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In this giveaway, WPZOOM, providers of top quality Premium WordPress themes at amazing prices, is shelling out premium WordPress themes (worth $69) and giving it to 10 lucky Six Revisions readers. Continue reading to find out how you can win a WPZOOM premium theme.

WPZOOM: Top-Quality Professional WordPress Themes

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To win, simply answer the following question in the comments:

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You can view WPZOOM’s collection of themes to see which one you’d like to win.

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This giveaway ends on Wednesday, May 4, 2011 after which the comments section on this post will be closed and you will no longer be able to leave a comment. Please leave a valid email address when filling out the comment form so that we can contact you if you’ve won. Please only comment once. The 10 winners will be randomly selected using the same method as previous Six Revisions giveaways. The winners will be announced on a separate post and you’re advised to subscribe to our RSS feed so that you can be quickly notified when the winners announcement post has been published. Please note that comments are moderated and so your comment may not show up right away. Please also note that comments that do not follow the instructions on how to participate (described above) may not be published, or may be removed later on.

Related Content

• A Guide to Premium WordPress Themes
• Top 5 Excellent E-Commerce Plugins for WordPress
• Enhancing WordPress Custom Fields with Search Filtering
• Related categories: WordPress and Web Design

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and also a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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Web Design Ledger

Six Revisions

10steps Photoshop Tutorials

GoMediaZine

Web Designer Wall

Speckyboy Design Magazine

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Spyre Studios

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Marcofolio

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Noupe

One Extra Pixel

PSD Fan

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Smashing Magazine

Vandelay Design Blog

Tutorial9

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Hongkiat

PSD Tuts

Webdesign Tuts

UX Booth

Abduzeedo

Inspired Magazine

Build Internet!

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Design Informer

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What are your favorite design blogs?

If you’ve got a favorite design blog that’s not currently on the list, drop a comment and let us know.

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It doesn’t matter how talented you are, if you can’t manage your projects, then you will struggle to achieve success.

To help you avoid that undesirable outcome, here are seven project management problems that designers and developers often face, as well as how to deal with them when they arise.

1. Your Client Gives You Vague, Ever-changing Requirements

Fickle clients can be a huge hassle. If a client doesn’t know what they want until a certain stage is complete, then schedule those decision points into the project as milestones. It is important to have a clear path mapped out from start to finish because it forces the client to be specific with their requirements, as well as keeping the project on track.

Be clear at the outset about what your task is going to be on the project and how much leeway is available. If you will need to be compensated for big revisions or changes in direction, then set a clear outline about the number of adjustments you can make before you need to charge more. If you can, quantify these adjustments with a number; it makes it much easier to keep track of things.

2. Your Client is Slow with Communication

People are busy, but it’s tough for you to move forward on a project if you can never get answers from the person you’re working with.

The good news is that you will drastically increase your response rate if you do a little bit of work ahead of time. Instead of waiting for the back-and-forth discourse to finally take place, simply start moving in the direction that you think is best and then seek verification. This strategy makes it easy for your client to quickly say yes (or no).

Here is an example:

Hi Mark,

Last time we spoke, you mentioned that we needed to make a decision on task X. I went ahead and started doing Y since that sounded best based on our previous discussion. If you’re happy with that, I can move forward and we can review the progress as scheduled on Friday.

Sound good?

- John

The beauty of this framework is that it shifts the client’s mindset from, "What decision am I going to make?" to "Should I say Yes or No?" Saying yes or no is much easier than thinking up a new solution (which, as the hired professional, should be our job).

Additionally, you will get a response much faster because there is now a time constraint on the work. If they like what you’re doing, then they will give you the go-ahead. If they don’t, then they know that they need to get back to you right away because, otherwise, things will be moving in the wrong direction.

However, it’s very important to use sound judgment. Obviously, you won’t be able to work ahead and then ask for approval on all aspects of the project, especially those that will cost a lot of time and resources to update should the client say no. That said, you’ll be surprised how much quicker things get done by making it easy for your clients to say, "Yes."

3. The Project Doesn’t Start On Time

Maybe you had a slow go of it last month, but now, you’re swamped. You know you need to take on the work when you can get it, but now you’re worried that you won’t be able to start all of your projects on time as you promised. Or perhaps your client says you’re a top priority — but tomorrow a different project becomes more important.

If the hold up is on your end, then it’s important that you do something to jump-start the project — even if it’s in a really small way. Give the client a call to discuss their expectations and set a more realistic timeframe for the first milestone. This could take as little as a few minutes, but it makes the client feel like things have started. However, beware of doing this more than once. That’s known as stringing the client along — they don’t take that too well, and for good reason.

If the hold up is on their end, then you need to communicate very clearly how that alters things moving forward. Be sure to let them know exactly how this change affects the completion dates of future milestones and you should check the revised schedule against other commitments with other projects.

4. You Try to Manage Every Project the Same Way

There has never been a project that has the same circumstance, requirements, and needs as another project. Situations, people, and goals change over time.

Instead of squeezing every project into the same template, spend some time crafting milestones specific to the needs of each project. Every job requires specific milestones that meet the schedules of all parties involved. Resist using the standard "2 weeks until X" type of thinking.

To put it simply, your schedule changes all the time, right? That means the way you plan your projects needs to change as well.

5. The Client Doesn’t Like What You Created

If this happens often, then there is a communication issue that needs to be addressed. Make sure you understand not just the technical requirements of a project, but also the underlying rationale of your clients. Why did they decide to do this in the first place? What are they hoping your work will enable them to do when all is said and done? How do they see your project fitting in with their overall strategic vision?

Good project managers create a shared vision between all parties. It’s your responsibility to understand the direction of your particular project as well as the overall strategy of your client — and then to make sure those two items match up.

6. Your Point of Contact Doesn’t Seem to Care About Your Project

Working on a project that isn’t high on a client’s priority list can be frustrating.  In some cases, the person responsible for communicating with you has little to no interest in your project. The completed product will have no direct effect on their job, they are hard to ask questions to, even harder to get answers from, and they provide minimal guidance.

This issue is best solved ahead of time.

When screening potential clients, do your best to find out if the contact person has a vested interest in the project. Pay attention to their awareness about potential problems or risks you could run into, their level of urgency when scheduling this project in their calendar, and their desire to communicate with you quickly and consistently from the beginning. If they brush these issues to the side, then it is worth your time to talk with someone else and establish a second point of contact before deciding whether to take on the project or to avoid the project all together.

7. Too Much Time is Spent Solving Problems After Projects Are "Live"

There are bound to be a few bugs here and there, but this is a classic problem caused by focusing too much on production, and not enough on testing. If this continually becomes an issue, then there are two possible solutions.

First, schedule in more time to test your projects from the start. Double your typical testing time if needed. Yes, it will stretch your schedule further, but in the long run, it will save you from the countless little problems that prevent your days from being productive.

Second, if your ongoing issues are a result of clients constantly wanting you to tweak something here and there, then you need to be clearer about what you do and don’t provide with your services. When you set guidelines with a client at the beginning of a project, you need to state very clearly that your work ends after the final product is created and handed off. This can be avoided by outlining boundaries at the beginning of a project that explicitly state that additional service after delivery will cost extra.

Putting It All Together

There are literally countless reasons a project can run into issues, but the vast majority of them can be solved with clear and frequent communication.

While it is easy to point blame in the direction of your client, it is your responsibility to consistently initiate contact and keep the line of communication open. This is about more than just talking to your client. Consistent communication is only created by active effort on your end. It doesn’t just happen naturally.

One excellent practice you can implement right away is to send your client a progress report every Friday. This could be a full report or just a short email. You should detail what you accomplished this week and what you plan to do the next week. Do this every week, whether your client asks for it or not.  Not only does this practice solve problems before they become too big, it will also make your clients love you.

Further Reading on Project Management Problems

• 9 common problems freelancers face and what to do about them
• Drawing the Line: 6 Things You Shouldn’t Tolerate in Projects
• 20 Questions to Know for Avoiding Website Project Disasters
• 7 Things Web Designers Hate Hearing from Clients

What are some project management problems you have faced? How did you solve them? Share with us in the comments!

