Redswish - carefully crafted banter

Are you really this stupid?

Today I received 3 spam contact form results from nathanbeck.co.uk, my portfolio site that ties in with this site (click on contact at the top and you’ll see what I mean).

They were all ’selling’ the same thing, but just spewed different bullshit each time.

Here’s the best:

Hello,
How would you like getting a logo’s (or) icon’s (or) header (or)template (or) banner designed free of cost for your website. We are giving away these services as a promotional measure for free of cost. In return we need a link at your site for each services at home or internal  page(Except link,resources,directory pages).So to get a new services all you got to do is mail us back with the confirmation of link and the page where the link added for our site. If not interested in any of these offer,and interested to do three-way link exchange,please feel free to mail me back.

Regards,
Rebheka.

I’m a freaking designer, it’s plastered all over my site and about 3 inches to the right of the contact form Rebheka filled in!

Perhaps she used an automated form-filling tool, perhaps Rebheka is actually a poorly paid Indian child slaving away for 13 hours a day posting and reposting the above email to hundreds of ignorantly selected sites. Perhaps I need to use a CAPTCHA, but I always liked the simplicity of my contact form.

We’ve seen it all before

I know, I’m sure you have. I just cannot get over the stupidity. I mean, you’d at least use correct English grammer. That email reads like it’s been processed by a cheap language translator.

I won’t post my response, yeah that’s right I responded! I’m sure you can assume the tone in which it was written. I just can’t believe anyone would possibly fall for such an email, it surely can’t be productive on ‘Rebheka’s’ behalf.

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Accessible web design – The Whats and Whys

What is this ‘accessibility’?

Aside from becoming a buzzword that designers love to throw around (”I’m a standards-aware, accessible web designer… therefore am superior to you.”), accessibility is about ensuring your site can be accessed and used well by all types of web users, including disabled or somehow impaired users.

This may not seem like a big deal to all the comfortable ‘typical’ web users reading this article right now. But you can be assured that a hefty portion of surfers on the net may be blind or visually impaired, motor impaired, paralysed or perhaps just using a particular web browser or operating system that doesn’t render websites like you would expect, or wish.

In fact, the net is the alternative that a lot of disabled users would rather turn to then trawling out to the shops to spend money, or to the library to learn. If you were in a wheelchair, would you prefer to make the arduous trip into town or roll over to your computer with a mug of coffee and The Beautiful South playing in your warm, cosy home?

So, don’t lock these users out!

Persuading the client

The client shouldn’t require persuading. Let me stress that. Building accessible websites shouldn’t be an extra cost or an additional feature. In fact, it would be nice if this article didn’t even exist, as if accessibility and standards-based web design was just as it should be, and didn’t require attention. Unfortunately this is not the case. I have friends learning web design in University and college now who have no idea what an ‘alt‘ tag is, have never heard of ‘accesskeys‘ and some (lord help them) don’t even realise there are more browsers than IE6!

However, understanding web standards and accessibilty isn’t something you should really brag about. It doesn’t necessarily make you a better ‘designer’, it just means that you’re going about building websites the right way.

I often feature links at the bottom of my sites to the w3c xhtml and css validators, so people would know that my sites use valid code. But why brag? It should be expected.

Explaining the acronyms

W3C: World Wide Web Consortium. www.w3.org.

The W3C is an international consortium founded by Tim Berners-Lee (the guy who is labeled as inventing the World Wide Web, there’s some serious gravitas behind that title!) and others. The consortium consists of member organisations, full-time staff and general webheads who work together to develop the net, raise understanding of the correct ways to build sites, create new technologies and work with all kinds of companies and people to help make the web a better place.

WAI: Web Accessibility Initiative. www.w3.org/WAI/.

