We’ve covered programmer types. Now it’s time we flip the coin and pidgin-hole designers.  I’ve come up with four types of designers I’ve come across.  I’m sure there are more so feel free to put your own in the comments.

Pablo Picasso
This first group is made up of artists who like the idea of a paycheck. At heart they are in it for the art, but web design pays the bills. They approach each design as a commissioned piece of art rather than a composite for a working site. Each piece is meticulously crafted into what is often a stunning work that could very well be found gracing a wall somewhere. The designs this group produces display balance, consistency, and visual appeal. However, these designers are artists at heart so as a Picasso painting doesn’t really give you any clue to who it’s a portrait of, their designs favor ascetics over usability and strong conversion points. Also, since these designers view their work as art, they take feedback and criticism personally resulting in a half hearted effort with revisions.

If you ask them to produce a big red button you might get this:

John Wayne
This second group shoots from the hip. They are not artists, they are visual gun slingers who find inspiration and run with it. Like the “Duke” they design with a swagger, using bold ideas that often break the “rules” of design. This blatant disregard for the color wheel often produces designs that are exciting, attention demanding, and innovative. They usually involve more consideration for the user experience and an emphasis on conversion points is second nature. Unlike the “Picasso” designer, this group loves feedback, as it just adds to their arsenal of ideas. However, the designs they produce tend to be cherry picked ideas the designer likes and integrates regardless of whether it fits the design or not. And since they love innovation so much they also tend to try to create a “new” way of doing things, which can be confusing to users. The end result can end up a bit jumbled and inconsistent.

If you ask them to produce a big red button you might get this:

June Cleaver
This designer LOVES it when things are clean, tidy, and in their proper place. They don’t feel a passionate need to create a masterpiece and neither do they worry themselves with re-inventing the rules for how a site should be designed. Their designs are consistent, usable, and easy to navigate. These designers create layouts that enable the user to easily find their way around. The design is pragmatic and almost always fits the type of site being designed to a tee. Ecommerce sites look like an eCommerce sites. Brochure sites dispense information in a no-nonsense manner. All in all there are no surprises and no inconsistencies. They also tend to be boring. While they pass information to the user cleanly and clearly, they don’t inspire them or demand their attention.

If you ask them to produce a big red button you might get this:

The Economics Teacher in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” (Ben Stein)
“Bueller… Bueller… Bueller…”, Ben Stein’s ultra dull drone embodies what every high school student has experienced: the dull ecconomics/math/accounting teacher. These teachers have zero people skills and are not looking to gain any. Their design counterparts are not much different… and they are known by another name: programmers. Sadly, many design firms make the home page look good and leave the rest of the design to the programmer who is doing the nuts and bolts of the site. While some programmers excel in the design realm many, many, MANY programmers do not. They are responsible for clunky, boring, and uninspired designs. The only reason I include them in this list is because for some reason they are responsible for so many designs on the internet, many times in rather significant places (go dig down into a large corporate site, the design tends to get worse the deeper you go). There is no upside here. Just dull, unattractive, and hard to navigate non-designs.

If you ask them to produce a big red button you might get this (God help us):

Conclusion:

Every desginer has the place where they pull from to produce a design.  Some pull from the artistic force within, some from the need to innovate, and others choose a pragmatic path.  Some should not be allowed to design… ever.  I’ve found the best designs come from someone who is willing to go beyond their strengths and stretch into new areas.  Most often this takes practice, hard work, and lots of mistakes along the way.  So to all the John Waynes, June Cleavers, and Pablo Picassos out there make every effort to widen those horizons.  To the Economics teachers, make friends with a designer.

One of my favorite things to play with in this creative industry is fonts! There are so many of them out there, thousands I’ve never even seen before, but I try to be aware of as many as I can. Here are a few free resources to use, if you’re looking to expand your font library.

