Building Your Own Site? A Few Strong Words...

This post is aimed squarely at those people who are business owners, having a go at making their business website whilst having little or even no web design experience. Amazing tools such as Realmac Software's RapidWeaver, Karelia's Sandvox or maybe Wordpress (plus many more) make this more possible than ever. I have been responsible for quite a few answers to questions on boards like Realmac Software Forums and get pushed further and further towards the following collection of thoughts. They may well be viewed as harsh, but that's not the aim. I really want people to use their time in the most productive manner possible.
The General Issue.
Business owners doing their own website building, should really focus in the right place. They worry about trying to take on a designer at their own game, with little or no experience, whilst having simple access to awesome design from some amazing RapidWeaver, Sandvox or Wordpress theme developers.
Do you seriously think that's something you can beat these people at? I really don't, honestly. The placing of 'this image here, and a bit more space there' is unlikely to be what will make your site successful at what you need it to be. That part is all about pleasing yourself, not your visitors. The website should be there for your visitors. Do you buy in all the stock for a shop that you like regardless of whether it sells? No, you look at what your visitor's are going to want to buy, and try and make sure that's what you have.
Don't always spend your time working from a 'blank sheet of paper' approach when you really don't need to. People are afraid of themes. Why? Someone else might have a site that looks similar somewhere on the web, but does that actually matter? When was the last time you visited a website and thought "I'd like this if I hadn't seen something like this before"? I'd suggest virtually never! If someone makes a website look incredibly close to a huge site like Amazon, eBay (you really don't want to do that anyway do you?!), Apple or the BBC, then maybe that would notice to some. But that's really where it stops.
So, what should you be focusing on then?....
CONTENT!
I know I'm shouting with the styling of the title above, but I seriously feel like I need to!! This is the very things a business owner knows about their business, and can really get into their site. They know what their customers are looking for and/or buy, and what information or goods they are therefore trying to give access to. Get your mind solidly on this, and use a generally good looking theme, and you'll do better than putting your efforts into competing on the design front where you will not be at your strongest. Keep your site easy to use. So many strangely awkward sites are made by people struggling to get something close to some image they had in their head without the skills to even know whether their ideas are a practical target in the first place.
Put much time into the content that will attract visitors and keep them there. Imagine yourself as a customer visiting. You know what they normally are looking for don't you? Think how they would use your website to get that information, and supply the info and make it easy to find. Try not to concentrate on 'telling them what you want them to think', it's close to being the web equivalent of shouting at them! If you can furnish your customers with what they want in an easy way that makes the experience positive for them, you have happy customers with a positive view of your business.
Now, isn't that the point of your website in the first place?

Android Tablets or iPod Touches:- Practical Uses.

Hello all!

A few months ago, we decided it was a useful idea to have something that made support and minor development tweaks possible, without having to take about £1k of MacBook Pro about to places where I wouldn't have my eyes on it, and the public nearby. It's not just the size (the 13" MacBook Pro is hardly a monster) but the cost in money and time/hassle of loosing my main machine with all the work and private information on it.

My first purchase to this end was a second-hand first generation 8GB Apple iPod Touch. Super-simple to set up in terms of email accounts, browser bookmarks, Address Book settings, calendars and more. Small, great battery life, and with the added purchase of FTP On The Go, ready to get in there! £70ish for the unit, about £10 spent on apps, & £10-15 spent on extras.

Downsides:- Very small screens (3 inch) are not the best thing to try and access a Direct Admin control panel on, and the small touch keyboard isn't practical either. Not easy to answer emails or support system threads on either. It really does take too long to do very much except read messages.

Fun sides:- Loads of great time-wasting games to be had! From the inimitable Angry Birds from Rovio Mobile (hugely popular and addictive). My son fell very quickly in love with this great little unit, and several of the great games we had on it. The Nintendo DSi was immediately relegated to second place for mobile/portable gaming! Not something we expected. He soon was using it more hours a day than I was, and would ask for it the minute I got home!

We decided that with various things being improved on the later iPods and iOS4 (which the first generation iPod touches won't run) that maybe an upgrade/update would be beneficial, but how much? Was there another option, maybe less game oriented (to reduce my son's possible involvement!) that would be in a reasonable price bracket? iPads were not an option here, as I'd end up taking around something that was getting too similar to the value I wasn't wanting to risk, and without file management to boot.

