October 15, 2004 | View Comments (27) | Category: CSS Vault
Summary: The Vault might be going through a feature-update soon and I would like to throw some ideas out to you and get your reaction.
Of all the sites in the network the CSS Vault is the one that goes untouched. Sure it gets updated almost daily, but it hasn't been through a feature enhancement in a long time. I have a couple of ideas for it and I would like to share them with you.
Most of us already have our own hosting provider, but do you think it would be beneficial if I could find certain companies that would cater to our community and have a directory of them? Or I could just setup a directory of companies that offer some great deals. I might just go with this idea anyways since it would only be a page that wouldn't be in the way of anyone.
Another idea I will probably go with is setting up a directory of all the designers who have designs featured in the Vault. This way if any company is looking for a CSS designer they can come to the Vault and have access to the best CSS designers around. Should I let others in though who haven't been featured in the Vault? If so should they have to pay a fee?
This one might be a touchy subject to some as it comes across as elitist, but I don't see any benefit to having a directory where every person who has created a CSS site gets included. If companies can't come to the directory and find quality designers then they have no reason to come at all.
I know there are CSS forums around, but would the Vault and the community be better served with one at the Vault?
Just some ideas and questions in which I would love to hear your thoughts. Also if you have ideas yourself of what you would like to see don't hesitate to mention them.
Trackback URL: http://9rules.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/363
Don't worry man, I won't include you since you got a new cushy job and everything ;-)
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
I like the idea of a Designer Directory because it's nice be able to find the designer behind the work. It would be touchy but the vault is based on your opinion so it wouldn't really be anything new. It might be less touchy if you included the same sort of "this is why I included this person" write up on each directory entry.
Ok so maybe it would actually be more touchy but it would also be more interesting and give people something to work toward. Of course directory inclusion for a fee wouldn't really fit into that.
I have less of an opinion on the other things you mentioned but one thing I was idly wishing for the other day is that one (or more) of the css galleries would organize entries by color. That led me to thinking about the host of other things I'm looking for when I browse through css sites for inspiration. There was also a fleeting thought of making my own css gallery with gmail type labels.
Think how much nicer (read: less work) it would be if I could convince an existing gallery to do it instead. :D
sunshine lewis (http://sparklit.sparkalyn.com)
The hosting directory would be nice, only if you used extreme discretion. There are just so many shity hosts out there. Maybe you could make some categories like: best of the best, best of the decent, best of the shity?
A designer directory would be nice. Designers who don't have a featured site should have to pay, but also be put in a seperate category maybe. From each vault entry, you could provide an extra link directly to the designers home page.
I suppose a forum would be nice. But, try to come up with some unique discussions maybe. I don't know. It's not really needed, but worth a try I guess.
Jason Marble
The hosting directory sounds like the easiest thing to implement. No bias other than those who have paid you to be listed, and everyone would understand that. How would they "cater" to those sites listed in the vault though? You have a wide variety of sites in there and the only thing they have in common is that they use CSS. Maybe a disproportionate share are blogs, so would they have MT or Wordpress available as a default feature?
Personally, I wouldn't touch the designer directory with a 10-foot pole. Maybe if it's just a listing of designers with vault entries yeah, but other than that what criteria would get somebody in? The fact that you like them? That would be a very subjective way to go, and while that's your opinion of that person's design skills it may not be what a potential web design client is looking for.
I can see why you'd go for the CSS forum as well. It's a very natural addition to the vault as well as whitespace. However, forums require a lot of moderation, especially one as active as the Vault could potentially get. If you have (or can get) people to moderate for you then it might not be such a bad plan, but I know you're a busy guy Paul and forum moderation might not leave you with any time to sleep.
Vinnie Garcia (http://blog.vinniegarcia.com/)
hmm.... they all sound good, particularly from an increase-Paul's-revenue point of view.
The hosting site... maybe you should make that one a seperate website, perhaps with a forum for reviews... though there are plenty of those out there already. It'd be one thing if it was, say, ColdFusion Vault or PythonVault or FlashComVault -- something that's not available on every single hosting provider... but CSS doesn't need anything special to run.
The designer/developer directory sounds very promising... maybe you could do something on the order of scriptlance with it, too, where people can bid on projects and so on. But would listing be free or would people have to pay, or would there be 'premium' listing for paying folks... lots of opportunities there.
