Helibo

It should go without saying, that you should insist on getting your web design exactly how you want it, first time round. When I say first time round, I don’t mean that you should expect your designer to produce exactly what you want in your first concept, I mean, that you should be sure he delivers to your exact requirements after the number of revisions required. In the past, I have foolishly approved a design, finished payment and received the files, only to decide a couple of weeks later, that the design was going in the wrong direction, and wouldn’t be suitable for my site. This, is a pain. It poses two fundamental issues: Time, and money. Not only have you wasted time waiting for it to be completed in the first place, and sheded out money that has now gone to waste, but you now have to wait longer for a new design to be completed, and pay yet more money. We can only blame ourselves in this situation, but there are some ways to avoid it!

Get the opinion of other web developers, and even peers.

Post your design up for critique on forums. See what the buzz is, and what kind of feedback you’re getting.

Choose a design you plan to keep.

When reviewing your design: you should have the mentality that the design you choose will be the design you keep and use for a reasonable amount of time. Don’t think “This bit’s not that good, but I’ll get it redone in the next version”.

Make sure YOU know exactly what you want.

Might seem an obvious thing to say, but if you don’t know what you want: how can you expect your designer too? You need to make sure your designer is clear on exactly what they need to produce for you. Which brings me nicely onto my next point.

Write a fully detailed brief.

Write a document briefing your designer on what you want. It’s good for you both to have a reference to check back to. This makes the design process a great deal smoother, and certainly works much better than briefing your designer over an IM. IM is good for things you missed out or revisions: but I don’t recommend it as a way to brief your designer.
Remember: It’s much easier to change a design before the coding stage, or better still, as a revision. So get it right - first time!

Time and time again, I find sites that look appealing to the eye, but lack structure or consistency. As web developers, we should be building sites that are easy to navigate for our users. That should be our top priority, and then come to the aesthetics.

The best way to do this is keep things simple. First, start by planning a logical structure to your site. Ask yourself: What should visitors see first? Where should their attention be drawn too? Also ask yourself: Do I really need certain things? Don’t put something in for the sake of it, or if you think that your design “should” have it. If you want to be unique, you should aim to be different – not have the same old design features every site has! It over-clutters the design, and leads to a not-so-user-friendly site!

You should also try and create designs that can be achieved easily through CSS – make it easier for the coder, or if you are the coder too – really produce something that fits nicely together overall, as a design and code piece.

A short article from me today, but I can’t tell you what to do with design – it’s an art form; a way to express oneself. I can only point you in the right direction, and let you do the footwork.

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.

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?

We are now providing a Web Consultation service which will consist of providing you with a highly detailed and unique review of your website, from the overall design and structure and its code, to SEO and marketing techniques that will help you get more out of your website.

All you are required to do to start is simply head over to the right hand side and click on the “Web Consultation” banner in the sidebar, and fill out the form briefly, providing some details of your website.

As an introductory offer, we will be providing this service at a one time fee of $50.00, that’s over a 60% discount from what the initial price will be. Cheap as chips for a quality service! And once payment has been authorised, a member of the team will be in touch with you to receive some details about your website, and then to give your review to you.

With our review we will be providing help and tips on how to lift your website off the ground. We won’t do this for you, but it will give you the correct information and roots to go down in order to get the best out of your website.

So what are you waiting for? Start your consultation today!

Months ago I had the idea to start Helibo as a personal blog. It wasn’t until recently when I decided to take Helibo to another level, where many articles about the web industry would be written by myself and 2 other people. So before I go on, I would first like to introduce, Xavier and Andy who will be writing articles for Helibo.

So today is the day where I announce the launch of Helibo, and how I will start this is by telling you where the name ‘Helibo’ came from. To answer, I was using a great tool called Tabeze to brainstorm my domain ideas really quickly. Roughly guessing, I would have made over a 100 attempts to come up with something short and decent. So there it is, and if you struggle to pronounce the name, this may help you - “Hair-Lee-Bow”.

I would also like to explain that this site was NOT created to be flipped, nor have I got the intentions of selling Helibo. With that being said, Helibo isn’t about making any money, it’s about providing thorough information about the web today which will give you as the user, a better understanding of it. Even if some articles are very detailed about different topics, we wouldn’t like you to turn your head away.

So if you know of a topic that you do not understand about the Internet, please feel free to contact us and we can add it in our topic box. Yes, we have one!

We have big plans for Helibo, and one way for us to succeed is by you giving us help. Give us honest feedback, interact with other members, and possibly submit your own articles and get paid. Helibo will be about sharing knowledge, and building an efficient blog about the web today.

If you a personal interested in any of the following:

• Learning about Identity, and strengthening your brand.
• How to interact with clients properly
• How to get yourself above your competition
• Dominating you or your business in the industry
• Making money online
• How to generate a buzz
• How to make your design a non 20 second look
• Learn more from programming
• Learning from industry leaders through interviews and articles
• And much more!

Then keep coming back or contribute to Helibo by grabbing an RSS feed, we know you love them!

So to finish off today’s introductory phase, I would like to Thank everyone for helping me launch Helibo. There is much more to come, so we suggest you be back very soon!