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Content in the Design Category

Tee Shirt Nut Up and Running

A few months back I talked about the side project site where I could display my {love} for T-Shirts. Well it's finally finished, but if the frequency with which I blog here is any indication, I don't expect to be burning up the internet with content. Simply put, I got the design and the structure exactly how I wanted it. There might be a few tweaks here and there (I'm not exactly happy with the header), but it's up functioning and ready for content.

Posted: Tuesday, April 20, 2010

qTip Framework and styling

Often times I set out to build a certain piece of functionality only to find out that it's been created by someone much smarter than I. So like any good developer I use what's there and tweak it to fit my customer needs. This time I needed a nice way of displaying YouTube videos, and instead of embedding them I wanted a sexy popup on the site. It just added a bit of flair that you don't get with an embed and it also save some real estate.

Posted: Thursday, March 25, 2010

Super Simple CMS

I can't believe it's been almost a month since I last contributed content to this site. Yes I have been a slacker when it comes to blogging, but I haven't been a slacker when it comes to work. Projects and customers have been keeping me busy, as well as a few side projects that seem to be getting more and more involved on a daily basis. But the amount of work I have isn't the topic for today. No, it's more centered around build a super simple, yet highly creative website using my favorite little framework Django. As I start to speak to more and more clients, I've found that more people are checking out my personal website in order to get a look at the type of work I have been doing. One problem! My personally branded name website hasn't been updated in about a year and the style and techniques are not things I usually do on projects. No I like jQuery and Django and I like to mash things up, my personal site does none of that. So I've embarked on a quick and simple project to give myself that "refresh" that I've so desperately needed.

Posted: Thursday, February 04, 2010

Tee Shirt Nut Day 2

As you can see from the image below, I've made some good progress with the T-Shirt website. At this point it's been all style, but we are quickly approaching the techincal pieces.

Posted: Monday, December 07, 2009

Day 1 Look of a Nut

I thought today we would start off by looking at the current site and how it looks. I had to change the background of the site because I couldn't stand looking at the plain white any longer.

Posted: Friday, December 04, 2009

Beginnings of a T-Shirt Nut

Anyone who knows me, knows that I like T-Shirts. One of the reasons I like T-Shirts so much is because I have a fully functioning printing business to facilitate my need for new and interesting styles to wear. One of the reasons I started a printing business was because I could never find the style/size/design that I wanted. This is the same reason that I started using Django to create my websites, I just couldn't find a product that did everything I wanted.

So, as I've mentioned before I wanted to create a new site that I can discuss T-Shirts and in those cases where I've created something, possibly sell them. The difference here is that it's got to be different than the tons of other Tee sites that are out there.

Here's what I want the new site to be like......

Posted: Friday, December 04, 2009

Products Sites

Today I find myself working on a new project that is somewhat different that the usual website that I'm asked to build. What I'm working on is a website that is product based, and not so much "news" related. These types of small projects are fun because they take you away from the "normal" development that I do for a "typical" client.

This client also gave me free artistic reign to develop whatever I felt necessary to get the products point of view across. Basically the message to me was:

Make it look good and help us sell a lot of this stuff.

Posted: Saturday, November 21, 2009

Out With The Old and Into the New

Things are starting to really heat up around here and lot of clients are trying to get ready for the big Christmas rush. Everyone wants their website to be ready for when the masses start shopping online this year. Well you are shopping online this year aren't you?

Whether you are or you aren't, I have two clients that need their websites updated with a new design and feel before the big rush comes on. It just so happens that in this case the websites in question are sites I put up a while ago for some colleagues that decided to go it on their own and see what online retailing was all about. In one case, online sales never got going, but their contact information caught on like wildfire. The site has become outdated, and now it's time for a refresh.

Posted: Saturday, September 26, 2009

404 Pages in Django

While searching this very blog, I noticed something very disturbing that I had never taken care of when building it. I had never integrated the dreaded 404 page. That's right, I had never really thought about what a sly user might be up to when on the site.

Lucky for me I didn't have any really "personal" data out there, but imagine if it was one of my customers websites. That would have looked pretty unprofessional. Luckily Django makes it really easy to create such a page.

Posted: Sunday, September 20, 2009

Finding a Good Website Creator

Great businesses often start with great ideas. Many times those great ideas turn into websites before the idea has been fully developed. I for one think this is a great start, especially when it comes to testing the market, but many times this task can be overwhelming. I get asked the question often as to whether or not a designers rates are worth it or not or if I can explain exactly what the offere means. Often times they(the developer/designer) throws fancy words out there like XHTML and CSS. Whereas these may not be strange terms to you and I, those not in a technology field may have no clue what those terms mean.

Just the other day a colleague of mine sent this question to me.

“The developer said that for $250, I would get a unique website of 4 to 5 static pages and 30 days of consulting.” At first that doesn't sound like a bad deal does it.