In their own words, “the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) works with organizations around the world to develop strategies, guidelines, and resources to help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities.” The WAI offers 3 levels of access. The relatively easily achieved Priority 1 through to the the master level at Priority 3. The reason that there are 3 levels is because it is understood that you can’t just expect everyone to become accessibility gurus overnight. Like transitional DOCTYPES, this allows continuous development and an evolving understanding of web standards and accessibility.

Section 508. www.section508.gov.

Section 508 is one of the few legal acts concerned with user experience and disability discrimination on the net. Becoming law in 2001, it dictates how sites should cater for various disabled users. Although it only applies to federal agencies and government sponsored activities, 508 sets a precedence that should be acknowledged by all designers.

Also check out:

• The Guild of Accessible Web Designers
• The Web Standards Project
• A List Apart

Ignore the stigma

So far, accessibility sounds as if it’s for the best. But, even after all these years of constantly pushing towards a better understanding and acceptance of standards and accessibility, some people either refuse to accept it or believe it will hinder them as designers. FALSE. I’m not trying to sell it, and I don’t worship it – I just want to rule out any possible negative implications:

• Building accessible websites doesn’t, and shouldn’t, cost any more.
• Building accessible websites hardly takes much longer, and if done properly will probably save time in the future.
• You don’t have to build multiple versions of your site (unless you’re going for a Flash and a HTML version). Your sites should be perfectly adaptable to different types of browsers, screen resolutions and tailored to different users in one fell swoop.
• Building accessible sites does not restrict you as a designer. Your sites can be as fancy as you want with imagery, typography, scripts, animation, hybrid layouts etc and still be accessible.
• Accessibility is not just catered to disabled people. It affects all users. It considers people with slightly poor vision or motor skills, people using mobile web browsers, screen readers, text-only browsers, search-engine robots, people who are temporarily disabled and the list goes on. Do you realise what a massive portion of the web-browsing population this covers?

So what are the real benefits?

I’m sure many reading this have just been scanning and may have missed a few bits, plus there’s still plenty I’ve not mentioned. But a blog article can only get so long. So, the benefits of building accessible websites?

• Increase market share and audience reach. By not locking out a large portion of users, you are of course opening the door for them.
• Increase search engine listings and discovery. That’s right: ACCESSIBILITY CONTRIBUTES TOWARDS SEO! Seriously, a lot of the techniques employed while building accessible sites really do aid SEO. Cleaner code is easier to parse. Alternative text helps to describe your site and provides additional content. Captions, table summaries, text descriptions, anchor titles and meta-data all provide additional descriptive data bout your site.
• Improve efficiency by reducing maintenance and sometimes bandwidth.
• Demonstrate social responsibility.
• Reduce the risk of any legal implications.

Still not convinced? I’ve hardly exhausted the subject but I don’t wish to bore you further. For more information you can visit the links mentioned above.

That’s all neat, but how do I go about it?

Of course there’s quite a lot of ground to cover on the subject of ‘how-to’. So I’ll be covering this in part 2.

If you wish to discuss the points raised above, think I’ve missed anything (surely I have) or disagree – let the people know in the comments section.

Move on to part 2 – Accessible web design – The how.

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Guest Post – Creating Usable Website Navigation

Throwing a shout out to my latest post, however not on Redswish. My first (I think) guest post has been featured on ifoh designs blog.

The article covers, or at least attempts to cover all the bases to consider when designing usable website navigation. It looks at page quantity, hierarchy, design aspects, accessibility, consistency and navigation design on different types of websites.

Quick teaser quote:

Consistency is essential. Nothing is more confusing than traveling to another page on a website, only to loose the navigation, or find that it’s changed format or location. Ensure that your navigation, whatever layout and positioning it may take, remains in the same place on every page of your site – even if the color scheme or rest of the page layout changes.

A simple ‘Return to the main site’ style link will not suffice.

But hey, don’t take my word for it, it’s my article! Check out the full article here:

http://ifohdesigns.com/blog/web-design/creating-usable-website-navigation

Thanks to Matt Rossi for the opportunity. Leave feedback wherever you want!