Screenshots taken by the M003 using the eye button in the menu bar!

In comes the Eken M003 Android v1.6 based tablet! Just less than £90 for the unit I chose, 8" screen (800x480) 128MB RAM, 600MHz CPU, 1GB internal storage, and good connectivity. These are available on eBay from a good number of China based sellers, we had a delivery time of just 8 days, arriving in perfect condition. I added for now an existing (existing in my possession) 2GB microSD card to it's dedicated slot. It still has a USB2 port which takes storage, keyboards and as it turns out mice too! The Android 1.6 operating system that comes installed, is very visual and logical to operate (many similarities to iOS as you would expect) and reasonably well rounded for basic computing (web browsing, Documents To Go for office docs, email, Youtube, Google Maps & more).

L to R:- Power, MicroSD, 30pin Apple style, Headphone, USB2

Initial experiences were OK. Touch screen unsurprisingly not to the Apple standard at all. More pressure required, and both slower and less accurate too. Looks fine though, and dealt with Youtube videos, Google Maps and web browsing rather well. The zoom out to get web pages to fit the 800px wide screen (when held in landscape) was very practical, far more so than on the smaller iPod screen. The stated 1-2 hour battery life was very quickly proved to be incredibly conservative in most of my use, with the system telling me I had 46% battery left after 2 hrs 30 mins of use! A bit of a negative is the lack of a really good sleep mode in the system, meaning that if you aren't going to use it for a while, shutting it down it the only real option.

There are more than games available.

Adding new applications brought some interesting points. There was an App Market app on the M003, but this was not the Android Market, but another 3rd party one! Here we start to see Google's version of 'open' they were trying to make a big noise about. Apps available (even when free) in the Android Market it would appear are not allowed to be available outside the market once out of beta. Not quite so open as Google would like you to believe.

Games on this machine would be the only real disappointment, not really for me but as far as my son is concerned! The response isn't really all that quick, and the processor and memory are probably not enough to go with the screen resolution for gaming. The iPod has this machine well taped when it comes to gaming. Maybe getting one with 256MB would make quite a difference, and certainly it would seem the 10.2 in bigger brother (mentioned again later) would be a much better match. I can't speak from personal experience.

I thought exploring the options of the USB connectivity would then be important. USB keys of various sizes proved to be very good! Finding free apps on the web for Android on another computer, and using the USB key storage for transfer was very straightforward. Installation was too. I also managed to download packages directly from both it's App Market app and the browser and install them.

Next I thought I must try using a keyboard. Wow! Now we're talking! Not just fast typing, but a mouse pointer on the screen that can be moved using the arrow keys on the keyboard, with return to click the virtual left mouse button. Browsing the web now becomes very quick and easy! The old Packard Bell keyboard I had plugged in for the test had a USB port on it to add a mouse. Well, it would be churlish not to wouldn't it?! One Microsoft Intellimouse later and I was operating something that felt much more like a full computing system than I had any right to expect. The scroll wheel actually scrolls down selectable items rather than normally down the page, but still useful for sure. Touch screen clicking and scrolling can also be used simultaneously, making this feel very slick in all.

The FTP app I had found, AndFTP is one of the most responsive apps on the device and very well thought out. The cost? Free! Brilliant and generous work from Lysesoft. Really works well from our tests here. Combine this with the File Browser Android has, and things are really good.

Apple's website in the Android Browser.

The fact that the Android operating system gives you simple access to files on USB devices and it's other storage makes things so much easier than on the iPod, the comparisons for this type of work stop being worth making. the iPod has been left a long way behind. Yes, the newest iPod Touches will probably use the Bluetooth Apple keyboard, but just look at it's price. Roughly 2/3 of the price of the M003.

Don't forget that the only way I can make these price similar, is to buy a old iPod and a new M003. A new iPod Touch 8GB here starts at more than the 10.2 in screened big brother of this M003 that also has 256MB RAM, a 1.1GHz processor and runs Android 2.1 as well. This is actually the machine I would suggest most people wanting mainly web development and surfing should actually go for, as long as the extra size isn't prohibitive.

I have now ordered a few more cheap extras, a flexible silicone USB keyboard and a 32GB microSD card being among them. I could go on for far too long on how well these little chaps work. Very competent for what we needed at WebKarnage, but not for the world's gaming community. My son now has the iPod Touch, and I have this Eken tablet, both of us feeling we have the unit that suits us best.

