Whether experienced first-hand or heard of in cautionary tales, everybody is familiar with the horror of not being compensated for one’s work and not being able to do anything about it. Enter a possible solution: a remote kill switch, which gives web designers a back door into a client website via PHP, AJAX or CSS to disable it in case something goes wrong, i.e., one doesn’t get paid.
Avoiding the technical details and instead focusing on the general idea of a remote kill switch, let me say this:
It’s a sad, sad reality that people have to resort to these methods, but it’s just a symptom of a bigger problem. I also see it as designers and developers defending themselves with tools they are familiar with, rather than legalese that could only throw them for a loop and might not even work. Which isn’t to say they should abandon the usual way of going into a project altogether; the kill switch can just be an additional safety net.
Is it unethical? There is no reason to use a kill switch underhandedly, or consider it as a sign of distrust or respect. It’s not about having the upper hand or treating clients unfairly, it’s about protecting one’s business. But to earn your keep you need to stay professional, not paranoid. Integrating a kill switch into a contract, where the client is fully aware of the consequences should it be breached, sounds fair and should achieve those two things. One must remember, however, that once both parties complete their respective deliverables, the kill switch must also be killed.
I wonder what percentage and type of web professionals incorporate this into their business process. This is a controversial issue for sure, but I think people can avoid the unnecessary drama if their intentions are sincere. What do you think? Apart from a contract and this kill switch, are there any other ways to protect web professionals from clients running off with their work?
So I was reading Elliot Jay Stocks’s post on the Apple tablet and noticed all the fancy gravatars his commenters had (maybe because they were not as small as the ones in the blogs I frequent). One in particularl that caught my eye was Jeremy Swinnen’s and made me wonder if, like Sam Wilson’s, it was a condensed version of his website and/or brand. I visited his site and turns out I was wrong.
Avatars are usually faces (photographs, caricatures, etc.) or logos, because that’s the most straightforward way to advertise yourself. But why not try something that remind people of your own website? Chances are that’s the first thing they do after reading your comment: check out who you are via your homepage.
If the logo in your avatar is featured prominently, which is probably the case anyway, then great. But I feel a disconnect when visiting a site that has no visual ties to the avatar associated with it. And putting a spin in your branding by using more than your logo in an avatar is a worthy challenge.
Sure, we also associate people with their respective URLs, but aren’t avatars the proverbial peacock’s feathers, the smoke and mirrors, the flashing neon sign—to lure people in, establish a connection, and possibly seal the deal on whatever it is you’re “selling”?
If you’re not choosing the most effective way to bring people over from Mr. Stocks’s site, then you could be missing out.
Jacob Gube of Six Revisions has compiled 30 visually-stunning sites which are all formatted like virtual business cards. Tim Van Damme, whose dot-com of the same name sparked this trend, also maintains a list as well.
There’s little else on each page except a rectangular area found dead-center, filled with icons representing the tons of new ways we can be contacted, befriended, stalked. We have the Web 2.0 era and all the insanely creative social media icon designers to thank for this phenomenon. (Sometimes blogs and other related sites are linked to in these cards, but who has time for those anymore?) If you don’t have the chops to whip up your own, services like Card.ly come to the rescue.
But that’s just the visual side of the metaphor being brought online. Business cards are meant to be exchanged because of the information they contain, so what good would these sites be without technological mojo? We have great frameworks like vCard, hCard, and perhaps the open identity systems like OpenID and oAuth. We also have companies working in the mobile space or have devices of their own (more here).
Then there are the lifestreaming apps, like FriendFeed, Tumblr, and chi.mp, which blur the lines between keeping one’s social accounts in one place and keeping up-to-date with said person at the same time.
How does one unassuming professional looking to establish an online presence actually choose from these possibilities? Social media evangelists pretty much recommend we get on everywhere, as many as and as much as we can help it. The goal is to be ubiquitous rather than obscure.
I have to wonder when we’ll ever reach true unification. Home phone. Work phone. Fax. Mobile phone. Email address. IM handle. Static homepage. Blog. MySpace page. Facbeook profile. LinkedIn profile. Facebook Fan Page. Twitter username. Then this—all of this.
How do you identify yourself offline and online? Do you pick one, or unload a bunch of URLs, aliases, and digits on your potential new client/drinking buddy/love-of-your-life? Is this whole business card business even a suitable metaphor, or yet another idea startups can cash in on? And we’re not even bringing up identity theft here.
