J Taylor Design | Blog

You Get What You Pay For

2010-07-26T06:47:41Z

Websites are no exception for the saying, ‘You Get What You Pay For.’ There are many ways of designing and developing websites. However, there are certain standards that come into play when designing and developing for the web, and anything outside of those standards are, unfortunately, a waste of money.

Toward the beginning of the year, we quoted a project for a prospective client who was interested in keeping the budget to a minimum while still offering a fair amount of features. After discussing the site as a whole we provided an estimate to handle the project, keeping in mind the budget that the client wished to stay within.

After providing the proposal, the prospective client informed us that they had a friend who was just starting in web design and that they were going to do the project for a fraction of the cost. We wished them the best and told them to not hesitate to contact us if they needed anything else or if they run into any issues.

It’s been 5 months now since we had last chatted with them and their site is finally up and running. At first glance, it’s an ok site, nothing special but it doesn’t offer those features we had discussed with them. However, the big issues come into play when looking at the code and the usability of the site. It’s a really small site, but it’s surprisingly hard to navigate and find what you’re looking for. Also, looking deeper into the code, there is nothing setup to help them with search engines. The site, unfortunately, completely lacks proper development. So essentially they still spent a fair amount of money for a website that is doing absolutely nothing for them, and that is a real shame as they are a really nice business and offer a quality service.

The moral of the story is to understand what you’re looking for when hiring a web design company. Your business needs a design company who will learn about your business, build a website around your business, design it with your clients in mind, and develop it properly. Otherwise, you’re sadly wasting your advertising dollars.

Check Your Spelling

2010-07-21T18:37:13Z

Being a designer, it’s hard for me to look at billboards, advertisements, and almost everything of a design nature without creating some sort of opinion. Now the opinions can be good or bad, depending on the execution of what I’m looking at. I find it hard to flip through a magazine with tons of poorly designed ads and ignore the fact that the ads are poorly designed. ‘Design’ is so engrained in my life, that I look at everything with design in mind. It’s almost like imagining your life without your cell phone or car. Once you have the tools, they begin to make an impact on your life.

I was driving down the highway one day and a charter bus drove past me. I noticed it as it was covered in bright blues and greens and had tons and tons of text all over it. One of the first things that caught my attention was how it was kind of hard to read the message that they’re trying to convey. So while trying to read the back of the bus, I noticed something that stuck out over the design. The line right below ‘Trans-Bridge Eco-Friendly Transport’ starts with the following: This coach features recylced seat materials… I know that it’s very hard to read the photo, but since you know what you’re looking for now, you may be able to pick out the letters and see that recycled is spelled wrong.

Websites can be a little more forgiving as you can usually find an issue and fix it. However, when it comes to print, it’s an expensive error, especially when reprinting is a necessity. It is extremely important to always check, double check, and have a co-worker/friend check over your website, brochure, etc. to help make sure that there are no errors. Unfortunately, Trans-Bridge is going to have some of their buses driving around for a while displaying their mistake.

Building WordPress Outside of the Root Folder

2010-07-16T14:51:36Z

We use WordPress as a Content Management System constantly here at J Taylor Design. There are many perks to using WordPress that can help to make your site search engine friendly, as well as really easy to update and maintain. In most cases, if we’re moving the hosting of a client, we just build the new WordPress site in the root folder of the new host, then push the site live when we’re all finish. That’s really nice as we don’t have to worry about there being issues with transferring the site and making sure everything is hooked up properly, as it should be ready to roll out of the gate because we built it right on the platform.

However, sometimes we need to build the sites in a development folder as we’re not moving the host, or we’re redesigning an existing clients site on our hosting platform. In those circumstances we setup a development folder within the root folder and build from there. For example, http://www.yoursite.com/2010 or http://www.yoursite.com/develop

There, we can setup WordPress which will recognize the folder in which it’s installed as the main URL for this site. So if I setup WordPress at http://www.yoursite.com/develop, then WordPress uses that address as the main site address. So now we can work and do everything we need to do in the background while the existing site is up and running, and no one visiting the site knows the difference. When we’re all finished and we’re ready to transition between the new site and the old site, this is where the semi complicated steps come into play. It’s not so much complicated, as it is attention to detail. We apologize for this being such a text-heavy post, but there’s not too much we could do with imagery to explain the process, so if you’re finding yourself confused, let us know if the comments or contact us from our ‘Say Hi’ page.

