Helibo

Earlier this evening I came across a website called Doomi. After looking at the homepage I thought i’d download the application and see what it’s like.

I was completely blown away. Doomi is the perfect piece of software for me, with great AJAX like features, letting you add, edit and remove to-do items. Best of all, you can even make reminders on each item that you wish to be reminded about.

The only disappointment I’ve found is that there weren’t enough options on that reminder feature. However, the application is amazing!

When I began learning PHP & MySQL, I found myself downloading pre-made scripts from a website and manipulating them to understand the language. I found this strategy very hard to begin with, but eventually picked it up.

I then moved on to tutorials to further advance my knowledge, and I was helpless. I wasn’t able to understand anything about PHP. All i knew was that MySQL is a database that has information in it, and PHP is some code that you have to write to work with the database to do what you want with the information.

I spent a good month or two trying to understand PHP, when suddenly I found myself reading “Advanced” tutorials. Oh no wonder I couldn’t understand.

Ah` what’s this I see?
I finally found the perfect website that I knew would help. I started reading, and within a week I had gone through everything and started to practice. If you have a rough idea of what PHP & MySQL is, then this PHP MySQL Tutorial is perfect to begin with.

On a personal note, I would suggest going through this tutorial at least 3 times, until you understand and are comfortable in writing the basics of php. Then go ahead and try and write a few scripts for yourself, call it a test if you may.

3 years later after following on with more intermediate tutorials, and having the help from someone i knew personally who was sufficient in the language, and I could say I am now a PHP Programmer.

So to finish off, PHP & MySQL might seem extremely hard for you, but if you just take a read at this website a few times, just read the first 3 areas over and over, and you should get a grasp of it pretty quickly.

Good luck to you all if you think about learning PHP & MySQL.

Wordpress made a great move on their face. The websites design is a huge improvement from the old one, much more aesthetically pleasing I must say.

Even the Wordpress Admin Panel and User Login has been updated. Just like I said in a previous post as well, Getting Fresh works!

Read more about what exactly has been upgraded on Wordpress.

That’s right folks, right here on Helibo.com you have the chance to win a book!

As a matter of fact, there is 2 books, but the we are giving the winner a choice between which one you’d prefer. The winner will be able to decide from either one of the following, The PHP Anthology or The Principles of Beautiful Web Design. Both books are from Sitepoint, both in brilliant condition. And to top that, The Principles of Beautiful Web Design is a hard back copy, which are limited edition!

The books have been provided by Adam Roberts (me), which I have read completely and I must say, they are great! And just to note, the Quick Reference Guides are included of course!

Want to get your hands on of these prizes?
It’s simple, all you need to do is post a comment below, with your name and email, your email will be hidden, and in the comment just simply post a link to your website.

How does it work?
You will be entered into a database, which will enable you to be entered for the draw. At the end of the competition, we will have write some code that pull someone out at random. And that person shall win.
Once the winner has been chosen by the computer, we will contact you via email. If you fail to reply within 10 days, a new winner will be announced.

When does it end?
This competition will end on the 15th of April 2008.
And remember, to enter you must have your own website!

What if I have a question?
If you have any questions or concerns, please use the contact form.

I would just like to let you know that there might not be a new post for the next couple of days, but if you can wait, just hold on that little longer, we will have something for everyone.

I myself am working on getting a competition together, without saying what the prize will be, it will be great for designers and programmers or anyone that would like to get learn on either of the subjects.

And to top that, I am also working on something for all wordpress bloggers, a free theme. Yeah, you read right! We will be releasing a new wordpress theme that will be freely available to download right here on Helibo.com. So check back every day, or subscribe to the RSS Feed so you can hear about it first!

And to finish off, I thank everyone for their support so far.

When it comes to Content Management there is bound to be a system that is right for you and your site. It’s just a case of searching for the perfect system. Each CMS has good points and bad points, and I am yet to come across one that is perfect in every way. While Wordpress is good for some sites, Joomla, or e107 is better for others.

A great site to find Open Source Content Management Systems is OpenSourceCMS, you are able to view different systems and read comments from other users that have tried that CMS. The best feature by far allows you to actually login to the system and try it out from an administartor perspective, allowing you to look around and see what features are built in from the word Go! By using this site you can easily browse through system after system to find the one that is right for you.

