Hash One

Testing the Elements

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:10:36 +0000

We just need to test all the common elements that are generally used in a blog post. Click here to see the results.

Pellentesque enim tortor, fringilla et, vestibulum at, gravida sit amet, eros. Etiam congue vulputate massa. Suspendisse tempor massa. Nulla dolor. In porttitor laoreet sapien. Sed a ipsum. Etiam risus nisi, consectetur quis, dictum eget, rutrum nec, mi. Proin bibendum, quam non volutpat tristique, risus sapien faucibus sem, eu congue tortor augue et mauris. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Ut purus felis, sollicitudin sed, pellentesque et, sagittis aliquam, urna. Nulla facilisi. Vestibulum iaculis varius metus.

Heading 1

Pellentesque enim tortor, fringilla et, vestibulum at, gravida sit amet, eros. Etiam congue vulputate massa. Suspendisse tempor massa. Nulla dolor. In porttitor laoreet sapien. Sed a ipsum. Etiam risus nisi, consectetur quis, dictum eget, rutrum nec, mi. Proin bibendum, quam non volutpat tristique, risus sapien faucibus sem, eu congue tortor augue et mauris. Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Ut purus felis, sollicitudin sed, pellentesque et, sagittis aliquam, urna. Nulla facilisi. Vestibulum iaculis varius metus.

Heading 2

Tincidunt varius sequi, integer magna ac, donec curabitur. Rhoncus sed. Lectus vitae augue, mauris tincidunt. Ut nec fermentum, dolor vestibulum. Nunc neque tincidunt, non dictumst tempus. Et id, duis sit arcu, felis porta donec. Proin tincidunt.

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5

Heading 6

One
Two
- Two Point One
- Two Point Three
Three
Four

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One
Two
Three
1. Three.One
2. Three.Two
Four

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Phasellus lorem aliquam, pede morbi, nulla sed. Urna ut a. Mattis viverra dignissim, suspendisse risus, felis a. Sit nec. Sit egestas condimentum. Tempor quisque sit, commodo justo consequat. Augue fermentum, est vulputate et, purus et. Tincidunt quam enim, ac a pede.

Get more traffic with good design

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:09:11 +0000

While designing We Are not Freelancers we had one goal in mind. Our goal was to get featured on as many web galleries as possible.

This isn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination, we had never achieved it before so why would we do it now? From start to finish this blog took about 8 days to create but I think of those 8 days I must have spent every hour of them on the design.

Why did we want to be featured on galleries?

Was it ego? Was it recognition?

A little bit and A little bit.

But. The main reason was traffic and the spin offs of that. I strongly believe that if you are a start up blogger and you have a bit of a budget/time to play with you should really put a lot of focus into your design.

We managed to get featured on quite a few CSS galleries and the result was 2000 visitors per day for the first 5 days. That is a lot of visitors for a new blog.

But that was only the start.

With that comes features on other blogs, We Are not Freelancers has been featured on many blogs for ‘Best Footers’, Best Headers’, ‘Best Tweet Birds’, Top this and Top that.

SEO

So getting featured is awesome, your ego gets stroked, your get recognition, you get traffic. But the most important thing is still to come:

SEO rankings… with all the sites we have been featured on, We Are not Freelancers has gained some serious back link horse power. We have put literally no effort into our SEO but, due to the amount of sites we have been mentioned on, our SEO rankings have been impressively boosted purely off back linking.

Get creative and then refine your design

So I highly recommend that you spend a bit more time on either getting creative or finding someone who is creative. We spent hours looking around, analyzing trends etc. We noticed that one popular trend which is under used is hand drawn designs. So we tackled it head on.

This isn’t the only trend out there which is under used. There are many, you just have to dig deep, discover a cool style get inspired, execute good padding, establish a grid structure and then refine, refine, refine, refine, refine.