1. 1001 Free Fonts - Simply put, here is a source giving you 1001 fonts, free of charge!
2. Font Freak - Whether you use Mac or PC, font freak has many cool fonts to choose from.
3. Urban Fonts - If you’re into curly, funky, stencil or anything else, they have lots to choose from.
4. Da Font - Many font styles to choose from, such as groovy, horror, medieval and graffiti.
5. Font Squirrel - Choose from their latest features or a slew of other great categories.
6. Abstract Fonts - Looking for different and unique? This the perfect source to step outside the box!
7. Font Space - You’re sure to find what you’re looking for whether it is trendy, spacey, handwriting or anything else.
8. Font Cubes - For the most up-to-date font styles, this should be your first stop. Check out their dingbats collection as well.
9. Fonts 101 - Thousands of more fonts to choose from. Allows you to type in your text, to try out the font before you download!
10. Jabroo - Want to preview your text, choose a color, and background color. This font engine is sure to help you pick the right one.

Do you have any other font sites you frequently visit?

It’s almost 2010, only five more years until we are in the time equivalent of Back to the Future Part II with hover boards, flying cars, and food hydrators. One thing they did not highlight in BTTF II is the Web. So let’s get back to the fact that it is 2010, and lets face it, if you don’t have a website as a business you are hurting for dozens if not thousands of potential leads. So where does your website stand on the chronological equivalent of keeping up with the times?

• Business w/ No Website = Beginning of Time
• Business w/ Just a basic website = Early 20th Century
• Business w/ a Website that works for them (aka a web marketing tool) = 2010 and beyond.

What is a website that works FOR you? Let’s first change our nomenclature. A website that works for you is a web marketing tool or web application, a website that doesn’t is just a website. So now let’s talk about web applications. How does one make a website become a web marketing tool? This actually takes quite a bit of intellectual thought, especially for some businesses that don’t have the capabilities to sell their product online, or so they think. My goal today is to provide some thought provoking questions so one can assess where a particular business might stand on the pillar of web application or just a website.

1. Can the product or service be purchased directly online?

If yes, then great, this is now the easiest path to make your web application work for you. If not currently today, is their a way for you to? I have had the luxury and the opportunity to work with a few clients that were looking for creative ways to turn their product into an online sales mechanism…and it does work! The hard part is now your ability to direct traffic. This is certainly an effort that takes a lot of ground work to get started, but once you build a solid foundation through some good PPC and Search Engine Marketing (SEM), the rewards will be online sales while you are counting sheep. PPC and SEM are about 983 blog posts themselves to try and educate even the average savvy user. With that being said you have 3 options: hire a professional (hey, lifeBLUE does that), do it yourself (not a bad way to get started when you are cash conscious, but very time consuming), or don’t do it all and just let your site sit there in the vast junkyard of ROI-less websites (I may be biased but I don’t recommend the last one).

2. Can your website obtain leads directly online?

Whether you are consumer direct or B2B, is it feasible for visitors to submit their information to you via some type of contact form, chat system, or call back function? This is probably the category where most businesses go wrong. You have seen the sites w/ Home, About, Services, Contact Us. There is nothing wrong with the actual navigation per se, short, direct…sweet. However, most websites don’t use dynamic contact and multiple connection points to integrate their website into a working web application. A few things you should think about and/or check for in this category:

• How often are you updating your content and is it relevant? Or does it just look like the site was built 3 years ago and the HTML dust is so thick you can barely see your monitor? Having a tool that allows you to keep your content fresh and current gives users the satisfaction that there actually is a man behind the curtain and serves as credibility. News updates, blog posts, or any other ideas that give chronological relevancy to your business is key. Make sure your content is attractive and shows the value of conducting business with you. Think of it as if you had 30 seconds to gain someone’s attention (and its not even that long) what would you say knowing you would not have any opportunity for a rebuttal?
• How are you attracting potential leads? Does your site have conversion points on every page that funnel your traffic to the desired goal? Are you using a variety of methods such as short forms, live person technology, brochure requests, call requests, and a plethora of other metrics to ensure that you have done everything possible to attract their attention and give them the opportunity to do business with you? The answers to these questions speak for themselves.

