This is just going to be a quick blog post, because I am still busy getting killersites.com up and running properly after an emergency server move I had to make.

The short story …

I had been using the same hosting company for many years and generally with not too many issues. But in the last year, things started to go downhill fast. The server was very slow (overloaded) and it went down way too often.

The last straw that broke my weak nerd-back, was a complete shutdown of my account by some pencil-necked twit who decided that killersites.com had too much traffic … so this no-nothing nerd suspended the account!

… You have to understand, I had been with these guys for 5-6 years, I’ve spoken to the founder/owner on several occasions and they used killersites.com as a feather in their cap:

‘… we proudly host killersites.com.’

So this unannounced shut down of the entire site was shall we say, vexing.

When it get’s that bad, it’s time to leave fast!

A quick threat of legal action got the site back up quickly, but I was warned killersites.com had too much traffic and I had to move it. So, I moved it to our own dedicated servers right away … within hours.

So why did I not change over to our own dedicated server years ago?

Answer: Configuration.

Killersites.com has been around for about 13 years now and it has a lot of old legacy stuff floating around. Specifically, we are talking about old Perl scripts and a couple of Java based web applications.

… Once you get these sort of things working, you’d best leave them alone. That hassle combined with my general laziness caused me to keep killersites.com sitting on the old server, even when some early evidence of trouble started to brew. You can’t underestimate laziness!

Continued trouble …

So as I write, I have still to get the old Java forum up and running again and the Perl based directory is not fully operational. The nice thing though, is that all the PHP based applications:

- Wordpress blogs
- Newsletter script
- PHP based forum (to replace the Java created forum)

… migrated easily and are working fine. Once again, no hassles with PHP and I highly recommend you learn PHP as a web designer.

Bye for now.

Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com

Hi Stefan,

I found your article while doing a search about sitemaps, so I figured I’d see what your take on it is.

I work at an agency that does small business websites, some as small as 5 or 6 pages, like an online brochure. I know sitemaps are useful, and help with SEO, but it’s part of our standard design to put text links to each page in the footer of each page. I think a sitemap page with 5 links on it is kind of silly, and a waste of space. Should we continue with the sitemaps or do the footer links suffice in those cases?

Thanks a ton!

I agree. Sitemaps are really useful when there is a lot of content in a web site – if you have a really simple site, it is probably overkill.

That said, if you anticipate that the site might grow (in terms of content), I would create the sitemap and use it as the 404 page. Once the content builds and you deem it necessary, you can link to the sitemap that will already be ready to go.

When considering any aspect of a web site, keep this rule in mind:

Design for people and not for search engines.

… After all, search engines in the end, are trying to find the best websites for people!

Hope that helps,

Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com

This article speaks to those not so tech savvy entrepreneurs.

What we want to do:

The goal is to create an e-commerce website that builds a business using all the cheap and free tools available in the market today. One great thing about the nerd driven computer revolution, is the strong sense of community and desire to give opportunity to the masses.

Because of this freely available cheap and/or free technology, it is just so much easier today to start a business than it was just 15-20 years ago.

These are some of the questions this article will answer:

1. What are the components of an e-commerce site, and how do you best get those components into your web site?
2. What makes an e-commerce website successful?

What are the components of a successful e-commerce website?

The components an e-commerce website:

1. Payment systems
2. Shopping carts
3. Ezines, list management software (newsletters)
4. Email auto-responders
5. Web analytic software (web stats)

How do you get these things into your website?

Like so many things is the tech world, there are many competing methods and technologies to do this. That said, I would suggest starting out with the easiest and least expensive methods. Later on, as your web business grows, you can chose more advanced technologies – if the need should arise.

To find these solutions, just use Google. So for a shopping cart, search for ’shopping cart’ or ’shopping cart software’. You get the idea. I’m not going to recommend any specific tools/solutions in this article simply because I’m a lazy bastard.

Just kidding. No, it is more or less because these things are moving targets, so what I recommend today may not be the best choice 6 months from now.

What makes an e-commerce site successful?

A few simple things really:

• Ease of use in terms of the web site.
• Professional look that instills confidence in your business.
• Speed of processing.

One thing I want to emphasize is the importance of having a website that makes the prospective client feel comfortable with dealing with you. With so many scams out there today on the Web, people are very reluctant to hand over their credit card numbers … or do any business with fly-by-night looking operations.

Besides everything you can do on your end (great design, professional look, contact information that is obvious) you may want to go with a really well known credit card processor like Paypal. Since Paypal is a fairly well known company, by working with them, you can gain from their fame.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

Have you ever loaded up a web page and found funny looking symbols in your text where there should just be normal text? Take a look at this screen capture:

Those funky symbols are appearing because you are using symbols (in your web page) that fall outside the normal character space range … you need to tell your browser you want to use international symbols.

To do this, you need to add the UTF8 meta tag:

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″>

And this is what you will get:

Hope that helps.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

I’ve been using Paypal to process my credit card orders since 2001 and overall, it’s a pretty good service.