If you are struggling a little then ask someone in the design world to have a look before you release it, people like Liam McKay are seriously friendly and helpful, Adelle Charles is another. Hell you can even ask me

By doing so you will kick start your viewership in a big way which can only be a good thing for the future. Spend the time now and reap the rewards later, we spent many hours on this design but it not even close to the amount we would have had to spend on SEO’ing and hustling.

Below are some of the sites we have been featured on:

The 3 Step process to marketing on Twitter

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:05:32 +0000

I tweet a lot and thanks to TweetDeck I am kept up to date with what the people I follow are doing. By watching them I have tried to pick up as many good aspects of their habits and tried to combine it to market our blogs.

I believe that these methods are working well and would like to share them with you:

Step 1: Gaining followers with the power of the retweet

By now we should all understand the power of a retweet. If someone with 10,000 followers retweets your post then there is the potential for massive impact. The problem is that many of us don’t have someone like that.

So the key is to get 10 people with 1000 followers to like you. How do you do that?

Well first you have to be genuine, if you are fake and cuddly people will pick it up almost straight away and you are more likely to lose followers instead of gaining any… you have to find 5 or 10 popular tweeters who you can genuinely have a conversation with.

You can start off by retweeting their new blog posts. You must also be able to answer some of their questions and cries for help that they put out.

By doing so you make a mark on them and there is a good chance that, by consistently being in contact and retweeting, those people will start following you.

Once they start following, and realizing that you retweet a lot of their content, they will start retweeting your content. Often what happens from there is that one of their followers will retweet that post and so on.

Step 2: Create a buildup

So now that you have the retweet power you want to leverage on that as much as possible correct?

The way you do this, and we now consider this a pivotal aspect of our tweet marketing, is by creating a build up.

If you know what next weeks post is going to be about make sure that people get a sniff of it this week.

For example:

“Do you know who John Smith is? Follow him now because next week he is on our blog.”

Two days later:

“Did you know that John Smith did x,y,z… find out more next week on our post”

And so you carry on, but you do it subtly. It must not be the main focus of your tweets, it should be a random mention every now and then. By the time it gets to that Wednesday some of your followers will be chomping at the bit for when you mention that the post is live.

Another aspect is that your buildup tweets can have retweet potential.

Step 3: Consistent reminders and timing

You have the RT power, and you have created the buildup. It is time to tweet your post.

So you tweet it…. Nothing happens.

This is the part which some people may not respect and may even initially misunderstand. When you post a tweet about your latest post make sure that you do so every 4hrs on the day of it being published.

Some of you may consider it spamming but I disagree. There are many ways to skin a cat.

Part A – gauging the popular times

First of all let us focus on the basics. Not all of your followers will be online at the same time. So since you want all your followers to know about it, you will need to time your tweets so that as many of them find out as possible.

My suggestion is gauge when the popular times are. When is it that most of the retweeters are retweeting? Learn when the best time is to launch a tweet and stick to it as best as you can.

Also remember that you have to consider multiple time zones. So it is no use saying ‘oh well I will just post at 12pm my time’… 12pm your time could mean 4am in the most popular Retweeters country.

So gauge your timing correctly and tweet consistently.

Part B – Consistent tweets

If you decide to tweet about your post every 4hrs then make sure the tweets are different and that they lead to different aspects of the post.

For Example:

Tweet 1: “New blog post ‘Interview with John Smith’

Tweet 2: “Have you seen out latest post? Please help #float it

Tweet 3: “Our latest post is generating quite a bit of chatter! Get involved ”

With all three tweets you have provided different links and different subjects, which avoids the spam label and has RT power and points to different areas which promote your post in different ways.

Some tiny tips and reminders

Tweet about old posts once in a while. The chances are that your new followers have not read previous, top drawer, posts from your blog. Let them know. The key here is to only tweet it once and to make sure that you timed it correctly.
Create conversation. Don’t just tweet about your post, talk to other tweeples. Show people that you are normal so that when you tweet about your post they will respect it. If you don’t involve yourself in the community you will seem like a corporate machine
If someone tweets something good about your blog then retweet their comments and maybe even follow them, it is good twitter etiquette.