3. Your company doesn’t sell directly to end customers and there aren’t really leads to be attracted online.

This category is a catchall that regardless of what category, a business can gain some benefit from these ideas. At the LB we occasionally come across a business that only has 2 or 3 large clients and aren’t necessarily seeking new business but would welcome it if the right client came along. Regardless there are many ways to make your website work for you that is not necessarily sales or web based, or even if it is, you can still profit by providing value added services by making it a web application. You can save costs, man/woman hours, and headaches by using a variety or all of just a handful of the following ideas:

• Online support system for current clients.
• Login functions where clients can manage their account information and communicate w/ customer service.
• A way for clients to login and obtain information only suitable for clients.
• Create a network for your customer base to communicate and interact with each other (Very good for niche
  industries).
• A login control where customers can actually manage their product, shipments, and other details.
• I could go on and on…have more ideas, call us or comment!

Hopefully this post has electrified some light bulbs or at least gave you some thinking material for your next restroom break. The bottom line is that everyone with a website or a web application has the opportunity to expand their product, service, lead generation, or value added services online, the possibilities are limitless.

How to identify programmers and cope with their different coding styles.

Everybody has their only personal touch when it comes to pumping out code. Oftentimes the difference is negligible since similar work items are usually delegated to one programmer or department, minimizing the chance that you will ever have to sort through their source since it ‘appears to work’. Having to decipher another person’s code can be time consuming and runs the risk of erroneous implementation of code. Being able to recognize a particular programmer’s style is the first step to successfully utilizing their work for your benefit. Listed below are a number of different programming styles that you are likely to come across in your workplace along with their distinguishing traits.

The Clutter Bug:

More often than not this type of programmer can be identified by looking at their workspace alone. These ‘cluster-coders’ lack organization and are more concerned with results than upholding standards. Clutter Bugs are the product of loosely defined business requirements, poor fundamental programming education (or a personal indifference towards accepted programming methodology), and not enough team experience. The Clutter Bug gets a bad rap, because they often are the most intelligent programmers. Most Clutter Bugs know their code like the back of their hands and given a conflict can resolve it promptly. Other symptoms include inconsistent lunch schedules, late hours, and unkempt hair.

The Dungeon Master:

These programmers assume that others will adopt and follow their programming styles down to which data structures they use. The Dungeon Master is resilient to change and is always ready to defend their work with a lengthy list of reasons why their style is superior to yours. They are quickly irritable when dealing with other persons’ code, and will become quickly lost if too much or too little whitespace is present. Individually they might stand out from the crowd, but when working within a team environment they oftentimes become the nitpicker and inhibit work from getting completed by requiring that all deliverables meet their standards first and not the clients’. Some Dungeon Masters are the product of the Dinosaur mental block (can’t teach an old dog new tricks), but more often than not they are just prideful and have an insurmountable prejudice.

The Spatially Aware:

If there was a beauty pageant for code-writing the Spatially Aware would win every time, however they might fumble when asked how they would use their code to better the project. The primary flaw of the Spatially Aware is that they probably have spent more time organizing their code than writing it. Some of them are tightly bound by the instructions of their first programming teacher while others simply have some form of textual spacing Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. This type of programmer may make it extremely easy for you to find what you need from their code, but they will struggle immensely with your code if you have not mashed your “tab” button to death. They also tend to waste valuable time making code look presentable even though the client will never touch the source.