Related Content

• 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Rates and Keep Your Clients
• 10 Tips for Providing Great Customer Service to Your Clients
• 6 Essential Things All Freelancers Should Be Doing
• Related categories: Project Management and Productivity

About the Author

James Clear is the founder of Passive Panda, a site about earning more money, more time, and more freedom. Join Passive Panda’s Free Newsletter on Earning More to receive the 7-part Freelancing 101 Course and proven tips for earning more. Connect with Passive Panda on Facebook.

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True/Slant was also about the author — just as Forbes has been for 93 years. At T/S, easy-to-use WordPress tools enabled our contributors to do what they loved to do: create content. They freely self-published 100 to 125 posts a day, sometimes more.

When you stop to take a look at the development of WordPress over the past few years, it’s hard to argue that most of the improvements have NOT been centered around the author. Just a few author specific features that have occurred recently are: Post Revisions, continually improving media management system, Quickpress, word count, quick edit, reply to comments from the back-end, and although not directly in the core of WordPress itself, the acquisition of After The Deadline. As Matt was quoted in the article, even their acquisitions deal with the author. It’s this dedication that has propelled WordPress to be the most popular publishing platform in use today. Yes, there are other factors that go into the popularity of WordPress but I’d say the ease of use along with the ease of publishing content is a large majority of its popularity.

Strictly from an authors point of view, what makes WordPress a better publishing system than Drupal, Joomla or a myriad of other systems?

Earlier this year Elliot Jay Stocks caused a bit of controversy with what he thought would be a mostly innocuous comment on Twitter.

Instead, the simple tweet above turned into a passionate discussion argument about what skills a web designer should have. Last week Michael Tuck revived the issue with a post for Six Revisions, Should Web Designers Know HTML and CSS?.

A couple of videos I watched this past weekend also got me thinking about the question again. The first is a short video on why designers should learn programming. The second video I’ll get to in a bit.

What’s Necessary?

Here’s a list of things that are necessary for web designers.

• Breathing
• Food and water
• Shelter from the elements

That’s it. Those are the things necessary for all of us, web designer or any other human being. No matter what else you try to add to the list you’ll find more than one exception and if there’s an exception to something, that something clearly wasn’t necessary.

So is it necessary that web designers know how to code? Of course not. There are plenty now and there will be plenty tomorrow who will never know a lick of code and still manage to be great and successful web designers. That doesn’t mean web designers shouldn’t learn how to code though.

I agree with Elliot’s surprise when encountering web designers who have absolutely no knowledge of how to code their designs and I agree with Michael that web designers should know html and css, but as far as the question of whether it’s necessary for web designers to know how to code, the answer is very definitely no they don’t need to.

The rest of this post will focus on why need or not it’s in the best interest of web designers to know how to code.

Why Web Designers Should Know How to Code

There are lots of things we should all do that aren’t necessary. For web designers being able to code their designs is one of those things. Even if you never plan on developing your designs knowing how has benefits.

• Understanding the medium you work in will help you work better in that medium
• It offers a competitive advantage
• It leads to better communication along the web creation pipeline
• The more you know in general, the better designer you’ll be

Ultimately knowing how to code will make you a better web designer, much the same way understanding something of the printing process will make you a better print designer.

You don’t need to to run the printing press or know every detail about the paper and ink, but having at least a general understanding of the materials and the process and the strengths and limitations of each will lead to less problems and provide you with information to make additional design choices.

UX Week 2009 | Jesse James Garrett | Adaptive Path from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Understanding the Medium

The work of a web designer is inevitably going to be a web page or website. Some might argue that’s not quite true given the rise of apps, but even then the design ends up being developed with code. The medium we work with is the web.

The code itself isn’t the medium, per se, but the code is how we interact with the medium.

About 3 1/2 minutes into the video above Jesse James Garrett talks about how design has historically been taught. He mentions that in the historical approach to be a really good designer is to know your medium and that for many designers the first choice was to define the medium they would work in.

Jesse calls this mediumism and suggests it’s an outdated approach. I agree to an extent at least with the idea of having to choose a single medium to work in.

There are aspects of design that aren’t medium dependent. For example using space in a design. Whether your design ends up in print, on the web, or on the surface of a balloon, you’ll want to consider the use of space.

However working with the medium is still important. You wouldn’t attempt to use a fountain pen to place your design on a balloon unless your goal was to pop the balloon. An understanding of the medium is only going to make you a better designer in that medium. With web design that understanding comes in large part through an understanding of the code used to produce web pages.

Gaining a Competitive Advantage

I’m sure you’ll agree that a lot goes into creating a successful website. A few things off the top of my head that might contribute to the success of a site.

• Clear business and site goals
• Valuable products and services
• Sales Copy
• Content creation
• Visual design
• Web development
• Off-site Marketing
• Search engine optimization
• Backend programming
• Database management

Are you, or even can you, be an expert in all of the above? Probably not. Still when I consider all the different things that go into making a great website I want to learn them all. It’s one of the reasons I became a web designer in the first place. There’s always more to learn. I don’t expect to master everything, though I do expect to improve my skills in everything related to creating a website.

Aside from the intellectual challenge, knowing more about the various aspects of creating websites gives you a competitive advantage. It will help you differentiate yourself from your competition. When your skills cross disciplines you offer added value to your clients.

If you’re applying for a job and you know visual design, but the next interview knows both visual design and how to develop that design as a web page, who do you think offers more value to the company? Who stands the better chance of getting the job?

You can differentiate yourself in negative ways too. If a large segment of the industry knows how to code and you don’t you lessen your value. I’d bet there are more web designers out there who know html and css than don’t know. It only makes sense to keep up.

You might argue that you don’t need to code since you work with someone who does, but what happens when the client asks questions about the code (it does happen) or you need to come up with an estimate of time and price for your work and your developer is not in the room.

Which brings us to the next point.

Better Communication Along the Pipeline

If you look again at the list above it should be clear that no one person is likely to do all that work. It’s going to be done by several people at least. Several people who will communicate with each other.

It helps to have some shared language with people when communicating with them. I can’t tell you how many times a web designer with no knowledge of coding has sought me out to develop their designs. The communication is sometimes difficult and leads to confusion. While I consider it my responsibility to help a designer understand in those situations, there’s a limit to how much I can do.

Also the more time I have to spend explaining the development process the more I have to charge for my involvement in the project. It’s unreasonable to think I could spend two hours explaining something that will result in a one hour job. I can’t make a living that way.

As a web designer you may not communicate with the person who later writes press releases, but you’ll certainly have to talk to the person who’s developing your design. The two are tightly connected. The more you as a web designer understand the development process the better your communication with a developer will be and the more likely the finished page will be faithful to your design.

The Many Skills of Design

In addition to the list of the components involved in creating a successful website here’s another incomplete list of different skills that benefit a designer.

• Problem solving
• Art/creativity
• Psychology
• Usability
• Accessibility

You can certainly be a good designer without general knowledge of psychology, but understanding things like the principles of gestalt will help make you a better designer. Design crosses a lot of different fields and it’s in your best interest to know something about as many as you can.

If you’re a freelancer or you run your design business it makes sense to learn more about accounting, and marketing, and general business concepts. You may choose to hire an accountant, but if you learn nothing about accounting you better hope your account is 100% trustworthy.

You may hire someone to do your marketing, but doesn’t it make sense to know where your marketing dollars are being spent. You don’t have to be an expert, but you should know something about those other disciplines.

Two Counter Arguments

First a comment by Alex Crooks on the Six Revision post.

A designer who can’t code knows no boundaries of web development, and is always pushing the limits of what we can do/display on a website. Innovation is often found because he is not limiting the design because he knows it might be very hard to code.

Alex makes an interesting point. Sometimes the best way to see a solution or innovate is to step back and see thing with a child’s mind. See things without the curse of knowledge.

It’s an interesting point, but one I think makes an ineffective argument in this debate. Yes there will probably be times when knowing too much about the limitations of coding something leads to less innovation, but there are better solutions to the problem. A simple one is to ask someone else for a different perspective.