Build Out the Site in the /develop folder

This step is easy as you just do your work as usual. Setup WordPress in a /develop folder and get it finalized and ready to go live.

Getting into phpMyAdmin

Next, we need to log into phpMyAdmin to export out the WordPress database that we’ve just been developing. We do this by making sure we select the database in phpMyAdmin, going to Export, making sure SQL is selected from the Export settings, choosing Save as File and hitting the Go button. From there, phpMyAdmin will export us out an SQL file of the entire WordPress website.

From there we want to open up that SQL file in our favorite code editor, ours being Coda and search for the WordPress URL that we have as our main URL. In this example it’s yoursite.com/develop You can search with the http://www. but just in case you have anything in the code without the http:// or the www. we want to make sure that you replace everything where the .com/develop is located. Once you do that you can save your SQL file with the changes and your ready to import the database back into phpMyAdmin.

Our preference is that we develop using a database called ‘develop’ and then import our newly updated database into a brand new database. The reason being, is that just in case something goes wrong, we can crosscheck our new database, with the development database that we know works because it’s been tested within the /develop folder.

So to do that, you need to setup a new database, then go back into phpMyAdmin, select that new database and go to Import. From the import panel, you want to choose your updated SQL file that we’ve updated and hit Go and let it upload.

Out with the Old

The next step is removing the old site and replacing it with WordPress. Now here you can either move the files on the server from the /develop folder into the root folder, or copy the files to keep the /develop folder intact… Again, leaving the original folder intact allows you to crosscheck your files incase something goes wrong in the root folder. Also, before completely deleting the original website, you may want to back it up somewhere on your computer first, again, incase something goes wrong. Also, we typically create a new folder in the root folder and drop all of the original website files into it before moving WordPress into the root folder.

If you are copying over the entire WordPress install, the most important part is to bring the wp-content folder as that is the folder which stores your theme, plugins, and image uploads.

So once you move out the old files and bring in WordPress, you’re almost finished. The last thing that you have to do before making sure everything is hooked up properly is open up your wp-config.php file in the root folder, and change the database name from development database to your new database. From there, you’re ready to check out the site and make sure everything is running properly.

Some Troubleshooting Tips

It may be best to put up a temporary index.html file to keep the site hidden as your making the transition. However, please note that some servers don’t view HTML files over PHP files and you may have to add ‘DirectoryIndex index.html’ into your .htaccess file to tell the hosting that it should recognize an index.html file over other files
We’ve run into the permalinks not working sometimes when moving the site due to the .htaccess file moving. If that happens, you can re-save the permalinks in WordPress. You may have to delete the .htaccess file and let WordPress remake it for you.
When using certain plugins (ie: some SEO plugins) that you don’t necessarily need to be installed in the development site, wait to install them until you’re working in the root folder. This tip doesn’t apply for the SEO plugins that adjust the title and meta information as that will carry over in the SQL database.
With a lot of CMS systems running on PHP and MySql, similar steps may apply as well.

Have We Missed Anything?

If we’ve overlooked a step or if you have any additional tips to help people out, let us know in the comments.

Transferring Songs from Your iPhone

2010-07-07T17:05:39Z

I ran into a small problem a couple days ago. I had purchased an album on my iPhone while I was on the way back from a client meeting. When I got back I wanted to transfer the purchased album to my iTunes on my computer that way I could enjoy the lovely sounds at the office as well. When I plugged my phone into the computer and tried to drag the purchased album to my iTunes, it wouldn’t let me. I wasn’t too surprised as all of the iPhone / iPod devices are setup so that you can’t drag and drop your friends music from their devices onto your computer to try and avoid paying for the music. I tried a couple quick things until I found the solution.