What should you buy? Well, that totally depends on what you need the unit for. I expect many will love the iPad (my sister certainly loves her's) but that's not right for me, as was referred to earlier. Many of you might have an iPhone (I'm not more than doubling my contract to get one) that will do for you, but it won't compete for me with a larger screen + portable keyboard. Would I buy the exact model I have for children wanting to play games? No, you want either a similar one with more RAM (it's not upgradeable by the way), a faster processor, or both! You will have to decide for yourselves.

Battle lines everywhere..

Everywhere I look, companies aren't happy just positioning themselves per se, but seem to feel it vital to be positioning themselves against another company, or opposite them. Apple seem to be one of the main favourite targets for this negative campaigning here, with not just Adobe, but Google spending much of their effort earlier this year positioning themselves against Apple.

Doesn't this effectively spend much of your companies energy and capital publicising someone else? Apple for example, weren't the first to have a mobile platform not supporting Adobe's Flash, no-one else did at that point either! Adobe saw the massive growth of Apple's platform, and rather than making tools directly for that platform, tried to use negative sounding publicity to get Apple to take Adobe's proprietary platform for Adobe's benefit. That was quite a hiding to nothing, and only made more people aware of HTML 5 and Apple. Own goal on Adobe's part? In my opinion, YES!

Google then talked so much about Apple at the Google I/O this year, it was quite astonishing. Popping at Apple for not supporting Flash, and then not showing an Android able to run Flash on a mobile device. Adobe and Google getting together to make a kick-ass solution from Flash and Android would do this in a positive way. OK, so only if they can do it, and I think it would take proprietary hardware like is out there for H264 video, but surely that's not impossible? Adobe could have looked at this a few years ago, and Apple might even have been quite likely to get on board. Not now. Hardly convincing is it? It almost backs up Apple's stance!

Look, I know this is looking very 'pro Apple' right now, but that isn't my point, and Google do some amazing stuff nearly all of us use every day. I'm looking here at the effective or otherwise outcome of negative campaigning or causing a battle. I really think it so often doesn't work. Surround your company in negative campaigns and guess what? People start to associate your company with negativity. It's just a subconscious thing.

Get into positivity people, and stop doing yourself a disservice with crass negativity. Just saying something is crap is rarely a real opinion, and usually a lack of one. Reasoned positivity will get a good vibe going around you and/or your business.

WebKarnage.

Coding Languages, How Many Do You Know?

Are you a heavy coding type? Do you happily write HTML and CSS? Maybe you take it further into programming style languages like javascript, PHP and ASP? This has become more of a point of consideration for us recently. As the coder in the team, it all falls to me to make the technology work for us the best I can. The big question I'm feeling is,

"By spreading yourself thinner (learning more languages) do you dilute your focus too much?"

Now I understand there are people out there who don't just design websites but take on the building process without much coding knowledge if any, and that's a contentious thing in itself. In a bigger team of people, your designer can work with others that have coding knowledge and there is little point in duplicating the skills the team already has access to, but how about the freelancer?

We've always felt that some knowledge is pretty much vital when taking on the website of someone else's business and accepting payment for doing the job. There are so many pitfalls that can be avoided from some knowledge particularly of the basic structure of an HTML document, and the contents of a CSS file. We are not stating that someone who can't hand-code a site can't build one, I've personally seen too many good sites put together by people who aren't proficient coders to say that, but those neglecting to understand what type of things the head of the document usually has in it and the like, are not taking their job seriously enough for my money.

For our thoughts, even that's not enough, and I am happy enough coding HTML in a text editor (Espresso on the Mac is our current favourite) and also CSS, but that's not the end of modern web pages is it? How many web pages out there, are built without any inclusion of javascript? Not exactly a high percentage. OK, so it is commonly said amongst developers that pages including javascript should function without the javascript running, so you could claim that it's not quite as deep in the 'core' of web pages, it's just additional 'behaviour', but is that just taking the easy way out?

I have been working on my javascript knowledge of late, and with how different this is as a language, I'm beginning to wonder what good I'm doing for myself. I have used many javascript 'plugins' without knowing any javascript code over a number of years, relying on plugins based on libraries like jQuery to give us the results needed by only understanding how to tie this into the HTML document. Does understanding the basic syntax of javascript really help here? Not so far to be honest. This ends up feeling like you're spending time knowing how to make a clock when all you want is to wind it up and tell the time.

