Color has always been a bit of an Achilles heel for me. At school I could always draw well but not paint to any real level of proficiency. And so it is when it comes to designing a web site – for me, finding the right color scheme is one of the hardest parts.
Read MoreHits – or How Idiots Track Success
Here’s an amusing post/rant from Intranet Blog on how hits are a meaningless metric but are still way overused as a statistic.
Read MoreHow to Get a Job in the Web Industry
Since I became the web team manager at Seattle Children’s Hospital, I’ve been involved in the process of hiring people for my team for the first time.
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How to Create a Block Hover Effect for a List of Links
Among the many things to like about Veerle’s redesign of her blog is the way she does the hover effects for lists of links, such as those in her “approved” section.
Rather than force others to wade through Veerle’s CSS (wow, that’s quite a stylesheet!) I thought it’d be helpful to show how to create this “block hover” effect.
Read MoreLink Checking Software Review: Web Link Validator
Checking your site for broken links is a necessary but tiresome part of web site maintenance. For the longest time I’ve used Xenu’s Link Sleuth, mainly because it’s free but also because it works.
The Top 8 Search Engine Optimization Techniques
In “The 80/20 Of Search Engine Marketing” (“Part 1”:http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/331/search-engine-marketing-part-1/ and “Part 2”:http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/336/search-engine-marketing-part-2/), Yaro Starak discusses “The 8 Essential Things You REALLY Need to Know About Search Engine Optimization” by SEO guru Brad Fallon.
Fortunately, he goes into some detail about what these ‘essential things’ actually are; I’ve listed them here as an introduction to his posts.
More CSS Optimization Techniques
A lot has been written about more efficient CSS (see below for some examples). Certainly, when you work with multiple people on larger sites, organizing your CSS in a logical, consistent manner becomes increasingly important.
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How to Write a Web Site Creative Brief
When I wrote about creating a standardized web site development workflow I mentioned how the development of the creative brief is a key part of the initial concept phase of a web project.
Consequently, I thought it might be useful to go into more detail about what a web site creative brief looks like and how we use it.
Read MoreNew Web Site and Redesigns Launched
I’m not usually one to blow my own trumpet, but I did want to highlight some projects we’ve recently done at Children’s Hospital. Yes, I actually do some real work during the day!
We’ve just launched the public phase of a campaign to raise $300 million (we’re $200M down with $100M to go), and to accompany this we launched redesigns of our Hospital Foundation and Guild web site and the home page of our main web site.
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How to Create a Standardized Web Site Development Workflow
As far as possible, we try to use a standard process for our web projects. Although it can seem like overkill for smaller projects, one thing I’ve discovered is that when it comes to building web sites for large organizations, there really are no shortcuts. Read More