The solution wasn’t too complicated, but I don’t feel that it was obvious enough. My initial thoughts were that there would be a ‘transfer purchased’ button somewhere when you’re looking at the Music or Default panels. Unfortunately I didn’t see one (maybe there was one and I missed it, if so feel free to comment below). Anyway, the solution that I had found came from right clicking on my device name and then finding a ‘Transfer Purchases’ option there. Once I did that, everything moved smoothly from my iPhone to my computer and I was ready to enjoy my new album.

Canon T2i Video Test : Knoebel’s

2010-06-04T20:25:45Z

We recently upgraded our digital SLR to the new Canon T2i which shoots full HD video. I cannot express how awesome this camera is. Not that our old Canon Rebel XT was bad or anything… but with the huge back screen, some modified functionality, and then the full HD video on top of that, it’s hard to not be impressed with this camera. Over Memorial Day weekend I took a trip with family to Knobel’s Amusement Park which is in Elysburg, PA. Knobel’s is a really old style amusement park where it almost feels like your stepping back in time. Regardless, I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to take the new video functionality of the camera for a spin. After the break we have what we ended up with after mixing the video together and dropping an audio track on top. Other than that, we didn’t modify the colors or any of the video as we wanted this to be an accurate example as to what this camera can do.

Information:
Song: Efterklang - Modern Drift
Camera: Canon T2i
Lens: Canon EF 50mm
Details: None of the video has been touched up or color corrected.

The Vendor Client Relationship Spoof

2010-05-06T15:18:02Z

A Web Copy Writer friend of ours sent along this video to us early this week. Essentially the video pokes fun at how some clients want all the glitz and glam in the world when it comes to their projects, but they don’t necessarily want to pay for it… This video takes a look at regular world situations like going out to eat, getting your hair cut, buying a DVD, etc. and what would happen in those situations if those conversations were presented. Please note, that not all clients are like this…

3 of Our Favorite New TV Shows

2010-04-23T13:11:39Z

Every now and then it’s good to just sit down and watch some TV to give the brain a rest. This past year we’ve been resting with some really good (in our opinion) TV shows that are in their premiere seasons. So in the spirit of sharing, we wanted to share a couple of our new favorite shows on our blog. Cause hey, maybe you guys like them too… and maybe you hate them. If you do, tell us why!

Parenthood

So the first show we’re gonna quickly touch upon is Parenthood. Parenthood is a story focusing on a large family that has a ton of sub plots through the parents, grandparents, siblings and so forth. It’s filled with good emotion as well as humor. Honestly, I find myself laughing out loud at least a few times every episode, and my wife cries almost every episode. The cast is filled with great actors with the exception of a couple here and there (which we won’t mention). One of the actors that really surprised me in his performance is Dax Shepard. I have never been impressed with his performance in any of the roles he’s played in. However, he is a really like-able character on Parenthood. So if you’re taste for shows includes good drama with some really great humor, checkout Parenthood. Currently they’re showing full episodes online.

Community

The next show we’re gonna touch on is Community. Community is a story following a group of kids at a community college. It features a very like-able cast with some very funny talented actors. I think at this point we’re getting toward the end of the first season and the episodes definitely aren’t as funny as they were toward the beginning of the season… but I’m definitely still hooked and hoping for the best.

Modern Family

Modern Family follows, well, a modern family. I don’t think at this point that I could say anything negative about this show. It’s truly hilarious, but also has it’s soft spots when necessary. Each actor on the show delivers a great performance and they mesh so well together. There is definitely diversity between all of the family members, and it allows for some great moments. You can watch full episodes of Modern Family online.

Creating a Business Page on Facebook

2010-03-19T18:36:35Z

With social networking continuing to grow, more and more businesses are looking to show their stuff on tools like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Utilizing those tools are great because they’re free, and they can help drive traffic to your website to help bring in potential business. A lot of clients and friends ask us how to setup business pages on Facebook. The process is really easy as long as you know what you’re looking for. So we wanted to take the time to put together this really simple tutorial on setting up a business page on Facebook as well as creating the custom URL for your new page!

