Redswish

Carefully crafted banter

How To Sell A Website


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Before I even begin to commence on this tiring and inevitably pesky subject, I would like to make clear that this isn’t a tutorial or much in the way of decent advice, but more of a question. I never feel I’m up to the standard as either a designer or businessman to be dishing out the advice, so I tend to approach subjects from an inquisitive, unbiased 3rd person perspective. I don’t know how to sell a website. I know how to build a website. I could sit and talk to you for hours about web design, in person – writing articles can be too time-consuming, though all in good time. But as for selling a site to a hopeful future client, there’s no exact science, but perhaps an art.

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Woody Websites


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Of course, all designers have different views and strategies as to how a site is designed and what components go into that design. I’ve always believed in 5 core visual approaches, as also dictated in Sitepoint’s ‘The Principles of Beautiful Web Design’ (Jason Beaird – fantastic book). Jason categorises the 5 central design approaches into Layout and Composition, Color, Texture, Typography and Imagery. All equally important characteristics of a beautiful web design. The one theme that I’ve often failed to fully acknowledge is Texture. I’m a big believer in clean, simple websites (I’m not a lazy designer!) and in turn sometimes disregard the importance and possible benefits of employing more texture into the design. But, not to divulge any further in to my own approach, I’ll meander to the central topic of this article – a relatively new boom I’ve noticed, primarily among some of the finest css-based web designs on the net, of an abundance of wood texture on…

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Blogging with Live Writer


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I [heart] open-source. To the extent where it almost limits the scripts and packages I use because I refuse to actually pay for anything – I’m sure I can find an alternative out there in the jungle of the web. This site is built with WordPress, one of the finest open-source packages on the net. Some of my other sites integrate ajax gallery scripts, slideshows and forums etc. Now aside from Live Messenger, Microsoft doesn’t strike me as a company to offer much in the way of decent open-source software. However, about 3 weeks ago I attended a WordPress Meeting at the MDDA offices in Manchester where I met a host of other WP users and developers. Among others, 2 guys that stood out were Darren Turpin, a self-described ‘content manager, copy-writer, pro-blogger, mercenary wordsmith and online marketeer’ and Paul Fabretti from Stockport-based company KMP.

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Is valid code really neccessary?


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I’m a big believer in semantic, valid mark-up. Both XHTML and CSS. And it’s fairly safe to say that every website I build now contains valid code, unless in the case of integrating a complex script which makes it extremely difficult to obtain the coveted W3C valid link at the bottom of the site. There is a huge hype among forward-thinking, standards-driven developers regarding the importance of valid mark-up. This point is made from different angles.

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What can’t you do on the web?


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Just a little muse. The question in principal may seem ridiculous, but honestly – what can’t you do on the Internet? Perhaps let’s start with what you can do. A scenario. I’m an exceptionally lazy person (I’m not – this is for the sake of my example). I’m sat at my computer, watching a film on the Internet. Or listening to music. Or playing a computer game (online chess?! more probably Call of Duty 4!) I get a bit peckish so I order a pizza, online. While I’m at it I can also order a week’s worth of shopping to be delivered to my front door.

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Microsoft Bidding for Yahoo


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News on the grapevine – Microsoft have officially entered a bid to purchase Yahoo for $44.6 billion. Firstly, that is a sickening amount of money. Secondly, this seems another attempt to monopolise another market. I understand the computer world was Microsoft’s upbringing – it’s home territory. Over the past few years it’s managed to wrestle it’s way in to the console market and is currently doing very well. While Sony are on their feet with the PS3 (and don’t argue with me because they are), the only capable opponents to Microsoft’s XBOX 360 are Nintendo – age old veterans of the video-game market. I do like the Wii.

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New Sans Design Website


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It seems I’m on fire at the moment. As well as finally getting round to creating a blog site, today (1st Feb) is the launch date of my new web-based company: Sans Design! For those of you interested in the name, it’s a bit of a joke. ‘Sans’ is Latin, meaning ‘Without’. Therefore ‘Without Design’ is a comical twist, especially as the actual priority of Sans Design is the design aspect of creating websites.

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