My First Design Challenge

[orion_joel]

Hi All,

I am heading into the first time i really have had any sort of challenge to do some design above really a basic layout for a website. Pretty much the sum total of my previous design experience has been using CMS framework and applying templates, making just a few small changes to add or remove things that i needed or did not need.

While this has worked well for me, the one person i have done a website for has been happy with the site for a while and has started to find that some of his competition are starting to make their sites more interesting and and not so straight forward. While i want to continue looking after the site for this person i would like to get some point of views from everyone.

I have been shown three sites that he likes from his competitors, while one i think is worse, (terrible color choices). The other two would mean that i need to really spend some time to build my skills to be able to do something comparable.

Do you think it is worth spending the time learning more about design, for one case that i am not charging with the potential then i guess to start doing more work and charging for it, or maybe is it time to bite the bullet and say it is out of my depth. While i want to learn i have no idea where to start.

[billbenson]

I guess the question comes to mind, what do you want to do with it? Do you want to be able to improve your own site? Offer web design services? Develop a family of sites for your own use?

I recommended a book in a thread a little while back. It was a good xhtml and css book.

Since you already are using cms's, you can do some really fancy things with some php and database knowledge. Its really not to hard to pick up if you have some programming background.

I use oscommerce a lot (thats not a recommendation for oscommerce, it was just the best ecommerce package availabe when I first built the sites). I've written quote generators, programs for updating database prices etc that have really made my life easier.

I have also done things like modify oscommerce to take sections of text from product descriptions and use them as heading tags on the pages or title tags for search engine reasons.

Learning php and mysql may be a good route if you are going to continue to use cms's (or even if your aren't). It only takes a few weeks to go through a dummies book on it.

Again, I don't really know what you are trying to do but just some ideas.

[vangogh]

Ultimately only you can really answer the question of whether it'll be worth the time. It depends on your goals and how you think it best to get there.

Some thoughts:

First you can probably do more than you think and probably aren't out pf your depth. Trust me, most everyone who does anything creative has the feeling that they aren't good enough at times. It's just part of the process that you work through. It happens on projects all the time. Usually when I start a new design I get a concept in my head, make some sketches, and then try a design. I almost always hate it and think I'm no good, blah, blah, blah. Then I try again and again mad again if I have to. Eventually the design comes together. Some turn out better than others of course, but the final work is always better than the initial work.

I think it's natural sometimes to see someone else's work and focus in on the parts we can't do while forgetting to see the parts we can.

When it comes to the sites clients show you take a deeper look at the sites and uncover what it is about them they really like. You might be focusing on the detail you know you'll have trouble recreating while they might just like how the navigation works. Ask your client why they like each site in question. You may be surprised by what they really like in each site.

Also remember that you're the designer. If your client could recreated those sites they wouldn't be showing them to you in the first place. Do what you can to make the best site you can right now. Try to learn how to do one new thing instead of thinking you need to learn everything for this one site. Often sites need less of the flashy details than you think. One little detail can do wonders for a design. Just do what you can and then see if you can add or maybe two new things to the mix.

One last thing. There's plenty I still can't do in comparison to what I see other sites doing. Those same details that are making you wonder about being able to design are not my strengths either. I do what I can to improve with each new design and have found for me the best approach is to first do all the things I can do. Layout the structure, make sure the navigation is functional, etc. When I have something I like I'll work to add an extra detail or two to refine the design, but I know the design can still stand on it's own without those details. The details are the icing on the cake, but they aren't the cake.

[orion_joel]

Post's seem to actually post much better when i am connected to the internet, so hopefully i remember everything i had planned to say here.

Basically to answer both of your questions, i want to learn this to improve my own website, build a group of websites for myself and to offer design services (however not a fully fledged design company). While i do not want to choose Web Development as a career option, i feel that it is a necessity to achieve some of the business goals that i want to achieve. So as such learning it would not be a waste of time, but it comes down to weighing up what i need to learn how in depth i need to learn it, and if in the long run it will give me a suit return on the time i have invested in learning.

The book you mention bill, i thought seemed like a pretty good book, It seems in Australia though it is quite expensive, $70.00RRP, and lowest i have found it is about $60.00 so i think this might be one time where even with the shipping from Amazon it will work out to be much lower price.

Really, i think what gives me the idea that i could be wasting my time with learning some of this is that i do not know how useful it will be in the long term. I mean i could go down one path learning one thing and it ends up being something i use once, and not again. I guess that is what really has me hanging not knowing what will best use my time.

[billbenson]

That being the case, I would learn xhtml, css, php, and mysql. xhtml because it is becoming the new standard. For me css is the most difficult, at least when it gets into page layout. That book cleared up a lot of questions I had. Consider programs like dreamweaver tools, but given your objectives I'd learn to code first. In the long run you will be glad you took this approach given your objectives. All of the same information is available in on line tutorials for free as well. Just starting out sometimes a book is more cohesive.

