Etiqueta: Web development

Tips for Building Your First Web App – Thnxz @sixrevisions


These tips are from a person who started out as someone who wasn’t familiar with Web programming. When I first started developing my first web app, I wasn’t a web developer. I was a business guy.

(If you want to read my story on how I built my first web app in only a few months using Ruby on Rails, check out my article: Why Making Web Apps with Rails Is Awesome.)

An assumption I’m going to make about you, the person reading this article, is that you’re already a web developer, or that you’ll be hiring one for your first web app. I’ll be discussing practical, general tips that are applicable to all web apps regardless of what Web technologies you’re using. So please don’t expect some deep-level web programming techniques in this article, because you’ll find none.

Another assumption I’m making is that you’re going to build your first web app without investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into version 1.0. I’ll assume that your budget is in the $5,000 range largely because that’s where my experience lies.

With my preface all said and done, let me share my seven tips based off my own web app development experience.

1. Think in Terms of Data Relationships

Regardless of complexity, size or feature set, you can break down any web application into this simple operational mechanics:

  1. The web app takes in data from users
  2. The web app processes and decides what to do with that data
  3. The web app produces some output for the users

All web apps work like that, so at the start, it’s best to break down your web app’s core features into data relationships to see:

  • How your web app should be built
  • How your web app might deal with user data and presentation
  • What features you need to prioritize
  • What web services and web technologies you’ll need to enlist and get familiar with

And so on. | Full article +INFO 🙂

For example, let’s take the primary feature of Instagram — posting a photo up on the photo-sharing service — and break it down into the fundamental operational mechanics above:

  1. The web app takes in a photo from users
  2. The web app processes the photo to scale it up or down to the layout of Instagram and also what photo effect the user wants to apply to the photo
  3. The web app produces a modified image and displays it for the usersI know you may not be able to think naturally like that at first whenever you look at web apps, but the more you use other web apps, and the more you think about them in all of these little pieces of data relationships, the easier it is for you to conceptualize and build your web app.

2. Keep Track of UIs and Websites That Inspire You

Do you have examples of web applications and websites that you like?
Full article +INFO 🙂

 

3. Keep the First Version as Simple as Possible

Building a minimum viable product (MVP) is a popular concept for online startups.
Full article +INFO 🙂

 

4. Focus on Behavior and Less on Look-and-Feel

Quite often, frustrations that people have with a web app come from the way it behaves, not the way it looks.
Full article +INFO 🙂

 

5. Use Free or Affordable Web Services as Much as Possible

Even if you just won the lottery and have money to burn, don’t be frivolous with your funds.
Full article +INFO 🙂

 

6. Use Third-Party APIs with Caution

An API is a way for a developer to get access to the data of an external web service. For example, Twitter’s API allows any developer to build an app that accesses public tweets and the account information of Twitter users.
Full article +INFO 🙂

 

7. Focus on the Excellent Execution of Your Idea

I can’t think of one web app that was successful based solely on being “the first.”
Full article +INFO 🙂

7 Inspiring Interviews That Every Web Designer/Developer Should Read


• 1stwebdesigner - Become A Better Web Designer!
Written by:  Rean John Uehara

It’s already August and the year is about to draw to a close…how are you doing with your work and projects? I know that inspiration is quite often hard to come by, and with our line of work inspiration is mainly the driving force. To give you a boost, why not read these 7 inspiring interviews by famous bloggers, web designers, and web developers, who have garnered success in their fields?

Are you ready to be inspired?!

%tutke
7 Inspiring Interviews

Four of the interviews below actually focus on how their design blogs became a huge success. These blogs they have started simply as pet projects to teach other people about their passion: web design and web development. In the end, they managed to not only fulfill their wants, but they also managed to create entire communities for designers and developers by providing useful resources. This is one of the reasons why I once asked, Hey Web Designers and Web Developers, Are You Blogging Yet?

The following interviews will redirect to Founder Tips (except #1), 1WD’s sister website where we publish interviews and success stories of people.

Ready to be inspired? Go!

1. An Interview With Chris Coyier – Founder of CSS-Tricks Leer más “7 Inspiring Interviews That Every Web Designer/Developer Should Read”

PHP in the Enterprise [Infographic]


infographics4u.com

PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for Web development to produce dynamic Web pages. It is one of the first developed server-side scripting languages to be embedded into an HTML source document rather than calling an external file to process data. This infographic is an attempt to readdress the balance and show how PHP is used in the enterprise.