Getting Started

There are a few things that you may want to have prepared in order to create a Facebook business page and they are as follows:

A personal Facebook account This is required in order to setup a page
At least one photo for the business profile Ideally you may want to have a few photos ready to upload
A starting post announcing your business presence on Facebook

Setting Up Your Business Page

Now that you have all your tools ready you want to log into Facebook with your personal account information. When you’ve logged in you want to go to the following link: www.facebook.com/pages/ and you’ll see something similar to what is shown in the image below. From here you want to click the button that we have highlighted that says ‘Create Page.’

On the next screen simply fill in the basic information by choosing your category and filling in the name of your page. The name of your page is your business name, not what you’d like the Facebook URL to be. After you have setup your new page, follow any of the additional instructions that Facebook throws your way! It’s at this point that you’ll want to get in your photos and a starting post on your wall. After you have that information prepared you’ll want to start suggesting your page to your friends.

Getting a Custom URL for Your Page

Facebook has a rule that you must have at least 25 fans in order to get a custom URL structure for your page. For those of you who don’t know what we mean by custom URL structure, it’s basically a custom link to your Facebook page like http://www.facebook.com/yourbusiness so you can easily direct people there from your website, an email, etc. So once you have at least 25 fans you can go to the following link to setup your custom URL: www.facebook.com/usernames/ and you’ll see something like the image below. Make sure to click the ‘Set a Username for your Pages’ link toward the bottom of the screen as highlighted in the below image.

Next you’ll want to choose your newly added page from the drop down list as shown in the image below. From there you’ll want to type in the custom URL that you’d like to have for your page and click the blue Check Availability button. Follow the instructions and you’re all set! From here you’ll want to remember your custom URL and link to your new Facebook page from your website, your email blasts, etc.

Facebook Page Tips

Even though Facebook is free to use, it does take time to update. We recommend that you set aside some time to handle updates. A good idea would be to set aside time to update all of your online marketing, for example your blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. If you let your sites get out of date, it doesn’t look good. We’re not the best at it either. Work gets in the way, but if you plan for it, they’ll always be updated.
Try and get your fans to interact with your Facebook page. This may or may not work depending on what your business is. For example, if you sell clothing you can request that your fans submit pictures to your page. Think of creative ways to get your fans involved. That way your fans will build your page for you.
Create a contest with a prize for the winner and run contests regularly. You want to keep whatever momentum you get on your page running smoothly.
When you add a new blog to your site, link to it from your Facebook page. That way you’ll get more readers to your site.
Try and keep your Facebook page fun. Facebook was originally created for a personal environment, so all of your fans are showing off their personality on their pages. You should too.
Create some ‘fan specific’ content. Give people a reason to become a fan of your business.

No Blu-Ray for The Boys are Back

2010-01-27T17:28:27Z

I like to think of myself as a well rounded movie viewer. I can enjoy a great movie where tons of money was spent, down to a super low budget indie film. I tend to keep up with the trailers on Apple’s website and I’ll note any film that I think looks good and the date when it comes out in theaters. This past summer I watched a trailer for The Boys are Back, a Miramax drama starring Clive Owen. I think that I can safely state that Clive Owen is one of my favorite actors. From his role in The Inside Man to Children of Men to Shoot ‘Em Up, I always find myself impressed by his performance and choice of movies. This movie looked like no exception.

After watching the trailer for The Boys are Back, I became pretty excited to see it. It was pretty obvious that it wasn’t a huge production movie but I thought for sure that I’d be able to see it once it came out in theaters. However, the weekend that the film was set to hit the box office I was very disappointed to find that it wasn’t showing anywhere around me. I don’t recall ever seeing the trailer on TV and anyone with whom I talked about the film with had never heard of it.

A few weeks ago, I was browsing through the upcoming DVD releases on Now Playing, a free iPhone app that I’m constantly on, and I noticed that The Boys are Back was set to release for purchase on January 26, which was yesterday. I immediately hopped onto Amazon to see what the price was for a Blu-Ray copy of the film. I did find the page on Amazon for the film, but it didn’t show a photo of the product or give me a price whatsoever. However, the DVD copy of the film was available to pre-order. I think that we can all agree that Blu-Ray is the latest generation of purchasing movies. If I’m going to purchase a movie, why would I want to buy it on semi-dated technology?