By the same logic you would get more innovative designs without any knowledge of design or your client’s business or life in general. You wouldn’t feel limited to design navigation that works for example.

Limitations are not a bad thing. Design is about constraints. Take away all the constraints, all the limits, and you have art. Art is a wonderful thing, but it’s not design. Design is limited from the very moment a project begins. You’re designing something for a specific client with a specific budget and a specific audience. Each limits innovation.

There are better ways to overcome those times where innovation might be stifled than a lack of knowledge.

Is it Easy to Learn to Code?

Depends on who you ask I guess. It wasn’t difficult for me to learn. A few days with html and the rest was memorizing different tags I could use. CSS took a little longer, but an understanding of the basic syntax again only took a few days and then it moved into memorizing different properties and values.

And yet both took much longer to master, especially css. It’s easy enough to memorize the code to float something to the left and much more difficult to learn how to use that code in a working design. It’s easy to learn how to use css to turn a piece of text blue and much harder to understand which css properties will be best to use to develop a layout and how to then structure your html so it works best with those css properties.

Coding is a different skill than designing. The former relies more on the left side of the brain, where the latter relies more on the right.

While I’ll still argue that it’s worth working through this learning curve it’s the one reason I can accept for not being able to code your own designs. Not everyone finds it easy to learn how to develop websites. For many of us it is relatively easy to pick up, but that’s not true for everyone and there’s no reason why it should be.

That doesn’t excuse not knowing anything about how a web page is developed, but it is a reasonable argument for why some web designers can’t code their own designs.

Additional Resources

Instead of trying to embed links to some of the other people who have covered the topic throughout this post, I thought it made more sense to list some of them together here. As you might guess there’s a lot of opinion on this topic and the links below only point to a few of those opinions.

Be sure to read the comments on these posts as that’s where much of the debate happens

• Web designers who can’t code
• Should Web Designers Know HTML and CSS?
• On Designers writing HTML
• 5 Good Reasons Why Designers Should Code
• Should web designers build their own pages?
• Design isn’t about tools

Summary

Is it necessary for web designers to know how to code? I don’t think so. Again I consider very little in life to be absolutely necessary and a designer’s ability to code a website is not one of them.

However I do think web designers should want to know how to write html and css, because it will only make them better web designers. Coding is going to enter into the development of a website and will be closely tied to the visual design the same way paper and ink is going to enter into the creation of a print design.

The more you know about the medium in which you work the better you can design for that medium. The better choices you can make in regards to that medium. You don’t need to become an expert, but you should want to know as much as you can.

It will help you understand what’s possible and what’s considered not possible. It helps you see where you can push boundaries and where you should probably stick to conventions and existing design patterns. There are better ways to not stifle innovation than a lack of knowledge.

You wouldn’t or shouldn’t begin a design without an understanding of how the success of that design will be judged. It constrains you, but in a good way. The same is true for using a grid, choosing a small color palette from all the possible colors, and using a limited set of typefaces. All constrain in a good way. The same is true for knowing the limitations of how browsers render html and css code.

It’s not that web designers need to learn how to code, it’s that knowing how to code, at least the basics, will help you design better websites.

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So you’ve just launched your website. The only thing left now is to start creating content and arranging for some promotion, right? Well, not so fast. You first have to do several things to ensure that your site is set up properly and ready for the public.

Here are a few things you should do right after launching a website (and if you can, do them prior to launching your website publicly).

Create a Sitemap.xml File and a Robots.txt File

What are these files? These files are essential for search engines and other web services. They are two out of the five web files that will improve your site.

The Sitemap.xml file is a standard protocol for listing all the URLs that are contained within your website. It gives web spiders like Googlebot a better understanding of your website’s structure.

If you’re using WordPress, you’re in luck: The only thing you need to do is to install a plugin called Google XML Sitemaps, and it will do all the work for you. This is a valuable WordPress plugin, and is one of six plugins that Six Revisions uses on the site.

If you’re not using WordPress, you can have a look at XML-Sitemaps.com, a simple tool for generating a Sitemap.xml file just by providing your website’s URL.

Robots.txt is yet another file that search engines love. It’s a simple text file containing information about which parts of your website search engines should and shouldn’t visit.

To create such a file, you can just use a template and modify it to you own needs.

Here’s my template (designed for WordPress sites):

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /wp-admin/
Disallow: /wp-includes/
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins/
Disallow: /wp-content/cache/
Disallow: /wp-content/themes/
Disallow: /trackback/
Disallow: /feed/
Disallow: /author/
Disallow: /archives/
Disallow: /2009/
Disallow: /2010/
Disallow: /2011/
Disallow: /print/
Disallow: /index.php
Disallow: /*?
Disallow: /*.php$
Disallow: /*.js$
Disallow: /*.inc$
Disallow: /*.css$
Disallow: */feed/
Disallow: */trackback/
Disallow: */print/
Allow: /wp-content/uploads/

You should remember two things regarding robots.txt:

1. You don’t want search engines to encounter any duplicate content on your website
2. You don’t want search engines to index your private pages and scripts (e.g. the wp-admin files in WordPress)

If you use WordPress, check out this guide called Optimizing WordPress for Search Engines to learn more about Sitemap.xml and robots.xml in the context of SEO and WordPress.

Set Up Web Analytics

Having stats about the traffic to your website is simply priceless. Without traffic statistics, you won’t know how many people are visiting your site and you will have a hard time figuring out how to improve your site to draw in more traffic.

If you want a top-notch and free application that will report data about your website users, then look no further than Google Analytics.

Of course, there are alternative web analytics software out there, but Google Analytics is the undisputed leader, and not simply because it was created by Google, but because the tool is extremely powerful and easy to use.

Here are a few guides and tutorials to read for getting up to speed with Google Analytics:

• Unleashing the Power of Website Analytics
• Google Analytics in Depth: Goals and Funnels
• Search Analysis with Google Analytics

Set Up Google Webmaster Tools

Not many people use this tool — it’s not as popular as Google Analytics, for example — however, it still is one of the best tools to have as a website owner.

Here are just a few things Google Webmaster Tools will tell you about your website:

• What errors Googlebot encountered while indexing your website
• The number of links pointing to specific web pages (both inbound and outbound links)
• Keywords that Google sees as being used frequently on your website
• Keywords that have been used by people using Google Search to land on your website
• Info about possible security compromises and malware that might have been installed on your website

Want to learn more about Google Webmaster Tools? It’s not surprising that the best place to start is the official Webmaster Tools Help articles.

Also, make sure to check out the following guide: How to Find and Remove Broken Links in Your Website. This guide will allow you to make sure your hyperlinks work.

Monitor Your Search Engine Rankings

A good ranking in search engines is important to any site. Good ranking equals more traffic and increased levels of popularity. More traffic equals more money. That’s why it’s crucial to monitor whether or not your SEO efforts are bringing good results.

If you don’t want to buy software (i.e. spend money) there are two main ways of monitoring your keywords:

Manually: Just input a keyword in Google Search and take note of the position of your website. Important: Do not click on your listing because if you do, Google will remember it and next time you will see your website on a higher position. However, you will be the only person to witness that change; everybody else will see it on the actual position. This is because Google Search tries to predict what you will likely click on and, thus, previously visited sites bubble up to the top.

Use a Firefox plugin: There are a few Firefox browser add-ons for checking your keywords. I like the one called Rank Checker. Check out this video of Rank Checker:

Rank Checker is easy to use and has all the important features for search engine ranking analysis and monitoring.

Submit Your Website to Dmoz

I don’t really know why, but for some reason Google checks whether your website appears in Dmoz, and if it does, it gets some extra points when it comes to its search rankings.

Submitting your website is very easy. Just go to Dmoz, browse to a category that best describes your website, and then click the suggest URL link in the top menu.

Unfortunately, it takes some time for your submission to be reviewed. Sometimes even a couple of months. Here’s something important: Even if you don’t see your website listing yet, don’t resubmit it. Such a practice may result in your website dropping to the end of the line. I would suggest not resubmitting your site more than once in a 6-month period.