 

Convince your Client to your Admired Services | Smashing Buzz

The main point is to manage your client if you have an online job you need to have clients to continue your job here I’d like to say that as a graphic designer manage his work in printing, flyers, brochures, postcards, business cards, posters, booklets, rack cards, calendars to convince the clients. Same like that if you are a web page designer, developer, or a programmer and even if you are a content writer you need to present extra-ordinary services to convince your client.


Via Scoop.it – human being in – perfección

It’s an age of technology and now a day’s lots of people like to have a good worth on technology and many people like use as a source of survival. Many people like to work at their home as a freelancer similarly lots of people are working at their offices the well-known fields are web page designing, web developing, content writing, blogging and programming as well. Leer más “Convince your Client to your Admired Services | Smashing Buzz”

Should We Always Deploy Content Management Systems?

Content management systems are a wonderful tool for empowering website owners. Most of us have witnessed the power and ease of use of CMSs like Drupal and WordPress. They have changed the web development industry in a significant way.

Now, even average Internet users who have very little technical knowledge can have the ability to run and manage websites without any help from trained web developers.

Because of this CMS revolution, a major segment of the web development industry — dedicated to developing simple to complex CMSs for a broad set of users and premium themes for popular publishing platforms — has blossomed.

There are quite a few benefits to developing a site powered by a CMS. Chief among them is that the website owner is able to add and manage their website’s content, thus keeping visitors interested and search engines tuned in. And for the web professional, he has much less responsibility in maintaining the website.

But is empowering the business owner with a CMS always the way to go? Sometimes leaving tasks such as website maintenance and system upgrades to a professional leads to better results for the owner.

To explore the question of whether or not we should always deploy content management systems for our clients, let us first go through some types of clients who would not fully benefit from them.


by Maria Malidaki
http://sixrevisions.com/project-management/always-deploy-cms/

 

Should We Always Deploy Content Management Systems?

Content management systems are a wonderful tool for empowering website owners. Most of us have witnessed the power and ease of use of CMSs like Drupal and WordPress. They have changed the web development industry in a significant way.

Now, even average Internet users who have very little technical knowledge can have the ability to run and manage websites without any help from trained web developers.

Because of this CMS revolution, a major segment of the web development industry — dedicated to developing simple to complex CMSs for a broad set of users and premium themes for popular publishing platforms — has blossomed.

There are quite a few benefits to developing a site powered by a CMS. Chief among them is that the website owner is able to add and manage their website’s content, thus keeping visitors interested and search engines tuned in. And for the web professional, he has much less responsibility in maintaining the website.

But is empowering the business owner with a CMS always the way to go? Sometimes leaving tasks such as website maintenance and system upgrades to a professional leads to better results for the owner.

To explore the question of whether or not we should always deploy content management systems for our clients, let us first go through some types of clients who would not fully benefit from them. Leer más “Should We Always Deploy Content Management Systems?”

What One Thing About Web Design Would You Change Today?

As Web designers and developers, much of our time is spent carving out little corners for ourselves: setting up stops along the information superhighway, creating hangouts to populate the virtual landscape. We shape areas of the Web as we choose to or as our clients command—like Neo altering the Matrix. Unlike Neo, though, we have rules to follow, standards to meet. Web development and design exist in a framework that dictates what we can and cannot do. With this idea of molding the Matrix in mind, we once again turned to our followers on Twitter.

In a recent poll, we asked: if you could make one thing about Web design different today, what would it be? To avoid repetition, we included a caveat: other than making IE disappear? With that, a wide range of answers flooded in on hash tags.

As always, we appreciate everyone who took the time to respond to the poll. Having a strong connection with our readers is rewarding—that’s one thing about the Web design and development community that we hope never changes. Below is a peek at what Web development and design would be like if our Twitter followers and Facebook fans had their say in shaping the industry.
Better Browsers…


http://www.noupe.com/design/what-one-thing-about-web-design-would-you-change-today.html
(…)

Better Browsers…

Even with the proviso in our question, most responses dealt with browsers—just not Internet Explorer. They also brought up how we build for the Web and how our work is interacted with, but browsers seemed to be the topic of the day. Judging by the amount of noise about it, the most frustrating problem is cross-compatibility between vendors. A number of different makers build browsers, and each browser has a unique way of rendering code; in this environment, designing and developing can be a burdensome task, and our readers would change it if they could.

