freelance web designer &
wordpress themes developer
rss

Blog

Characteristics of a good web developer

21 November 2012

Actually, everyone could be a web developer. And it’s a very true statement. It’s not such a difficult job to build a website (and especially if there’s no need to pay for the tools). What is difficult is to be a good web developer. A good web developer has to meet the following criteria:

  • He should know that it’s absolutely possible to work without specifications. As a matter of fact, he has to be ready to cope with large volumes of projects, in which there’s just no time to create such documents.
  • He also should know that the most important thing in his job is to build a well-functioning project and use the simplest and the cheapest possible technologies, as fast as it can be done. Why the easiest technologies? Because time is what’s important. Why is important? Because there’s a big number of other firms that could do similar job much faster than you and thus, they can easily abduct your potential clientele.
  • He has to be aware of the latest trends, love Internet and be interested in it. That’s a very important prerequisite of web developer’s success. He simply has to love Internet and be interested in all the stuff related with it. Good web developers have accounts on various social media sites so that they can keep up with the latest trends and Internet technologies.
  • You won’t be a good developer if you don’t like to learn new things, read tutorial and documentation. From time to time new releases of popular tools, programming languages and technologies should be studied and tested by good web developers.
  • A good developer is supposed to be on good terms with SEO. SEO is a very important part in web development. Therefore, a good web developer should be able to build a good website for the search engines.
  • Good developers know how important image optimization is. If the site takes ages to load, it’s probably not a good website.
  • A good web developer should know the differences between the major web browsers; and here I’m talking not about cross-browser compatibility (that’s the job of a web designer) but about those differences that make one functionalities possible on the website and others not.
  • A web developer is expected to know at least one programming language. PHP is a must thing. Why? Because there is a big number of websites built in PHP, because WordPress is created in PHP, because it’s easy to find hosting for PHP, etc. The more programming languages you know, the more opportunities you’ve got. You can actually choose what language would ideally meet your new project requirements.

How to check if your developer has done a good job?

08 October 2012

Imagine if you were in a situation where you had to evaluate the job of a web developer and check whether the design has been created in a professional manner or not, how would you do that? What would be the actual way to give an adequate assessment?

If you were in the situation that you needed to find a good web developer, the thing to do would be to look through their portfolio and see how good the previous work projects were. If a web developer has just finished a project for you, you should check out the site itself. So the only question is, how to do it?

First things first, you need to validate the code. That’s a duty of a web developer to be able to write a proper HTML or CSS code. The W3C Validator service could be of great help when validation of HTML code is needed. If the service finds two or three mistakes, you shouldn’t panic and think that a web developer hasn’t done his work properly. Send your web developer an email with your inquiries. However, if the service spots more than dozen mistakes, it certainly shows unprofessionalism of a developer.

The next thing to do would be to check out the compatibility of your website with the major web browsers. There’s absolutely no need to check the site in a browser that’s not popular and hardly used by anybody. However, there is a number of web browsers that is commonly used these days. You can always check up the statistics to see which browsers are currently popular.

If the website performs well, it won’t be problematic to adapt your website to new technologies or various platforms. Such website will be interpreted by search engine spiders better and thus, the site would be ranked higher in the search engines. In this way you will get more traffic.

Website planning: what do you know about it?

27 September 2012

If you want to create a successful web project, you need to thoroughly plan it first. It doesn’t matter how big the task is, a professional approach should be applied to every task before the actual work begins. And this is especially true about website development. Both, a client and a web developer should be thinking of an effective strategy for the site to perfectly fit the entire business concept.

A lot of questions should be asked before starting a project. Here’s a list of questions to consider:

  • What are the objectives of the website? What needs to be achieved?
  • What is the targeted group of customers: their age, interests, geographical location, ethnicity, etc.
  • What emotions and feelings do you expect your website design to evoke?
  • How are you going to express the vision of the business? What tools will you apply?

Of course, that’s not the whole list of questions you should ask. That’s just the beginning. The whole planning process involves so much more and a lot of fun just as well. You may find it very enjoyable when you get to think of all the ways to present your brand on the web. In general, there are basically two perspectives to keep in mind and they are:

  • what your brand is;
  • how the customers will experience it.

The important part of web development process is to keep the original goals of the website in mind. Often times, websites are built just around the client’s goals and little consideration about users’ needs. Generally, such websites fail to create a positive impression and retain customers.