The weekend before the films release for purchase, I did a little bit of research to see if the film was going to be released on Blu-Ray. With disappointment I learned that since the film didn’t do well, it was only going to be released on DVD. With that I was a little torn as to whether or not I should go and buy it. With Blu-Ray being the current generation, what will be in the future? Will the next system still play DVDs like Blu-Ray players currently do? So I continued to check out how the film did in its initial release in theaters. What I found was that the film only brought in $783,013 in its entirety while it was in theaters. In fact, the film was only released its opening weekend in 6 theaters! At its max, The Boys are Back only played in 108 locations at its peak in theaters and only played for 6 weeks. Compare that to Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel bringing in almost $49 million in its opening weekend alone (To be fair, I know that comparing The Chipmunks and The Boys are Back is kinda kicking below the belt)!

But my complaint is this: Why can I buy a Blu-Ray copy of All About Steve which has a whopping 6% review rating on Rotten Tomatoes, or better yet, I can buy Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (thanks to GGX for finding this one), but I can’t purchase a copy of The Boys are Back on Blu-Ray. For that matter, why can’t I get a copy of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas on Blu-Ray either? That is also a Miramax film; however, this film brought in $9,030,581 while showing in at max 679 locations over its 11 weeks in theaters. That film obviously made more money than The Boys are Back, so why is there no Blu-Ray release?

I don’t think there is a great solution to my complaint, but I just wanted to get it out there. I can understand the money side of things. Miramax needs to make money on its movie and pressing millions of Blu-Ray copies of films like The Boys are Back & The Boy in the Striped Pajamas may not bring them back money on their investment. But why can’t Miramax just press 10,000 copies and just sell them online? Why can’t they just see how it does there and keep pressing them as necessary. I’d be right in line to purchase a Blu-Ray copy of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and also purchase The Boys Are Back for a second time!

How about you? Are there any movies that aren’t available on Blu-Ray that you think should be?

Awesome UPular Remix

2010-01-19T15:02:05Z

I stumbled upon this video and had to post it! For those of you who have seen Disney’s UP, this video may mean a little more to you; however, it is very easy to see the creativity involved regardless if you’ve seen the movie or not. So check it out below!

Stay Organized with Anxiety

2010-01-08T16:11:26Z

A good friend of mine showed me a nice little Mac application called Anxiety a couple years ago. At that point I was playing around in multiple applications to try and find a really simple tool to help with project management. After playing around with apps like OmniFocus and Things (which I really did like, by the way), I was finding that many of the applications had just a little bit too much going on. Now that doesn’t make these applications bad or anything, actually both those listed above are really great applications that I would highly recommend. However, they weren’t what I was looking for.

I wanted something super simple, almost like writing things down on a sheet of paper, then crossing them off my list as I completed them. That’s where Anxiety fit perfectly. After my friend showed me Anxiety I was pretty hooked. It’s super simple to use, it works with iCal and if you’re using MobileMe it will sync across your Apple computers with ease! It does so by working off of Apples built in To Do list and you can categorize them as you want to. So for me, I have the following categories: Invoices (money that is waiting to come in), To Be Invoiced (clients that need to be sent an invoice), Work (things that need to be taken care of), Proposals (prospective clients who have received them so I can stay in touch), Phone Calls (any necessary calls that need to be made), etc.

My only complaint is that I haven’t found a way to be able to look at my list on my iPhone. I’ve read some things saying that the To Do lists are supposed to show up in your email under a certain folder but I haven’t had any luck with that. Both OmniFocus and Things have iPhone applications that you can purchase to coordinate your app together. However, since Anxiety utilizes the To Do list that Apple provides, I’m assuming that they should have the lists available on the iPhone!

Regardless of the iPhone issue, Anxiety is a great little app to help keep you organized.