… In fact, I would argue that Paypal is essential for just about any e-commerce site since it is used by so many merchants and most importantly, just ordinary people.

Paypal’s main advantages are:

• Easy to set up.
• Can accept several types of electronic payments: credit card, e-checks and Paypal.
• Since Paypal is so well known, it will put your clients at ease. You’d be surprised at how nervous people still are of buying products online!

The Dark Side of Paypal .. for Canadian Merchants

For reasons unknown to this humble nerd, Paypal has a process in place that is not favorable to merchants/companies based in Canada.

Specifically, if you want to transfer your US cash out of your Paypal account to your US dollar bank account (that happens to be in a Canadian bank,) Paypal will not allow you to do this. Instead, Paypal will only wire transfer to a Canadian dollar account. And in the process, Paypal takes take a hefty premium on your money in the conversion. From my experience, Paypal can harvest as much as 6% in the conversion.

.. A nice little bonus for them.

-

OK, this is a bit of a rant … I know. But there is some useful information that I think many would find useful nonetheless.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

I’ve been a advocate of website templates in commercial web design for years now, because it saves the designer a lot of time and in saves the clients a good chunk of cash.

… There are occasions where from-scratch custom design makes sense, but for most web design projects, templates are a great solution – especially with a little customization to make it look unique.

How to use Templates in the Web Design BUSINESS process?

I was recently asked by a web designer how I would show clients the templates that are out there? Do you send them to a template site (free or commercial) or do you do something else?

My suggestion is to meet with the client, figure out basically what kind of style their project needs, and then you as the web designer, go out there and take a bunch of screen captures of templates that you think could work. This way your client doesn’t have to sort through thousands of templates blindly – most clients don’t have much in the way of design skills …

Don’t show too many templates!

I would not show them more than say five templates. If you give them too many options, nothing will get done. You will find yourself in design-paralysis because the client will have a heck of a hard time making up their minds.

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

This will be just a short post.

Someone recently wrote to me, frustrated about their web site, where the project seemed to never end … there was always something more to do. Basically, this person was wondering if they were up to being a web designer since they just couldn’t get it right the first time.

Web Design is an Iterative Process

The point of this quick little blog post is to remind you that web design is typically an iterative process. What I mean by that, is that a web site is oftentimes, built in stages where you ‘finish’ the design from a-z and then, you go back and polish the layout and the structure of the site in a second, third and sometimes even a forth pass.

… So don’t get too flustered if your site is not turning out exactly the way you want the first time you take a crack at it. Eventually, you will get it were you want it to be and then … it will be time to redesign again!

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

I don’t want to argue the issue again, but in a nutshell: I always felt it unwise to ignore the practical realities of the browsers actually being used in favor of the Web Standards. I argued that the Web Standards, though noble in thought, were not reflective of the reality on the ground. As such, I advised web designers (years ago) to pay much more attention to browsers that people used, rather than to the Web Standards and the W3C validator.

Heresy!!

“… When people start surfing the Web with the W3C validator, I’ll start testing my sites with it. In the meantime, I will test with IE and Firefox since that’s what people use!”

The forward compatibility myth and the Web Standards

One of the big arguments put forth by the Web Standards zealots was that if you follow the Web Standards, your pages would be “forward compatible” … your web pages would more likely render properly in web browsers that have yet to be created.

Well, recent evidence is showing me that these academic shills were wrong once again.

The PS3 web browser prefers tables!

Being a hardcore nerd, I went out and bought the best blu-ray player on the market: the PS3. One of the reasons I got the PS3, is that it is equipped with a web browser. Yes, I like to surf the Web on my big tv.

Anyway, what I’ve discovered is that the PS3 browser screws up only on ‘forward compatible’ Web Standard compliant web sites. Whereas with old school table based layouts – never a problem.

It seems to me that the fine people at Sony (like so many others) realized that there are hundreds of millions of pages that are built with old school techniques and that they better support them. One thing academic nerds can never understand: pragmatic business decision making. Instead, they are defenders of the faith and thus, are very dogmatic in their decision making.

… Reminds when IE7 came out and it broke all these ‘forward compatible’ websites because they were using CSS hacks rather than safe and sure (non standard) IE Conditional comments. Man, many CSS books had to be corrected and reprinted!

Conclusion

I think this post is best summed up by what one my assistants (and formally Web Standards zealot) said when he started actually having to produce web pages in the real life:

“It’s hard to believe that these zealots are actually building web sites!? … When you’re trying to follow the strict standards in real day to day work … it simply isn’t always practical.”

Happy new year!

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

Now that we are entering into a recession, potentially the worst economic crisis since the great depression (!!), web designers are probably wondering if their jobs are safe?

… This all comes down to whether or not companies will be spending money on web design? The answer:

- Short term: they will spend less.
- Medium term: they will spend more.

My reasoning is based on my 18 years experience as a business owner and on my observations of the current market.