Noah Stokes rants about the lack of professionalism in the web design industry. There are several reasons listed, ones involving IE6, Smashing Magazine posts, mentoring, and passion. But this first point got me thinking:
First, stop thinking your client is stupid. Your client is not stupid. I don’t care if they want an all Flash site sized at 800×600 with a dancing unicorn for the navigation. You may laugh at them behind their back, just remember, they laugh at you when OMG, your precious Tweeter is down. We are in the services industry. Get used to it. Your client is your lifeline. Show them the respect they deserve, even if they don’t deserve it.
Admit it: we’ve all mocked our clients and snickered at their choices at some point. A lot of us continue to do so.
There’s a lot to be said about the trials our kind face—dozens of comic strips tell the tale, Dilbert being the most prominent. But when did it become “cool” to act all holier-than-thou over project specifications? What sparked this trend to act like this misunderstood artist, this “chosen one” enduring torturous quests in the epic battle versus this monster of a client? Is it specific to this industry or happening elsewhere too?
IE6 Must Die, the title of Mashable’s latest post, hit the Twitter trending topics (it’s the new “Digg frontpage”) a few days ago. It’s really a good thing raise awareness for the browser we’ve been dying to get rid of for years now. But as much we should appreciate every little bit towards this goal, we should pay more attention as to why IE6 isn’t dead yet.
This Digg Blog post, Much Ado About IE6, sheds a good amount of light into that. Those who use IE6 to access Digg were also invited to answer a short, three-question survey that would hopefully reveal why they’re still using the outdated browser.
The results are thus: (a) More respondents used IE6 at work: a whopping 90% compared to 56% at home. (b) When asked why they don’t use another browser, majority say they can’t: either they don’t have sufficient computer access or workplace rights to do so, or the computer they’re using can’t handle modern browsers.
Granted, Digg is not a mainstream source of statistics. The amount of IE6 visitors are only at 10%, and more importantly, this social voting/bookmarking site has a strong geek slant. We can still learn from this unofficial study. As Mark Trammell concludes in the blog post:
Giving them a message saying, “Hey! Upgrade!” in this case is not only pointless; it’s sadistic.
How about we stop focusing on those who refuse to upgrade and try to help those who are simply unable to? All the campaign sites against IE6 don’t amount to much until they figure that out.
Just like the future of web typography means teaming up with the big-name font foundries to come up with a real solution to font embedding on web pages, eliminating IE6 would require reaching out to big businesses and convincing them to do large-scale upgrades in the workplace. On the Web, that’s already begun: we have the likes of Google and Facebook urging people to upgrade as they are dropping support for IE6.
But for non-technology companies, who’s going to reach out to them? Microsoft? W3C? WaSP? Assuming we found someone who will do the dirty deed, can they be convinced to drop a significant chunk of their market? Assuming the dirty doers manage that, can that significant chunk of their market be also convinced to stop accessing their sites using IE6, when in all probability they can’t? Should they be ignored?
The vicious cycle continues. (So much for freedom.)
When setting up your website one of the most important aspects will be to choose a domain name. It’s that domain name that will stick with you for the lifetime of your site. You can change the template, change the purpose of the site, fire a designer, hire a designer, but you just cannot change that domain name (unless you scrap it and do a redirect). Finding an available domain name that you like and that is appropriate for the purpose of your site is complicated. Here are a few things to think about when choosing a domain name:
1. Match the domain name to actual name of your site
One of the easiest and best alternatives is to get a domain name that matches the actual name of your site. It’s a duh statement but so many people forget to match the site. You will increase your branding as well as make it easy for visitors to remember the name of your site. The worst thing that can happen is if people fall head over heels for your site but can not find it again simply because the domain name is not the same as the name of your site. For example if you have a bakery site, don’t call it StubbornNelly.com. No one will have a clue what your theme is. Call it, TastyPastry.com, or even Anne Cookies around the corner.com.
2. Keep it short – and Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS)
Keeping the domain name short is a challenge if you are looking for a .com domain as all three and four letter words are already taken. Yep, and all standard English words are gone too (designer.com, awesome.com). Coming up with a name that is short will be easier to remember and pass along by word of mouth. But remember, a domain name should however not be kept short just for the sake of keeping it short. Do not use acronyms as a url if they look bad as an acronym. Think of all those failed websites because people did not see different words as one word. Like don’t come up Patterns, Octogons and Other Pics and give it POOP.com. That’s a failed domain name.
