The Web Design & Development Megathread

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Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

You always badmouth the previous guy, that's how you get the job.

# ? Oct 16, 2015 22:19

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# ? Jun 2, 2024 16:34

Nushergrudger: Dec 18, 2009

I've got a question. First, I'd like to mention I have very limited experience in web design. I do photography and a bit of graphic design work and I know just a little about coding, my employer decided I would also be good the guy to create Google Ads for his website.

So I'm using Google Web Designer, since I didn't know where to start, I've made some basic static ads with various landing pages. He wants an ad that is animated, in that the pictures displayed are switched at some sort of interval. I have no idea how to do this and I'm failing in searching for it on the internet. I now turn to you all, can someone give me a direction to start here?

# ? Oct 16, 2015 23:58

Impotence: Nov 8, 2010; Lipstick Apathy

nexus6 posted:

Yeah, they've decided to move to Umbraco but we've no idea why. I can't even think of any sites that use it.

We're going to get in touch and say obviously we're disappointed in their decision and we'd encourage them to make sure Umbraco meets all their requirements. Since we don't know what led to this decision we'll include a laundry list of reasons we recommend D7 over other solutions.

I think they've been charmed my some Microsoft vendor because I really don't think they know what they are talking about, 'issues we've been having with php' for example. All the issues they 've had with their POS site have been the rear end-backwards way it was implemented by whoever's nephew they hired to build it. A quick example, there is a sidebar search from with multiple filters but all it really does is throw every form value into a keyword search.

https://www.nexon.net and its sub-sites and microsites are built on umbraco if that matters

# ? Oct 17, 2015 00:00

Huzanko: Aug 4, 2015; by FactsAreUseless

Nushergrudger posted:

I've got a question. First, I'd like to mention I have very limited experience in web design. I do photography and a bit of graphic design work and I know just a little about coding, my employer decided I would also be good the guy to create Google Ads for his website.

So I'm using Google Web Designer, since I didn't know where to start, I've made some basic static ads with various landing pages. He wants an ad that is animated, in that the pictures displayed are switched at some sort of interval. I have no idea how to do this and I'm failing in searching for it on the internet. I now turn to you all, can someone give me a direction to start here?

If these are banner ads you could create an animated GIF in Photoshop.

A different program but same idea: http://www.lynda.com/Edge-Animate-tutorials/Web-Motion-Beginners-Create-Animated-Banner-Ad/149117-2.html

In PhotoShop: http://www.shutterstock.com/blog/how-to-make-animated-banner-ads-in-photoshop

# ? Oct 19, 2015 15:14

The Dave: Sep 9, 2003

They mention animation right on their page:
https://www.google.com/webdesigner/features/

There's also google web designer tutorials on youtube that might go over exactly what you need.

# ? Oct 19, 2015 15:19

Munkeymon: Aug 14, 2003; Motherfucker's got an
armor-piercing crowbar! Rigoddamndicu𝜆ous.

Nushergrudger posted:

I've got a question. First, I'd like to mention I have very limited experience in web design. I do photography and a bit of graphic design work and I know just a little about coding, my employer decided I would also be good the guy to create Google Ads for his website.

So I'm using Google Web Designer, since I didn't know where to start, I've made some basic static ads with various landing pages. He wants an ad that is animated, in that the pictures displayed are switched at some sort of interval. I have no idea how to do this and I'm failing in searching for it on the internet. I now turn to you all, can someone give me a direction to start here?

You probably want the carousel https://support.google.com/webdesigner/answer/3195037?hl=en

# ? Oct 19, 2015 16:38

cheese eats mouse: Jul 6, 2007; A real Portlander now

Career questions about reviving my development portfolio. I moved back into graphic design and hate it and want to get back into web development. I've had a breakthrough with JavaScript and it has been a breeze to learn and currently in a free Rails course with a big project due at the end of this 'semester'. I'll probably be creating a website with a log in and after that complete building a personal site using Rails

I have past experience with HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, SASS, some Git and command line knowledge, and pretty much everything Wordpress. I have built web pages using what I knew in my previous position, but haven't coded anything except for freelancing on forms this past year. I'm not sure what else I could build to show I know my stuff? We have game developer and JS meet ups locally, but I'm ready to move west and don't want to apply to any more jobs here since our small ad firms don't pay and everything else is based around .NET. I'm really great at networking and not scared to follow any job lead, but moving without any job prospects seems like suicide career-wise and financially.