Posted: Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Site Rebuilds

Every once in a while I get the rare opportunity to work with someone who has big plans, a great idea, tons of energy and little to no budget. Most of the time I have to decline these projects, but this particular project is near and dear to my heart. Probably because it a family member and they are trying to re-establish themselves on the internet.

We've all heard the horror stories of people taking their businesses online, getting their "buddy" to build the site for them and then never really walking them through the process of updating the site or showing them all the features. Worse yet, is getting someone ( a client) to a certain point and then abandoning them because you've run out of web design skills and programming knowledge.

This is in fact what happened to a family member of mine.

Posted: Monday, July 27, 2009

Finishing Off Old Projects

Have you ever had the chance to grab some free time and finish something you started a long time ago? Well, it appears I've finally hit that point in my daily activities, where I can do a side project of my own and finish something.

The finishing of a project that I've started is something I really really really look forward to. It's just the sense of self accomplishment that makes me feel so darn good. So, now that I have some time I'm going to finish that Tee Shirt site that I was so excited about before.

Posted: Wednesday, July 08, 2009

I'm Nuts for Tshirts

I know that I had said yesterday that I was starting a 2 new projects, and yes that is the case, but I guess I wouldn't be me if I didn't start something else that I don't have a bunch of time for. Yup that's right, I've started a new little project for myself that allows me to keep up with all of my tshirts.

For those of you that know me really well, you know that I'm somewhat of a non dress up type of guy, and more of the hang out in a tshirt type of guy. I'm not about to make fun of those that like to wear nice shirts and pants, it's just that I'm more comfortable in a tshirt, jeans and sandals. So with that said, I'm sure you can guess what kind of site I'm going to create. Yup, that's right, a site dedicated to the shirts that I make, and how I make them.

Posted: Monday, June 08, 2009

I Got Two New Projects

I'm excited to tell you that because of this blog, I've been able to snag two new projects. Yup, that's right, two actual paying clients. It's rather exciting based on the fact that I had to take some time away to complete some other projects and didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to this blog.

Posted: Sunday, June 07, 2009

10Beans Almost Ready

I've been spending some time on 10Beans.com this week and it's almost to the point where we could actually have shoppers. A few more updates to the templates and the creation of some static content, and we are in shape. I also think I need to add a shopping cart, which at this point will probably be paypal.

Luckily there are many considerations when it comes to shopping carts. For me on a simple site, it boiled down to Paypal or Google Checkeout. Both are pretty good, however the advantage to using Paypal, is that the shopper doesn't need a Google account in order to use it. Checkout still seems a bit limited, so I'm going to stick with the internet standard of Paypal.

Posted: Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Some More Tools

As you can see from the site so far, things are moving along rather nicely. I've got my database all set up to start adding T-Shirts, and all that's left is to design the templates that display the data on the website. It really is that simple, it just takes a good plan and the ability to stay on track with the development.

Today however, I thought I would take a break from the building of the site and concentrate a little on some of the tools I'm using to make the T-Shirt site.

Posted: Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Build T-Shirt Model

With the framework that I use to build sites ( django ), I start with my drawing, and then move to modeling my data. When I model my data, I usually get out my trusty blank piece of paper and start writing down the things that I think are needed for a particular piece of data. Since we are building a T-Shirt shop, I thought the best place to start would be with the T-Shirt data. That is essentially the bulk of the content for the site.

Here are the things that will be part of every T-Shirt.

Posted: Sunday, May 03, 2009

I Start With A Drawing

Now that I'm off and running with the idea of a T-Shirt shop, I thought I would start the process off with a drawing I did to reference the various part of the site. I always like to start my design with a sketch so I have something to reference when I get into the building phase of my project. Usually I start with a drawing as you can see below, and then start a prototype with markup and sample data in the database.

Posted: Saturday, May 02, 2009

A few More Updates

I told you that I would actively trying to get this site into shape, and I'm here to prove to you that I could get more working. So here are some highlights of what I did yesterday to improve the site.

RSS Feeds

You'll notice now on the right hand side of the page there is an RSS link. Go ahead and click that, and depending on what browser your using you'll subscribe yourself to my feed. I might actually change this in the future to be managed by feedburner, but right now I can handle it myself.

Posted: Tuesday, April 28, 2009

We Are Off - Finally

As you can see I've finally proceeded with getting my site here up and running. While doing so, I thought this might be a good place to start with the blog. After all I'm building this site so that others will notice me and hire me to build and maintain their websites. Even if you don't need me to design anything for you, hopefully you'll find something here that will inspire you or solve a problem. At the very least you can always drop me a line or comment. I'm one of those sick junkies who actually likes to get email. I know crazy.

Before we get on with the next improvement for this site, I thought it might be a good idea to review what we have going for us right now.

Posted: Monday, April 27, 2009