Get Yourself a Copy of Anxiety

Using PHP to Update Your Copyright

2009-12-31T17:02:45Z

Being that we are on the verge of entering a new year, I felt that this was an ‘on topic’ little tutorial to share! Any developer who utilizes PHP should know that it can help save time, which in turn increases productivity. PHP offers a wide variety of tools to help you to create smart, dynamic website. Here is a little trick to help you to not have to go to every single website you design and develop to manually update the copyright information to the current year. Depending on how you have a site setup, that could be a pretty decent task, especially if you’re not utilizing any sort of global variables.

Please note that your site must be on PHP friendly hosting as well as the following code must be in a PHP file or template rather than an HTML file as it will not work!

Being that we (meaning us physically) are located in the New York timezone, we popped in the correct code for PHP to recognize the appropriate year for our timezone. All you would need to do is replace that spot with the appropriate timezone and you’re all set! A link is provided below to find your timezone.

Now this is a very simple approach to using PHP to update the year for you. With further research you can look into taking this to the next step.

Happy New Year, and have fun!

PHP Date Time: Find Your Timezone

The Dream Kids CD Artwork

2009-12-07T17:16:28Z

Recently The Dream Kids asked us to come up with a design for their new Christmas & Patriotic CD. From the one sentence asking us for a design came the idea of a split christmas tree / american flag which ended up being in the final design. This was a really fun project from start to finish and we’re pretty proud of the final outcome. Part of the artwork came directly from our holiday cards (scroll through the print work) that we send out to clients.

So take a look! You can get a copy of the CD by emailing them using the contact information on their site.

Running IE6, 7 & 8 on Your Mac

2009-11-13T16:29:19Z

As a web designer it’s extremely important to be able to test projects in multiple browsers. We want to try and ensure that people get the same experience whether they’re looking at a project in Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc. Now any web designer should be able to tell you that Internet Explorer is the biggest issue with our jobs. To be honest, if we didn’t have Internet Explorer things would be so much easier, in particular Internet Explorer 6. According to Wikipedia, IE6 was release in August of 2001. That’s more than 8 years ago! When you think about that in computer years, it’s a lifetime! So why are so many people still running IE6? I can’t answer that, but I can tell you for certain that when it comes to web development that tons and tons of money is wasted on making sites work in IE6!

Anyway, I’ll step off the soapbox now to get back to the point at hand. Being that we need to test our projects on multiple browsers, we need a way to do it! Rather than buying a PC that I don’t want, I simply run VMware Fusion on my Mac with Windows XP installed on it. Windows XP natively had IE6 installed on it which was perfect for me. If I had to choose one of the versions of IE to be able to test on, I would choose IE6 as the majority of the issues are found there. However, IE7 and IE8 both have their issues as well. And you can’t simply download all the versions and run them without some special programming. So that’s where this little trick comes into play. Thanks to the guys at Edskes, they’ve developed a great way to be able to run any version (all the way down to IE1) at the same time! All you need to do is get VMware Fusion running with Windows on it, go to the following address (you have to install it while in a browser in Window, you can’t install it straight onto your Mac), and download (it’s the link right below where it says Internet Explorer Collection with the light blue background) and install and you’re good to go! It’s the perfect solution!

Final Builds Site - Internet Explorer Collection

WordPress Parent Navigation

2009-11-10T17:11:16Z

For those beginner developers out there working in WordPress, here’s a little trick that you may have not run into yet. If you need to build out a website in WordPress that will load the navigation dynamically, meaning that any pages that are added in the backend of WordPress are automatically placed in the navigation on the front end of the website, there is a nice piece of code that will do that for you. You have the option to edit that code to render out the displayed navigation in almost any way that you’d like, which is a great plus when it comes to having control over a website.

The trick comes into play if you decide that you only want WordPress to output the parent navigation, ignoring any child pages that may be in WordPress. So here is the code that calls in the navigation dynamically as is:

So all we need to do if we decide that we only want to show the parent navigation is add a small piece of code in between the brackets.

What we’re telling WordPress to do here is to create a list of the pages that we have in the backend of WordPress and only show the top level navigation. If we were to change that 1 to a 2, WordPress would output the top level and second level navigation, ignoring anything beyond that! For more information on the wp_list_pages tag check out the following link:

Template Tags/wp list pages