A forum is definitely a good idea... that's the most natural extension of the site... but yeah, they're alot of work to moderate... I run an invitation-only forum with only about 100 members and we still use 6 moderators plus the two admins... a public one with the amount of traffic you have would probably take more. But you can also offer a degree of self-policing with some message board software, which might help clean things up.
Hey... does this mean you'll finally do a tableless all-CSS template for PHPBB??? heh
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I don't see too much benefit in listing hosts with a CSS resource. Doesn't exactly make sense. The "designer(s) responsible" bit would be a great idea. I think the forum wouldn't be that useful though since, as you said, there are already a lot of those around.
David Schontzler (http://www.stilleye.com)
I dig the hosting directory -- that's always extremely useful, and much of the ones I see on the web are crap -- you'd just have to watch out for employees or owners padding their good comments.
Designer Director, I don't much care for, even if I am a designer. All the CSS showcase sites seemed to play off the same themes and ideas -- and it really only reflects our close-nit community. There are literaly thousands of better designers out there overlooked -- either because a lot of these sites don't have a lot of design background (and just place it by what they look good) or because they have their own agenda's -- and that's not a biased opinion, I've been on some and not others. I would tell you to leave that up to commarts.com or aiga.com -- otherwise you're just saturating the industry even further with some designers that don't bill professionally. That being said, though as long as there's a note like said above that the designer was featured on the site, then that wouldn't look so biased. Even though you're right to not include everyone -- it is your site, so your opinion is the final say; but I would think that's a matter of judgement on your part, rather than the design community. But it could be profitable... and I don't think a paid feature would work. Guru.com can't get that to work themselves, advertising would probably just make the best of it.
Forum would be beneficial for you and a good experience for new users -- there's so many forums out there now, though that I know a lot of people would gloss over at the thought... but then again, quite a few people would come over.
Brady J. Frey (http://www.dotfive.com)
About the Designer Directory I really think it should only list designers featured at the Vault (not 'cause I don't want you to make money on it though ;-)). You mention the quality yourself, and by this rule, you can vouge for their quality as designers, and thereby the directory would get better credibility.
Else, it seems like some good ideas, I'd go for 'em all.
Jonathan (http://holst.biz/)
Regarding a host directory I personally wouldn't use it, but I guess I don't see any harm in including it if it wont interfere with the other features.
A Designer Directory would be golden. But I don't see why designers not included in the vault should be listed. I'd rather see it as just a category (which btw is a function I'd really like! color might be a nice category, like mentioned above, and there are lots of other possible categories), with a link to the designer's site.
Jacob Rask (http://www.jacobrask.net)
I love all of these ideas.
For the listing of designers, I think you should set things up with three distinct categories. First, any designer who's site is featured on CSS Vault go into the main category. Out of that category there would be the best of the best or featured designers. Who's the best? This could be decided on by your opinion on the designer's work then others could comment. I guess I see these best of the best designers as a CSS Vault entry, just like a site. It would be a page with thumbnails of a few of the designer's sites, a write-up about the designer, and a way to contact him/her. Then you'd have your opinion, what you like, what you don't like about the designs, and why you chose to make this designer a featured one. Then we all could comment on what we like and don't like. That way, someone looking to hire a designer gets to see a little of the designers work, what you think of it, and what the CSS community thinks. I think paying to be featured is an okay idea, as long as it was marked that it's paid for. We'd all still be able to comment on the designer so if the designer was no good, it wouldn't matter if hey paid for it or not.
When clicking on the designers button, I'd expect to see a list of all designers with the paid featured designers at top, followed by featured designers then everyone else would follow. Maybe you could also add an ability to sort this list by number of comments, rating (more to add, I know), number of views, etc...
I also love the forum idea. I'm always looking for new places to talk about CSS.
Chris Fenison (http://www.chrisfenison.com)
I like the ideas, especially for the designer directory. How extensive it would be? Would any of the geographical location of designers be mentioned?
For the hosting directory, though, it may be a good idea to list hosts that designers in the Vault actually use? So at least that tells us if "it's good enough for them, it's good enough for me" type of thing.
Lea (http://xox.lealea.net/01/)
I also like the designer directory. I would be most interested in which designers created the sites listed in the vault. Clicking on a designer and seeing thumnails or links to their site entries in the vault would be really nice.
Personally, I would not be as interested in looking at listing of designers who paid to be included. But as long as it was obvious which ones paid to be included and which ones are included because they have an site in the vault, it would be okay by me.
JonathanB (http://www.bloy.net)
I like sunshine's idea of organizing by color. I tend to think in terms of color, and many times I have a color in mind and just want a few ideas.