And that ladies and gentlemen is how you should prepare a post. It is not just about the SEO, or the comments or that single tweet. It is a long process. Good planning can yield good results with visits, comments and diggs.

p.s – Follow us on Twitter and stand a chance of being retweeted (I love to retweet). Twitter.com/obox

There is nothing wrong with listening

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:04:56 +0000

…start of rant…

I believe that Marc and I are very good listeners. In fact as good as we are at listening we also suck at listening.

We were once in a meeting which contained way too many silent moments because we were so used to keeping out mouth shut that we never had anything to add.

So while I am all for listening I am all for talking too. This brings me to my reason for this post.

Lately we have received quite a few requests for meetings to just have a chat about the web etc. We love these meetings because its good to network and you never know what you could learn from your visitor.

But…. the other day we had someone come in here (Let’s call this person Wilson) and all they did was speak . And speak. And speak. It was about a 1hr ‘meeting’ and if Marc and I got 10 sentences in it was a lot. During the meeting Wilson was giving us all these proposals of collaboration and that he was this project and that project etc… Wilson was asking us questions but not once waited for an answer.

If you are going to ask someone to get involved with your project can I suggest that you a) give them time to think and b) give them time to respond.

If you talk too much there is the risk that the listener loses trust in you. They would rather have you out of their space than to keep attacking it all the time.

The other issue I had was that Wilson kept on mentioning how much money they made. When did I ask how much money you make? How much money you make is private and should stay private. One of my pet hates is when someone bursts through the door and tells me how rich they are, I instantly ask myself ‘Are you really that rich?’ which is quickly followed by ‘Do I really care? And why are you telling me?’. There are those who think they are, and then there are others who know they are. I prefer the latter.

I understand that it is important to get your point across but be careful not to shut yourself off from the people you are actually talking to. You risk losing their interest and before you even get to the main item of the meeting you have lost their attention.

So I suggest that, unless the moment calls for it, you talk and listen. You never know what the other person might add.

…end of rant…

Keep it simple, Charge them

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 22:00:52 +0000

This post has come about through my thoughts of how open source programs make money. It is a bit of a rant as I am only seeing one side of the coin here, so if you can then please enlighten me.

Yesterday I read a post on 37signals which spoke about how to make money twice. To me the best part of the post was in the first paragraph.

It said: “A good portion of this industry is still trying to figure out how to make money for the first time (hint: charge people).” What I loved about it was simple, “hint: charge people”. Brilliant.

Why is it brilliant? Well because it seems that the trend of Web 2.0 is not only glossy buttons but also Open Source and Free Software, it is driving me mad. “Take it, it’s FREE!”. This is awesome for the end user, they can get a great service at no charge.

But how is the person who is making the program going to put the food on the table? “Venture Capital.” Well, if have ever visited Tech Crunch you will have noticed that it is no longer about just getting ‘some venture capital’ so that you can focus on making your program. You now have stages A, B, C, Z. Each time the amount needed increases 10 fold, venture A cost $1mil, venture C cost $100mil. Eventually it will run out, it has too. That bubble will burst, especially now that the US is been smashed by an economic crisis of note.

Cape Town recently played host to WordCamp. The star guest was Mr WordPress himself, Matt Mullenweg. One of the first slides in his presentation said the following: “Selling software is dead.” He proceeded to list four blue chip IT companies and pointed out that only one of them was charging for their software, the other 3 gave it away.

I find it incredibly difficult to put a huge amount of work into a project and then just give it away with a smile on my face. There must be some kind of plan to make money off it. If companies like Adobe and 37Signals continue to charge good money for their software I see no reason as to why you should be giving yours away.

I strongly believe that if your product is good enough then people will be willing to pay for it. By doing so there are no favours, the stress and effort is justified, it becomes sustainable plus you are having fun AND making money at the same time. Who said you can’t have the cake and eat it?