This just sounds like wasting a little time perhaps, but by doing this are you trying to squash too much into your headspace and time? Are you going to weaken your focus on what you do really well? After all, no-one can be everything to everyone.

That's the concern here, and while I'll be pushing on with this for a little while yet, we're keeping aware of this as I go along. I am responsible for a lot of the visual design and layout we have to do (far less often photography and copywriting etc) and must make sure none of this focus suffers as I try and move forward in any other areas. We can't afford any weakening as a small outfit in what is working for us to add something that we can't see any benefit from as yet.

As the work into web programming languages deepens to PHP too, we will keep up to date on here as to what we feel the consequences are.

Please leave comments as to how you all feel about this, as I'm sure it's very different for different folks. While I'm far from worried about diving into coding, it's amazing how different languages feel like they do or don't work with your head/thinking, and HTML has always felt easy, and javascript really not here.

Best,

Karn @ WebKarnage

New year, more blogging? More something else? What about Fresh Thinking?

Hi all! Karn back on the loose again.

Wow, it's been a long time since my last post, far far too long really. I always think I should put more posts up, but about what? Should I just post anyway?

How many times have we all read posts about the value of 'good' content and regular new content being good for your site and profile? Many many times in truth. Isn't that just a symptom of a glossed over issue? How much of this 'good' content being posted everywhere is actually fresh content? Is most of it the same 'advice' as we have seen in almost the same guise somewhere else...

This is a dilemma that stops me from posting more. I'm not going to find someone else's great advice, re-package it and call it mine 3 times a month. There are already many people doing this, and don't mis-understand me, it's not all wasted time as it does spread the message, I just worry when I see whole blogs with no fresh thinking: 'How many more of these do we really need?' It's not what I want this site to be seen as.

We have all been made well aware of lots of IE quirks, like the 32 linked sheet limit (still happening in IE 8) and many more, but how many times can we be told these things before we think of the blog saying it as an 'also typed' and ignore it? There are some brilliant large resources out there I respect hugely like Sitepoint (whose podcast I have had the privilege to produce on a semi regular basis of late). With serious resources like that out there, what's the point of me repeating them in a small blog? Collated good resources are far more useful to us all.

Getting more software specific, there is the awesome Realmac Forum with loads of information regarding RapidWeaver and web design in general. Even there when answering questions you can find you are repeating yourself several times in one day. Do I need to be repeating that stuff here too?

Perhaps I am setting myself the impossible task of fresh thinking in my blog, but that's what I wanted it for in the first place. It's not here just to drive more random traffic to the site or increase my page ranking a bit. I wanted it to speak of my personal vision of things without just repeating what I've already said in other places. Is that just being too fussy?

The big thing I find myself repeating is the idea that web design isn't DTP, although the number of people I see trying to treat it as such is increasing all the time. Apps like iWeb that are wonderful to make a simple personal site actually increase that perception with those trying to move past it's limitations and seem to leave people shocked to find that every app doesn't just work that same way. I feel that the average visitor has less patience on the web than with any other type of media, and if the information they want can't be found double quick, then they are off back to the Google search to find another site.

Getting the most picturesque layout gets very nice responses when you ask how it looks, but who actually notices that when they are looking for the information on the sites they visit with a purpose? It generates an almost subconscious feel for the owners of the site, but that only get's a chance to be a positive thing if the visitor hangs around for long enough. If in a stubborn effort to stick to a design the SEO is significantly compromised (large amounts of text as images for example) then what is the design worth if no-one can find the site to read it?

How can we move ourselves to fresh thinking if we spend our time repeating on forums and then do the same thing in our blogs? Doesn't sound like a positive move forward to me. Newer methods like FontStyler allowing a wider range of fonts and looks that work in all major browsers give us new design options that inspire, we just have to make sure we keep the importance of getting the information across isn't lost in the use of all these great new technologies.

I am looking to give myself a new focus in web design and coding in 2010, as are others I know. I think we need to make sure we are not going around in familiar circles at the end of this new year. Let's burst out of this loop and make a break for it! Make 2010 a year for fresh projects and fresh thinking!

All the best,
Karn @ Webkarnage.