that can accommodate a nice tabbed navigation.

You can find the tabs example and basic Open Realty template in the tutorials section of TBE.

Best regards.

CRE Loaded Catalog Images

Posted on August 7, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio, Products, Real Estate News, Template Design Kit | 1 Comment

CRE Loaded Thumbnail Generator

Nothing is more annoying than seeing or hearing about the frustration end users and site owners have with their site after spending a lofty chunk on its development. Although some things are certain to surface almost routinely, many things can be avoided by taking the time to draft well written and clear documentation.

In CRE Loaded projects I almost always provide site owners with a style guide if I have the slightest idea that he / she intend on using the content page features in the cart. Now, all though CRE Loaded comes with a WYSIWYG editor for product listings, it does not come with a logical explanation on how to use it effectively and therein lies the problem I face quite frequently with end users.

CRE Loaded unlike osCommerce provides a way for store owners to add content in a more rich and controlled format, thats the good part. But Its been my long held suggestion to end users to do their publishing of content offline in a professional html editor (commercial or not) primarily because online editors fill your drafts with countless inline elements that can break a layout. In every single one of my commercial sites, I draft the content in MS Word so I can port a version of my article to a PDF and MS Reader for downloads and then I copy that article into Dreamweaver, clean up the messy MS Word markup, validating the structure, then pasting it into the WYSIWYG editor in HTML format. As you can guess my blog is NOT one of those places I do this at. Nothing here validates. (proof positive on another experiment I’ll tell you about later)

Pictures and Content Break My Layout!

So, in CRE Loaded projects and templates I’ve always provided the client with a simple one page sheet on the correct image sizes and a small collection of examples among other things for the editor. In the last month alone I’ve seen only 1 person use a CRE Loaded design I’ve built correctly. Thumbnail images are consistent in size, the popup images are all the same size and product images are all the same size. Its when people try to upload these gigantic images in hopes that they will be sized correctly that problems begin.

Because of this I’ve had the php guy build me three little CRE Loaded generators that I’m publishing free of charge for your use. The main one is a simple image generator that takes the product photo and produces three output sizes based on user variables for either width or height. It will add a nice little user defined prefix to the image and provide some other features that will help CRE store owners to quickly generate consistent photo sizes without the lengthy process of producing them in photoshop.

I’ll write more on this generator and the content validation generators later in the week. Until then, blog like a mad man.

Website Application Compliance?

Posted on July 21, 2007
Filed Under Design, Portfolio | 1 Comment

Does XHTML and CSS Compliance Really Matter?

For some reason I seem to just piss people off in forums when I point out ways to improve the compliance of application code. It seems no matter how much patience and professionalism I use to describe ways to reduce the size a site by switching it to CSS or simply cleaning up the hundreds of compliance errors that surface, some people take offense. It’s freaky really.

I recently wrote about creating all css layouts for templates for CRE Loaded and opened up a storm of responses in a particular forum for designers that still has me shaking my head in wonder and amazement. Now I tend to self edit my writings pretty accurately as not to completely offend people but when I say that tables are heavy compared to style sheets, or I talk about cross over block elements as being bad code, I’m speaking truth! Right?

CSS / XHTML compliance is not pure vanity and its not an attempt to show off ones skill in design. Web standards however are alot more than just validation per se. Compliance to web standards has everything to do with the methods of publishing content in ways that screen readers and browsers can understand. It’s also about publishing for consistency, ease of change, control and many things that most compliance browsers should present unanimously in similar form and function. Now validating code doesn’t mean you get to say “I’m better than you are, ha” and it doesn’t mean you will rank better in search engines contrary to popular belief.

Good code standards in my opinion makes a statement about quality and attention to detail not to mention just doing it right. Nothing is harder to deal with then bad code and when code is so bad its noticeable I find myself making it a personal challenge to clean up.