Nicole (http://nicoleswan.com)
My only consideration would be over saturation. There are so many hosting companies out there to begin with. Couple that with numerous designers having reseller / affliate arrangements with said hosting companies, and you've got redundancy to go along with your over saturation.
Same with designers. Look at the FirmList website for example. Their header claims to have 14,000 firms / freelancers across 165 countries. Sure, there's not that many CSS designers -- yet, but again, where do you draw the line and say enough?
The other thought would be listing designers already in the vault. It doesn't take surfing through CSSV too long before one comes to a submission where most everyone is questioning why the site was listed. Wouldn't it be like feeding a designer to a pack of wolves if you have them in your designer directory as a qualified resource, when their submission was torn apart by other designers for whack CSS, non-validation or break downs in "x" browser?
Just some things I would be considering if I were you.
Mark (http://www.lightpierce.com/ltshdw)
If someone who hadn't featured in the gallery were to pay you to be in the Designer Directory, and you didn't like their design work; i.e., you wouldn't have listed any of their sites in the gallery, would you accept their money and list them anyway, or turn them down?
paul haine (http://joeblade.com)
Well I like their work they would probably be in the Vault anyways :-)
Who knows though, I have to give this some thought.
Scrivs (http://9rules.com/)
I would say yes to A (as long as all entries are equal, and the selection or rating is objective) and C, but not to the designer directory...
Guido
Designer Directory? yes. To be honest id like more links to articles etc Not so kean on a forum or webhost stuff, there are far too many stites that do that allready.
Your the CSS vault, so think of more CSS realated stuff rarther than generic website stuff.
Tom
Sounds like an excellent idea! It would help raise the bar in design also. Designers will want to look the best out of the pack so it can only push the bar that little bit higher!
Full support your ideas :)
David Jones - Elegant Design (http://www.elegantdesign.co.nz)
If this already exists, then please forgive my ignorance...
The one thing that I would find useful is an explanation by designers of some of the techniques used in the creation of their CSS designs. I'm not talking about the basics, but rather the wicked cool little tricks or solutions to problems that we all stumble across when designing. I'm not really talking about CSS hacks, but rather tips and stuff. Kind of a "look what I did, isn't it great" place.
So, when a designer thinks "I really need a little bit of CSS to position a graphical bullet to the left of a link" then they can come along to the CSS Vault and see if someone has saved them the time and effort of working it out. I know that some people may learn less if the answer is provided to them on a plate, but for a designer with a deadline, it will provide them with a quick-win solution that they can learn from after delivering the project.
Maybe the CSS forum could cater for this?
Anyway, regarding forums, someone above mentioned the creation of a CSS template for PHPBB. I'd love a list of resources (free bulletin boards, other bits of similar functionality) that are CSS/XHTML compliant. I have a site that I'm converting to CSS/XHTML but the forums are still in tables and this proving to be a pain.
Paul Nattress (http://www.npower.com)
Yes, but with reviews or testimonials by CSS chaps who have actually used the service.
Yes, but indeed only those who are in the Vault.
No, thanks.
Paul Watson (http://stormfront.typepad.com/)
All of the ideas sound great- the forum most of all.
I'm not full of ideas- but how about interviews? Maybe ask a few of the big-shows a few questions like, "how did they get into web design?", "When?", "Why?", that kind of stuff.
Jenni (http://www.mrsjenni.com/)
Someone else mentioned geographical locations of designers in the designer directory. I was going to mention this myself. I'm sure potential clients would prefer to work with a designer in their area, all other things being equal. I would go so far as to group them by state/country, though simply listing their location is better than nothing.
Jennifer Grucza (http://jennifergrucza.com)
I love all the ideas. The forums I would be big on, well, because, I love forums, and I love telling people about semantics heh :) If you need any moderators Scrivs drop me a email! I'd be glad to help out!
Zachary Blume (http://www.zachblog.com)
I love all the ideas. I enjoy looking at all the design and such. Getting ideas and inspiration for future projects. Or wishing we can design better. Perhaps Free CSS Templates, would be great. (free membership - login facility). More longer archives. Or another site with archives (e.g. cssvaultarchives.com). These are only ideas. More resources. And if possible where a site has changed since featuring on CSSVAULT, perhaps if can be downloaded so that we can study the code and design at our leasure.
But other than all that, and what others have to say, this site is so cool.
Aaliyah
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#1
They all sound like good ideas to me bro.
Keith (http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/)