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New Holiday Extras Viral!

Flame have just launched a new video viral campaign to promote our client Holiday Extras‘ airport parking service.

Check it out, it’s in the big purple box:

http://www.holidayextras.co.uk/airport-parking.html

Ben, our copywriting guru (I’m beginning to dislike that phrase), created a top script that caught their attention and made it through to the final cut with hardly any edits. Justin McArdle was brought in to steer the reigns and working with Flame Digital and actor Paul Kaye; produced the 90 second viral.

Let me know what you think. You can either comment here or find out more on the Flame blog article.

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The power of Wordpress Custom Fields

I can’t believe I’ve been playing with Wordpress for so long and never explored the Custom Fields feature. A website I’ve been working recently has required me to push the boundaries of Wordpress, or more appropriately my understanding and knowledge of it. In doing so I’ve bravely slipped deeper into the Advanced Options and lived to tell the tale – the tale of the Custom Fields…

The fundamental functionality of Custom Fields provides you with the ability to expand your posts and their content. They allow you to include extra information and features in your posts that the WYSIWYG editor doesn’t provide itself.

How it works.

When in your Write/Manage posts page, mooch down past Tags and Categories to the Advanced Options – ooh! Down here in these murky depths you’ll encounter the Custom Fields box. In here you’ll see 2 empty textareas labelled key and value.

The key is the name for your custom variable, and the value is, well, it’s value! When you create a custom field, you are creating new meta-data. You then insert a simple line of php into your Wordpress template where you want this extra data to appear in the theme and voila! You’re done.

So, the easiest way to show you is with a short example.

Adding Subtitles to your post

I feel subtitles serve more as a presentational feature than anything. And sure, you could always just insert a h2/h3 at the top of your post to act as a subtitle. But sometimes that doesn’t cut it, especially if your subtitle needs to stand out from the post content more than an standard inline header.

Step 1 – Theme files:

In your Wordpress theme, you need to enter a line of code to pull in your custom field. Make sure this is within the post loop, the most obvious place is of course directly under your post title. Here you go:

The only bit you may wish to change is the keyword within the parentheses. In this case ‘Subtitle‘. This ties in with the key you create in the post editor, so make sure they’re the same. And only use it again if you wish to display the subtitle somewhere else, for any other custom fields you’ll have to change this.

It would make sense to place this code within header tags:

That’s it for the code!

Step 2 – Post page:

When you’re writing or editing a post, go down to the Custom Fields area in the Advanced Options. Create a key which correspondes to your keyword you set in the code. The value will be the actual Subtitle content. So for example: Key – Subtitle Value – An inside look at Google’s new browser… Add your custom field and save your post.

Step 3 – Check it out:

Check out how it displays on the page. Then utilise the power of CSS to get it looking bob on!

Having more fun

Let’s face it, subtitles aren’t that interesting. But there’s a lot more you can do, a lot of which I’ve still yet to discover. Post Thumbnails

Add the following code to your theme:

" alt="" />

This will include an image, pulling it in from a specific folder. So if you upload all your thumbnail images to the directory /wp-content/post-images/ and then in your post editor set the key as ‘Image-Thumb’ and the value as your image name (eg. picture.png), this will pull in your thumbnail picture and place it in your post. You can control the appearance of the image with CSS.

To actually upload your images to the specified folder, you can use good old FTP or a plugin I’m particularly fond of, because it keeps you in the WP admin area without having to use any external programs: Filosofo Old-Style Upload.

Of course this doesn’t necessarily have to be a thumbnail, it can be a full size image, adding plenty of colour and interest to your blog articles.

For a more advanced alternative to this method, check out Justin Tadlock’s method.