If you go the route I suggested, the only program that I think is a must buy is zend client which is a php editor. It makes it a lot easier to find grammatical errors in code. Its kind of pricey. You can certainly can start out just using a text editor. There are free versions of just about everything else. There are certainly programs that are nice to have such as DreamWeaver and Photoshop.

There are a bunch of good text editors out there for free or cheap. I use the free version of editpad Pro. You download it as a trial, and then when the trial expires you loose some features. Far better than notepad.

Also, when you get into php / mysql, you will find you use excel a lot. I always bounce between editpad, excel, and zend frequently when writing php.

When you start getting into php make a post and I'll give you some suggestions that make things easier that I've never seen posted or in books.

[vangogh]

If you're interested you might as well spend some time learning. The worst case is you'll know more about a subject. There's nothing wrong with that. You'll find the more you learn about different subjects the more connections you make to other things. Oddly enough by learning to design better you'll see business models in a new way or you'll get a better feel for marketing.

Where exactly are you with web design? What do you know and what are the things you don't know? I can probably point you to some websites with good free tutorials. My impression after your first post was you were looking to know more specifically about the design part, the visuals and less the coding. Is that right? Or is it more the coding side you want to learn? A little of both?

[orion_joel]

Thanks, for the pointers Bill, i am going to order that book from amazon, just gotta see if anyone else wants anything at the same time. That is one of the downfalls living in Australia, the freight costs work out better the more you buy, but still add a bit to the cost of the book.

For the most part Vangogh, you are correct, i am primarily interested in the Design/Flow/visual aspect of the sites, which i think is going to be primarily needing to focus on the XHTML and CSS side of things, in respect to actual coding and such. However the biggest challenge i have is getting between the look i want and making everything work together to get that look i want.

While i do not know how much of CSS works, i have no problem in figuring it out by searching when i know what i want to do but not sure what command i need to use. Additionally the same with the PHP i have no idea what the code does, however given a plugin or add on for a premade script and directions where to add the new bits in, i can do so and get it working how it should.

After speaking with the client i think that i am going to be able to manage most of what is wanted at least to some extent, there may be a few things i get stuck on but i will have to see about them as i run into them.

[billbenson]

Joel, when you start with the php mysql, run through a form tutorial. Not one that includes email (complicates things a lot). Simply a form that saves to a database. I took a quick look and didn't see any of those types of tutorials, but I didn't look very hard.

Emails come later and are more difficult. You want to be able to have someone enter a form and stick it in your db. Its a really good starting point because you need to create a database, and stick stuff in there from a form. From there you can go anywhere, from sending out emails, to collecting visitor data. It also covers a lot of ground on the learning curve.

If you can't find one, let me know and I will write a simple one for you. Get familiar with phpmyadmin as well which should be part of your hosting package anyway.

Start with the xhtml and css (imo) in any case. If you have a feel for html and css, you can do both concurently.

Again, just how I would approach it. I'm sure others have different opinions.

[vangogh]

Here's a few good links to check out.

Web Design From Scratch is a great site of tutorials on web design. It's going to be less about coding and more about design itself. Spend a week reading through everything. I've gone through everything on the site 2 or 3 times.

W3Schools offer some of the best and easiest intro tutorials on just about every coding aspect of building a website.

For learning CSS, I recommend any or all of the books of Eric Meyer. Eric Meyer on CSS and More Eric Meyer on CSS are great books where he takes a site that's been coding using tables and html attributes and converts them to CSS. If you type in all the code as your reading you'll have a pretty good grasp on CSS by the end of the book.

Creating an all CSS layout takes practice. The basic syntax of CSS are pretty easy to understand and it won't take long before you're able to style most things, but it will take a little time to really get good using CSS for everything, especially for the site layout.

One thing I'd like to do with this forum if there's enough interest is to expand the website management section a little so there's a coding section where we can ask and offer tips on building websites. If so maybe we can walk you through a lot of things. Even if that section doesn't appear don't ever be afraid to ask a coding question here.

[billbenson]

Vangogh. I started out with php with a dummies book. It got me started, but taught me a lot of bad habits. For example, I now always call the same page (self global) for a form. first time through, display the form, second time validate, third time take some action. The dummies book would have me writing three pages. This is a long time ago. The dummies book may be better now.

Do you know of any good books or references on proper php coding? I'm not talking about object oriented programming which baffles me.

I think a coding / design section would be good as there are a fair number of people here who do that, even though it's a "small businesses forum" not a webmaster forum. Maybe a webmaster section for the web related stuff that is currently spread out a bit?