Browsers in What One Thing About Web Design Would You Change Today?

Below are selected responses from our followers that offer a number of approaches to bettering the browser experience, and most of them deal with rendering code. There was variety in the responses, but making all browsers adhere to one set of enforced standards is an extremely popular solution. Compatibility was the focus.

  • I’d make every browser standards-compliant… and every website look amazing!
  • I would make every browser render the same code the same way.
  • Kill vendor-specific codes. No more of this -webkit crap.
  • Make all browsers be in sync. They are out of sync now. That’s the big difference between being a Web and graphic designer.
  • As many have said, cross-browser standards. So much time is wasted creating cross-browser compatibility. I’d also like to see better methods for separating content and navigation forms.
  • I’d ask all developers and companies to create one standard all-in-one Web browser. Need competition anyway? Here: plug-ins!
  • All browsers should have a unified rendering engine.
  • Standardize form elements across platforms and browsers.
  • Force standards. The W3C should have to “allow” browsers to browse the Web—and if -webkit, -moz or 90% of IE’s browser-specific bullshit were there, they’d block the browser. In a week, we’d have development heaven for all.
  • Make every browser read visual elements mathematically the same way so that developers wouldn’t have to care about cross-browsing.
  • We need a single open-source rendering engine (i.e. WebKit) that every browser could use and contribute to—and then we can scrap all other engines.
  • Fix font rendering. Leer más “What One Thing About Web Design Would You Change Today?”

xarg.org | Most Recent Hacking Article

Camara support in HTML5 and JavaScript

At the moment, there are very good efforts to be able to access devices directly with HTML5, which would integrate native webcam support directly into the browser. However, there is still the fundamental problem on the Internet that most systems do not support HTML5. Even the current browsers do not provide the update functionality, which would cover the needs of today’s speed of development. This topic, however was already discussed in a previous article.
Read the rest of the article »

More Recent Hacking Articles
Resolve many-to-many relations a bit different with MySQL

In database modeling, a m:n relationship is usually resolved by an additional table. But what if this relation is used only for archiving and the number of links in the resulting table is not too high? In that context, I got the idea to store all referring ID’s as CSV string directly into a TEXT column of one of the referring tables. I came to this idea, because otherwise I would have to build complicated foreign keys and this way I also save one additional table. Certainly, this only makes sense if the data is not frequently accessed as foreign key. Nevertheless, I would like to tackle the problem, even if the implementation is very MySQL-oriented.
Read the rest of the article »

SQL-modes right to exist

At the beginning of a new project, one is faced with the question if MySQL’s strict mode should be used or if the default behavior is sufficient for most scenarios. This mode certainly makes only sense if you evaluate the error codes and acting accordingly in the application – thus, it would be a bad idea to apply SQL modes to a running system. Unfortunately, SQL modes are not really common and have thereby a few bugs. Also the fact, that the user can bypass the mode in the session raises the question whether it makes sense to use these settings at all. I decided to only set a selected list of options; just what really makes sense and improve the behavior of MySQL. Strangely that these modes are not set by default, what one might expect, as they are close to a natural approach of databases usage.
Read the rest of the article »


Camara support in HTML5 and JavaScript

At the moment, there are very good efforts to be able to access devices directly with HTML5, which would integrate native webcam support directly into the browser. However, there is still the fundamental problem on the Internet that most systems do not support HTML5. Even the current browsers do not provide the update functionality, which would cover the needs of today’s speed of development. This topic, however was already discussed in a previous article.
Read the rest of the article »


More Recent Hacking Articles

Resolve many-to-many relations a bit different with MySQL

In database modeling, a m:n relationship is usually resolved by an additional table. But what if this relation is used only for archiving and the number of links in the resulting table is not too high? In that context, I got the idea to store all referring ID’s as CSV string directly into a TEXT column of one of the referring tables. I came to this idea, because otherwise I would have to build complicated foreign keys and this way I also save one additional table. Certainly, this only makes sense if the data is not frequently accessed as foreign key. Nevertheless, I would like to tackle the problem, even if the implementation is very MySQL-oriented.
Read the rest of the article »