Meta-Data

Some of the examples given on the Wordpress Codex page on Custom Fields are the simplest, and the best. What if you fancy adding information relating to your current mood or the weather at the time of writing your post? Try:

Current Mood:

Key: Mood
Value: Happy
Code:

Current Mood: 

Displays: Current Mood: Happy

Listening To:

Key: Listening-to
Value: Fly me to the moon – Frank Sinatra
Code:

Listening to: 

Displays: Listening to: Fly me to the moon – Frank Sinatra

Other ways to display meta-data

To pull in all the meta-data for a post in one fell swoop, go for:

Which will display all the meta-data in an unordered list and add’s classes that can be styled with CSS.

If you want to pull meta-data from a specific post, you can specify which post by the post ID, which data by it’s key and whether to display the data as a single item or pull in an array:

• $post_id is the ID of the post you want to select data from
• $key is the name of the meta-value you want
• $single can be either true of false. If true it will pull in a single string of meta-data, if false it will pull in an array of the custom fields.

Go Play…

Like most things, Custom Fields open doors which you have to walk through and explore. In essence they’re very simple but if used correctly can be pretty powerful, another extension of the basic functionality of Wordress. So go forth and experiment!

For more information on Custom Fields and all things Wordpress – visit the WP Codex.

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Increasing and maintaining blog traffic

Content is King

Without a doubt the most essential method of both bringing in and retaining high levels of traffic is through constant generation of high quality, unique content. Regardless of whatever search techniques are used to generate visitors to your site, if they’re not greeted by useful information and interesting articles they will leave and most probably not return.

It’s all too easy to take a step back and go to another site in a few mouse clicks, so it’s essential that you provide a service or a level of quality that keeps visitors at your site, and ensures their return. Blogs are one of the most dedicated methods of bringing in traffic, but the real aim is to retain visitors, obtain repeat custom, subscribers, recommendations, inbound links and build up a community where your site’s visitors are engaged and compelled to provide their own input.

Blog posts are unlike other forms of written literature. Web users scan pages, so it’s important that the useful points are easy to find. Keep paragraphs short, use bullet points and lists,  blockquotes, close-captioning and  other visual techniques to keep your copy interesting. Large blocks of boring copy will not get read.

Don’t forget to utilise the power of keywords within your posts. Consider what people will be searching for, what are the central points of an article and what words and phrases will stand out against other similar sites. Use visual keys to identify keywords. But don’t overdo it. Don’t sacrifice the quality of your copy for the sake keyword spamming.

Getting people to your site

• Promote articles through 3rd party sites. In the case of a sports blog this could be other sports blogs and websites, sports news aggregators, general news sites, directories, showcase sites etc.
• Ensure that the blog URL is on all print and stationary and in the signature of emails. It’s a basic, obvious point but essential nonetheless.
• Use comment sections on other blogs, forums and sites to promote your blog. DO NOT SPAM. Reply genuinely, but include your website URL in your signature. Most blog comment areas will also use your display name as a link to your site as well.
• Guest authoring. This works 2 ways. Writing guest posts for other blogs can sometimes be more effective then a post on your own blog. This is especially useful when trying to get your blog onto it’s feet and raise it’s profile. Similarly, other writers creating content for your site helps to maintain post frequency when ideas and news are in short supply, and serves to offer variety to the tone of your blog.
• Promote your site and blog through traditional SEO methods such as Google and MSN webmastering. Ensure that your site’s code is clean and easily searchable and acknowledge basic SEO standards such as including ‘title’ and ‘alt’ information.
• Use obvious post titles. Do not keyword spam your post titles but ensure that they accurately describe the article and will be easily searchable. Also make sure the post titles are displayed in the page title on each unique post page.
• Advertising and affiliates. Buy inbound links or swap reciprocal links with other high-ranking websites.
• Observe other high-traffic blogs in your niche. What methods are they applying to continue to attract and maintain this level of visitors? Take ideas and inspiration from similar blogs and websites.
• Use ping services like Pingomatic and Wordpress plugins to notify other sites when you’ve created new posts.