The Shape Shifter:

Always looking for a new and improved way to perform the same old trick, the Shape Shifter will solve the same problem three different ways in three different places. Their included files list usually has to be placed within a collapsible tag to keep it from taking up half the page. The hardest part about dealing with a Shape Shifter’s code is learning how their code works or learning the foreign resource they decided to pull in. Other programmers struggle with Shape Shifter code, because it requires them to learn alternative ways of implementing a solution that they are already capable of doing with tried and tested logic. Shape Shifters are usually technical bookworms, random bloggers, and tend to jump into a problem headfirst without analyzing the needs of the project first.

The T-1000:

In the brain/processor of the T-1000, coding standards are expendable. Opening up a T-1000’s code is like opening a Windows Media Video file with notepad. Class and variable names look more like serial codes than descriptive titles, lines of code run together, and commenting is, in the programmer’s opinion, unnecessary. These programmers are living machines and should be watched carefully when working on a team project, especially if you have employees with the last name of “Connor”. If you’re delegating an entire project to a T-1000 rest assured that it will function correctly, but do not expect great documentation. T-1000’s can understand anybody else’s code, but others will struggle to understand the simplest statement of a T-1000 program.

While it is impossible to unite all coders under one programming standard, it is very easy to alleviate several issues that may occur between clashing programmer mentalities by implementing and enforcing rudimentary practices. This can be as simple as defining naming standards, having a logic flow associated with work items (aka use cases), or enforcing good commenting. Below are a number of steps that can assist in tightening the nuts and bolts on your development team:

1. Create a predevelopment process where overall project analysis and design is performed. This includes designing database schema, use cases, naming conventions, and business rules.
2. If your team is large, or your projects expansive enough, you may consider developing a business-specific software development cycle where project workflow can be custom-tailored to your business’s needs and methodology.
3. Getting your developers to discuss their ideas openly in Developer Meetings can help establish what kind of standards are necessary for your workforce, and will also promote constructive technical discussion between programmers.
4. Commenting is a simple and easy way to describe what your code does. This is the only reason commenting exists…so use it!
5. Documentation is painful to compile, but it will save your developers time, your end users even more time, and your customer support department 50% on their phone bill.

In order to get the most out of your developers it is important to recognize the differences and utilize the strengths of your team members. Being able to identify what type of programmers you are working with will save you time, money, and minimize the need for oversight. Taking some of these proposed precautionary steps can drastically increase the efficiency of your development team and also increase the conviviality of your workplace.

Magento is great for e-commerce sites, but it can be difficult to learn. Here are a few Magento links I’ve found useful in my Magento development:

• Richard Castera’s Magento snippets Great, simple code for doing things like running an SQL query against the database, getting the current category, and one my most- used ones, adding a product to the cart via querystring.
• Explore Magento Another piece of code I regularly use is gives me the ability to run my own custom code outside of Magento. This can be extremely useful if you have a specialized page not within the main Magento framework. You can find detailed instructions here.
• Magento Database Diagram - Although it’s for version 1.16, this diagram is very useful if you want to run your own SQL queries in Magento. It saved me a lot of headache when trying to figure out how to join products, images, and prices for a custom query.
• LoonyBlurb - Custom Layout Templates
  If you work with Magento for very long, you’ll find yourself needing to create custom layout templates. This blog makes that easy to do.
• Finally, my favorite site for Magento snippets: Snippi.net. Unfortunately, it’s been down for the past two days–let’s hope it’s only a temporary setback. If the link works for you, it is the best repository for short, one-line snippets–from doing everything like removing an item from the cart, grabbing a product thumbnail image, or getting session data about a logged-in user.

Got more? Let us know!

One of the most difficult parts of any Web project is establishing an accurate timeline for completion of the project. There are so many unknown factors that can creep up during a project that will inevitably delay the project.

So how do you try and account for these factors and establish a schedule you can count on? The simple answer is to break a project down to its smallest pieces and project those items.