I left my past position because they were paying me peanuts and the web designer position I'm in now pays great, except I'd rather be coding. I had trouble getting a second developer job due to my lack of JavaScript knowledge. My ideal job is working in an agile environment working along with a designer/UX person and not being completely walled off from the creative side.

cheese eats mouse fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Oct 19, 2015

# ? Oct 19, 2015 21:15

IronDoge: Nov 6, 2008

For the front end side of things, there are several Javascript libraries nowadays that deal with constructing UIs. People will argue vehemently for their own flavor, but 2 examples of popular ones are React.js and Angular.js. It's up to you really as to which one you'd want to try. Whichever one you pick, there are plenty of tutorials out there as to how to learn them. If you are eyeing any specific employers, they sometimes list what specific one they're looking for experience in.

Here's a course that has several projects at the end you could choose from to showcase your skills:
http://freecodecamp.com/map#basic-front-end-development-projects

Judging from your experience you could probably start somewhere in the middle of the course and build from there. Any projects you complete should go onto a Github profile so you can link it on your resume. It makes it very easy for an employer to click the link and view all your work in one place.

# ? Oct 19, 2015 21:35

Loezi: Dec 18, 2012; Never buy the cheap stuff

Munkeymon posted:

You probably want the carousel

Your client probably does not want the carousel:

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/auto-forwarding/
http://www.widerfunnel.com/rotating-offers-the-scourge-of-home-page-design/
http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/10312/are-carousels-effective
https://econsultancy.com/blog/61995-carousels-on-ecommerce-sites-are-they-worth-bothering-with/
http://erikrunyon.com/2013/01/carousel-stats/
http://conversionxl.com/dont-use-automatic-image-sliders-or-carousels-ignore-the-fad/
http://www.usefulusability.com/kill-conversion-killing-carousels-now/

And most concretely:

http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/

If your client really wants a carousel, please read this: http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/carousels/

Loezi fucked around with this message at 22:43 on Oct 19, 2015

# ? Oct 19, 2015 22:40

The Dave: Sep 9, 2003

Loezi posted:

...

The context of the post was designing a banner ad in Google Wed Designer.

# ? Oct 19, 2015 22:57

Loezi: Dec 18, 2012; Never buy the cheap stuff

The Dave posted:

The context of the post was designing a banner ad in Google Wed Designer.

Yes, and I'd say the arguments and data from the links I provided matter for that as well: 1) People seem to ignore carousels in general even if they are HUGE and 2) If they don't ignore it, they just click the first thing.

So unless you are building a carousel that has effectively the same thing on each slide, you should just pick one and focus on that. And if you have effectively the same thing on each slide, just pick the most effective and use that without the carousel.

# ? Oct 19, 2015 23:03

The Dave: Sep 9, 2003

I don't disagree that putting a carousel on your website as a hero is a bad idea.

I'm just saying that != making a two image carousel on a display banner.

# ? Oct 19, 2015 23:15

Nushergrudger: Dec 18, 2009

Noam Chomsky posted:

If these are banner ads you could create an animated GIF in Photoshop.

A different program but same idea: http://www.lynda.com/Edge-Animate-tutorials/Web-Motion-Beginners-Create-Animated-Banner-Ad/149117-2.html

In PhotoShop: http://www.shutterstock.com/blog/how-to-make-animated-banner-ads-in-photoshop

This is what I ended up doing. As far as Web Designer goes I just made looping animations so that the tap/click areas for the landing pages moved out/in in tandem with the picture in the GIF switching.

Loezi posted:

And most concretely:

http://shouldiuseacarousel.com/

If your client really wants a carousel, please read this: http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/carousels/

This was enjoyable, and interesting. You're right, though. We were not trying to create a carousel.

Turns out it didn't matter much because now I've got an error about multiple landing pages on Adwords. Tech support informed me that it is not possible to have multiple links from one ad, though the static banner ads I uploaded had multiple links. So :confused:

Thanks for the help, anyhow!