Keeping people interested

• RSS and ATOM feeds, newsletter subscriptions, even SMS updates. Make it easy for visitors to subscribe to your site. Getting visitors to give your email address while signing up to your newsletter will help to build up a database of potential clients.
• Email campaigns. Build up databases of email addresses through subscribers to your blog newsletter, existing clients, purchase lists of email addresses, use email addresses from commenters on your blog etc. Then send out regular email newsletters with the latest articles and company news. Encourage people to subscribe, advertise competitions or products.
• Ensure that your site is usable. Regardless of whether your blog contains high quality content or not – if it’s difficult to read or find – it will be useless. Clean, usable and aesthetically pleasing sites will hold your visitors for longer and help to promote their return.
• Serial Content. Creating series’ of posts, daily/weekly/monthly features, strings of similar-style content, lists, interviews and unique ideas keep visitors coming back for more.
• Update regularly. Your subscribers and regular visitors will constantly be thirsty for new news and articles. If you can’t provide this – they will go elsewhere. However it’s also essential not to overpost as this can overwhelm your readers and scare them away. The ideal number of posts to make per day or week is entirely dependent on the niche and topic of a blog, the size of it’s readership, the length and value of the posts and the manpower behind the blog. Researching and discovering the ideal post publishing frequency takes time and constant monitoring.
• Post Publishing Consistency. Regular visitors will grow to expect and anticipate the frequency of your articles. It’s essential that once you’ve decided on an ideal publishing frequency that you stick to it.
• Blogs are social. Utilise the power of social networking to build your community and promote interaction. Use polls, allow users to submit their own ideas and news, pictures, even audio and video. Allow users to create accounts and profiles.
• Provide services and products that the competition doesn’t. Blogs aren’t just about content and posts. Use your interface to promote other products, provide free downloads, audio or video content, games and offer live feedback and real-time chat solutions.
• Consider mobile devices. With an increase of smart phones and in particular the iPhone – more users are accessing websites through their phones. Don’t block this percentage of your traffic – ensure your blog is usable on mobile devices.
• iPhone apps. If your blog is updated often or contains useful news that needs to be accessed on the fly – look at building an iPhone app that pull in your latest posts and site content. Sites like last.fm, ign.com, twitter.com and facebook are already taking advantage of this.
• Gimmicks. Free prize draws, competitions, monthly or weekly features both attract new traffic and entice current visitors to interact more.

To summarise

Your blog will succeed if it’s providing useful information to people. Good blogs generate traffic because they provide continuous new content all the time, they retain that traffic because visitors enjoy coming back for more and it’s given to them.

All blogs work differently; they attract different types and levels of visitors and are designed for different purposes, whether that be to make money, advertise products, raise profiles or just rant or express an opinion. However the principles behind all successful blogs are generally the same:

• Provide high quality, unique content.
• Ensure your site is easy to use and navigate.
• Employ traditional SEO techniques as well.
• Look after your readers – your current community is just, if not more important than new visitors.
• Research and analyse your market, ensure that your blog tailors to this market in every aspect: tone of voice, appearance, topic, usability and in SEO criteria.

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Google set to launch browser called Chrome

Well it was bound to happen at some point, but this was quite unexpected. A comic accidentally released yesterday tells the story of Chrome’s development and Google’s approach to creating the new Internet browser. It’s not a bad read really.

The Chrome beta is proposed to launch today, although I’m struggling to find it anywhere. Google have kept things pretty hush hush on this project, although have formally announced the launch of Chrome on their official blog.

Chrome is designed to be clean, well-tailored towards the user experience, fast and get this – it’s open source! The new browser, if successful, will help to aid Google’s development of online apps and technologies, as well providing a fresh perspective on how we use the internet.

Good news or bad news?

It all sounds tremendously exciting. But how will this effect us as web designers and developers? Will it supply further cross-browser compatibility issues to contend with, break the browser usage market down further or will it crush rival browsers and monopolise the market? Who knows… it’s Google, anything could happen!