Some great short named domains:
- IBM.com (why call it international business machines)
- digg.com (i dig you, you dig me)
- Match.com (find a matching partner)
3. Use keywords
Optimizing your domain name for search engines is a big help. In using one or two of your single most important keywords you will have better chances of getting a higher rank on the search results, thus increasing traffic. This will not be easy, as most “natural” names already are taken. Combine an important keyword then with something secondary. These sites came up with great names:
- GraphicDesignBlog.com
- TutorialMagazine.com
- Dev-Tips.com
4. Describe your site
Your domain name is an excellent way of describing what your site is all about. Say for example that you manage a site about fishing. Your domain name should in some way describe that fishing is exactly what your visitors will find on the site. Again, fishing is a major keyword of your site, so exploit it with a well picked domain name.
5. Avoid confusion
In general, domain names are not expensive. Register domains with misspellings of your original domain if you want to make sure you catch most type in domain traffic. Redirect those misspelled domains to the main website. This is a great for sites that use hard to spell words or need to protect their brand identity. Examples:
- Google.com
- Googel.com
- Gogle.com
6. Consider alternative domain extensions
If it is impossible to find a good domain name with the prefix .com you might want to consider using an alternative domain extension. Many countries have opened up their country code top level domain for international registration. This is perhaps your chance to create the perfect domain hack. Examples:
- Del.icio.us
- Ma.tt
- Designm.ag
Picking a domain name will take time, energy and some creativity from your side but its worth it in the end. The last tip is to checkout recently expired domain names at snapnames.com – many names will be awful or cost a fortune, but once in a while you will be able find a real gem at a reasonable fee. Good luck on finding the domain of your dreams!
Everything old seems to be new (and hip?) again. And I’m not too sure I’m happy about it.
Short URLs
Shorter URLs are all the rage these days because of Twitter and its 140-character limit. If you’re one of the top sites on the web is practically mandatory for you to roll out your own URL shortening system. Ars Technica, for example, whose official URL is arstechnica.com, also has arst.ch. If you’re on a CMS like WordPress, you’re advised to give out the post ID permalink instead of the keyword-rich permalink of your blog post for the same reason.
Not too long ago, SEO and usability experts were on the same side and recommended readable URLs. Now that Twitter is the new internet marketing (I think they call it social media now) battlefield, the rules changed. When the next killer Web 3.0 app comes out, will we compromise and adjust once again?
But then again, has the Web ever stood still? Maybe I just thought it was beginning to.
WebKit’s CSS animations and scrollbars
You can now style scrollbars and perform animations using CSS in WebKit browsers.
I remember when Internet Explorer started to support scrollbar styling and almost every personal site took advantage of it. But then they grew out of it and were told by the gurus not to mess with the browser chrome.
I also remember <blink> and <marquee>.
But then again, “styling scrollbars isn’t messing with the chrome anymore than styling a button is.” Would the world be a saner place if browsers behaved the same way and all looked alike?
DiggBars
Digg has come out with its own version of the external page framing mechanism which they call the DiggBar.
Said mechanism is nothing new, and never really died out even to be considered a comeback, but Digg has a powerful following by all that which is noisy in the blogosphere to build a considerable amount of buzz. And no matter how you look at it, framing external pages is still framing, reminiscent of the era when HTML framesets were considered cool.
But then again, perhaps in this new era listening to the clamor of the crowd is no longer a fluke, but a very real way to improve one’s business.
Skittles on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube
Years from now, people will look back to the day Skittles ditched its flashy site and chose to load the top social websites that talk about it instead.
I can’t even begin to fathom how brilliant a campaign this is (despite being pioneered by Modernista exactly a year before). Maybe it’s not. I don’t know whether it’s so open-minded and fun, it doesn’t even look like a gimmick anymore or it’s just plain lazy to put the Skittles-related Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and even Wikipedia pages right on Skittles.com.
The cynical
Why load tweets, photos, or videos if you can just pull them via the the sites’ ever-useful APIs and create a page that’s sprinkled with 100% more colors and candy? (Come on, don’t deprive web designers and developers of their jobs!)
Is it even legal for a company to load another company’s web page to promote itself? (But asking that is like saying Facebook owns whatever you post on its site, and we all know how that turned out.)