It’s so much easier to put a time estimate on a task that has been broken down into its pieces. For example, let’s say one of the big project tasks is to develop a shopping cart. That’s a pretty daunting task to try and slap a time estimate on if you don’t know all the individual pieces that make up that task. So, the best thing to do is take that tasks, break it down and then project those smaller pieces. So in our shopping cart example, I might break it down like this:

• Build front-end shopping cart graphics – 4 hours
• Install shopping cart software – 12 hours
• Integrate software with merchant account – 8 hours

Of course, I can then break these tasks down into their pieces as well if I don’t think I can accurately gauge their times as well. Then I can simply add up my times to get an idea of how long a big task will actually take me.

When I begin working with a client, the first topic I discuss is the specific list of site features and the sitemap. My goal of tackling this subject is to get an idea of all the different components that will make up a project. My next step is to break all these items into their individual tasks. Only then can I accurately estimate a timeline for a project.

Creating a timeline can be intimidating. When you have some many items to get done and so many moving pieces that are always threatening to derail your project, the best bet is to deconstruct the project. Put times to items and then do your best to stick to them. That’s the key to effectively establishing a project timeline you can live with.

This is a hot topic, at least among nerds lurking about various tech forums around the ‘net. Every nerd has their favorite distro, 72 reasons why, and are willing to stake their reputation on it. Basically, they are distro fan-boys. They argue, fight, start flame wars, and spread more confusion than actual fact in their attempt to support what they believe to be the best of all server distributions.

Really what it comes down to is preference. For the most part, all Linux distributions are built on the same foundation with the same software. Each distribution modifies the software somewhat, which is where the controversy comes in. So it is with some fear and trepidation I throw my hat into the ring.

I’ve picked three that I like and explored each. In the spirit of Open Source Software, I’ve only selected distributions that are free of charge and conform to current Open Standards. Each has it’s ups and downs. Each fits one niche better than the other.

CentOS

Description:
CentOS is a fully open source version of Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux. It takes out all the proprietary modifications and software and leaves the Open Source core intact.

Pros:
STABLE, STABLE, STABLE! CentOS is rock solid stable. It only uses packages that are time tested and fully checked for security leaks. It comes with a fairly air tight SELinux configuration (OS level security) and has a good firewall set up from the get-go. CentOS also comes with some good graphical tools for administering your system.

Cons:
The stability comes with a price. CentOS uses packages that are much older compared to other distributions. That means that new cutting edge features are not there. A prime example is PHP, the current release of CentOS defaults to the 5.1 versions. Magento, a lifeBLUE favorite, as well as many other great PHP applications require 5.2 to run properly. CentOS is also a pain to configure at times.

Conclusion:
CentOS is the way to go if you need stability. Not so much if you need the latest packages and want to step quite a ways away from the default configurations.

Ubuntu Server Edition

Description:
An up to date, customized distribution based on Debian (yet another distribution). It features easy installation of packages and many great tools to help you administer and configure your system.

Pros:
Ubuntu is easy. It is built to be a user-oriented distribution that makes configuring and administering a Linux server less painful. It features an easily customizable version of the Apache 2 web server, extensive selection of commonly used third party applications like phpMyAdmin, and a powerful tool to keep your system up to date. It also now features AppArmor, which is touted to be a new and improved version of SELinux. All of these features work together surprisingly well considering how cutting edge the packages are.

Cons:
Ubuntu has a VERY short support cycle for most of it’s versions. They do have a version marked as “Long Term Support” which is also kept up to date, so this can be avoided. Also, since Ubuntu uses cutting edge packages, a sys admin has to be very diligent in keeping the server up to date to avoid security gaps.

Conclusion:
Ubuntu is probably the best version for someone who is going to spend a lot of time administering and manipulating their server. Configuration is easy and it is simple to roll back changes if things don’t go right. Ubuntu is a bad choice for “install it and leave it” servers (which isn’t really a good idea, but people do it all the time).

Gentoo

Description:
Most sys admins are probably shaking their heads at this one. Gentoo is hard to learn, often complex, and takes a great deal of time to configure. However, it allows an unparalleled ability to configure, change, and manipulate the software on your server.