Set Up Google Alerts to Monitor Mentions

Google Alerts is brilliant. Let’s say that you’re interested in all things that have to do with the term, guitar. If that’s the case, then you probably want to know about every new website that appears on Google that covers this topic.

However, you can’t possibly monitor the whole internet (it’s a pretty huge place). Here’s where Google Alerts comes to the rescue. Google Alerts will notify you about every new web page that contains keywords you’re interested in. If you don’t see the power behind this nifty app, then let me rephrase my value proposition for Google Alerts: Google will let you know of any web page that contains your keywords. This lets you stay on top of competition, as well as monitor what people are saying about your website.

A good idea is to monitor your website’s name, your company’s name, your own name, and other things that are pertinent to your website. For example, Six Revisions might want to monitor:

• sixrevisions.com
• designinstruct.com (the other site of Six Revisions)
• Jacob Gube (the founder’s name)

Talk about having your finger on the pulse — it doesn’t get much better than that. There are many more tools for monitoring your website’s mentions. For example, you can use the RSS feeds of places like Yahoo! Pipes, Twitter search and Google Blog Search.

Monitor Your Website’s Uptime

Without a doubt, the most important piece of information you can have about your website is if it’s online or not. The problem is that you can’t really visit each of your websites every minute of the day. Luckily, there’s an app for that. It’s called UptimeRobot. You can use UptimeRobot to track as many as 50 websites at the same time, and if one of them goes offline even for a minute, it will send you an email notification. The best part? The tool is free.

There are plenty of tools for monitoring your web properties’ uptimes. Be sure to check out this list of 12 free tools for monitoring your site’s uptime.

Check Your Site’s Speed

It was not so long ago when Google announced that one of the new factors for ranking websites in search engine results is site speed. Of course pleasing Google is not the only reason why you need to make your website lightning quick. User’s hate waiting, and they will less likely visit your website again if they remember it as being slow.

There are many tools for allowing you to make fast web pages. One such tool is YSlow: it checks your web pages to see issues and suggests things you can do to make your site faster.

There are many other tools you can use to check and evaluate your website’s speed; be sure to take a look at this list of 15 tools to help you develop faster web pages.

Conclusion

Dealing with all the things mentioned above will take you less than one hour (maybe a little more if you don’t have a web development background and if this is your first site). This hour might very well be one of the most fruitful hours you spend towards the well-being of your new website.

What other things should site owners do immediately after launching a website?

Related Content

• Launching a Blog Successfully in 15 Days
• A 6-Step General Process for Producing a Website
• 6 Things You Need for Your Web Project to Succeed
• Related categories: Website Management and Web Development

About the Author

Karol K. (@carlosinho) is in his 20s and is a web 2.0 entrepreneur from Poland who shares his thoughts at newInternetOrder.com. Tune in to his site to get web design tips and content on online-business-related stuff.

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We’re guessing you’ve been there and this is why we love Photoshop brushes so much…

With little effort you can use one or more brushes to enhance or create truly outstanding designs with just a few clicks.

That’s why today we’re super excited to unveil another member of the WDD family of websites with our brand new site for those Photoshop brush lovers out there! And we call it… BrushLovers

For the past 12 months, top designer Liora Blum has been working hard with us to create a really amazing and exclusive collection of free and premium Photoshop brushes just for BrushLovers.com

We’ve uploaded a great number of sets already and there are tons more to come that will keep making their way onto the site every month. You can easily find them by sorting the brushes based on categories, and/or free or premium sets or by doing a quick and easy search.

The site is mainly focused around our extensive collection of high quality free brushes, but we also have some amazing premium sets for really low prices. The premium files are priced at only $3, $5 or $7. And we also have the option to purchase packs of credits where you pay less than $3 for any brush set, regardless of the original price. For those die-hard brush fans, we also sell an unlimited VIP pass to download all the premium files you want.

So what makes these brushes so special? Quality! Just one word, but it really represents the true effort that went into creating these. Each brush set took hours of hard work, from conception to design, multiple revisions and even creating those beautiful previews that you can now see on the site.

And these brushes not only look pretty in the preview, but they also work beautifully. As you start using them, you will notice the great care and attention to detail that was taken when crafting each one.

By the way, we should mention that all brushes are available at high resolutions, making them perfect for online use or print.

A special thanks to Claudiu Cioba for the great design that he created for the BrushLovers website.

Here are some examples of just a few of the brushes now available on BrushLovers:

So go ahead and check it out, and let us know what you think. We’re very proud of our new website and we hope you enjoy it too.

We welcome your feedback as we try to make it an even better place for all brush lovers out there!!!

Enough talking… Take me to the BrushLovers website now!

If you find an exclusive RSS freebie on this feed or on the live WDD website, please use the following code to download it: n5UR0E

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Over the past few weeks, I’ve been doing a bit more logo work than I can really remember doing at any given time. That may also explain why I have been writing a of logo related posts, too! Over the past few weeks, I have written articles entitled “6 Quick Lessons from Logo Galleries” and “Would Your Logo Fit on the Moon?” both of which were a lot of fun to research and think about. Well, today’s article is another one of these logo-based pieces.

Last night, I was actually at a meeting with the board of an organization for which I am currently doing some work. The point of the meeting was to go through some logo revisions so that I could get feedback directly from the board. The meeting actually went better than I could really have hoped for, since we ended up settling on a finalized design. One of the main things we were looking at, however, was a discussion of colour.

As the meeting progressed, I found myself explaining my reasoning for having originally designed the logo in a simple greyscale. On my way home from the meeting, I got to thinking about this discussion, and I realized that this would make a really great topic for an article.

So, today, I want to talk about why I generally choose to do my first, digital rendering of a logo design in greyscale.

Focus on Shape & Space

Ultimately, the reasoning comes down to the power of shape and and space. When I start a new logo project, one of the things that I try to focus on the most is working to create a meaningful and interesting mark that will represent a business or organization in a unique, interesting and meaningful manner. Obviously, a big part of this effort is the careful use of both shape and space, and this is one of the key reasons why I like to work in greyscale.

Basically, doing using an all grey palette helps me simplify the early stages of the design process. By stripping away all the concerns about colour, knowing that I will bring that into the equation later in the process, I am able to concentrate more on those key elements of shape and space.

For instance, in one recent logo, I created a simple geometric shape that repeated in a circular pattern. During the process, I spent a lot of time carefully adjusting the size and proportion of the shape, as well as relative spacing between each repetitio. The whole thing involved a lot of working and reworking in order to achieve a mark that I felt had just the right weight and balance (some of my initial efforts felt very heavy and bloated).

Working in greyscale helped me concentrate specifically on these areas.

As an example, here is an old logo concept that I created for a client a little over a year ago.

An old logo concept done in greyscale (with the company name modified, of course)

Obviously, for the purposes of this article, I have removed the company name in replaced it with the generic “Lorem Sorem”. Still, even this simple geometric design done in greyscale really helps focus the attention more on the shape and spacing, without being distracted by issues of colour.

The Power of Colour

And make no mistake–colour can be very distracting. You may not think that it’s all that important, but colour can completely change the way that we see and understand something. Just take the following colour treatments of the same sample logo that we saw above. First, we have the logo in dark blue.

The same logo, but set in a dark, calming blue

This particular colour is certainly a very safe selection, and perhaps the sort of thing that we would see in a big corporate logo (or The Gap…). That being said, it is also a very calming, subdued colour. It speaks to a silent, unwavering strength that, though perhaps somewhat somber, is also dependable and enduring. Contrast that against this variation.

The same logo again, but set in a bright, energetic pink

Clearly, the colour here is much bolder than what we saw with the dark blue. It brings a significant vibrance and energy and passion to the whole design. In the proper context, the colour could also bears strong cultural connotations of femininity, unlike the blue, which is more strongly masculine.

There are likely a number of other comparisons that we could explore, but the point is simply to understand just how strongly a choice in colour can impact a design. If we start with colour right away, then the various concepts, connotations and ideas implied by a particular colour may start to work on us in exactly the same way that they work on anyone else, potentially influencing the decesions we make in terms of shape and space.

