River Designs is BORN!

Friday, June 9th, 2006

It’s online! On the 07/06/2006 at 7am, River Designs – http://www.riverdesigns.com.au has finally gone live! I put alot of hard work into the design and layout of the web site and I feel like it’s finally paid off! On the first day of launching my web site, I received three emails for a web site design quote and on the second day, I received another request. I’ve already started contacting clients and now moving onto the secondary phase. Marketing! Looking back, I think of all of that hard work in the mornings and evenings I put into building my web site and see it grow into something thats great is a truely rewarding experience.

But wait… River Designs is just warming up….

1 day left

Tuesday, June 6th, 2006

Yep. 1 day left. Tonight after my seminar, i will be optmising the graphics on the web site, i aim to make River Designs load fast on a normal dialup modem. Most of my previous designs, I used slightly more graphics which contributed to slower load up times.

Things i’ve learnt today
1. One purpose, one design, one simple function… is what makes a good product. Don’t complicate your product with unnessary stuff.

99% complete!

Monday, June 5th, 2006

It’s nearly finished! Today, i spent the whole entire day going through the final web site design. I created two contact pages, updated the left and right containers, paragraphing, test multiple monitor resolutions on IE and Firefox and linked portfolio images to their orginal file. The wierd thing was that everything was 99% complete! So I had to go through each and every item and finalise! Yet, i still feel as if it’s not finished yet. I guess it’s the feeling when you’re about to launch a project you’ve been working hard on and you get the feeling that you’re missing something. Anyhow, tommorrow, I will go through and do the final step. Optimise graphics. I will not launch the web site till its the morning of the 7 June 2006. Tomorrow night, I have another business seminar, should be good. I will be able to get some more ideas and apply them to River Designs after my web site launch.

Things i’ve learnt today.
1. CSS is very frustrating.
2. Even though table designs is “old”, they are faster to develop and works with ALL browsers.
3. When deleting CSS rows, make sure you comment them out so you can revert to old code. (very useful).
4. Do regular backups with versions. I had to revert to an older version of the web site to get the CSS overlapping problem fixed.
5. The last few days before the web site launch, there seems to be so many little things that need fixing.
6. Make sure when you finish something, make sure you actually FINISH it.
7. As you’re progressing through the project, the little things that take a few minutes to finish usually gets delayed to the last few days of the project. Which adds to a whole bunch of little things to do!
8. Not writing or practicing writing content tends to reduce “content flare”. I’ve just noticed this as I write content right now!

The biggest setback i’ve had today was getting the overlapping problem fixed. I went through the code line by line and it turns out, the code that displays only the background image was the problem! I still do not understand why this happened but it appears to have fixed it! Strange stuff!

2 days to go!

Sunday, June 4th, 2006

The clock is ticking! I have now got two days left to complete my web site. Yesterday, I did a slight redesign to the web site so it’s more friendly looking. If you checked out the previous screenshot of the prototype banner, you will notice it’s pretty dark looking. I changed the banner so it doesn’t look too dark and it looks more friendly I also included a more better navigation panel for the menus so it’s more accessable. So far, I love the look of the new web site and much more happier with it’s look and feel. I have finished with writing the content for the web site (finally) and now doing some code optimisations and fixes. If you recall in one of the previous posts, I fixed the problem with the resizing of containers that overlap each other. Well, now it’s BACK. However, IE works fine but now Firefox doesn’t look so hunky doory. I am unsure whether I can fix this problem, hopefully with a few CSS adjustments, it will do the trick without breaking anything else. I may have to revert to the older version of my web site because they work fine.

Clients. I have already made contact with a new client! I have made an appointment starting in the first week of July. My next project once I launch the River Designs web site is to do another set of business cards and marketing materials. By then, I should have some more paperwork ready and prepared for the meeting.