Tables are NOT bad code

The bold and often arrogant pursuit of compliance has led many to adopt this belief that tables are in some way bad code or at least bad coding methods for layouts. Granted tables are not really intended for layout they none the less acceptable methods of site design for popular applications like CRE Loaded or osCommerce as so much of their function relies on tabulated data and data sets that really can’t be displayed effectively any other way.

So, since CRE Loaded was the motive for this post I’ll move to briefly looking at how it can be done using nice clean compliant code.

Open Realty - Joomla - CRE Loaded - Word Press

Of the many applications I work with only three stand out as being in some need of an overhaul. WordPress and Joomla are certainly not on the list as these two applications are very well developed to accommodate good web design.

CRE Loaded is a commercialized enhanced variant of osCommerce which inherits all of its poor layout standards and old inline styling methods. With patience and a little diligence, CRE Loaded as well as osCommerce can be brought up to speed for a lighter and faster product that will at the very least validate providing your content and products descriptions are not messy. Its easy to take an otherwise clean and compliant layout and break it with your content as you can see on my blog I do almost daily as this site produces more non compliant errors than any I’ve worked on. (There is a method to my madness I promise)

I’ve taken CRE Loaded as well as osCommerce on many occasions where custom designs were needed and pretty much went through and cleaned up the code but never did so as a foundation for further templates. Until now! The biggest concern is the frequency of change in these applications and the developers apparent decision to not include the inventory of file changes in the change log (sometimes). This presents a problem as updates and maintenance become a very time consuming endeavor.

An all CSS osCommerce template is possible in Beta 3 and is relatively possible in CRE Loaded 6.2 as I’ve discovered. After spending countless hours building a solid foundation for future design by creating several custom modifications as well as contributions, CRE Loaded templates can eventually weigh nearly 1/3 of their average weight while reducing processing time as much as 80% in all the demo’s and tests I’ve ran. I think that alone speaks for itself.

But compliance in relation to CRE Loaded really begins with the doctype and then all the little redundant generated code methods that make up the application on a whole. CRE Loaded has a proud feature set in its admin panel that let you alter the design to a degree and this doesn’t play well with an all CSS Layout.

I’ve been able to make features like template width, background color and other things controllable in the admin panel work well with an all CSS template. But an all CSS / XHTML compliant template for CRE is a lofty endeavor to say the least.

Now I love CRE Loaded and I suggest it to clients more so than any other commerce application. I wont even touch things like VirtueMart or Zen Cart anymore now that I’ve had some serious time invested into looking at, learning about, and designing for CRE Loaded customers. Compliance was a personal challenge when I decided to take it serious and the very first things I nailed was the module boxes.

CRE Loaded All CSS Templates / Themes

People who use osCommerce or CRE Loaded may be familiar with some of the menu tools available such as JS Cool Menu or DHTML Menu among others. The big issue I’ve always had is that neither one of those menu systems will rank or index with google and the ease of use is almost nil.

The very first obstacle I had was creating and all css multi level menu that I could apply to many of the other CRE Modules so it would index in search engines and reduce its weight and redundant “countless nesting” table levels that were really odd to work with.

After diligence, plenty of $$ for coders, and testing, I was finally able to produce a few master layouts that will validate according to both XHTML and CSS compliance tests and reduce the size to such a degree that when compared to stock templates, the CSS designs will weigh on average about 70% less and load much quicker.

Does this matter? Well I’ll let you and the search engines be the judge as my next posts on the subject wont be until I publish the results I certainly know and expect in terms of indexing and usability.

Regardless of the arguments surrounding compliance standards, CRE Loaded in my personal opinion benefits greatly by quality template design as many would plainly see. The temptation to produce turnkey tabled layouts is hard to avoid considering that most template houses sell their designs for $150 on average. The headache has been the exhaustive amount of layout code that makes up the pages when finally rendered. I think if you look at some of the designs I’ll publish you may consider a similar transition and because of such I’ve assembled a 5 template package which includes several custom menu contributions (All CSS mind you) along with STAR PRODUCT and a few other contributions that will help you in your own template design.