SQL-modes right to exist

At the beginning of a new project, one is faced with the question if MySQL’s strict mode should be used or if the default behavior is sufficient for most scenarios. This mode certainly makes only sense if you evaluate the error codes and acting accordingly in the application – thus, it would be a bad idea to apply SQL modes to a running system. Unfortunately, SQL modes are not really common and have thereby a few bugs. Also the fact, that the user can bypass the mode in the session raises the question whether it makes sense to use these settings at all. I decided to only set a selected list of options; just what really makes sense and improve the behavior of MySQL. Strangely that these modes are not set by default, what one might expect, as they are close to a natural approach of databases usage.
Read the rest of the article »

Use MySQL binlog to collect accesslogs

The easiest way to get user statistics from your own site is probably binding third-party tools like, e.g. Google Analytics into your code or parsing the logfiles with AWstats or webalizer. Evaluating your own logged data is the best way to look over the (imaginary) shoulder of users and bots. Moving static content on different servers remain the accesslog also manageable and free from unnecessary data.
Read the rest of the article »

My jQuery Playground

Probably the biggest problem of a high degree of specialization may be that learning outcomes can be long in coming if you do not even open up new areas of studies for yourself. So I was looking for a system that I’ve never used before. The second criterion was that I wanted to quickly achieve results to have something demonstratable at the end of the day. Thus, I have to announce two new jQuery plugins, which are really useful – at least, I hope you also see the benefits 🙂
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Combine CSS and JavaScript with lighttpd

In early 2007, a nice trick made the circuit to reduce parallel connections by bundling CSS and JavaScript files to one larger file. I immediately started the research to optimize this approach. But why should you combine static files at all?
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Optimized way of getting subqueries at once using JSON

Imagine we have a user table in MySQL and similarly, a products table. Each user can now busily buy items. But this is not what this article is all about. This article is more about, that users can also favor articles they like. From a database point of view, this represents a m:n relation, which is resolved by an additional table. We now want to display a list of all products and all users who favor a specific article. In real world scenarios, this can be a really big amount of data, but let’s bring an approximation later into play and focus on the main idea for the moment. In addition we want to know, if the person who is actually logged in into the system, already favors a certain product.
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Design a developer friendly web

A few years ago, I’ve started creating a list of features, that web-browsers should be able to do, to build rich Internet applications without complicated tweaks and hacks. The time passed away and nowadays, many creative heads concern on web-development, thus some of my ideas landed in HTML5 or other web-standards, without my help. So, I want to show an extensive collection about techniques of browsers, which are already implemented, and which are still needed for developers to design the Internet of the future.
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Is an angle between two other angles?

With my last HTML5 experiment “Space Shooter”, I had to solve a problem of checking, if an angle is between two other angles. Sounds easy for the first moment, but let’s see, if there is not the one or the other portion of trouble in it.
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Disable ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP in MySQL

In a few scenarios, I prefer using the data-type TIMESTAMP of MySQL, with the flag ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP. This is much easier and even faster than using a trigger which sets a specified column to NOW() or CURRENT_DATE(). I love this feature, when it comes to set last modified flags of tables. Now, I encountered a problem with a tagging table by using the flag. Every tag in the table has besides the tag-name, also the aggregated number of relations and a timestamp of last update (or the insert). Everything is okay, until you want to update the aggregated column, when the numbers are wrong for any reason.
Read the rest of the article »

Originally posted on June 7th, 2010.

