Featured Client: Musicians’ Association of Seattle

Posted on February 17, 2012 by webanalogy

I’ve been working for the Musicians’ Union since June 2006, almost 6 years! They were one of my first clients, at the start of my web design career, simply doing website updates and fixes. In September 2011, they launched a redesign, my largest web design and development project to date. Except for a little of help with some PHP from a colleague, I did all of the web design and development myself. It was a 2 year project of design, development and working with the Content Management System, Concrete5.

Musicians' Association of Seattle

An Organization for Musicians’ Rights

While we live in a time of unbridled Capitalism, the Musicians’ Union is a remaining voice for fair wages and worker protection. We’ve all become so used to hearing the story of the struggling musician that we’ve forgotten that there once was a time when musicians’ could make a living at their profession, and it wasn’t always a part time passion you did after you got out of your full time job. They offer benefits to their members like Healthcare through Group Health, contract protection, daily job referrals and being a part of a community of professional musicians.

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Winter Soltice Hard Drive Crash

Posted on December 26, 2011 by webanalogy

On Winter Solstice, Dec. 21st, my hard drive failed. This could have been devastating to my business. I work my computer very hard, keeping it on, transporting it, working on large files with many programs open at a time. I was getting warnings of the mechanical failure to come, because my software was increasingly freezing up and slowing down. Also computer start ups were slowing down too. But, caught in the whirl of the holidays, I ignored the warnings.

I took my computer to My Mac Hero because of the fantastic reviews the owner, JP, got. My other reason was I’ve been disappointed with the technicians at the Mac Store and REPC. JP was able to save almost all of my data, move it to a new hard drive and install the new hard drive in my Mac. The small amount of information that was lost, I either had backed up or am able to get again from disks and downloads. Even though I back up my computer, I do it manually and only when I have the time, which is not that often, because of lack of time. I could have lost a lot of my work, personal photos and music. I was very lucky and am happy to say that I did not loose anyone’s work.

Just some advise. If this hasn’t happened to you yet, it commonly does, so find a dependable way to back up work. My Mac Hero has some great advice. From this experience, I’ve made a change to using Time Machine for my whole system and cloud based backup for my really precious files (like my daughter’s photos).

Along with this good news, and relief, I go back to work on Tuesday, the 27th.

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Google Is The New Typography Darling

Posted on December 5, 2011 by webanalogy

At this present age of computer technology, we often have the assumption that one can do anything on their websites regarding design. To some extent this is true, when it was not true only 10 years ago. But, there usually is a hefty “price” for customized design requests that we dream up. To get every design effect we want, the website might have to be a Flash site. Unfortunately, with Flash sites, the search engine optimization suffers, viewers of your sight get annoyed by the long download times, and they are costly to design. The reason why, in my consultations, I always recommend custom coded HTML sites instead is they have the best search engine optimization and quick download speeds making your site an efficient marketing tool, mobile friendly, but still, with a beautiful design.

Unfortunately, HTML sites can suffer in the beauty of their design. This particularly bothers me because I am a designer and want to provide high end design to my clients. The area where it suffers the most is typography. Because HTML websites can only render fonts that the browser pulls from the user’s computer, we are greatly limited to the choices of fonts. The solution in the past and still today is when we want a unique font, we have to turn it into an image.

In an age were you can do virtually anything you want on a computer, why does this, what should be antiquated, limitation exist? Open Source is the motto of the web, but in print, the owners of the goods, such as the font foundries, hoard their goods and charge exorbitant prices for the fonts they own. Even though we are talking about typography on the web, the web uses fonts that originally came from the print world. Because these fonts are coming from the print world, they are also being restricted by people with an outdated mindset and business tactic. It would be justified to sell something at such a high price if you had actually made this font, and the font had to be maintained in some way. But, the truth of the matter is these font foundries usually only own the copyright to the font, the font designer is often deceased, and the font is digitally stored with no need for any maintenance. The font foundry is doing nothing but making money off of someone elses work—the font designer.