On course, on the other side of the coin, it could certainly be argued that this is not necessarily a bad thing. A predetermined palette could certainly help inspire and dictate the direction of a particular design, through the very type of connotation that we have already looked at. That’s why I classify the recommendations of this article as being a general sort of methodology. It is certainly not something that is an absolute requirement, but rather something that has worked well for the projects that I have been working on recently, and for my own particular design style–which does tend to emphasize shape and space.

Progressive Enhancement

I know, the term progressive enhancement is something that is almost exclusively used in the world of web design and development, but I want to borrow it here to underscore another important reason why I find starting in greyscale to be a valuable exercise. The clients that I have worked for thus far have been exclusively from that small-to-medium class of enterprise or organization, most of which tend to have smallish budgets.

As such, it’s not all that difficult to guess that there will be circumstances in which these clients may need to print something that’s not in colour. Maybe their invoices or other business forms are being printed on a simple black and white laser printer. Maybe they are running a small, black and white advertisement in the Yellow Pages or some other directory. Maybe they are just doing something where colour is simply not an option.

Whatever the reason, there is always a good chance that the client will need the logo in a simple black and white format, and part of my design process is to make room for this contingency, by supplying clients with a simple black and white version of their logo as part of the final package that I ultimately deliver to them.

So, in a way, I think of colour as a form of progressive enhancement for the logo. It is certainly important, and something that needs to be carefully considered, but it’s we also need to approach the design from the perspective that not all situations (like browsers) will actually support colour. A well designed logo will have a good, black and white fall back as a contingency plan for such situations.

Starting in greyscale helps with this, too, because it forces me to rely extensively on those concepts of shape and space that I’ve already talked about in order to bring detail and meaning to the design. It can be easy to start doing this by using complimentary or contrasting colours, but what happens when we pull all of the colour out in favour of something simply black and white, like this?

Three simple, white divisions easily prepares this particular logo for black and white

In this particular case, making the transition was simple, since I could use thin white gaps to suggest the same division that was created by the subtle gradients. As such, the design retains much of its inhrent personality. But, what would happen if the logo used a lot of colour to establish these details? They would either be lost in the transition to black and white, or the designer would have to make some significant adjustments in order to suggest the same details in a different way.

By starting in greyscale, and thus keeping my mind firmly focused on shape and space, I can avoid some of these problems.

Conclusion

As I’ve already mentioned, this is by no means an absolute, written-in-stone, ignore-at-your-peril kind of rule or methodology, and I’m sure there are all kinds of designers out there who are a heck of a lot more talented than me but don’t use this greyscale concept at all. Still, I have found it to be extremely beneficial in my own work and, after my client meeting, I thought it might be interesting to share it with you.

If anything, I hope that it gives you something to think about the next time you site down to tackle a logo design project!

How about you? Have you ever tried beginning a logo design in greyscale? How did it work for you? I would love to hear your thought, comments or own methodologies!

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To thank you for subscribing to my feed, I am including exclusive, feed-only content for you at the bottom of each post!

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WordPress 2.6 introduced a post revisions feature, which automatically saves a draft as you begin to write a post or page and saves a revision for each change made afterwards. That’s right, every time you make even the slightest alteration to a post or page, a new revision is saved. Now don’t get me wrong, this is an incredibly useful feature, especially if you accidentally cut half of your post during a late night edit or lose power while composing your latest masterpiece, but these revisions can slowly build up in your database.

If it’s been a few days since you’ve last edited your blog, chances are that you don’t need to keep any revisions around, and they’re probably just siting in your database taking up space and growing cobwebs. To remove all of your revisions safely without harming your published posts and pages, backup your database, then use either Delete-Revision or Better Delete Revision. If you’re handy with SQL queries, use either phpMyAdmin or the MySQL command line to run the following query (change the table prefix as necessary):

DELETE FROM wp_posts WHERE post_type = "revision"

Update: Thanks to Ozh for pointing out that the above query “just deletes post marked as revisions. If for some reason you associated a revision with a tag or a category that was then removed when the final post was published, you will have extra entries in other tables such as terms.” The proper query to safely remove all of your revisions is as follows (change the table prefix as necessary):

DELETE a,b,c
FROM wp_posts a
LEFT JOIN wp_term_relationships b ON (a.ID = b.object_id)
LEFT JOIN wp_postmeta c ON (a.ID = c.post_id)
WHERE a.post_type = 'revision'

If you want to disable the revision system, add the following line to your wp-config.php file:

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false );

If you want to specify the number of revisions that WordPress can save, add the following line to your wp-config.php file (change the number to your desired maximum revision count):

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 3);

As the revision system is a form of backup, I recommend periodically deleting revisions as opposed to disabling or limiting it.

I ran the above query on my blog for the first time last night and reduced the database size by almost half! How much did you save?

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You can use such a system for asking customers which features they would like to see implemented in future revisions of your flagship products, and a supple voting system can actually be implemented for collecting their feedback in an entirely unequivocal fashion.

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Find out how much UserEcho.com is worth with Stimator.com

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Read the rest of Amazon Kindle Update 2.5 Delayed For ‘Small Adjustments’ [Kindle 2.5 Firmware Facing Revisions Based on User Feedback, No New Release date Given] (223 words)

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In most non e-commerce applications, the obvious goal of an SEO campaign is to generate both a high number of leads and also a greater quality of leads. Of course, the search engine marketing company running the campaign can sometimes be frustrated since its involvement with lead data ends as soon as someone sends a form or picks up the phone to call the client company. The big problem here is that a wealth of data is being lost that could help improve the SEM campaign, and it becomes harder to follow closed leads back to their original online source. Moreover, it’s nigh impossible to track the online source of customer calls. Without help from a search engine marketing company, the client company itself is often unable to compare leads from the web versus traditional sources. On its own, reliable lead tracking becomes a near impracticality despite its importance in reevaluating future initiatives. This is a shame since the data is readily available.

As anyone who has ever done a lead quality analysis, which hopefully you or your search engine marketing company has performed, you’ll know that all leads are not created equal. That is to say that leads from some sources will be a higher quality than other sources, making frequent, detailed lead tracking a necessity. What follows are three scenarios starting from most ideal – exceedingly rare – and trending to the most common, which is unfortunately, well…common.

Three Lead Tracking Scenarios

Scenario #1: Ideal – In a perfect lead tracking scenario, leads from the website are filtered through a sales management system, such as Salesforce, which has an easily integrative tool that takes leads from the website and automatically fills in the data, adding it to a data set. A custom phone number can also be created by your search engine marketing company and used for each individual campaign that you wish to track, so that the salesperson filling in the data on Salesforce can tell by incoming numbers where the lead was generated.

If someone interested in your services or products came by a pay-per-click ad, for example, he or she could be sent to a customized landing page with a designated phone number to call. If a visitor came in through an organic SEO channel, there are off-the-shelf programs that serve up a unique phone number that a typical visitor punching in the URL would not see. Taking it one more step further, there are systems that will allow you to tell with great granularity where each phone lead came from, down to the individual ad/keyword etc. level.. The phone call data from closed sales can thus offer the same wealth of integration that you can receive from online lead forms, for example. Indeed, you ca, track any metric that’s internally important, from which channel is bringing the highest quality leads and average dollar sale per web channel, all the way to a direct ROI correlation for each individual search engine marketing initiative (again, down to the individual keyphrase level, if desired).

Of course, only two obvious channels have been cited, SEO and PPC. You can, however, use the same philosophy effectively for any initiative, such as email marketing, banner advertising, or the like. Unfortunately, a majority of companies are not set up for this type of granularity, especially without guidance from an experienced web analytics or search engine marketing company. Rather, a number are set up to work with a proprietary CRM system that doesn’t lend itself well to web integration, leaving meaningful lead tracking by the wayside. Sometimes, companies still perform lead tracking using spreadsheets or other such simplistic methods. Often the people tasked with such initiatives are aware of the severe limitations of the current system but suffer from an inability to get buy-in to switch to something more high tech.