Analyze online behavior with MySQL and PHP

A useful feature of statistical systems in social networking backend’s is the analysis of when members are mostly, or better said, in average online. Imagine, that we have a database table to store DATETIME-timestamps of when users logged in, which could look like this:
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Originally posted on June 4th, 2010. 1 comment

Cracking a Caesar cipher

The Caesar cipher is one of the simplest encryption algorithms in which every latin letter of a given string is simply shifted cycliacally by a certain offset.
Read the rest of the article »

Optimizing integer multiplication

I’ve already mentioned the topic integer-multiplication optimization in the article about my mathematical failures. I was quite obsessed with the idea and while I looked over some results of this optimization method, I noticed a beautiful pattern in the binary representation. I wrote a small algorithm to get all possible numbers which can be optimized a bit as constant factor of a multiplication. The algorithm is implemented in JavaScript, so if you’re interested in the source code, feel free to read it.
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Dynamic thumbnail generation on the static server

It’s quite natural to use features of the main programming language used in a project to generate user thumbnails or thumbnails of other images. Let’s assume, that we generate 3 sizes of every picture. With a rigid system, you would generate every size and store them temporarily on the webserver until it wasn’t uploaded to the static server. That means we have a lot of write operations on the webserver to generate the small pictures and finally writes to upload each of these pics to the static server – the CPU cycles intentionally left out.
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Calculate date ratios

When I celebrated my birthday, I got the idea that there must theoretically be a date on which two peoples ages are in a certain ratio. The basic idea were born when I thought that there must be a date on which my mother is exactly twice as old as me. Actually, this is the point of time when I’m as old as my mother was, when I were born. That means
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10 Places to Buy Professionally Designed WordPress Themes

In the past few years, the popularity of WordPress has skyrocketed, which has led to a growing demand for themes. With this growing demand, we’ve seen new premium or commercial WordPress theme shops popping up everywhere.

Some may say that the premium WordPress space is getting a bit saturated, and they’re probably right. However, more premium theme providers does mean a wider selection for those seeking more than what a free theme can offer.

The only problem is being able to find quality and professionalism in the vast sea of premium themes. It seems that the majority of premium theme designs out there are lacking, and appear a bit amateurish.

So for this post, we’re showcasing 10 great places where you can purchase professionally designed WordPress themes.

All of these shops are run by either designers or people that understand design – and as you can see, it shows in the quality of each theme.


//www.webdesignerdepot.com

In the past few years, the popularity of WordPress has skyrocketed, which has led to a growing demand for themes. With this growing demand, we’ve seen new premium or commercial WordPress theme shops popping up everywhere.

Some may say that the premium WordPress space is getting a bit saturated, and they’re probably right. However, more premium theme providers does mean a wider selection for those seeking more than what a free theme can offer.

The only problem is being able to find quality and professionalism in the vast sea of premium themes. It seems that the majority of premium theme designs out there are lacking, and appear a bit amateurish.

So for this post, we’re showcasing 10 great places where you can purchase professionally designed WordPress themes.

All of these shops are run by either designers or people that understand design – and as you can see, it shows in the quality of each theme.

1. Theme Trust

Theme Trust creates beautiful WordPress themes that are dead simple to use. It’s a fairly new theme shop, but a high level of quality and attention to detail is evident in their themes.

Professional WordPress Themes

2. Theme Shift

ThemeShift prides itself on creating “Professional” WordPress themes, and they do a great job at delivering on that promise. Their themes are all well designed and show a great attention to detail.

Theme Shift

3. Themify.me

Themify.me is one of the latest to enter the premium WordPress theme business, but all of their themes look simply amazing.

Themify Leer más “10 Places to Buy Professionally Designed WordPress Themes”

20 Excellent Coda Tips

I’ve been using Coda for a while now, and it’s become my web development application of choice. There are quite a few great web development applications out there (read “18 Wonderful IDEs for Windows, Mac, and Linux“) but if you’re a Mac user, Coda is easily one of the best.

Here are 20 excellent Coda tips to increase productivity that I’ve gathered during my use of Coda so far.
1. Set Your Preferences

There are a few things I had to change right away when I first started using Coda. These are all found in Coda’s preferences.

I never use a GUI CSS editor so I set Coda to always open CSS files with the text editor.


I’ve been using Coda for a while now, and it’s become my web development application of choice. There are quite a few great web development applications out there (read “18 Wonderful IDEs for Windows, Mac, and Linux“) but if you’re a Mac user, Coda is easily one of the best.

Here are 20 excellent Coda tips to increase productivity that I’ve gathered during my use of Coda so far.

1. Set Your Preferences

There are a few things I had to change right away when I first started using Coda. These are all found in Coda’s preferences.

I never use a GUI CSS editor so I set Coda to always open CSS files with the text editor.

