HAVING FUN WITH WEB DEVELOPMENT!
New Painting in Progress!
Sep 28th
I have finally started a new painting! It is going to be a Christmas present for my boyfriend. Knowing how long it can take me to complete a piece, I figured that it would be a good idea to get started now. Here is the original image that I will be painting from:
Original Picture: Henry & I
Since this is meant to be a Christmas present, I decided to do it the right way. Which is completely opposite of what I usually do. Generally, I pull out the canvas and just start painting. With this piece, I drew an outline on the canvas first. While drawing the outline, I was reminded how useful this step is. I found myself erasing the eyes a bit and at one point, I made his forehead a bit too big (so sorry Henry).
Stage 1
During this first stage, I am focusing on getting the skin color and basic layout in place. This will be the first layer of the piece and may be changed several times before completion.
Stage 2
Article 2 – Delving into SEO
Jun 27th
During my research into the best Search Engine Optimization Practices, I came across the “Findability Strategy Checklist”. This was developed by Aaron Walter, his site is located at: http://buildingfindablewebsites.com/. Thus far, it has been the most comprehensible list I have found. I am going to list it here, but you can also find it at http://buildingfindablewebsites.com/findability-checklist.php.
Included in this checklist are:
- General Recommendations for All Projects (this includes mark-up, server, content, javascript, flash, etc.)
- Redesigning or Moving a Site
My goal is to form my own checklist that I can include with each client’s file and go through whenever a site is being developed. Once I have all the information together, I will post my checklist for other to use.
Challenges in Responsive Web Design
May 12th
One of the many challenges that Web Developers face is designing a site that will work on as many different platforms as possible. Not only are there the different browsers to contend with, now there is such a variety of screen sizes and resolutions. From the high-res desktop screen to the smaller mobile devices, the screen sizes and resolutions can vary so greatly that developing a site that will fit all can at times, be rather challenging.
A article was recently posted Web Designer Depot that breaks it down rather nicely and offers some suggestions on how to design a site that will fit as many platforms as possible.
Big vs. small: Challenges in responsive web design
PHP Password Generator
Jan 31st
I have discovered a very useful PHP Password Generator. After making a couple changes to update the code to my specific needs, it worked perfectly! Check it out at http://www.tutorialchip.com/php-password-generator-class/.
PHP Remove Comma From Currency String
Jan 26th
I was recently faced with the situation of needing to enter a dollar amount from a <form> via PHP to a MySQL Database. This may sound like a simple feat, but it resulted in being completely the opposite. The reason being is that when data is “uploaded” into MySQL, it views a comma as being the end of a string. So, when the amoutn 75,000 is entered, the amount that MySQL actually “sees” is 75. To find the solution took me a bit longer than expected. And, as per usual, it ended up being something simple to correct.
To removed the “,” from the string:
| <?php $price = ereg_replace(“,”, “”, $_POST['nprice']); ?> |
Let’s break this down: ereg_replace function is to stating, locate the “,” in the $_POST['nprice'] string and replace it with “”, which is nothing. You can place anything inside the first “” of any symbol you would like removed. Now the data is clean and ready to be uploaded into MySQL accurately. The next solution to find, is how do we show the number (example: 75000) as a currency? That proved to be much simpler.
| <?php echo number_format($price); ?> |
This indicates that the value stored in $price should be shown in a number format (example: 75,000).
To learn more about the function ereg_replace: http://php.net/manual/en/function.ereg-replace.php
To learn more about the function number_format: http://php.net/manual/en/function.number-format.php
Beautiful Contact Forms
Dec 27th
Yet, another inspirational post by webdesigner Depot. Check out these beautiful and inspirational contact forms. It is always a wonder to discover beauty in a very functional, yet feels like somewhat mundane, Website attribute. http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/05/beautiful-contact-forms-for-your-inspiration/
Inspirational Typographic Designs
Nov 17th
Typography has become very popular in Web Design and more and more sites are using this technique to grab and maintain user’s attention. Listed below are examples that offer inspiration on all that typography has to offer!
