Archive

Estimating the time it takes to build a website

One question that is put to me from time to time is:

“… how can you budget the amount of time it will take to build a website?”

killersites.com-web-design

This can be a tricky thing because there are so many factors involved:

  • How fast do you work?
  • Is your client going to be really picky and ask for many revisions?
  • Are you likely to come across time consuming bugs?

Ultimately, you will have to learn how fast it takes YOU … to build a website.

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Use Dreamweaver CS3 templates to save time

Hi,

When I was working on the redesign of the killersites.com, I found (as a starting point) that the templates that ship with Dreamweaver CS3 useful.

Dreamweaver CS3 starter templates

Dreamweaver has a nice collection of bare-bones web templates. One thing I found cool about these templates, is that they contain a lot of notes that describe why they (the web-nerds at Adobe) have certain things in place - like the specific code they used to deal with a given CSS layout issue.

… This is another good way to learn more about CSS.

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Why Flash CS3 makes Flash important again - and this time, it’s for real!

Up until Flash CS3, I think Flash had been slowly drifting into becoming a niche market technology. But now, Flash CS3 (and the Flash player 9) puts Flash back into the game as an important player.

… This means that it now makes more sense for web developers to learn Flash technology. I go over some of the details below.

Continue reading ‘Why Flash CS3 makes Flash important again - and this time, it’s for real!’

How to organize your css code: the ‘killer’ css structure

I can’t stand articles that make you read two pages before getting to the point. With that in mind, let’s look at how I think css code should be organized.

php-video-tutorial

In a nutshell: css code should be divided up into at least 4 separate pages:

  1. page-structure.css
  2. text-styles.css
  3. misc.css
  4. ie-styles.css

How about we call this the ‘killer’ css structure.

:)

Before I go into the details of what each css file contains (if it’s not already obvious), I want to quickly cover WHY you might want to use this basic css structure for all your websites.

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Killersites.com get a facelift.

Hi,

I’ve been a busy little bee lately.

This past week, I finally got around to re-skinning killersites.com. Yes, after about 5 years of using the same basic layout, I finally decided that an update was needed.

I think when someone said:

“… killersites.com kinda looks … 2000 ish.”

… I was pushed over the edge and began the design work. You can see the new layout on the home page now:

www.killersites.com

Later on, I will be rolling this out throughout the rest of the web site and on other sites as well:

- killerphp.com
- how-to-build-websites.com

etc …

To build this new look I spent about 50 hrs and about 15 public revisions. As I went along I released early drafts of the new look for people to comment on in the forums. You can read the thread and see the progress of the redesign here:

killersites redesign discussion

Now that I’ve got this in place, I can go back to creating new videos.

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com