Font foundries should not get any money from a font from a deceased font designer. If font foundries had the current mindset of “the new economy”, including generosity in their business plan, as companies like Google do, they would make all fonts public domain as soon as the font designer passed away. For example, there is no reason to have to pay $70 for the font Cochin when the designer Georges Peignot has been dead for almost 100 years! Many fonts can cost you 100′s of dollars made by deceased font designers. Don’t get me wrong, I am opposed to pirating of fonts, as well as pirating of music and film. The font designer should get paid fully for the font they design, with royalties.

The business approach font foundries have, is left over from the reigning days of print design, it is linked to the capitalist mindset of greed. And they are unwilling to join the new socialist business approach behind the web, where there is generosity to the masses included in the business plan. I won’t go in to the absurdities of how our country demonizes the term “socialist”, because for those of us who see the world with an open mind, know the roots behind that term is generosity and sharing. All of Europe applies socialism in their business and political models.

Coders give far more valuable files of code for free to build complex features on websites, far more valuable than the font that can be easily duplicated by font foundries. The owners of the font foundries are not doing any work, they are making money off of other people’s work. They are squirreling away the fonts and over charging you, the consumer. Meanwhile coders are inventing the web and then giving it away.

Google is a part of a new generation of businesses where they give away almost everything they invent , and make money off of advertising and the more advanced feature of their inventions. This is a socialist (I’m using socialist as a compliment) approach, where sharing and giving away is good business. While the old guard is grasping on to their font copyrights of products they never made themselves. the font foundries are using the capitalist approach—making money off of other people’s work while doing nothing.

A specific advancement into bypassing this hoarding of old intellectual property, is Google Web Fonts. At the time of this post, they have 320 font families that they are giving away for free so that you can have a more visually appealing website and better search engine optimization. While the font foundries have created unnecessary road blocks in the progress behind websites, Google and other companies are breaking down that road block, not by pirating, but by having designers make their own fonts that can be given away.

Here is where I get to specifics on how you can improve your website typography. Many of you out there have websites with headers that are images because you wanted a unique font on your site. Having a header made into an image hurts your search engine optimization, but that was our past solution to bringing better design to your site. Now, you can find a font on Google Web Fonts that is similar to the one you currently use on the site, and have you or your web designer switch out the image header with actual text. This is done by attaching a css file with the Google Font to your website. Other perks to this new feature is you can now highlight the text of headers and search for the header text in your browser. Additionally, if your website has a search box or tab, those header titles can now be found.

I’m very excited about this new feature of typography on the web. With typography, we can finally have the best of both worlds—beautiful design and great SEO. I know it is not brand new, Google launched this last year. But, very few people are using it. Google is not the only company helping with this age old (for the web) problem. But, for brevity, I am focusing on Google; they are the leaders in the movement and deserve a thank you from all of us. As for the “stuck in the business of greed” print foundries I say, “if you weren’t the actual person who physically make the font yourself (that means most of the fonts you own), let the font go free ya old misers!”

Posted in Typography | 2 Comments

Firefox 4.0.1 is a Terrible Browser

Posted on May 12, 2011 by webanalogy

I haven’t been this passionate about browsers since I started working in web design and had to wrestle with all the bad coding found in Internet Explorer 6 and 7. I told everyone I could, to switch over to Firefox for many reasons: it is built by a community of really cool, smart independent developers (not a money hungry corporation), they have great developer tools, and it is truly free.

I wouldn’t say to end your support of Firefox quite yet, but recently they have created an “upgrade” that I would say seriously hurts their standing as “the best browser”. Version 4.0.1 stinks! As soon as I started using it, I sensed something was terribly wrong. And, the more I used it, the more problems I found.

Not only is it slower than previous versions, the design is ugly, and the UI is confusing. I’ve Googled the slowness issue and found others who agree. Regarding the UI, they have moved buttons and functions that were in well designed places to places that the user has to relearn for no good reason. Being a developer, I have to hit the refresh button a lot; moving it in a place where there never were buttons before is confusing. In applications, developers are always adding, adding, adding. Developers, and users too, need to learn to simplify. The added images for each bookmark is unnecessary and takes away valuable real estate for the actual bookmarks.