Anyways, better get back to work. These past few days, the flu has struck my nasal passages and now my designs are looking abit SICK! hehe

Business Seminars

Tuesday, May 30th, 2006

Last night, I went to a business development seminar. It was great! I got to understand more about business structures, legal requirements, accountants, lawyers and other stuff that is very complicated. The man who did the talk was really direct and honest in his approach. He got me thinking about the success of River Designs, however, I know that it’s another obstacle i have to overcome and raise above to achieve success. No matter what you do, you will always get doubts to whether something will succeed or not. There was alot of great ideas I can apply to River Designs and as soon as I launch River Designs web site (7th of June 2006), I will start on a project which will be added to my web site…. so stay tuned for that one

I will be going to two more business seminars in the upcomming days. I’m contemplating whether I should go to the “how to get your business online” just in case I don’t miss out on any new trends I should be aware about.

Anyways, back to work!

8 Days to Go!

Tuesday, May 30th, 2006

Things are running well! For the past few days, i’ve been writing lots of good content for my web site. I realise that writing good content is actually … hard! Writing content that captures the audience and gets them interested is … without a doubt … an art form. Hey, i’m not artist my self but i’ve read lots of good content out there lately and the way people write things and get people hooked on their content is the work of a pure genius! Hopefully I will be able to bring my writing skills up to their standard one day!

I’ve completed the first round of draft content for River Designs. At the moment, i’m doing some final editing and making sure everything is not too technical for my target audience.

Things i’ve learnt:
1. Just write, even if it’s bad, just write and you can come back to it later.
2. Don’t write to try and impress anyone.
3. Edit, edit…. EDIT!
4. Use words that people understand! No technical mumbo jumbo.
5. Writing at 5:00am in the morning… is strange.
6. Gain practice in writing in blogs
7. It’s all good!

River Designs.com.au is now registered!

Wednesday, May 24th, 2006

It’s official! www.riverdesigns.com.au is now registered and ready for deployment. After a few phone calls with the service provider, I was able to get riverdesigns.com.au registered and online today! I just finished creating a few mailboxes and usual admin stuff, now all there is left to do finish my website design!

It’s all coming into place….

CSS design phase is complete!

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006

It’s done! I got home last night and managed to fix the incompatiblity issues between Firefox and IE. Even though I’ve used IE for many years, i’ve started to like Firefox because of it’s usability, customization and difference. However, 80% of Internet users do use IE so I have to make sure IE users can see River Designs. So at last, I can move from CSS style sheets and begin copy writing the web site.

I have now set up the pages, links and structure of the web site, all there is now is to write good content. After all, content is KING. I have about 7 days to complete this task before I move onto optimising my web site graphics.

Things I’ve learnt during this exercise:
- “em” seems to be the only standard between Firefox and IE. Use it as much as you can.
- /* */ is good to comment out style sheets.
- is good to comment out HTML.
- As are designing, make sure you test the web site at the START and DURING the CSS design phase.
- CSS is good but bit worried about the future of maintainability. If future web browsers are to be released, do I have to continally update my web site with work arounds or hacks?

The clock is ticking!

A sneak peek of River Designs

Monday, May 22nd, 2006This is my prototype design of the River Designs web site. As you can see, it’s only the logo bit and only part of the complete picture. Once River Designs goes live on the 7th of June, you’ll understand the reason for the green & yellow bit on the bottom of the image and how everything falls into place. Stay tuned!

Web designers were right, there needs to be a standard

Monday, May 22nd, 2006

It works! I got home yesterday all excited and willing to try out my theory of adding the “min-width” to the whole container and it worked! Its funny how you work on a problem thinking that you’ll probably have to have this and that but all it takes is just one line of code. So thats that!

I spent the remainder of my time adding a rollover effect to my portfolio images. In the past, I’ve always used Javascript to switch images, but this time, I want a border around the image. I spent alot of time playing around with hovers and div tags and managed to get it working. One thing I learnt from this exercise, you need to have the right ordering of CSS tags.

This morning, I decided to finally test my website on IE….. NOT HAPPY JAN! Probably not a good move on my part for I should really test final CSS design during the design phase not after. All of the layers and areas on my web site is jumbled up! It looks extremly sexy on Firefox but looks dodgy on IE. I hear there are some workarounds or hacks that can be applied, so I will take a look at it very soon and work on it tonight. Should be good.