You can fill your website with the content full of professional industry jargon to build trust in the website user, but overdoing it can leave your customers somewhat confused. It won’t be surprising if they’d prefer a site of your competitors who managed to present their information in in a clearer manner. Always think of the end users and their needs. When they come to a certain website, they’re searching for some answers. Thus, don’t over-complicate the things for your customers.

Equip your website with a powerful cms!

08 August 2012

A lot of business owners perceive the whole process of managing a website as a challenging task. If you had a previous experience of working with Microsoft Frontpage or HTML coding, then it’s understandable why you’ve got such impression. The emergence of WordPress has alleviated the plight of business owners. It’s a user-friendly, open-source content management system that makes the updating process clear and easy. Now you don’t need to hire a web developer to edit the content of the website for you. These days are long over.

Why WordPress cms?

The ease of use is definitely the first advantage of WordPress content management system. Another prominent asset of WordPress is its flexibility and capacity for various adjustments. Besides, WordPress cms has got an advantage of being an open source platform that is always improved by communities of web developers. You can create your WordPress business website at no cost, except for hosting, of course. WordPress is one of the most popular open source content management systems, therefore if you would need any of the paid service such as WordPress maintenance or support, it won’t be problematic to find a web developer to hire.

WordPress is not the only powerful content management system known in the modern society. Drupal and Joomla are another widely used platforms, however, WordPress has got an indisputable advantage over them – simplicity. If you are an inexperienced user, WordPress content management system is an ideal solution for you. It’s so easy to set up and maintain that even novice users can master it within a short period of time.

Originally WordPress was created as a blogging platform, but with time passing by it’s gained big popularity and grew into much more functional and scalable project. Today’s WordPress can support multi-user installations. If you need to create just a few web pages without any posts for your small business website, WordPress cms will meet your requirements as well.

Essential tools to create a great website

14 July 2012

The best thing to do every morning is to check the revenues I’ve made over the night. Like fishermen check their traps, I check the Internet to see how much money I’ve earned when sleeping at night. Would you not want to have something like that that could accumulate money for you whilst you’re away? Besides, you can always make your wages round-the-clock from different corners of the world. It’s easy to monitor the resources from where the money comes from and keep on improving web pages to achieve even better results. Does it not sound good enough for you?

Ok, let me explain how I make money from the web so that you don’t get confused. There’s nothing to do with Multi-Level Marketing (although there’s nothing bad in making money through this way) or online forex trading. You don’t have to be involved in any sort of piramides to make money without having a proper job. However, I need to say it’s not such an easy task. Many of those who try to build an online money-making machine fail to succeed. Many of them fail to get successful even after several tries. In all honesty, it does require a certain level of smartness to get prosperous online but the final result would certainly exceed all expectations. It’s all possible and realistic!

Nowadays, it’s absolutely no problem to get started and hosted on the web. Everything you need to is to create an account with the Blogger, PBase, Tripod, etc. and within short terms you already own your own website. But if your intentions are more serious and you’d like to have regular and long-term earnings, you should be thinking of having something that is 100% your own.

With an own website you will definitely feel a big release. The freedom in your hands will be phenomenal. So, now we’ve come to the centreline of the blog – what are those tools exactly which help create a great website? Actually I could them on my fingers of one hand. Basically, there are only 5 elements which are important to build a great website. Of course, you can hire a web developer to do this job for you, but I wouldn’t recommend you to do so. You should become a captain on the board of your ship. The great news is, you don’t need to know much about programming. Everything you really need are the 5 essential tools which I’m going to tell you about.

The first tool would be a HTML editor. It’s a software application for creating web pages. Hypertext Markup Language is a full name of the programming language that we’re talking about. It shouldn’t really scare you. You can basically create your site in the Notepad and save your files in .htm or .html format, but it won’t be convenient to build a website in that way. Microsoft Frontpage and Adobe Dreamweaver are the preferable applications to write web pages.

The second important tool required to create a website is understanding of HTML codes. These codes are like instructions which you tell the Internet how you want to format the pages.

Domain name should be among the first things considered when you’re about to start a website. When thinking about your domain name, check out if it’s a unique one. There are many websites which you could visit in order to pick the relevant and available domain name. Quite often people use their own names as domain names, but in all honesty, if you’re not a celebrity, it would be more sensible to use a more appropriate name.

Web hosting is the fourth important tool. What does it mean? It means that you rent a space on a server to be able run your personal website on the web.

And the last essential tool you need is an FTP software. It’s an application that makes it possible to transfer various data from your computer to the website. It also makes it possible to download the stuff from other websites.

2 pages