I’ll call it a template kit even though I don’t want it associated in any way to the Rapid Template Design Series. But look If I can save a would be client or customer hundreds of dollars in design by providing a nice little package for $50 my only question to you would be. Is it worth it? and if so, I’m going to publish it!

Rapid Template Design Series UPDATE

Posted on June 21, 2007
Filed Under Design | Leave a Comment

Working With Template Engines

Amazon.com, we love it, we use it, we buy from it; now we’re selling on it. As soon as Amazon approves our publishers outline on the RTDS, we’re that much closer. Amazon said they would evaluate and set the price accordingly (which is odd) and then provide it for sale as an instructional series.

Getting into college bookstores and instructors along with getting the ISBN and BarCode; well those things were easy. Getting content of this type approved by mainstream book stores and online book clubs is quite a different thing. They want that all important summary of what it is and what its intended to do. Its my fault entirely for running out to my blogs and other sites and publishing announcements prematurely. Its my fault entirely for taking what began as a free set of video tutorials and a small file collection and attempting to make it the jack of all trades which it naturally isn’t. So part of clarification we had to publish many of the key phrases I really wanted to use as supplementals under a category for working with template engines.

Joomla, Open Realty, CRELoaded, osCommerce, WordPress, among others were part of my intention to simply make them capable for stand alone template design packages. But now that has changed and they will be included as part of the series published in supplementals. Maybe in the future after this hurdle is jumped, I’ll look at making some small $20 variants specifically geared toward each of these applications.

So why am I ranting about this again? How annoying right?

Understand that this project has been my pet from the day I let the idea occupy my mind more than casually. Had I not started teaching at the community college part time, I’d likely have never come up with the idea to take this beyond the trivial. Now I’m committed; I either follow through or vanish this achievement into internet history as “the big announcement that never was”. I’ve sought and motivated colleagues to contribute (among others), and I’ve solicited investment based solely on my reputation thousands of dollars to pay for proper production audio and video equipment to produce a professional result. I’ve invested my own money along with the trivial grant given to us by the school for the foundation. A lot is on the line and I know this will be something that will be “arguably” affordable, yet important enough to have real utility value to a student of design.

Joomla 1.5 Templates

Posted on June 21, 2007
Filed Under Design | 1 Comment

Will Commercial Templates Be Gone?

I STAND CORRECTED
Joomla 1.5 will in fact STAY as GNU/GPL as such rumors to the contrary had at one time floated about on the subject. Still after being corrected by a visitor today, the question that still remains is the debate over commercial components and additions to Joomla. Will these be required to follow Joomla’s religious adherence to the GPL guidelines?

Joomla has grown so fast over the past year that nearly every major computing industry magazine has commented on its diverse and rather explosive growth. Joomla is freeware as it stands and will continue to be such but the GPL license requirements may take a turn for the worse for third party component developers. Its being suggested that third party components will not be allowed to publish their products encrypted and commercialized for the new release of Joomla as of yet. What this does for design firms that sell drop in templates is semi cleared up in threads in the forums, but at the moment it looks like both GPL and NON will be accepted. The argument looks to be raging in the forums after looking moments ago and some feel its not fair that Joomla impose a mandate on component developers and not template developers.

I guess I stand back and conclude that In many ways the thousands of dollars I’ve spent in addition to the brutal terms we had to agree to with Amazon may in fact pay off then. Our course ware, the Rapid Template Design Series, does in fact feature a small section on CMS systems such as Joomla. What we cover in that section is how to take the central theme of the course which is visual design, and then instruct on how to apply it to various types of template engines such as Joomla, open-realty, creLoaded, oscommerce, or vBulletin for instance. Since its instructional and course ware, regardless of the final outcome I think we’re safe.

I’ll follow this actively now that a visitor was kind enough to point out the errors of my post and send me a set of links. Thank you Elin Waring for your corrections. I prefer to be accurate and your feedback helps.

Real Estate Websites

Posted on June 13, 2007
Filed Under Design, Real Estate News | Leave a Comment

“Real Estate Websites”

Forget all you have assumed about Real Estate Website development and consider just a few quick pointers.