Transforming Your SEM Campaigns

This brings us to scenario #2, which is not 100% ideal, but still allows for significant lead tracking and data analysis. In the next installment, we’ll discover how both this scenario and scenario #3 can also be used to track sources and metrics with a high degree of success – if done properly. From ideal, we travel to workable, and finally to a common but unfortunate lead tracking scenario, which still presents some redeeming qualities for you and your search engine marketing company to work with.

Scott Buresh is the founder and CEO of Medium Blue, which was named the number one organic search engine optimization company in the world by PromotionWorld in 2006 and 2007. Scott’s articles have appeared in numerous publications, including ZDNet, WebProNews, MarketingProfs, DarwinMag, SiteProNews, ISEDB.com, and Search Engine Guide. He was also a contributor to The Complete Guide to Google Advertising (Atlantic, 2008) and Building Your Business with Google for Dummies (Wiley, 2004). Medium Blue is an Atlanta search engine optimization company with local and national clients, including Cbeyond, Oliver Wight Americas, and DeKalb Medical. To see how we can help you achieve your online marketing goals, please contact us.

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Chasing Leads: Offline Lead Tracking in SEM Campaigns, Pt. 1

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The UpSide Theme is a free WordPress theme that is best suited for personal blogs. The WordPress theme comes with 5 color schemes and 2 different layouts that you can set up on the theme’s options page in the WordPress Admin panel.

UpSide Theme is provided to you under the open source GPL License—this means that you can use it for all of your projects for free and without any restrictions. This theme is flexible enough that you can use it as a starter theme for your WordPress projects.

UpSide Theme is released especially and exclusively to Six Revisions readers by the team at DynamicWP.

Preview

Here are some screenshots of UpSide.

Front Page

Post Headline

Sidebar

Contact Page

Threaded Comments

Demo

You can see the functional live demo of UpSide theme on DynamicWP.

• UpSide Theme Demo

Documentation

Read the documentation page for UpSide theme to learn more how to use this theme.

Download

• upside_wordpress_theme (ZIP, 0.20 MB)

Related Content

• Free WordPress Theme: Zexee
• Letter Frame – A Free WordPress Theme
• Annexation: A Free WordPress Theme
• Related categories: Freebies and WordPress

About the Author

DynamicWP is a site that develops beautiful free WordPress templates, useful WordPress plugins, as well as WordPress tutorials. You can grab their RSS feed and follow them on Twitter (@dynamicwp) for exclusive updates.

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Protection, Powered by Automattic: Your blogs and sites are your livelihood. Are you protected? VaultPress is the only restoration service built on the Automattic grid that reliably serves over 10 million WordPress.com blogs and 250 million monthly visitors.

VaultPress protects more than just your content. VaultPress understands the complete WordPress environment. This means your plugins, dashboard, themes, comments, and even your post revisions are all safeguarded and ready to be restored.

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Upgrading between major revisions of Mac OS X has bitten me several times in the past, mostly because I use my Mac as a web development machine. I need Apache, PHP, MySQL, Perl, Ruby and a whole bunch of Ruby gems in working order, and it seems like major OS X updates almost always mess with those in one way or another.

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Posted in Mac, Movable Type, PHP.

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The Winners

• Nejo – (ebook)
• Trevor – (paperback)
• priyadarshi kunal – (ebook)
• Jennifer – (paperback)
• Dave – (ebook)

Congratulations to the winners! You should have already received an email about your prize (or will receive one soon, shortly).

MySQL Query Screenshot

Buy a copy of the book!

If you’re interested in having a copy of MooTools 1.2 Beginner’s Guide but didn’t win one, I would like to encourage you to purchase it on Packt Publishing or Amazon.com. Read more about it here.

Related Content

• MooTools 1.2 Beginner’s Guide Book
• Win a MooTools 1.2 Beginner’s Guide Book from Packt Publishing
• How to Auto Caption Images Using MooTools
• Related categories: JavaScript and Web Development

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development, and a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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The definition of "success" is different to everyone. To me, I define success as having a large audience that consists of readers from all over the globe that love and enjoy your work as much as you do.

In this article, I would like to reflect and share with you the things I consider to be the ingredients of our recipe for success and growth.

This article is part of Design Instruct Week, a weeklong celebration of our newly launched site, Design Instruct. This week on Six Revisions covers topics that deal with running websites and design, written by the founders/editors of Design Instruct and Six Revisions. Be sure to check out the Design Instruct Week Twitter Giveaway, which gives out different prizes every day of Design Instruct Week.

Unyielding passion for your work

Growing a web project takes time and dedication. It involves many days with little or no sleep. It has an abundance of minutia tasks that need to be done when you’d rather be doing something else. Building a website necessitates a schedule that would make anyone but those who are truly passionate and dedicated to their idea, give up. Do you have it in you?

A strong knowledge about your subject

Whether you’re building an email app that will revolutionize the way people do emails or a web publication about baking cookies, you have to know your subject inside and out. When you’re not well informed, it clearly shows through to your audience. Being knowledgeable about your subject is about creating trust: Internet users are wary about the things they consume on the Web. If you can’t prove to them that you can be trusted, they have thousands of other sites to choose from.

Talented people

The foundation of any web startup is the people that have built it. It’s no secret that the largest component that drives the continual growth of Six Revisions and Design Instruct are their brilliant writers. Without them, our two sites wouldn’t be where they are now.

Discovering people with the same passion and belief is rare. Thankfully, we’ve found a few of them that have decided to join our family (you can see just some of them on the About page). I spend a lot of my time working with our writers, as well as helping them grow their own websites.

Partners that compliment your skills

In the first article of Six Revisions, I said that you should avoid going solo for your web project. When things start to build up, in order to carry forward your growth and keep up with demands, you need to collaborate with someone.

For Design Instruct, I knew I needed someone who would be better than I am with visual art and design. I was a graphic designer back in the days when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, but have now since moved onto web development and web design. I also knew that I couldn’t run two sites on my own, yet I was fearful to put my fate in the hands of just anyone.

This is when I approached my brother (Isaac) to team up with me. He’s an illustrator and photographer by trade, and someone who—regardless of our relationship—is vastly dissimilar from me. He has brought his knowledge, skills, fresh ideas, and passion to the table.

Design Instruct and Six Revisions wouldn’t be able to advance without a solid partner, and I’m almost certain that your web project won’t be able to either.

An open ear to your audience

Your users have a lot to say. They have a vested interest in your growth and have entrusted you with the responsibility of constantly improving yourself to meet their needs. Oftentimes, when we believe in something so steadfastly, we tend to shut these voices of alternative thoughts out.

Critics are a penny a dozen on the Web—the Internet gives people a cloak of anonymity that make it a piece of cake for raffish individuals to say negative things about your web project just for kicks.

However, there are also many people with ideas and suggestions that can make your site better. Take advantage of the collective nature of the Internet by listening to your users’ opinions, suggestions, and ideas. They have taken the time to share these ideas at no cost to you but your time to listen to them.

Relationships with people in your industry

The Web has the ability to connect us with people that we might not be in close proximity to. It’s important to foster and create relationships with people in your industry, regardless of whether you consider them competition or not. When we are working together rather than against each other, we can drive innovation and grow together instead of creating a counterproductive environment.

Make it a habit to reach out and contact the people in your industry. Participate on discussions in their website (you can, for example, frequently find me in the trenches of Smashing Magazine and Envato comment sections), see if there are opportunities to team up and build something together, trade war stories, and just get yourself on their radar.

Staying informed about the happenings in your industry

Keeping up with the events happening around you is critical. It’s part of being knowledgeable about your subject and is something your audience expects you to be doing. Especially on the Web, when things change so rapidly and interests are fickle, it’s imperative to maintain your information current.

Effective time management skills

Having a good time and task management habit ensures that you can keep up with the growth of your web project. Time is the primary limiting factor to your growth, and thus, you have to treat it as a resource, just like your budget and your technology infrastructure.

Taking risks

What stuns advancement of any project is the fear of change. Fear of change leads to fewer or no innovations. On the Web, being risk-adverse is not a good trait to have. In a realm where things move very quickly, being a stick in the mud will only make sure that the people around you that are taking all the risks will be reaping the rewards instead of you.