There is the option of giving away your product and then charging for a service. WordPress gives away their blogging engine but then charges for services such as more bandwidth or modifiable themes. It is a great idea but the problem with that is that you need to build up a huge user base before you can start making money. Matt admitted that very few people actually upgrade their accounts on WordPress, this interested me because I thought that a user base of over 3 million would have at least 20% – 25% of its users on upgraded accounts. To me this only weakens the call for free projects.

“But”, I hear you say, “by being free, the community can get involved and help improve your product.” I say, that if you are earning money then you can invest that back into your community and pay people to improve it, this can create more loyalty than someone who does it for free.

The other issue I have is that if you have a free product someone who is clever enough can piggy back off your project and make money off it themselves. So while you are slaving away, someone else out there is taking your work and cashing in. I don’t see anything wrong with that method, as long as they obey the relevant rules of Open Source, but wouldn’t you like to at least be getting something back for giving something away?

So to end, I don’t agree with Matt, selling your software is not dead. Selling your software will outlast free software and if it is good enough then people may even drop the free item and buy your one. You just have to look at WooThemes to realise it, there are tonnes of free themes out there but WooThemes is now a sustainable business because it is better. The reason they are better is because they could afford to pay for it to be better, and the reason they could afford it is because they charge for it.

So instead of racking your brain about how you will make money out of your new app, keep it simple… “charge people.”

Using padding in your design

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:59:36 +0000

I am a padding addict. I love padding so much that if I turned into a pillow I would probably be happy.

No seriously. I consider margins and padding to be more critical than 960.gs or the 10px method. You can have the best grid based layout but if your padding / margins are out it will not look good.

I usually spend more time making sure that all my padding is correct than if my site fits perfectly within a grid. It facilitates relevant information, separation and more importantly, white space management.

Below is an image which shows the difference between margins and paddings. Often people can confuse the two and get frustrated when things don’t look right.

I am going to unscientifically explain the difference between the two but I think that the image explains it better:

Margin is the distance between one element and its surrounding elements.
Padding is the distance of items within an element.

Now that I have confused myself, here is the image:

Without the correct margin or padding items can look disconnected, out of line and can create layout headaches for the elements which surround it. Padding can also dictate the character and readability of your site.

A site with lots of padding will look open, minimalist and easy to read. If you have too little padding things can look claustrophobic and it can be difficult to distinguish between sections on the site.

Below is a bad example of margins & padding, and a good one.

Bad Padding

Unfortunately this site has no padding within its (table!) elements, this creates a sense of claustrophobia between text and container.

Good Padding

Creattica Daily is a good example of how padding creates great white space management and also allows for easy reading of the title and its content.

Below are some sites which I think get their spacing just right, not just in padding and margins but also heading & paragraph line heights (which is another story for another day).

The Ten Pixel Method

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:57:44 +0000

Don’t like grids? Try our ten pixel method.

There may be a proper name for this somewhere out there and it may be commonly known. If so we apologize if this has been repeated.

Grids are making a comeback and are becoming quite common in the web world. If your site doesn’t follow a set structure in its layout it may seem disjointed and difficult to navigate, read or look at.

There is a popular template being used at the moment, it is called the ‘960 Grid System‘. The 960gs site has two templates which you can download.

12 Columns – 60px wide columns with 20px gutters
16 Columns – 40px wide columns with 20px gutters

There are one or two drawbacks with using a grid. The main one is that it can take a while to perfect a design and sometimes you will land up with an element being a couple of pixels out, which can be a nightmare.

Today though, I am not going to talk about creating a site with a grid. I want to talk to you about another method that we sometimes use at OBOX-Design. We call it the ‘Ten Pixel Method’.

What does this mean?

It means that, the width of all your elements are divisible by 10, and that the spacing between elements is, at the least, 10px apart. We sometimes use this method when a site needs to be liquid or if a site needs quick deployment.

A good example of its application would be our new Content Management System, but unfortunately we cannot show you that just yet, so for this, we will create the framework from scratch. The first thing to do is to decide whether your site will be liquid or static.

