I am not here concerned with the more complex colour effects you can get by creating a background image with the effects you want—gradients, radial bursts, stripes, and so on. I just want to make a small point about the use of colour names.

I have 2 recommendations to make, and I make them to the most talented and experienced of my fellow Web designers, because they don’t always follow them.

1. Use the colour names of the 16 originally defined colours: red, green, blue, etc.. It doesn’t take long to learn them. Especially, use black and white. There is absolutely no excuse for writing
   background-color: #000;
color: #fff.
2. Add a comment to any colours that you can only identify using hex (or RGB) values. After
   color: #cf2200,
   add the comment
   /* a red, from garden flower */,
   or at least
   /* a red */

Anyone who has been a programmer as well as a designer knows the value of comments. In particular, they make it easy for other people to identify your colours and your reasons for choosing them, while reading your code. And they make it easier for you, when you come back to the code a few months later.

I should mention here that modern browsers know a huge array of colour names, but I am not suggesting we need to use them, except when by chance a name identifies a shade/hue that we have already chosen. It’s better to get into the habit of adding comments.

Actually, while we’re on the topic of CSS colours, I feel like passing on a practice of my own which is not so generally useful as to count as a recommendation, but which I find really useful as a designer. And here I mean designer, not coder.

I put all my colour rules—for backgrounds and borders as well as text and links— in a separate section at the end of my style sheets. This is a bit of an irritation when coding, since I have to create the other rules for a given element in another section of the style sheet. But it really pays dividends when I want to make small changes to site-wide colour schemes. The relevant values are all together, and can be changed together—sometimes in a single rule.

Why not see if it works for you?

A rule, in my terms, is a bit of advice that you should always follow—unless, in the particular case, you know better. A rule should never be broken unknowingly. It is worth knowing, and worth remembering. So here is the ninth rule.

9. Put elements in expected places,

There are places where people expect to find particular Web page elements, like the website logo, website navigation, website search. If you want your visitors to find these elements quickly, put them in the obvious places. Put the logo at the top left of the page, before anything else. Put the primary navigation at the bottom of the page header, under the logo. Put the search box on the right hand side of the Web page, at or near the top.

Well, that’s definite enough, I should imagine. And of course a particular Web design can call for quite different positioning. I quite often break this rule myself. But only in the spirit I have defined. In the case of each particular Web site or Web page. I consider the default places, and only choose another when I am quite sure it will be better.

Unfortunately, I can’t show you either—unless you are an AFPO Calpe member, in which case you can head over to the site and log in! I suppose that means a few more people will see those pages than see my lovely designs for the Jalón Villa Rentals management interface, which only the owner and I ever see. (Actually, I could add the index page to my page designs—so you can see if it’s as lovely as I claim. I’ll put that on my to-do list.)

What anyone can see are the public pages. They are quite text-heavy, so I compensated by setting text in plenty of whitespace—actually buff—and creating what I hope is an imposing header.

This header is in part based on the AFPO magazine cover: it was from there that I got the blue and the yellow, and the overlapping titles. At the end is an image of the Peñon, with a cloud halo. I love the photo, which featured on the previous AFPO site, and still appears on their stationery. I’m not so sure about the heavy gilt lettering—but the President told me he didn’t have a copy of the photo without the lettering, and I’ve now got quite used to it.

Because of the big header, I gave the Web site a left-column menu.

I explain the background to this commission, and the thinking behind particular design decisions, in my notes on my website portfolio page. And you can of course visit the AFPO Web site itself!

Actually, I have mentioned this site before, when it was just a one-page Web site. It’s a property site, but for a single property. Liz, the owner, is keen to sell her villa fast. She has called on the services of a few estate agents, but also wants to see if she can manage a private sale.

She had dozens of photos I could use, and I took another fifty or so myself.

For colours I very quickly hit on black, to offset the photos. I also used some pastel colours to highlight and distinguish information for 2 different kinds of buyer—those looking for a villa for themselves, and those looking to rent. For the final effect, you can have a look for yourself.

Of course, if you look at my portfolio, you will see I have pinched one effect that I used before: an orange gradient that remains fixed in the viewport. (But it is is a different shade of orange!)

And it does make a good story, with lots of false starts and lessons learned—as well as obstacles overcome. And there is stuff here to interest anyone who has contemplated moving or reconstructing a Web site. What is more, if anyone is in the same predicament, looking at a Web site based on a proprietary CMS, I have a lot to pass on.

But now I am in another predicament. I am too busy to go into the detail. To give you an idea: I have been building a new Web site for a local organisation which already has a Web site. We agreed a date in mid-March for the switch. But the organisation’s old Web site has vanished from the Web! They are now asking me if they can switch this week.

So: here is a summary of what I did to reconstruct the proprietary CMS site.

1. I created a MySQL database, together with 4 tables
2. I populated the tables partly with data that the previous designer kindly handed on to me, in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, but mostly with data that I copied and pasted from the site.
3. I created the main ‘site’ pages as static pages, simply copying the HTML that the previous dynamic system generated.
4. I created the ‘browsing pages’ with a set of HTML templates and PHP scripts.
5. I downloaded, one by one, by hand, around 800 images, including property images and icons, and put them in appropriate directories.
6. I created a PHP script that displayed any of the 70 or so properties, taking descriptions and prices from the database, and images from directories.
7. I created a wealth of interactive features: a search facility, a registration form, popup enquiry and print forms, a ‘lightshow’ image gallery, an availability calendar (for each property), and various booking forms.