Google generally provide tools that help us. I spend a good hour a day utilising Google’s vast toolkit in various ways. Developing a browser is huge step – they’re entering a delicate market with stiff competition. It will be intersting to see what Google will offer to entice users over to Chrome.

*Update*

Google will be holding a press conference at 18.00 UTC which will hopefully mark the release of Chrome.

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Different Blog Post Styles

It’s come to my attention just how many styles of blog posts there are. I normally categorise general blog articles into 3 or 4 obvious themes – Tutorials, Reviews, Rants and Lists. But if I think about it, there are far more different types of posts – most of which can actually be categorised within the aforementioned styles.

Please let me stress that this categorisation is my personal perception and creation, and surely other bloggers will see this from an entirely different angle – please feel free to comment on how you would approach this yourselves.

After some research and a few pages of scrawled notes and diagrams, I’ve broken my obvious categories into about 17 sub categories or more accurate styles, which fall under 4 main themes:

• Instructional
• Reviews / Editorial
• Opinion
• References

I’ve then arranged these different post types into a rather messy diagram:

The majority of styles are self-explanatory, however for the benefit of the doubt I will outline what I mean by each blog post type:

• Tutorials
  • Tutorials form the bulk of posts on a lot of blogs. They are a fantastic source of inbound traffic because they directly supply the users need with a solution, people often search for answers to questions and tutorials – constantly supplying high quality tutorials will guarantee both new and repeat visitors.
• Research
  • Research can actually be broken down further into research and result. These type of posts are generally when a question is asked and either a poll, survey, email request or visitors comments are used to answer the question. For example if a post asks ‘Which blogging platform do you prefer… 1) Wordpress, 2) Movable Type, 3) Expression Engine, 4) Typepad, 5) Blogger? The results are collected from the site’s visitors and displayed – research and result.
• Problem Solving
  • As opposed to writing tutorials and presenting information of your own back, replying to visitors emails, comments and even your own problems can be a good way to boost the content on your site whilst helping others out. Plenty of well-known bloggers take time out once a week or month to sum up answers to visitors questions, for example on David Airey’s site. Some blogs are built entirely on supplying answers.
• Comparisons
  • Posts contrasting 2 or more products, services, beliefs… anything. Debating the positives and negatives of something can show that you’re open minded. It also serves well for people wishing to make a decision on something. For example a comparison article on Photoshop vs Illustrator may help someone decide which program to splash out on.
• Information
  • Informational blog posts are extremely common, they’re often easy to write as usually just state hard facts but also form a major use of the internet. The term may seem vague and can often be grouped with tutorials or news but is essentially unbiased, time-independent information.
• Interviews
  • Interviews on blogs give a range of benefits. They provide a different tone of voice, provide new insight and a different angle of thought. They’re a great idea for when you can’t think of anything to write and will also help to raise the profile of your blog if you get the opportunity to interview someone with some gravitas and expertise.
• Case Studies
  • Case Studies help to get points across and are great for demonstrating how techniques can be applied to a real-life scenario or project. If you’re struggling to think of a tutorial subject, try taking something you’ve already created and walk your readers through how you did it.
• Reviews
  • Reviews are another massively used blog post style. Although sometimes non-biased, the benefit of the internet and blogging is that people’s opinions can easily sneak their way into articles. Reviews can be found in all sorts of styles – products, films, services, art, music etc. You will also find that they continue to survive for years, because usually someone will always find your review useful at some point.
• Previews & Predictions
  • These are similar to reviews but are forward-thinking. Predicting how the new version of Internet Explorer will work, what the new James Bond film will be like or how the economy will fares are examples of preview/prediction posts.
• Critique
  • Critiques are extremely opinionated, even when people like to pretend they’re not. Be careful when writing critiques; make sure you know what you’re talking about or prepare for some serious retorts. It’s important that critique posts remain objective and constructive, and don’t break down to full-blown attacks.
• General Opinion
  • I apologise for the vagueness of this title. General opinion, in some ways, encompasses reviews, rants, critique, information, predictions and more. But the central concept is that it is the writers opinion towards something. Whether it be a product or service, some news, personal events or absolutely anything at all – the article is tailored in no way to the reader but purely as an output for the bloggers expressions. General opinion is predominantly found on personal blogs and is often humorous.
• Rants
  • A personal favourite of mine. The internet is a great medium to get things off your chest. So rant away – you’ll be surprised how many people enjoy reading angry posts, and giving their own opinion on the matter.
• Debates
  • Although similar to Comparisons, Debates pit one opinion or paradigm against another, as opposed to a neutral comparison of 2 or more items. Debates do well on blogs, they are a good way of getting readers involved and building up comments. You can debate against yourself, another blogger or your readers – but be prepared for heated it can get!
• Musings & Ideas
  • Generally found on personal blogs, these are usually small posts where you simply wish to express an idea, meme or thought. It’s surprising how thought-provoking these posts can be and how much response you can receive. I often find that Jeffrey Zeldman comes up with some quaint musings.
• Links
  • Great for when ideas run dry, great for helping to promote something you like. Link posts are simply, as the name suggests, links to other articles/websites. Ensure that you don’t get into a habit of doing this for risk of your site becoming a portal and loosing it’s independence. Also include a description of where you’re linking to and why. These are also a good idea for building up relationships with other bloggers.
• Lists
  • I’m seeing more and more list posts all over the net. They’re easy to write and, providing they’re full of high quality links, act as fantastic resources. They help to build up relationships with other websites and can help to get your site noticed. It’s also nice to see what your commenters will contribute towards the lists as well.
• Collation
  • Collation posts are when you basically gather up other people’s opinions and comments on a subject and tie them all together with your own. These often require a lot of research but the benefits can be huge. You’re discussing a topic by taking views from different sources, therefore often providing quiet a deep, varied view of a topic. Readers find these posts resourceful, and will help you to build up ties with other people from whom you’ve collated your information.