For simplicity sake we will create a static layout. The next step is to decide on the width of your site and how many columns it will have. Key thing here is that columns must be divisible by 10 in order to keep a clean layout.

We will create a site 960px wide (I believe that this is now the standard width, grids or not, it is best suited to static layouts). It will have 2 columns. The Menu will be on top, content on the left and Misc details such as Links, Advert or Recent Posts on the right. One of the positives of this method is its quick execution.

So first things first let us create the HTML.





The 'Ten Pixel' Method




	Our Company
	Menu goes here
	
		
			Content Column
		
		
			Right Column
		
		

	
	© 2008

Now that we have our layout in its simplest form we need to determine how big each column is going to be. What I do is take the sites decided width and divide it by the amount of columns the body will have. From there I can easily determine the width of the menu column, content column and right column. In this case it is easier because we only have two columns, the content column and the right column:

The right bar must be able to contain 336px adverts: 350px

This leaves us with the main content column. I want there to be 10px between the two columns so this one must be 600px wide.

Now that we have our widths let us create the style sheet. One of the main elements of the 10px method is that your padding and margins must be at least 10px thick on each side. A site with space to breathe is a healthy one, so I recommend 10px padding for the side bar and 20px for the content.

Below is the styles to implement into our site (I have also included some standard styles in this CSS):

	/*----- Std Styles -----*/
	body{
		margin: 10px;
		padding: 0;
		font-size: 8pt;
	}
	body, p, a, tr, td, .date, pre, code{font-family: "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", Arial, Sans-serif; position: relative;}
	h1, h2, h3, h4, h5{font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; position: relative;}

	p{color: #111111; padding: 0px 0px 0px 0px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 0px; line-height: 18px; font-size: 8pt;}
	h1{color: #222222; font-weight: lighter; font-size: 25pt; letter-spacing: -1px;	margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px 0px;}
	h2{color: #222222; font-weight: lighter; font-size: 15pt; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 10px 0px;}
	.clearboth{clear: both;}

	/*----- Layout Styles -----*/
	#container{width: 960px;}
	#header{
		padding: 10px;
		margin: 0px;
		width: 940px;
		background-color: #036;
		clear: both;
	}
	#site_body{
		width: 960px;
		padding: 0px;
		margin: 0px 0px 10px 0px;
		clear: both;
	}
	#menu_bar{
		width: 940px;
		background-color: #f3f3f3;
		padding: 10px;
		margin: 0px 0px 10px 0px;
		clear: both;
	}
	#content_bar{
		width: 560px;
		background-color: #f3f3f3;
		padding: 10px 20px;
		margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px;

		float: left;
	}
	#right_bar{
		width: 330px;
		padding: 10px;
		float: right;
		background-color: #ccc;
	}
	#footer{
		padding: 10px;
		margin: 0px;
		width: 940px;
		background-color: #f36;
		clear: both;
	}

	/*----- Header Styles -----*/
	#header h1{color: #fff;}

Your site should look something like this:

Notice that we have 10px between the header, site content and footer. There is also 10px between the main content column and the right column. None of this was done by reverting to any grids. It should not have taken long to execute and, because of the simple method, makes it easy to make changes and add content.

All that is left it to fill each area with content. Remember to apply to the 10px Method to all items, that means widths divisible by ten and spacing at least 10px apart.

I hope you find this method useful. I have used it on quite a few sites recently, most notably our new Content Management System. If you don’t find it useful then at least you can use this code as a template for future designs.

Making money from your passion

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:53:02 +0000

When I began my web design career I didn’t do any design work. It was all programming.

Since Marc and I were three years old we have been wearing helmets (who knows why……). Helmets fueled my passion for racing (I often wonder if my blood is in fact petrol) and even when I began racing at the age of 14 I made sure that, despite my shoddy suit and 2nd hand kart, I had to have the best looking helmet. Natrually I always used to dream of being able to design my own helmet.