Coda Preferences General Tab

Under the Editor tab I’ve check-marked “Show line numbers” and “Use tabs” for indenting. You can hide/show line numbers by pushing Command + Option + L as well.

Coda Preferences Editor Tab

Under the Colors tab I’ve check-marked “Highlight Current line” to make it easier to see where the cursor is when switching back and fourth between applications.

Under the files tab I set files to open when double clicked instead of a single click. You may also need to setup your external editors. Coda automatically used Photoshop for the image formats I use.

Coda Preferences Files Tab

This is how Coda’s navigation bar at the top is by default. This is just a waste of space in my opinion although it is pretty.

Coda Nav Bar Big

I’ve changed mine to display only text titles and as small as possible. Since I don’t use the buttons I have that section minimized most of the time anyway. Instead I use the shortcut keys which I’ll cover next.

Coda Nav Bar Small

Aside from these changes, I’ve left everything else at the default settings. I’ve played around with the color schemes a little but I didn’t find anything I was really happy with so I’ve kept the default color scheme.

2. Switching Modes

If you aren’t using shortcut keys to change modes, now is a good time to learn. Pushing Command + 1-6 changes the mode you’re in. You can switch between your sites, editor, preview, etc. modes very quickly this way.

3. Navigating Open Documents

Pushing Command + Shift + Left or Right Bracket will navigate through your open documents.

4. Line Indenting

Coda automatically indents certain markup for you by default but you’ll still find yourself using the Tab button pretty frequently. Instead of jumping to the front of a line to indent it you can push Command + Left or Right Bracket to indent the line the cursor is currently in.

5. Clips and Text Inserts

Pushing Command + Control + C will open up Coda’s clips. Clips is a place to store snippets of code for quickly inserting into documents. You can save snippets for use in all documents or just site specific clips.

Coda Clips General

You can assign tags to quickly insert clips. For example, I’ve set “htmltemp” to insert an HTML 4.01 Template when I start a new document. I would type “htmltemp” into the blank document and push Tab to insert the clip. You can also insert a selection placeholder if the cursor needs to go somewhere specific in the clip after being inserted.

Coda Clips General

Leer más “20 Excellent Coda Tips”

Web Development: Don’t Just Keep Up With Everyone Else

As web developers, it is paramount that we educate ourselves on the latest techniques, trends, software, and coding. If you don’t, you will not achieve being an in demand designer/developer. Your skills will fall behind, and it will reflect in the websites you build. As much as we all like to think we are in some big happy family of designers and developers, we are all competing with each other. Just keeping up is what everyone else is doing, so how do we get ahead?


As web developers, it is paramount that we educate ourselves on the latest techniques, trends, software, and coding. If you don’t, you will not achieve being an in demand designer/developer. Your skills will fall behind, and it will reflect in the websites you build. As much as we all like to think we are in some big happy family of designers and developers, we are all competing with each other. Just keeping up is what everyone else is doing, so how do we get ahead?

Web Development: Don’t Just Keep Up With Everyone Else
Image credit: Mikebaird

Blogs, Blogs, and More Blogs!

Obviously, there is a ton to read online about the latest and greatest techniques. If you looked at the RSS feeds we all subscribe to, it is probably a good bet that most of us have quite a few in common, like: onextrapixel.com, webdesignerdepot.com, css-tricks.com, net.tutsplus.com, sixrevisions.com, and smashingmagazine.com. If not in your RSS reader, then maybe you just visit them occasionally. They are all a great source of information, but what about the lesser known blogs? The ones you have never heard about, being written by people like you.

Blogs, Blogs, and More Blogs

There are a lot of great tutorials written by people in the web development trenches that don’t get any recognition. How do you get to them or find them though? Easy, just go to the blogs you normally visit, and start clicking on their links in the comment sections. You will be amazed by the quality of tutorials, tips, and general articles written by people you don’t know yet. Don’t just stay focused on the most popular blogs, because everyone else is already doing that. We want to get ahead of them, remember?

Starting your own development blog is also a great way to step it up a notch. Writing your own tutorials will make you not only better at communicating, but give you a better grasp of what you are trying to get across to the reader. It’s hard work for sure, but you will find you are more in tune with what is changing, what is new, and start hunting for things people might not know about. I know I have learned a lot just by doing research for topics to write about on my own blog. Find something you don’t know how to do, learn it, and then write about it. Others might enjoy your article, and you will possibly have gained a skill that puts you slightly ahead of the people you are going up against.