Looking out for opportunities to grow

The reason I personally respond to every email (I get hundreds a week) and carve out blocks of my time to partake in interviews, participate in discussions, write on other web publications, join panels, write books, and other activities that may not have a direct impact on Six Revisions or Design Instruct is because I never want to end up saying, "I wish I’d done that."

Being receptive to possibilities outside of the websites that I run, without a doubt, has contributed to the growth of my own web projects.

What are your own ingredients for success? Let’s talk about them in the comments below.

Related Content

• How to Design for Your Worst Client: You.
• How to Stay Ahead of the Curve as a Designer
• 6 Things You Need for Your Web Project to Succeed
• Related categories: Project Management and Web Development

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development, and a book author. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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I was asked this question a couple of years ago. It is a question that is meant to have an easy answer and yet I found myself at a loss for words when I tried to answer it. The concept is simple enough. However, as I started thinking about what the question actually meant and what it was actually asking, it started to take on a life of its own.

This article is part of Design Instruct Week, a weeklong celebration of our newly launched site, Design Instruct. This week on Six Revisions covers topics that deal with running websites and design, written by the founders/editors of Design Instruct and Six Revisions. Be sure to check out the Design Instruct Week Twitter Giveaway, which gives out different prizes every day of Design Instruct Week.

Of course, "here" could be anywhere and it’s different for everyone. However, beyond that notion of location, we have to take into account that "here" also means being in the present; being in the ‘now’ which makes "here" not just a place on a map but also a place in time.

Knowing why we are "here" gives us the most concrete and basic thing we can know about ourselves, which is, that there’s a reason for us being where ever were are in our lives.

For artists and designers, knowing why we are "here" is especially important since it’s the kind of knowledge that can give purpose and meaning to our work.

For this piece, I asked previous contributors and friends of Six Revisions and Design Instruct to answer the question: "Why are you here?"

The writers could answer the question in anyway they like. It could be several sentences long or it can be just a single word. Their answer could be funny and clever or inspiring and deeply profound.

Below, you’ll find some of the answers I got from this exercise along with a sampling of their favorite works.

Click on the image below to see the full size of the graphic.

Special thanks to:

• Francisco Inchauste of FINCH
• Shannon Noack of Snoack Studios
• Zena Santos
• Tyler Denis of Denis Designs
• Jacob Cass of Just Creative Design
• Jan Cavan of Dawghouse Design Studio
• Miguel Cardona of Dumbwaiter Design
• Matthew Heidenreich of Devise Function
• Richard Carpenter of HV-designs

How about you? What’s your story? Why are you here? Share with us in the comments section.

Related Content

• 40 Useful and Creative Infographics
• 10 Revealing Infographics about the Web
• Performance Comparison of Major Web Browsers
• Related categories: Infographics and Graphic Design

About the Author

Isaac Gube is a photographer, philosopher, illustrator, adventurer, designer, and whatever else he chooses to be on any given day. You can connect with him on Twitter @IAMTHEGUBE or visit his Flickr page to see some of his photos.

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If you follow Six Revisions you know that Jacob is a very talented designer, developer, and writer. Today he and his brother Isaac have launched their latest project, Design Instruct, which will provide high quality content related to visual arts and communication.

Design Instruct has launched today with a tutorial, How to Make a Vibrant Portfolio Web Design in Photoshop.

If you’re interested in design tutorials and articles I recommend that you subscribe to the Design Instruct RSS feed or follow them on Twitter. I’m sure Isaac and Jacob will turn Design Instruct into an excellent resource for designers. They’re also looking for writers, so if you are interested see their writing guidelines.

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1. Smashing Magazine

2. Noupe

3. Six Revisions

4. WebDesigner Depot

5. PSD TUTS+

6. WebDesigner Wall

7. Spyrestudios

8. Design Flavr

9. Vandelay Design

10. Design Mag

No related posts.

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on 10 Websites to Get Design Inspiration – Online Part I

The Winners

• Tricia
• Angela
• edgar villalobos
• Pam
• anna

Congratulations to all of the winners! You should have received an email regarding how to claim your prize.

Random Selection Method

Below, you’ll see the MySQL query used to randomly select the winners from the giveaway post from last week.

SELECT comment_ID, comment_author, comment_author_email,  comment_author_url
FROM comments
WHERE comment_post_ID = 2356
ORDER BY RAND()
LIMIT 5

Thank you SnackTools and Participants

Thank you to SnackTools for providing these points! As well, thank you to the participants for joining the giveaway.

A quick note to everyone: please stay tuned for more giveaways here on Six Revisions. If you are a company or organization wishing to give away prizes that will be of value to web developers and designers, please contact me.

Related Content

• 12 Websites To Help You Learn Flash/ActionScript
• 10 Useful Flash Components for Graphing Data
• SnackTools Makes Creating Rich Media Content Easy
• Related categories: Flash and Web Design

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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SnackTools, a suite of webapps for creating Flash components, is here to help. SnackTools aims to bring non-Flash developers a way to create customized, sophisticated and impressive Flash media components without having to know how to code.

Since SnackTools is web-based, there’s no need to install anything, and you can access your work any time and anywhere (with an internet connection).

Currently, the suite has BannerSnack, which lets you create rich interactive Flash banners, and PhotoSnack, which lets you create stunning photo galleries (perfect for portfolios).

BannerSnack

BannerSnack lets you create Flash banners using a very intuitive interface. It has standard templates that you can modify so that you don’t have to start from scratch. If you want a more customized solution, you can import your own graphics assets and use the tool to design your Flash banner. You can select a standard size or customize the size of your banner. Check out some examples of banners created with BannerSnack.

PhotoSnack

PhotoSnack is a web-based application that lets you generate stunning photo slideshows/galleries. You can choose from a wide variety of templates. It will literally take you a few minutes to get your slideshow set up: you pick a template, you upload your photos, then adjust the settings, and voila – your own professional-level slideshow. You can use it to display your portfolio, photos, and more. Here are some examples of PhotoSnack in action: Slideshow examples.

A special Six Revisions giveaway

SnackTools has teamed up with us here at Six Revisions to give five lucky readers 1000 points for SnackTools. A download costs 4 points, so that’s a lot of awesome stuff!

How to participate in the SnackTools giveaway

To participate in the SnackTools giveaway for 1000 points, simply leave a comment below answering the following question:

If you won 1000 SnackTools points, how would you use it?

We’ll select five winners at random using the same methods as previous Six Revisions giveaways. The giveaway ends on Thursday, January 14, 2010 after which you’ll no longer be able to participate.

We’ll write a follow-up post to announce the winners, so you should subscribe to the RSS feed to get instantly notified when the announcement of winners has been posted. You should leave a valid email address when leaving your comment as this is the only way we’ll be able to contact you regarding your prize if you win.

One day only: exclusive Six Revisions freebie

For the entire day today, you can get 100 points free just by using the coupon code SIXREVISIONS100.

You have 30 days to spend all 100 points, so you better hurry!

How to claim your points

1. Go to http://www.snacktools.com/cart.html
2. Press on the “I have a discount coupon” link
3. Insert the SIXREVISIONS100 coupon code and press the “Check” button. The 100 points will be automatically added to the shopping cart
4. Login or register at this point
5. Press the “Post your order” button and the points will be added to your account.

An Easter egg for geeks

If you’re familiar with the Konami Code, here’s a tip: you should try it out when you’ve logged into the system and see what happens!

Related Content

• 12 Websites To Help You Learn Flash/ActionScript
• Adobe Flash Accessibility: Best Practices for Design
• 10 Useful Flash Components for Graphing Data
• Related categories: User Interface and Web Development

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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Close to a hundred readers participated, and today, we’re announcing the 20 winners.

The winners

The winners are listed below. Winners were selected at random using the MySQL randomizing query used in previous Six Revisions giveaways.

If you’re a winner, you should have already received an email with instructions on how to obtain your 1-year subscription Pingdom. Congratulations!