Is seeing yourself on Skittles.com enough incentive to build buzz about the product instead of the marketers who will be handsomely rewarded anyway? (A resounding yes if you’re one of those new media douchebags, but let’s get to that in a bit.)
Do these cynical questions even matter if you’re enjoying the experience anyway?
The self-absorbed
Skittles took a risk. Some other company would have been worried about the possibility of smack and smut polluting the streams.
It’s bound to happen anyway, if this campaign lasts long enough and the new media douchebags pounce on another pure phenomenon taking place. I think that’s what draws people to this experiment. It’s raw, unfiltered, and free from any sinister intentions. (At least to the naked eye.)
Remember when SEO hadn’t been invented? When Wikipedia was an unbiased reference? When Twitter was all about what you are doing right now? When your friends on Facebook didn’t have their own fan pages?
And what about the other side of that purity—the cold, hard, messy truth? Because it’s only a matter of time when Skittles, which is not just sweet, innocent, colorful candy, but also a huge corporation, rakes up some dirt in its dealings.
If there’s one thing to take away from all this is that if you’re a company and dreaming of pulling off something like this, it’s not about you. (Or maybe it is, but can you at least try to make it look like it isn’t?)
Any publicity is good publicity, order will emerge from chaos, and worry less about projecting a reality distortion field, focus more on making your product great, because it will speak for itself.
Here’s a great deal you don’t see everyday: SitePoint is letting you purchase 5 e-books for the price of 1 (that’s $29.95) and one hundred percent of the proceeds will be donated to the victims of the bushfires in Australia.
So we’re taking one day, working around the clock to plan, package, and execute our best book deal ever in order to raise funds for the Red Cross as soon as possible. Our ambitious plan is to raise over US$50,000. Every single cent generated from this promotion will go directly to the bushfire relief effort—so if you spend $29.95 purchasing 5 books from SitePoint, the whole $29.95 will go directly to supporting this cause. We feel that’s the least we can do.
The bushfires have already taken hundreds of lives just these past few days. But admirably enough, the SitePoint folks have come up with this selfless deed and at the same time managed to reward others who contribute to it. All in record time—this promo launched only a few hours ago.
It helps that digital products like e-books (and other downloadbles like songs and movies) cost practically nothing to distrbute. Of course one would rather leaf through real paper in a book, but getting hold of the information contained in the book matters more.
More importantly you’re donating to charity and getting rewarded for it. And unlike other products, all of the proceeds go straight to the victims. Not just a fraction. Which means you don’t even have to be interested in the books they’re selling; you can always find someone else who is.
So the customers get books, the victims get help, and SitePoint gets what, exactly? The satisfaction that it’s helping people in deep trouble. And, eventually, the reputation that it’s that kind of company. And knowing that, wouldn’t you want to do business with them again?
The offer ends on February 13. Buy now!
(Disclaimer: I’m not being paid by SitePoint to write this.)
Despite the the dot-com bubble bursting at the turn of the new millennium, the Web has become more intelligent, successful, and profitable in the past ten years. We have a ton of people to thank for that, but let’s focus on two groups that are celebrating their 10th anniversaries this 2008.
Google is one of the first web companies that reinvented the web as we know it. It essentially paved the way for what we call the Web 2.0 era because it was the better search engine that would leave Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista, Lycos, Ask, and the rest behind.
True to its name, Google just keeps on getting bigger. It took on e-mail (Gmail), advertising (AdSense and AdWords), office suites (Docs, Spreadsheets, Sites), multimedia (YouTube, Picasa), navigation (Earth, Sky, Moon, Maps, Street View), and even web browsing (Chrome). And even if the thought of Google looking into what we’re looking at and what we’re talking about is really scary, life with the help of the big G is just easier.
In the same vein, A List Apart has been the definitive resource “for people who make websites”. What started out as a mailing list evolved into a treasure trove of elegant web design articles that cultivated the love for the craft like no other. Design, standards, accessibility, optimization, business—this magazine covers it all.
It’s written the pages of web design history as well, from banishing <table>-based layouts to inventing CSS techniques (Sliding Doors of CSS, Holy Grail, Suckerfish Dropdowns, Sprites, Faux Columns, Mountaintop Corners) we never could have come up with. Websites today are efficient, meaningful, and beautiful because of ALA.