Which style is for me?

There are no written rules for which blog post styles are better than others, whether you should stick to only one style or try and incorporate everything or what styles lean more towards different themes and topics. In fact, everyone you ask will have a different opinion on what works best, what they like and what they hate.

So my advice to you is to experiment, try different blog post styles. Perhaps the information above may have inspired you or presented you with options you didn’t take seriously or even consider. And see what works best for you, because every blog, every blogger and every reader is different.

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The end of summer

Loosing touch

I sometimes must remind myself that redswish is my personal blog as well as a web design resource. Maybe that’s not the best idea, to combine both. But I wouldn’t post often enough on my personal life to maintain a solely self-centred blog alongside a contributing online design resource. Alas, this is the beauty of the internet in that I can balance both.

I feel like I’ve been lacking the personal touch recently in an order to obtain more traffic, striving to provide solely web-related information and tools in an attempt to coerce new visitors to the site, and indeed to keep current ones interested. But why? I earn no money from this blog, I have no intention to (yet!). I write because I enjoy it, I love getting comments back from readers, regardless of whether they’re positive or negative, and I love it when something I’ve wrote has directly affected someone else. That’s the buzz I get from blogging. So, kind readers, please indulge me while I sum up my summer with little regard for whether you care or not.

How time flies

Indeed. The past few months have indeed wizzed by, perhaps because I’ve been busy, or perhaps because I’ve not been paying attention. On June 9th I started my first real, real job at Flame Digital in Manchester. I stress ‘real’ because it’s my first occupation that involves a career, a future. And it’s been great, not a bad move for a self-taught 18 year old. Things are flowing at Flame, while I’ve slowly been trying to whittle down my freelance work for there are only so many hours in the day and days in the week. And that’s enough about web design!