70% of all home buyers search for their home online

According to a wide variety of webmaster guru’s on the web, as much as 70% of all new homes being sold were first searched for and reviewed on the internet.

Home buyers search on an average of 5 websites

A San Diego Realtor I spoke with said that his site retains more people per statistical capita than the national norm. According to experts, the average home buyer searches for listings on 5 separate sites before taking action and contacting a Realtor. My client states that three simple sentences can retain home shoppers on your website long enough to take action. Details on The Brokers Edge.

Home buyers want details, but you wont provide them

Studies show that many people seeking to locate a home online usually wont bother to register on a site unless they can benefit from a specific call to action. Techniques most commonly employed by Realtors is to provide listings with only partial details on homes and properties where additional information can be seen once registered. The call to action, “register to see address” or other details seeks to weed out curiosity seekers and increase the agents chances at more qualified prospects. Other incentives to registration include free documents and or guides that have a perceived or special value to be made only to registered members. I’ll cover this in the article “Top 10 prospect generators” next week on The Brokers Edge.

People judge a book by its cover

I’m the first to admit I’ve seen tragically ugly sites pull in millions in sales while graphically beautiful sites sit stagnant and eventually die. Such is almost clichÃ© but none the less true as we see sites that are tragic to look at, generate unbelievable sales volumes. Does appearance matter? I think the reason simple sites are so appealing is they are not overwhelming and you can always spot someone trying to overdue it when they make their real estate site look more like a portal or the jack of all trades. Such sites are almost never successful.

Attractive designs however are usually perceived as high quality and tend to depict authority from appearance and rich informative content. Maybe the key to good design is as simple as that ugly site but as beautiful as, well, that beautiful site. Don’t you love it when a plan comes together.

I’ll be writing on this and FSBO marketing success on The Brokers Edge.

Saving your life with regular backups

Posted on June 13, 2007
Filed Under Design | 2 Comments

Windows Backup Steps I take

So last night my system got nailed by a virus or some other bug which totally pissed me off because I was right in the middle of finishing up my network and ready to deliver some project files to a client when WHAM! The sinking feeling in your gut and then the red faced annoyance that I just lost the last 6 hours worth of work for the most part. Yeah panic is what I use to do but experience with such things teaches many lessons.

I don’t run automated backup tools (although I should) because they always seem to slow my machine down so I do everything manually. So, I’m going to briefly outline my simple steps to saving myself from tragedy many times over. Now keep in mind. A good tool to have is good solid backup device like tape drive or external drive and I’m guilty for not using either all the time.

I tend to follow a basic routine when it comes to backups. I have three hard drives available, one of which is external via USB2. Here are my little steps.
1) I run a windows batch file every morning that simply copies several files to the secondary hard drive (FileZilla.xml, my bookmarks for IE and FF, My code snippet DB, my DreamWeaver snippets, my Flash Snippets, my email PST backup, and my chat logs)
2) I always drag and drop large client project files into folders with an underscore on my secondary drive. _clientname/ for example. Why the underscore? because it shows up above all other folders.
3) Once every night I make a WinRar Zip of each client folder simply overwriting the existing one. I do this because in the event of a serious system issue I can quickly run KNOPPIX from my DVD drive and use the FTP feature to simply upload the client folders to one of our servers or the local machines on the network with ease before I try to repair any problems. BTW KNOPPIX i
4) DVD backups religiously. Get a copy of http://www.zero2000.com/cd-catalog-expert/index.html
$30 is absolutely no money when compared to ease of locating your data across dozens or even hundreds of media types.
5) Last I make sure I keep passwords, license numbers for software, and all mission critical elements logged into a simple hard bound journal I got from Office Depot for $14. I can’t tell you how many times I need a password for something I rarely use only to waste time searching when I can have it at my fingertips in moments. This very reason is why I’ll be building a simple stand alone VB application to store such things.

There it is, fast and dirty.

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