• dizzl
• Aaron
• Amaiko
• pimeo
• Joshua
• knico
• Tomas
• aleksoft
• Kevin Subba
• DesignLovr
• Metin Ucar
• Chris thurman
• qim
• Pete
• thedroidworld
• Angelica Rodriguez
• Juarez P. A. Filho
• gui
• Matt
• WipeR

Didn’t win this time?

If you didn’t win this time, don’t worry, there are other giveaways in store for Six Revisions readers. The best way to make sure you don’t miss any giveaway posts is to subscribe to the Six Revisions RSS feed.

About Pingdom

Pingdom is an important tool to anyone that runs a website. It will alert you whenever your site is experiencing offline issues. Alerts can be sent out via email, SMS, Twitter and even as iPhone push notifications. Pingdom has a free iPhone app for iPhone users.

There are also plenty of reports available to let you view your uptime and response time history, track down errors with Pingdom’s automatic error analysis that is performed for every downtime, and much more.

Monitoring is done from multiple locations on the Internet. No installation is necessary; everything is set up easily from within Pingdom’s online control panel, where you can also access all your reports, set up contacts for alerts, and other useful functionality. Learn more about Pingdom on their site.

Related Content

• 10 Free Server & Network Monitoring Tools that Kick Ass
• Five Free Tools for Multi-Monitor Computer Set-Ups
• 10 Excellent Feedback Tools for Web Designers
• Related categories: Tools and Resources

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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The winners are:

• Lynda Damiata
• Chetan Sachdev
• Michael
• Jigar Chauhan
• Earle Simers

Congratulations to the winners! You should’ve already received instructions on how to claim your prize.

Thank you JumpeyeComponents and participants!

I would like to thank the JumpeyeComponents team for deciding to provide the prizes for this giveaway. I would also like to thank the participants for sharing their opinion on what the thought was the best place to learn Flex. If you didn’t win this time, don’t worry, there will be more Six Revisions giveaways to come, so put the Six Revisions RSS feed in your feed reader to be instantly notified whenever a giveaway is posted!

Related Content

• 12 Websites to Help You Learn Flash/ActionScript
• 10 Useful Flash Components for Graphing Data
• Adobe Flash Accessibility: Best Practices for Design
• Related categories: Flash and Web Development

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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To make the voting more interesting, Navicat offered up three licenses of their new and awesome Navicat Premium application, which is a tool for managing MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL databases in one central and unified interface. Today, we’re happy to announce the three winners of the Navicat Premium licenses.

The Winners

• Ole – Navicat Premium (Windows)
• Jonathan Chee – Navicat Premium (Mac OS X)
• exe – Navicat Premium (Linux)

Congratulations to the winners and you will be contacted soon about claiming your prizes. For those who were not able to win, there are more giveaways in store for you so make sure to sign up for the Six Revisions RSS feed to get notified whenever a giveaway is posted.

An Exclusive Six Revisions Discount!

You can get 10% off the sale price of a Navicat product simply by using the following code:

• sixre20

This code will be valid until December 21, 2009.

Thank you!

On behalf of the Six Revisions community, I thank Navicat for furnishing these licenses and for hosting a wonder Six Revisions giveaway. Also, thank you to the participants who voted for their favorite RDBMS.

Related Content

• Top Five Best Database Management Tools
• Best Relational Database Management System?
• 7 Applications to Make Working with MySQL Databases Easier
• Related categories: Web Development and Tools

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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To celebrate the new release of FlashEff 2.0 for Flex, the JumpeyeComponents team has decided to work with Six Revisions to give away FlashEff 2.0 for Flex licenses worth $99 each to five Six Revisions readers.

How to Participate

All you have to do to participate is to leave a comment on this post that talks about your favorite place online to visit to learn about Flex. It could be a blog, a website, forums, anything on the web that has helped you in your education about using Flex.

Giveaway Details

The end date for participating is December 8, 2009 – commenting on this post will be disabled afterwards. Please only leave a comment once. Winners will be selected at random using the same methodology as other Six Revisions giveaways in the past. Please leave a valid email address when filling out the comment form, as this will be the only way we can contact you if you’ve won. Stay tuned for the announcement of the winners by subscribing the RSS feed.

Related Content

• 12 Websites To Help You Learn Flash/ActionScript
• 10 Useful Flash Components for Graphing Data
• Adobe Flash Accessibility: Best Practices for Design
• Related categories: Flash and Web Development

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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Last week, Pixmac, a microstock photo site (read more about them on the microstock:insider blog) teamed up with Six Revisions to give five readers 20 credits to use on their site. Over 30 participants shared a photos they found on the Pixmac site that they thought to be representative of design or development. Today, we’re happy to announce the winners.

The Winners

The five winners of 20 credits on Pixmac are:

• Anparasu
• Sebastian
• Michael L.
• Mary
• Zach S

Here is a screen grab of the MySQL query used to select the winners at random.

Congratulations to the winners! The winners should already have received an email regarding how to obtain their Pixmac credits.

Thank you!

Thank you Pixmac for sponsoring a wonderful and fun giveaway on Six Revisions, and thank you to the participants of the giveaway.

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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UPrinting.com and Six Revisions teamed up to give five Six Revisions readers a chance to win a set of 500 die cut business cards. Today, we’d like to announce the winners of the giveaway.

Winners of the UPrinting Die Cut Business Cards

These are the folks you’ve won the business cards of the "Best Online Resource for Graphic Designers?" giveaway:

• Nikas
• Jose Adan Ortiz
• AJ
• Sandra Kidd
• Annick

Congratulations to the winners and you should get an email soon with details on how receive your prizes.

Screenshot

Here is the screen grab of the MySQL query that was executed to randomly select the winners.

Thank you all!

Thank you UPrinting for hosting this awesome Six Revisions giveaway and for giving away such lovely prizes. Thank you to the participants who voted for what they thought was the best resource for graphic designers. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed to get notified of future Six Revisions giveaways.

Related Content

• Best Online Resource for Graphic Designers?
• 20 Useful Websites for Graphic Design Textures and Patterns
• 25 Impressive Character Designs from Behance
• Related categories: Graphic Design and Photoshop

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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Last week, Navicat, the creators of popular database administration software, worked with Six Revisions to give three lucky winners a chance to win single-user licenses of their wonderful tools. Today, we’re happy to announce the winners.

Winners

Here are the winners of the Navicat giveaway.

• Shaun – Winner of Navicat for MySQL Enterprise Edition license
• JR – Winner of Navicat for PostgreSQL Enterprise Edition license
• Matt Powell – Winner of Navicat for Oracle Enterprise Edition

Congratulations to the winners and you will be contacted soon about claiming your prizes. For those who were not able to win, there are more giveaways in store for you so make sure to sign up for the Six Revisions RSS feed to get notified whenever a giveaway is posted.

Screenshot

Here is the screenshot of the MySQL query used to randomly select the winners.

Thank you!

On behalf of the Six Revisions community, I thank Navicat for furnishing these licenses and for hosting a wonder Six Revisions giveaway. Also, thank you to the participants who voted for their favorite database administration management tool.

Related Content

• Navicat Database Tool Licenses Giveaway – Vote for Chance to Win!
• 7 Applications to Make Working with MySQL Databases Easier
• 12 Essential Security Tips and Hacks for WordPress
• Related categories: Tools and Web Development

About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

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These 20 designs show the various effects of using blue in your web design, and are all superbly designed, and very clean. Best of all, they’re all really fresh, so hopefully you haven’t encountered too many of them before!

20 Beautiful Blue Website Designs

Further Articles

30 Beautifully Blue Web Designs – I only just encountered this post after writing my own. Jacob from Six Revisions has compiled an excellent post showcasing 30 fresh blue web designs. Given that the post is quite recent, I’m relieved to find that our posts don’t showcase the same designs at all. Well worth checking out for more blue inspiration!

25 Refreshingly Blue Website Designs – Another great roundup of blue web designs from YoutheDesigner. This is a great blog that I’m only just discovering, but I recommend that you check it out!

40 Blue Website Designs – Another great post from OutlawDesignBlog. I’m a big fan of this blog, and Danny has done a great job rounding up some awesome designs.

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