# ? Oct 20, 2015 22:34

Death Vomit Wizard: May 8, 2006; Bottom Feeder

I don't know where to else to post my stupid nginx problem, so here we are. I started a Star Trek Meeting Minutes web site on my home server using nginx and worpress. Rather than RTFM, I started with the nginx config recommended at https://codex.wordpress.org/Nginx. That worked fine. My problem is that I want to alter this config to create a reverse proxy pointing to something else running on my server.

Here is a link to my config: http://pastebin.com/d8wW8FcH

At the very bottom is my addition:

code:

location /logs/ {
proxy_pass http://192.168.0.105:8000;
proxy_redirect default;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
}

mysite.com/logs/ seems to get re-redirected to a wordpress 404 page. I think that something somewhere else in my config is causing it, but I don't know how to locate the problematic code.

# ? Oct 21, 2015 06:21

Impotence: Nov 8, 2010; Lipstick Apathy

try put it above the location / for wordpress's rewrites, or ^~ /logs or something

# ? Oct 21, 2015 06:23

nexus6: Sep 2, 2011; If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes

Does anyone have any experience with D3.js?

I'm trying to replicate this zoomable sunburst but I really don't have any experience with D3 and all I can find are examples, not really any guides on how to achieve this. For instance, I can't tell how much of this is standard D3 code or how much is custom. Also I have no idea how you format the data this visualization uses or what the correct format even is.

I guess I'm looking for more of a step-by-step guide to how you format the data, how you set colors, labels & sizes of segments and how you use D3 to display that data as a sunburst.

# ? Oct 21, 2015 11:48

Data Graham: Dec 28, 2009; 📈📊🍪😋

Well, the data at least is in http://bl.ocks.org/mbostock/raw/4063550/flare.json

I think all the node names are just there to confuse you. They all have sizes.

Data Graham fucked around with this message at 12:09 on Oct 21, 2015

# ? Oct 21, 2015 12:04

His Divine Shadow: Aug 7, 2000; I'm not a fascist. I'm a priest. Fascists dress up in black and tell people what to do.

Can anyone recommend some software for tracking a sites google rank through time for particular keywords? Preferably something you feed a few things like URL and keywords and then it does the rest itself and maybe spits out a weekly report or something.

# ? Oct 21, 2015 12:47

Death Vomit Wizard: May 8, 2006; Bottom Feeder

Biowarfare posted:

try put it above the location / for wordpress's rewrites, or ^~ /logs or something

I tried first moving my code to above the / rewrite, then adding the ^~. After each change I restarted nginx and cleared my browser's cache. It's still doing the same thing though. One behavior that I forgot to mention before is that it gives me the http auth popup that is coming from the /logs/ service I'm trying to get to, but upon entering the user/pass is when it goes to the wordpress 404.

# ? Oct 21, 2015 15:54

kedo: Nov 27, 2007

I have a client that's interested in storing employee data in an online database (ie. names, addresses, tax forms with SSNs, bank accounts and routing numbers, etc.). I have no clue about what sort of security is required for this type of information. Can anyone point me to a good introductory article or walkthrough about laws regarding storing sensitive information and best practices?

# ? Oct 21, 2015 17:27

Loezi: Dec 18, 2012; Never buy the cheap stuff

kedo posted:

I have a client that's interested in storing employee data in an online database (ie. names, addresses, tax forms with SSNs, bank accounts and routing numbers, etc.). I have no clue about what sort of security is required for this type of information. Can anyone point me to a good introductory article or walkthrough about laws regarding storing sensitive information and best practices?

The laws are indeed the primary concern but there's this thing going on with humanity that we kinda have different laws in different places. Where are you located?

# ? Oct 21, 2015 17:43

kedo: Nov 27, 2007

Loezi posted:

The laws are indeed the primary concern but there's this thing going on with humanity that we kinda have different laws in different places. Where are you located?