When choosing a CMS you also need to take into consideration what the system offers in terms of support, updates and documentation. There is little point of choosing a system that hasn’t been updated for years as there is a higher risk of security issues arising.

Another thing to take into consideration is the amount of skins and plugins that you can use on your site to add as much functionality to your site as you need. If the system doesn’t have many plugins then you will have a harder time adding the functionality you want your site to have. If you have the knowledge you can of course create your own plugins and create the functionality yourself.

The choice is yours, make sure you make the right decision to make your site successful.

There has been many people who have a great portfolio and do their work great but they have one thing lacking, their lacking communication skills.

Professional Manner 

When you are talking to your clients, you must speak in a professional manner.   What a professional manner means is to talk fluent english (e.g. Hello. How may I help you? and not like yo wAts ^).  This is a very important element while communicating with your clients so they know what you mean, so they can understand you, and they know you are professional and not a immature kid.  Emoticons Another thing I see when people talk to their clients is emoticons being overly used. I am not telling you not to use emoticons at all but not many.  Maybe like one or two a chat and not 1 - 2 every couple sentences.

What was that?

A client doesn’t like it when you don’t know what they are talking about. Read it the first time, if you don’t know what they mean the first time then read it a couple more times.  After reading it a few times and you still don’t know what they said then it is alright to ask what they said. When you ask what they said say something like “I’m sorry, what do you mean” or “I’m sorry, I do not understand, can you please repeat that.” and this also relates back to the Professional Manner section because the last thing a clients wants to hear is “Watcha mean?” or “I can’t understand you bye.”

Can you wait? 

Clients love it when they don’t have to hold on or wait. You will lose clients if you always make them hold on and wait for a response. There are reasons they could wait (e.g. If you have to find something to provide them with to answer their question).  To prevent yourself from telling your clients to hold on, know what your talking about and study what you know.

Be nice!

Another aspect in keeping your clients is to be nice. Don’t curse, don’t say racial slurs, and don’t joke around about stuff that can be taken the wrong way. Don’t argue with your clients because it will turn them away. Remember this statement, “Your clients are always right.”   If you follow this article then you will keep more of your clients. I hope you enjoyed reading it. 

From something I read a while ago, “Shiny and Glossy elements are now officially outdated!”, I see it now as a fact. However as a designer myself, I must admit I still do create these shiny and glossy elements, but one way you could look at it, is that this old web 2.0 (Shiny and Glossy) trend, has become a smoking addiction to many players of Adobe Photoshop.

In event to this, I took action only weeks ago where I made my final glossy design. Many people commented that it was nice, but those comments were only from other designers of this shiny and glossy web 2.0 trend. In result, I asked some of my old clients what they thought of it, amongst other designs that I had done to this style, and they’re comments were negative.

I didn’t ask why, I already knew the answer. The answer, is that the clients I did ask were corporate companies, meaning professionalism and usability was the key to there type of websites. So web 2.0 is not the way to go, for any professional sort.

Read the rest of this entry »

Regarding a previous post of mine about 3D becoming unpopular, I looked through my bookmarks earlier today and found this amazing website that I almost had forgotten about.

Gnomonology is a fantastic website that provides a tremendous amount of tutorials. The tutorials are done by video, which the only downside is that you have to pay for them. But looking at the quality, they’re quite reasonable.

So if your looking to get into creating 3D models, sculptures or scenery, I would highly recommend Gnomonology for tutorials. They don’t base the tutorial around one type of software either, there’s many. From Maya, Photoshop, 3D Studio Max to After Effects, Headus, Lightwave and more!

I’m definitely going to be sitting down and going through them sometime soon.

A great way to keep your website up to date, is by shedding some light in different areas. By maintaining the corresponding elements but manipulating the way it draws attention, you should see a significant change. Let me show you.

A great example I found today, was the re-brand of Eden.

You can the rest of the above image on their homepage, and it shows they’ve even manipulated the logo as well. And doing this can give your website another boost in freshness. What I would suggest is don’t do this continuously, but perhaps every 6 months or so. Keep your website the same from a very long period of time can start to turn peoples heads away. It’s true!

Design and the web itself is changing on a daily basis, so by keeping your websites design clean and fresh, you should be able to keep up with standards of that time.

I believe people could save a lot of money by doing this, instead of after 2 or more years, having a complete re-design of ones website. Wouldn’t you say so?