Blogs Are Good, Books Are Great

You say you read tons of blogs already? Great! Now go out and get some books. The web usually only goes so far in teaching you something. Mostly it’s what we need to know right now, or how to do a specific thing. What will set you apart from the next web developer/designer, is a more in-depth know how of what you are doing. Once you have read one on a specific subject, go and get another because you can never know too much. Personally, when I got interested in learning jQuery, I bought 3 books: a reference guide for quick look ups, a book on the basics of JavaScript, and one specific to jQuery. Yes there are great tutorials online, but books are better for the general foundation on what you are trying to learn.

Books
Image credit: Erik

A book also offers something that can be hard to do on the web – a place to take notes, and quickly reference them. Go buy a bunch of post-its, and mark the pages that contain information that is important to you. Don’t forget to write the main topic on the post-it, otherwise you will have a mess on your hands. If you don’t want to do that, fold the corners and heck, write all over the book (assuming it’s yours). By the time you are done with the book, you have all the important parts marked!

Don’t Be a Freeloader, Do It Yourself

Most of us can agree that JavaScript libraries are great, right? jQuery’s motto is “Do more, write less,” and who doesn’t want that? In fact, there are so many plug-ins out there that do what we want, that it almost seems like there isn’t any real point in actually learning it. Just drop in the script, change a parameter, and done! Isn’t that just awesome? It is if you are in a crunch, but we are talking about learning, and how to get better at what we do. Next time you see something that you want to use…don’t.

Freeloader
Image credit: wiseacre photo Leer más “Web Development: Don’t Just Keep Up With Everyone Else”

7 Ways to Increase User Participation

By Ben Barden

Youth football – increase participationRunning a site doesn’t only require Web development skills. Any site where the users can add content and communicate with each other requires a great deal of care and attention if it’s going to be a success.

Increasing user participation on your site is achievable if you aim for the old adage KISS, or keep it simple, stupid. Beyond that, there are a few things you can do to get more people to interact with your site. Here are seven tips to set you on that path.
1. Enable Social Logins

I’d suggest losing registration altogether if you can. But if your site requires registration, best to make it as simple as possible. A quick click here, a quick click there, and hey presto – one registered user without the barrier of a signup form.

Check out our guide to JanRain Engage and you’ll be setting up social logins in no time.


By Ben Barden<!– –>

Youth football - increase participationRunning a site doesn’t only require Web development skills. Any site where the users can add content and communicate with each other requires a great deal of care and attention if it’s going to be a success.

Increasing user participation on your site is achievable if you aim for the old adage KISS, or keep it simple, stupid. Beyond that, there are a few things you can do to get more people to interact with your site. Here are seven tips to set you on that path.

1. Enable Social Logins

I’d suggest losing registration altogether if you can. But if your site requires registration, best to make it as simple as possible. A quick click here, a quick click there, and hey presto – one registered user without the barrier of a signup form.

Check out our guide to JanRain Engage and you’ll be setting up social logins in no time. Leer más “7 Ways to Increase User Participation”

Getting Started with Drupal: A Comprehensive Hands-On Guide

Drupal is a popular open source content management system. With its powerful and advanced features, you can build complex websites with ease, compared to building them from scratch. With the support of a huge community and a big number of available modules, no wonder Drupal is a system you keep hearing about over and over again.

In this guide, we are going to discover Drupal using a pragmatic approach. We will create a Drupal site with a custom content type and views.

Ready? Let’s dive right into this immensely powerful content management system.
Objectives

By the end of this guide, you will:

* Learn the benefits and disadvantages of using Drupal
* Install Drupal
* Understand the Drupal back-end
* Learn about Drupal modules
* Explore the Administer page
* Create and publish content
* Create custom content types with the Content Construction Kit
* Create Views
* Create Page view displays
* Create Block view displays
* Learn about Drupal themes


by Saad Bassi

Getting Started with Drupal: A Comprehensive Hands-On Guide

Drupal is a popular open source content management system. With its powerful and advanced features, you can build complex websites with ease, compared to building them from scratch. With the support of a huge community and a big number of available modules, no wonder Drupal is a system you keep hearing about over and over again.