Pros:
Because of how the package system in Gentoo works, you can do nearly anything you need to do to the software and still use the package management to keep things up to date. With most distributions, Ubuntu and CentOS included, once you step away from standard packages and put in some of your own custom versions you cannot use the package manager for those packages. Not so with Gentoo. The package manager allows you to create and maintain your own customized versions of software. That means if you need a tweaked out web server with lots of custom hacks to support your web application, you can integrate it into the package manager and more easily manage new versions of the customized software you are using. Another great aspect is that Gentoo can have a very lean install. If you just want a file server, you can install Gentoo with the base system and the file server. Most other distributions you would have to uninstall many, many packages to get the same result.

Cons:
Gentoo is HARD. It has a steep learning curve. It also takes a really long time to get a working system (it usually takes me at least a day to get one server up and running). Also, since it allows so much configurability you can break things very badly and have to start over. Lastly, if you don’t know how to make Linux secure, your Gentoo won’t be secure. You are responsible to install and configure the available tools to make Gentoo hardened enough to be an outward facing server.

Conclusion:
If you need to customize, go with Gentoo. If you want to control every aspect of the server in detail, go with Gentoo. If you want easy, go somewhere else.

Overall Thoughts

You have about a billion choices when it comes to distributions for your Linux server. It is worth the time to ask the following questions:

1. What is most important for the server? Is it stability, cutting edge features, or configurability?
2. How complex is the server configuration going to be?
3. How much time are you willing to spend keeping my server up to date and healthy?

If I was to go so far as to give some advice on choosing a server distribution, I’d say this: research your options and don’t get dragged into the hype. Figure out what your needs are first then find a distribution that best meets those needs.

Oh…and ignore the distro fan-boys.

Everyone gets inspired differently, no matter if you’re a developer or designer, or even if you’re a painter or sculptor. The element we all have in common is the blank canvas we start our days with. To start off I’m going to talk about my second favorite way that I personally get inspired. My number one way is basically staring at the computer waiting for an idea to pop into my head, and seeing as that doesn’t give me much material to write about, we’ll skip that and go onto the next mode of inspiration. If you are about to design a site, with a specific look and feel in mind, chances are, that someone else has done it, and a pretty good chance that a million other people have done it. So the best thing to do is to check out what’s out there online.

Get Inspired, Tip 1:
Surf the web for comparable sites

First of all think of the “style” you’re looking to achieve or the “subject matter”. If it’s a particular audience you’re going for, such as athletes, look at sports sites such as, ESPN.com, Nike.com, NFL.com, NBA.com. They must be doing something right, so why not take a few pointers from the best in the biz. However, when looking for a very specific style, look and feel, I go straight to the answerer of all my questions, the search engine. For this latest design we completed at lifeBLUE we were going for a very retro/vintage look. So we typed phrases like “retro websites”, “vintage web design”, something along those lines. And we got hundreds of design examples, websites showcasing these styles, portfolio’s reflective of what we were looking for, etc. The sites became endless. Here are a handful of examples we found most appropriate for the look we were trying to accomplish:

Now, it’s a matter of pulling from elements you admire in the design, adding your own touch, and piecing together your design ideas. Simple as that, right? Well maybe not “that” simple, but just by scoping out other site designs, you have managed to spark that creative fire and create a foundation for you to start designing from. If anything, it starts you off on the right foot and gives you a good boost!

And for the curious ones out there, here is what the final project looked like for lifeBLUE:

So, just take a few minutes (or this can sometimes turn into hours) and check out what’s out there. Maybe a trend you’re unaware of, a new design technique, or a simple tip or trick to try. The possibilities in this industry are endless, and change every day, so we’ve got to keep up. It doesn’t hurt to venture out and see what others are doing. Above all else, if you see an idea you like, just aim to make it better!

What websites get your creative juices flowin?