Ampersand Food Groups // Typography Illustrations By: Dan Beckemeyer
Michael Jordan Typeface Portrait By: Ziarekenya Smith
Top Search Engines
Nov 16th
One of the first steps to Search Engine Optimization is knowing which search engines are attracting the most users. Listed below are the current top 5 Search Engines.
Statistics are according to Hitwise (http://www.hitwise.com/) 
Last Updated: 11/6/2010
| Rank | Search Engine | Searches |
| 1 | www.google.com | 70.21% |
| 2 | search.yahoo.com | 15.06% |
| 3 | www.bing.com | 10.16% |
| 4 | www.ask.com | 2.56% |
| 5 | www.aolsearch.com | 1.43% |
Article 1 – Delving into SEO
Aug 16th
Search Engine Optimization…
There is so much information out there on this topic and many different offered avenues to take to increase a sites visibility. With these series of articles, I am going to delve into SEO and explore what exactly helps a site increase traffic and what can have the opposite effect.
Google seemed like a good place to start, after all, it is one of the largest search engines out there. Here is a condensed list of guidelines they suggest for increasing a site’s visibility. To read the entire article, visit http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769.
- Sitemaps – Submit a Sitemap using Google Webmaster Tools. Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages.
- Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
- Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
- Think about the words users would type to find your pages, and make sure that your site actually includes those words within it.
- Try to use text instead of images to display important names, content, or links. The Google crawler doesn’t recognize text contained in images. If you must use images for textual content, consider using the “ALT” attribute to include a few words of descriptive text.
- Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.
- Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as JavaScript, cookies, session IDs, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.
- Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled.
- Test your site to make sure that it appears correctly in different browsers.
So far, these are all items that I’m already aware of and nothing really new. With the exception of using a text browser such as Lynx to examine the site. Makes sense to utilize this since it will provide a clear picture of what exactly the search engines are “seeing”.
Step One: The beginning of creating a search engine friendly site is developing it with “clean” code and making sure it contains pertinent and useful information on the subject of the site (e.g.: information-rich).
The Dying Art of Design
Apr 12th
I have recently read a wonderful article by Smashing Magazine about the Dying Art of Design. The article is located at: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/08/the-dying-art-of-design/. I found this article very interesting and thought provoking. It discussing how “fundamental skills and the craft of design have started to take a back seat” in Web Development.
This article came at perfect time for me because I have been learning how easy it is to fall into the category of placing importance in creating “Quantity” instead of “Quality”. My goal has always been to provide my client with the best quality possible and when I my knowledge does not extend into the function or design they are envisioning, I offer to learn how to provide it or respect their decision to get it elsewhere.
In the past months though, I have seen how easy it can be to fall into the “trap” of the focus going from quality to selling as many designs as possible. Let’s face it, we freelancer’s need to put food on the table and it’s very easy to fall into the trap. So, what to do about it. My solution is:
Set Aside Time for Training
With everything new I learn, the one thing that remains constant is “How much more there is to learn”. Especially in the field of Web Development. There are so many different faucets to it, not to mention how quickly things progress and change. Setting aside a bit of time each week makes sense.
Scribble More
I am going to start carrying around a notebook just for scribbling my design idea’s, from coding to graphic design. This reminds me of my Art School days when part of our requirements were to always carry a sketch book with us and we were responsible for providing one sketch per day. It was a pain at times, but proved to be a good exercise. Just like exercising, there are those days that we just don’t want to do it…. but we do it anyway and end up reaping the rewards of our diligence.
So, those are the two items that I am going to start with. I am a firm believer in “baby steps” and setting too high a standard for me from the get go, has more often than not, deterred me from my goal. They both sound like a good place to start. Take a look at the article and let me know what you think and what possible goals you think that can be added to my list.