In this guide, we are going to discover Drupal using a pragmatic approach. We will create a Drupal site with a custom content type and views.

Ready? Let’s dive right into this immensely powerful content management system.

Objectives

By the end of this guide, you will:

  • Learn the benefits and disadvantages of using Drupal
  • Install Drupal
  • Understand the Drupal back-end
  • Learn about Drupal modules
  • Explore the Administer page
  • Create and publish content
  • Create custom content types with the Content Construction Kit
  • Create Views
  • Create Page view displays
  • Create Block view displays
  • Learn about Drupal themes Leer más “Getting Started with Drupal: A Comprehensive Hands-On Guide”

20 Methods for Upping Your Current Web Design Skills

All great designers are constantly improving their skills. There has never been a successful designer, or anyone of another profession for that matter, that has stopped at a certain point and said, “Good enough”. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to always be learning new things, and to always be improving.


All great designers are constantly improving their skills. There has never been a successful designer, or anyone of another profession for that matter, that has stopped at a certain point and said, “Good enough”. Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to always be learning new things, and to always be improving.

20 Methods for Upping Your Current Web Design Skills

In this post we’re looking into 20 different ways a web designer can improve their skills at any time. They involve everything from learning new abilities, to changing focus, and to revamping one’s mindset when it comes to design. (…) Leer más “20 Methods for Upping Your Current Web Design Skills”

50 Useful Articles and Resources You May Have Missed

When it comes to online tutorials and articles, you have to be very careful in choosing the right one from tens of thousands of articles you find as you are seeking help in the Web. So today we present nice articles and tutorials which are easy to understand and will surely add to your knowledge.


When it comes to online tutorials and articles, you have to be very careful in choosing the right one from tens of thousands of articles you find as you are seeking help in the Web. So today we present nice articles and tutorials which are easy to understand and will surely add to your knowledge.

Web Development

The Principle of Contrast in Web Design
A web design is made of many different elements, each having varying levels of importance and some demanding prominence over others. Some elements share a relationship, while others are not related at all. Author will share these principles.

Fertile in 50 Useful Articles and Resources You May Have Missed

Personal Branding for Web Designers
In this article, author will tell web designers that their self- branding strategies should be equally creative as their designs are.

Personal Branding in 50 Useful Articles and Resources You May Have Missed

Redesign vs. Realign
Many designers are still approaching website changes as redesigns, with little thought to whether they should be redesigning or realigning the site for their clients. This article states their comparision and differences.

Redesign in 50 Useful Articles and Resources You May Have Missed

The Current State of Web Design: Trends 2010
In this article, we present some observations on the current state of Web design. We describe existing and upcoming trends and explain how Web design might evolve in the coming months and years. We’ll also touch on what we as Web designers should be ready for to keep abreast of new challenges and opportunities.

Trend in 50 Useful Articles and Resources You May Have Missed

Applications of AIDA In Website Designing
Marketing is a very broad term and holds a lot of importance in this cut-throat competition of online business. It deals with the familiar, therefore, it generates the need to come up with a systemic way and a lot of creativity.

Aida in 50 Useful Articles and Resources You May Have Missed

New WordPress Keyboard Shortcuts
WordPress Keyboard shortcuts are a good option to save your time by allowing you to perform your actions quickly. These shortcuts make job of administration a lot easier and more user friendly. Leer más “50 Useful Articles and Resources You May Have Missed”

A Complete Guide to A/B Testing

A/B testing (also called split testing) is a testing method generally used in marketing to compare results between two samples with the goal to improve conversion or response rates.

In web design, A/B tests are generally used to test design elements (sometimes against the existing design) to better determine which design elements will get the best response from visitors.

A/B tests, by definition, compare only two variables (design elements) at a time. There is also multivariate testing, which compares more than one variable.


A/B testing (also called split testing) is a testing method generally used in marketing to compare results between two samples with the goal to improve conversion or response rates.

In web design, A/B tests are generally used to test design elements (sometimes against the existing design) to better determine which design elements will get the best response from visitors.

A/B tests, by definition, compare only two variables (design elements) at a time. There is also multivariate testing, which compares more than one variable. Leer más “A Complete Guide to A/B Testing”