An explosion of cash from obtaining a sturdy full-time job has sent me dizzy spending money. In less than 2 months I’ve bought a 24″ iMac (and don’t regret a single penny), an iPhone and a new car. And new shoes, clothes, dvds and lots and lots of drunken nights out. I’m not bragging, a still have the constraining ‘luxury’ of living with my parents so I’m making the most of it while I can.

To cut to the end of summer, because I have to admit that the previous 3 months have been as ‘un-summerly’ as they come in Manchester, the highlight of August has been Leeds Festival, to which I attended last weekend. It did not dissapoint.

I’ve, rather dirtily, kept last years wristband on my wrist for a full 365 days. The are several reasons I did this, regardless of which by last November I’d forgot it was even there. However with this years golden edition, 2 strips dangling of my arm seemed like enough, and I felt it was time to cut them off, thus they are not tied around my bedpost.

I struggle to remember all the acts I actually saw at the festival, surely this is due to the large quantities of alcohol consumed over a 4-day period. But immediately springing to mind are the incredible Rage Against the Machine, whose performance rivaled pretty much any other band I’ve ever seen. A close second was Justice, rocking out the Radio 1 stage with their grungy electro. I also had the great delight of checking out Tenacious D, Digitalism, Feeder, Queens of the Stone Age, The Mystery Jets, Biffy Clyro, Taking Back Sunday and was passively entertained by Serj Tankian, Dizzee Rascal and Avenged Sevenfold. Looking back, as many bands as I saw, I’m a bit miffed I missed The Killers, Editors, We Are Scientists, Vampire Weekend, Crystal Castles and CSS. Oh well, I still had a top time.

So, not the most eventful summer

And that brings us to this week. I’m saving my holidaying for a decent trip around Europe in November, for which I can’t wait. I’ve not been skydiving again, or bungee jumping or hovercrafting or travelled to South Africa or done many things which I hoped I would, which is slightly depressing. But there’s still plenty of time. Plans change, you just have roll with what life gives you at times.

Speak to you again soon. More boring web-related articles coming this week, so stay tuned.

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A selection of top CSS showcase sites

A fantastic method of getting your name out and enticing people to your site(s) is to submit them to CSS/website galleries and showcase sites. I’ve done it myself and know several designers who do it religiously every time they redesign or feel that traffic is dropping. Your site won’t get everywhere, some sites are far more strict than others – but providing your design is pretty and well-built, chances are you’ll get some free coverage!

Filling tons of forms in over and over get’s extremely repetitive, so to speed up the process get hold of auto-complete software like Roboform. Enter all your details once and it will fill in the majority of fields for you at the click of a button. Trust me, it’s a godsend.

So, mouse finger twitching, get your tabs ready, set and go!

• Best Web Gallery
• CSS Remix
• CSS Beauty
• CSS Bloom
• CSS Collection
• CSS Heaven
• CSS Import
• CSS Princess
• CSS smooth operator
• CSS Vault
• CSSElite CSS Gallery
• Design Snack
• FullSingle
• InspirationKing
• Light on dark
• Liquid Designs
• Lovely Blogs
• Most Inspired
• plasticpilots.com
• Refresh
• Screenalicio.us
• Submit CSS
• The Daily Slurp
• Unmatched Style
• W3C Sites
• Web Design Archive
• Web Creme
• Styleboost
• CSS Artillery
• CSS Based
• CSS clip
• CSS Container
• CSS Cool
• CSS coosite
• CSS Flavor
• CSS Hazard
• CSS Impress
• CSS Love
• CSS Mess
• CSS Reboot
• CSS Showcase
• CSS Top Sites
• CSS-Galleries.com
• Cssspot
• Design Meltdown
• I get by with a little help from my friends:
• CSS Fights
• FantastiCSS
• 101 Best websites

Phew… well that will surely do you for now. Don’t forget these sites aren’t just for getting inbound links and representation – there’s some awesome inspiration and design ideas so hang around to see what sort of sites they’re featuring and get and idea of the competition you’re up against.

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