At last a Web site was there, which looked very like the old one. At this point I turned to creating a new client interface, so that my client had a new personalised CMS.

As you may guess, this turned out taking as long as reconstructing the Web site visible to the public. But I was able to give my client a much more friendly and intuitive interface, with many more facilities than she had had before. (Oh, and as part of the process, I had to recreate the database tables, to make her job easier…)

I would point you to the result, but the public part of the site is only my reconstruction of the original designs, and still contains the mangled CSS and HTML generated by the old CMS.

And nobody but me and my client can see my lovely new client interface. Sad.

There is a general summary of the position on an Australian Web site. This is (part of) what they say about CMS sites:

“Content Management Systems – a mixed blessing
An alternative to a personal web designer is a CMS or Content Management System. The main benefit of a CMS is the ability to update your site yourself – within certain parameters – over the internet, and rolling all your costs into one monthly payment. But you need to go into a CMS contract with your eyes open.
1. CMS do not provide distinctive sites. They are, almost by definition, formulaic. Look at some and see what you think.
2. You don’t own your CMS site in the same way that you own a site designed by a web designer. With CMS you own the content but you cannot walk away from your CMS contract with your site intact – your site can only operate on the CMS operator’s platform.
3. With a CMS website you are locked in – you cannot change to a hosting company that provides more competitive rates or better features without losing your website.”

Point 3 in effect repeats what the English company say about their own sites.

So what was I to do when I was asked to ‘move’ exactly such a Web site, by a potential client to whom I had been recommended—by people I would prefer not to let down?

Of course I said ‘yes’. I committed myself to recreating the site, i.e., constructing a completely new site that would look just like the client’s current site, with a completely new database, a new set of scripts (PHP rather than the current ASP), all the existing images (several hundred of them) and a client interface that let her do everything she had done with the old CMS.

How did I get on in this foolhardy enterprise? Answer in Part 2.

Belated, because I have been so busy that I have neglected this blog. However, I now have a couple of posts on hand which I should complete in the next week: one on moving a Web site based on a proprietary CMS (that’s been my most time-consuming job) and one inviting comments on (another) new Web site.

Watch this space!

I have a couple of Web sites in this position right now. One is for two karaoke presenters: brookies karaoke. The other is for a friend who wants to sell her unique spacious villa in Calpe. I am doing plenty of work behind the scenes, which the website owners can check out, but neither of the full Web sites are ready yet to go public.

Obviously, you can’t go anywhere further on the site from the home page of a one-page Web site—but at least you can find contact details. What is more, from a website designer’s/owner’s point of view, the minimal Web site is available to be noticed. (And, to my astonishment, Web search engines often find one-page Web sites quite fast.)

1. The Web site has got to be found.
2. The Web site has got to be attractive.
3. The Web site has got to deliver.

OK. You look at these wishes, and you think, “How obvious! This is just common sense.”

So how come so many Web sites fail on at least one count—and some on all three? Let’s look at what may not be so obvious.

In the first place, the Web site has got to be found by the people you want to find it. That means designing the whole Web site for those specific people, and calling on SEO and marketing skills to catch their own specific keywords—every time you add text.

In the second place, the Web site has got to be attractive to the same specific people—not to the website owner, not to the website designer, but to the website visitor. You have to deploy the colours and the layout and the design which will engage the visitors you want, and make them want to explore your Web site. If we were all attracted in the same way, we would all be pining for Marilyn Monroe. Personally, I was always more attracted to Jane Russell. (You get the point.)

Finally, the Web site has got to give the people that you want to visit exactly what they are looking for. They came to your Web site because they were looking for something. You can bet every cent you have that they weren’t looking for an advertisement. Advertisements are what people fast forward through when they record TV programmes. So why would they be looking for one on the Web? Just give them what they want—no less, and (this is really important) no more.

So there you have it, and now you know what I mean. Your Web site has got to be found. Your Web site has got to be attractive. Your Web site has got to deliver.

Is Web hosting an area where it is right to assume that money and quality of service are connected? Let’s look at the facts.

There is no real mystery about Web hosting. You rent space on a computer which is permanently connected to the Internet. You also get a bandwidth (traffic) allowance. In general, the bigger the space you rent, and the more visitors to your Web site you get, the more you would expect to pay. Just as if you were renting space in an office building.

This is the case with my Web hosting plans on Web Costa Blanca. And my prices are very low, even for the biggest allocations of space and traffic. So what else are people paying for?

Two things: (1) a range of extras; (2) service.

1. I offer an extensive range of extras (personal control panel, email accounts, programming languages, site builders, databases, etc., etc.) This blog is not the place to trumpet them all, but anyone who cares can find them in the Web hosting plans section of Web Costa Blanca. I have looked at dozens of other Web hosting sites, and never seen a range of options to beat them.
2. I offer a one-to-one personal service to all my clients, who can reach me by email or telephone whenever they hit a problem or want to ask a question.

Why do I charge so little, then? It’s probably something to do with prejudices left over from my radical youth. I’m happy to charge for my labour—website design, website development, website maintenance. However, even when my clients have access to so many tools and extras, I’m not happy to make a profit on renting space.

And as for the service, how else do you get job satisfaction?