The design is ugly. It looks like there is another browser lurking in the background at the top because of the harsh darkened definition of the tabs. When going to a new page, the processing that happens in the lower left hand corner over the actual website information is annoying. Why didn’t they keep it in the bottom bar like they always have? (The bottom bar is left blank) I was using Safari today, which I haven’t used in a while, and was quickly relieved by the spacious design. I want to go back to version 3 or move to another browser. I will definitely not stick with 4.0.1. What do you think of Firefox 4.0.1?

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Promotion: Thumbtack & Sortfolio

Posted on April 18, 2011 by webanalogy

While the 2010′s buzz is all about Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, for the longest time, I had full time web design and graphic design work by getting my work the old fashioned way—word of mouth. I understand the importance of social media, but I think you will find that most people are just blabbing and not getting anywhere with their use of these tools. I’m not saying this works for every business, but still the old fashioned technique of referrals has gone a long way for me. About 75% of my work is through word of mouth. The other 25% is people finding me in organic Google searches.

Oddly, for the first time in years, I have had a slowdown for whatever reason. Obviously the economy has something to do with that, another is I’ve stopped accepting projects that don’t pay very well. So, this downtime has gotten me to improve on my online marketing. One thing I am doing is trying two online services that make my web design and graphic design services a little more visible to a wider audience. These services are Thumbtack and Sortfolio.

See my listing for Web Designer, Developer & Graphic Designer on Thumbtack. I’ll post the results after I have had a chance to see how it improves my client base.

 

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Mark Danielson, web designer & developer

Posted on April 4, 2011 by webanalogy

Because Schildbach Design is a one man operation, when things get busy, which they often do, rather than turn good work down, I turn for help. I have many colleagues in Seattle who I enjoy working with. Because they are not employees, we have this flexibility of doing our own projects, and working together when a project calls for more than one web designer/developer.

Mark Danielson

Mark Danielson is a colleague of mine who I enjoy to work with the most. He is dependable, easy to communicate with and a great designer. Like so many of us designers, his passion lies in fine art; and much like me, had a career at one time in illustration (we still occasionally do illustration, but the kind of illustration we are interested in doing, editorial, has essentially dried up compared to when we started).

Now, Mark is focusing on web design as I am. He also is a sole proprietor as I am. When my work load is too heavy, he is the person I most often call to help me out. I have subcontracted several web maintenance and web development projects to him and he has come through for me every time. We have a lot of similar skills, he knows html, css, the content management systems WordPress and Concrete5, a little bit of PHP/MySQL, and all of the Adobe design programs.

So, if you have a project for me, and it is large, don’t be turned off sole proprietor aspect of my business, Mark and I can take on the project together, as well as my connection with several other web developers in Seattle.

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NEVER Cut & Paste From Microsoft Word To Concrete5

Posted on March 30, 2011 by webanalogy

I’ve said it often how much I like working in Concrete5. It works well for me and it works well for my clients. I’ve tried many CMS’s: Joomla, Drupal, Textpattern, and WordPress; Concrete5, by far is the superior choice for builder and client. But, all CMS’s have their pitfalls, and I want to talk about some specifics in Concrete5 that my clients, and all who use it, need to watch out for.

The biggest issue is pasting content from Microsoft Word. NEVER paste content from Microsoft Word into concrete5! I can’t confirm this, but you probably should not paste content from MS Word into any CMS. What happens? When you cut from Microsoft Word, you are not only pulling the words you see, but also endless amounts of useless code, that when pasted into a site, corrupts that site’s code. The damage cutting and pasting content into the wysiwyg editor is pretty severe. Pieces of the site start to disappear. First the deterioration starts in the editing portion of C5 and then you see whole sections of the live site disappear. This is by far the worst thing I see my clients innocently do, and I don’t blame them. Shouldn’t entering content into your site be that easy? Well, in this case, Concrete5 and Microsoft Word don’t get along and you need to proceed with caution.