The Short Term

People are nervous now. They hear all the negative news and so they pullback on spending and wait to see what will happen. The REALLY nervous people out there load up on gold, guns and dried fruit … while most of us just rent a movie at Blockbuster and cut back on trips to Vegas.

So what does this have to do with Web Design? Well, for the first several months of the recession, you will see a slowing down in the web design game. Companies are nervous too.

So what can a freelance web designer do?

Go cheap!

Instead of offering from-scratch $2000-$3000 web design jobs, offer more affordable $1000 packages.

You can easily provide this by using a blog as your base (Wordpress for example) and then leverage a pre-made theme that you would modify. With this type of package, you can offer clients the functionality found in a blog/CMS along with a great layout/theme for a fraction of the cost. You can do this because it will take you a lot less time to put out the web site to begin with.

Go for quantity and not quality!!

Now is the time to go for volume, rather than trying to be a snooty web designer. With many smaller clients calling on you to update their modest websites over time, you will find that this approach is not only profitable but also liberating: It is always better to have 20 small clients than 5 big clients!!

The Medium Term

I think that once the initial shock of the recession wears off, companies will start to look at inexpensive ways to get new clients and to cut cost. The Web is perfect for this and so the money will flow that way.

I think that for branding sites, web designers will need to be able to provide some Web Marketing skills so that the business will be able to more effectively leverage their web sites to help build business. Understanding how Google Adwords can be used with a well built website, is something worth looking into.

If instead, the company is using their website to cut cost (for example: to provide support for their clients) you will need to have a better handle on dynamic Web technology like PHP and AJAX.

Conclusion

The current recession does not spell disaster for the web design profession. What it does mean though, is that you will have to adapt to the current reality. And for those who do, this can be a very profitable time!

Remember what biologist say: ‘The most adaptable species are the most successful.’

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com

No, you’re not stupid … CSS for page layout is.

What?! CSS is flawed?

Indeed. CSS for page layout sucks hard because the logic behind CSS page layout is weak at best, and perhaps, even flawed. I can say this with experience in other languages like Java and even VB. Not that I am saying CSS is a programming language.

Anyway …

For web designers used to the craziness of CSS layouts, they would be flabbergasted at how easy creating layouts/views/screens are in VB or even Java when compared to CSS.

What’s the main problem with CSS?

The main problem with CSS (and HTML) is that it was not conceived as a user interface technology. Rather, it was considered and engineered as a document/page technology.

Think about it, we talk about web pages and not web user interfaces.

Despite the original intention of the Web being a bunch of documents, today the Web is largely a bunch of user interfaces. Yes, most web sites these days are much more like a user interface that we see in software than they are simple ‘pages’. So therein lies the core of the problem:

CSS was designed to style pages and not to build user interfaces.

-

So what has happened?

Well, because web designers realized the advantages of CSS for laying out pages, they figured out how to bend, stretch and sometimes break the very limited CSS technology to create modern web pages.

The problem is that you have a bunch of methods and practices that don’t really make much sense … logically speaking. That’s why when you are new to CSS, it is hard as heck to create many common layouts as compared to doing it in tables.

Think about it, a center aligned liquid layout with three columns is a snap to do with HTML tables. With CSS though, it took the community a long time to figure out how to get this to work.

… It shouldn’t take the efforts of a community to get common layouts to work. That is a sure sign of a broken technology.

Even the CSS nerds know it.

Like most human beings, nerds are loath to admit when they’ve screwed up. So it’s pretty telling when you see the invention of CSS tables. Yes, CSS tables are basically tables created with CSS rather than with HTML.

CSS nerds finally realized that for user interfaces, you need a grid structure sometimes … tables are essentially grids. Problem is that CSS tables are not YET widely supported in the major browsers.

So why not use HTML tables if they are so easy?

Because you would be missing out on the two big reasons for using CSS for page layout:

1. CSS based pages are much easier to update and maintain.
2. CSS based pages are much more likely to work any many devices like iPhones, PDA’s, your printer etc…

I want to comment on the touted advantages of CSS. First, most devices today have powerful browsers that can read just about any type of web page (CSS or not) … so you have to question the 2nd argument. You also hear other arguments about why you should use CSS:

• Your pages will be lighter in KB’s.
• Your pages will be forward compatible.

… Both these arguments have proven to be what I said they were years ago: total crap. So forget them.

So if HTML tables should not be used and CSS is crappy for page layout, what is a nerd to do? As always, I try to come to you with real solutions. Check it out …

The Big Two CSS strategies:

1. Use templates
2. Use IE conditional comments

Comments:

Since nerds have already gone through the trouble of figuring out the nuances of CSS, you don’t need to reinvent the wheel! Use a template and just build out from there.

If any issues should pop up where Internet Explorer is not working handling/displaying the CSS like FireFox, then just use IE Conditional Comments to solve the problem.

Thanks for reading,

Stefan Mischook (a.k.a.: The web design heretic)

www.killersites.com