When I got into web work I finally had some tools that I understood and could use which would allow me to design. One day I was looking at helmet designs on the net and stumbled across a blank template of an Arai GP5. I downloaded the template and started playing around with some designs in Fireworks. By playing around with helmet designs I learnt how to use Fireworks for future web work all the while ‘fueling’ my passion.

3 months later I had what I thought was the best design ever. I managed to get a white Arai GP5 for my birthday and didn’t even blink before I sent it to a well known spray shop in Cape Town called ‘PureArt‘. The end result was a beautiful helmet which I could claim was mine and show off at the race track.

The design turned out to be quite a hit and I started getting requests to do some other drivers’ helmet designs. Since that day we have managed to generate some income from the race track. We now create many things for the racing world and sell packages for up-and-coming drivers who are trying to promote themsleves. This includes everything from a helmet design, to a CV, website and sticker kits for the kart.

It is amazing how creating that first design has allowed us to generate consistant business while at the same time having fun. Today we had to deliver a brand new helmet to PureArt to get sprayed, while we were there I saw some of my other designs being implemented and the satisfaction is huge. There is something special about seeing your design become tangible!

Website Over Engineering and ‘The Quote’

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:50:38 +0000

For the introduction of this post I’ll replay a conversation between a client and ourselves here at OBOX HQ… It went something like this:

Set the scene, it’s just after redesign number five, we’re finalizing the site, and while navigating the now totally-unlike-version-one site the Client pipes up… “Do you not think that maybe clicking around the website is a bit tedious?”

“… Excuse me sir? I think the inventors of the PC spent a few years developing the mouse to have buttons for a reason, but if that’s what you want I’ll look into it.”
(Okay, my response was not so brash, but I did say I would look into it)

I think the term “the client is always right” doesn’t quite apply to the web world as much as it applies to other sphere’s in life (like retail, for example) – sometimes our clients need direction to keep them on the straight and narrow. Because the web is what it is and we can do almost anything, it’s easy to get carried away with big ideas and extreme design directions, at times I think it’s a good idea to step back and review what direction your project has taken, instead of getting too deep and having to back track.

There’s also something that can be quickly forgotten when you’re really getting carried away and in your stride, and that is our friend The Quote – The Quote keeps us in check and, in theory at least, should stop us and the client getting over the top – when a client requests a big change it’s a good idea to refer to The Quote, as soon as you mention you will have to charge 100 hours for (in our case) re-engineering the basic function of the PC and the mouse, they are likely to detract their wild statements and ideas.

On that note, it’s also good to remember that while the quote and the invoice are two separate things, it’s always a good idea to let your client know when there’s an additional cost which is not mentioned on the quote, because there’s a good chance that relations will get sour and payment will be hard to come by. It’s happened to us, and I don’t want it happening to you!

So in conclusion (I know it’s a short post), what can we take from my rant?

Don’t get carried away on an idea if it’s not in the quote.
Always communicate with your client as to whether something’s an extra charge.
Don’t just say yes to your clients’ ideas because you’ve been taught “the client is always right”
Don’t just say a flat “no” – I always say we will look into it.

So be stern without being rude and stick to your guns if your client is getting over optimistic – it’s not worth the headache and occasionally, against all odds, you may just be right.

5D and EX1 Lady Bug Swarm

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 21:45:17 +0000

I shot this during the annual lady bug swarm here in the mountains above Boulder Colorado. Mostly meant to be a test to see how the 5D and EX1 footage would cut together. Just had the footage looked at by the good people at GW Hannaway on their ultra high end monitors and it seems, and I am told that, under the right circumstances and understanding the cameras internal codec issues, the footage holds up quite well!

I used Canon L Series lenses (24-70 and 70-200) and a Lens Baby with the plus 10 macro.

You can buy his music here:

itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=316335828&s=143441
I am a producer/ cinematographer…all shots are mine.

Video Credits: 5D and EX1 Lady Bug Swarm