Strip From Word

Here is what you do to prevent your site from deteriorating in front of your eyes: While in edit mode, with the C5 wysiwyg editor open, put the cursor where you want the text to be, cut the content you want from Microsoft Word and click on the “W” icon in the upper left hand corner (as seen above). Depending on the version of Concrete5 you have, you will either see a second window pop up for you to paste in the content (as seen below), or you will then be able to paste the content right in the wysiwyg window. If the former is what you see happening, after entering the text, then click on the “insert” button. Clicking on the “W” button is what clears the damaging code from MS Word.

Strip From Word 2

If you have a co-worker or, heaven forbid, you have already done some damage unknowingly, all is not lost. If you can remember where the updating from MS Word was done on your site, you can go back to that area, open up the wysiwyg editor, and find the entry that has the damaging code. How do you find it? Click on the “html” button (as seen in the first image above), and you will see the code that makes up your content. If you only see a <p> tag here or a <b> tag there, that entry is fine. But, if you see one or two pages of garbled code, you have found the MS Word gremlins. Now you can delete that entry and start over with content stripped of that damaging code, and your site should return to it’s normal health. If you still see problems, that means you need to keep looking.

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Should you use a Content Management System?

Posted on March 29, 2011 by webanalogy

I made it clear in previous posts that Concrete5 is my favorite content mangement system to work in. And, it is pretty clear to most, that CMS’s have replaced hand coding websites in html. This has been a huge advancement in bringing business owners, institutions, non-profits, and independent people websites that they can update themselves. But, with this advance in website technology and accessibility, has come some pitfalls.

Let me start with some big picture problems. Your site is going to load and change from page to page a little slower, sometimes a lot slower. Not as slow of a load time as Flash, but there is a noticeable difference between the load times of a site built in pure html and css than a bloated CMS. As amazing as Concrete5 is, it is a big, bloated CMS with Ajax, PHP, XML and other server side coding that is passing way more information back and forth; and that takes time. So, if you do not plan on updating your site much, and don’t mind paying a web designer to update your site occasionally, just have a web designer build the site in html. But, if updating your site content on your own is a top priority, if you want more control over your site, the content management system is the only way to go.

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WilliamsonArt.net Launches

Posted on February 22, 2011 by webanalogy
Website Home Page for James S. Williamson Fine Art

Website Home Page for James S. Williamson Fine Art

My 10th website project built in Concrete5!
To see the full site, go to: James S. Williamson Fine Art.

At first glance there might not seem to much to this site—one home page with an artist portfolio and four sub-pages. But, this website took a considerable amount of planning and work that Concrete5 was able to manage. This was a team effort with the client and the developer, Stephen Schildbach. Before even working in Concrete5, first there was the extensive amount of photography done by Jim williamson of his art—both the full images and closeups of the art. Because there is so much white in the art (white is very hard to photograph), Stephen, the developer and designer, had to modify, touch up and crop in Photoshop all 40 of the pieces of art and their accompanying crops (134 photos in total).

After extensive planning of the flow of the portfolio, Stephen chose to use the Highslide Web album add-on, but because of the requests of the clients, the add-on could not be used out of the box. There were several customizations made. The thumbnails only show the image representing the whole painting, not the crops. The crops are hidden from the thumbnail view, only to appear when you watch the slideshow. Thanks to help by the developer of the Highslide Web Album add-on, Wim Bouter, we were also able to add titles to each piece, including the crops, that can be edited by the client. The challenge was not only being able to do these customizations, but also to be able to have the client edit everything in the portfolio, which Concrete5 could do incredibly well.

In addition to the challenges of the artist portfolio. The site contains an extensive price sheet that contains 40 thumnail images, pricing and information about each piece. And, for asthetic reasons, Stephen used the image menu add-on so that the navigation text would match the logo text.

Lastly, the overall design of the site was a customized css design that Stephen modified completely from the theme “Dark Chocolate”. Even though the building of the site was started in that theme, the site design turned out to be a full customization. It wasn’t until later that Stephen realized and learned that he could make his own Concrete5 themes from Scratch.

Jim Williamson was the ideal client. He was flexible with my design ideas, the time line and cost. Although he suggested many of the customizations, I still felt free to come up with my own design. He understood that this site (although it did not have a lot of pages), was very complex in it’s structure and to do it well, I needed the necessary budget to complete it. It always feels good to have your client truly appreciate the work you do and not get caught up in petty haggling.

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Concrete5—the Best Content Management System

Posted on February 19, 2011 by webanalogy

For those of you who have a business, non-profit, art project or are a department in a university, you probably have a website; but how was it developed? Did the web designer build it in strait html years ago and now you have to call them up every time you need an update? If your site is not being updated frequently, that might not be a problem. But, if you are making constant updates, calling on a web designer to make those updates can be tedious and costly.

My suggestion is to look into a Content Management System so that you have more control over the content on your site. CMS’s are getting more sophisticated where you can do so much more than just edit text. You can add many kinds of functionality yourself, like a shopping cart, form, video, etc…

But, where do you begin in the research? There are so many CMS’s out there and so few stand out that you might just end up choosing the one you hear the most about—like WordPress. WordPress is a good CMS, there is a reason why it is so popular. But, like many products, it always disappoints me to see so many people making their decisions based on how often they hear the name.

Let’s put Webanalogy to work. Let’s say your looking for good food. Are you going to choose the restaurant you hear mentioned the most? I hope not. Because then you would be choosing McDonalds, and I think many will agree, that is not the best food out there. Same thing with choosing a place to travel to. Are you going to choose the country or state you really want to see, or are you going to choose the place you hear the most about? Well, then you’d be going to Las Vegas and I think most will agree, if they had to travel to just one place, it would NOT be Las Vegas.

So, why choose your content management system that way? Look towards the little guy you might not hear so much about, and listen to the praise. My praise goes to Concrete5 the best content management system out there! Here are my reasons:

  • It’s free (except for special add-ons at a reasonable price)
  • A beautifully designed interface (some CMS’s look like they were designed on Windows in the 1990′s)
  • Straight forward PHP for developers like me who are not PHP experts
  • Easy editing for clients based on editing in the site, not obscure folders that you have to sift through
  • A friendly community of developers who will help you in the forums
  • Just the right size. Not so big as Joomla where you feel like you are overwhelmed by this endless sea of people, technicalities and plug-ins, and not so small where you are all alone on this new journey
  • The main team is from Portland, OR; and everything from Portland is magic, right?—Tazo Tea, Elliott Smith and Powell’s Bookstore
  • Even though you have to pay for them (they usually are $15-$30), the add-ons are fantastic. And, because you have to pay for them, someone is actually getting paid for their work, they usually work well.
  • You can design nearly any kind of site with the core application that comes out of the box. If you have he skills, you can customize a site to nearly anything you want

But, Concrete5 is not perfect. Here are the issues I have run into:

  • Concrete5 requires some applications on the server that some web hosts don’t have. So, if you are anchored to a particular web host, your site in Concrete5 will at best run slowly and at worst, not work! (Concrete5 does not work well with GoDaddy) I can see where this would be a huge deterrent for some people.
  • Concrete5 and the developers of the add-ons sell you the add-ons at one time use only. That means, according to their rules, you have to repurchase the add-on for every site you use it for. If you are a developer, working on many sites, that can get expensive

As with all things, it is personal preference. I can completely understand why my two negative points would turn people away from C5. But, because the CMS has such a solid, clearly designed structure to work with, I’m more than willing to work with those issues. In return, I get back so much more. I have been using Concrete5 for almost one year now, and happily have made it my main Content Management System. Learning Concrete5 has furthered my career almost as much as learning html and css itself. It has become one of my core tools as a web developer.

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