The US. Client does business in VA, DC and MD. Their main offices are in DC.

e: You know what, disregard my question. Some cursory googling has made it obvious that this is so radically outside my area of expertise that I'd be foolish to try to figure it out on a client project.

kedo fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Oct 21, 2015

# ? Oct 21, 2015 17:48

Knifegrab: Jul 30, 2014; Gadzooks! I'm terrified of this little child who is going to stab me with a knife. I must wrest the knife away from his control and therefore gain the upperhand.

OK so my website uses images that constantly change/evolve (sprite sheets mostly). Problem is that often times this can lead to stupid cacheing issues. I have learned that if I reference the file using a "?[some_number_here]" and I change that number when the file changes the browser will force itself to re-download the file, it treats it as a new image.

This is great and rad, but most of my sites image updating is handled automatically in cron, and I want to be able to cron this change to my css or html (adding the ?[numbers]). I figure I have a decent idea how to do it (using nodejs) but I was wondering if anyone out there knew of or could suggest a good practice for doing this?

# ? Oct 21, 2015 18:56

Skandranon: Sep 6, 2008; fucking stupid, dont listen to me

Knifegrab posted:

OK so my website uses images that constantly change/evolve (sprite sheets mostly). Problem is that often times this can lead to stupid cacheing issues. I have learned that if I reference the file using a "?[some_number_here]" and I change that number when the file changes the browser will force itself to re-download the file, it treats it as a new image.

This is great and rad, but most of my sites image updating is handled automatically in cron, and I want to be able to cron this change to my css or html (adding the ?[numbers]). I figure I have a decent idea how to do it (using nodejs) but I was wondering if anyone out there knew of or could suggest a good practice for doing this?

I have some projects where we do a similar thing with our bundled library/template/application files. We have a single gulp task which goes through any file that has a direct reference and injects a new UUID for each build, so when it is deployed, everything is referencing the version from that build. Should be able to do a similar thing for fetching your pictures.

Edit: looks like so, uses gulp-preprocess

code:

var cacheguid = "?" + generateGUID();
    
return gulp.src(folders.src + "**/*.html")
    .pipe(preprocess({ context: { 
        APPLICATION_BUNDLE_PATH: applicationfilename + cacheguid,
        CSS_BUNDLE_PATH: cssfilename + cacheguid
    }})) 
    .pipe(gulp.dest(output.getFolder() + ""));

Skandranon fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Oct 22, 2015

# ? Oct 22, 2015 00:17

22 Eargesplitten: Oct 10, 2010

The OP lists a few CMSes, is there a free one that's recommended for someone just getting into web development? I know a lot of people use wordpress, but I hear it's also pretty lovely for most applications. I've programmed in Java and C++, so I don't need my hand completely held, but something user-friendly would be nice. This would be my first time using javascript (and probably a little SQL) outside of a codecademy-ish environment.

# ? Oct 22, 2015 03:21

fuf: Sep 12, 2004; haha

His Divine Shadow posted:

Can anyone recommend some software for tracking a sites google rank through time for particular keywords? Preferably something you feed a few things like URL and keywords and then it does the rest itself and maybe spits out a weekly report or something.

Did you find anything?

There are services like https://serps.com/tools/rank_checker but they're really expensive.

# ? Oct 22, 2015 10:34

His Divine Shadow: Aug 7, 2000; I'm not a fascist. I'm a priest. Fascists dress up in black and tell people what to do.

Don't have much spare time to look at it indepth, I found this last night but I don't know if it's any good or not, much cheaper though;
https://authoritylabs.com/pricing/

# ? Oct 22, 2015 10:40

Spatulater bro!: Aug 19, 2003; Punch! Punch! Punch!

22 Eargesplitten posted:

The OP lists a few CMSes, is there a free one that's recommended for someone just getting into web development? I know a lot of people use wordpress, but I hear it's also pretty lovely for most applications. I've programmed in Java and C++, so I don't need my hand completely held, but something user-friendly would be nice. This would be my first time using javascript (and probably a little SQL) outside of a codecademy-ish environment.

You've heard wrong. Give it a try.

# ? Oct 22, 2015 15:55

me your dad: Jul 25, 2006

I sometimes see padding shortened to only three elements:

code:

padding: 20px 20px 0px

How does this work? Is it because a value is set to zero and it's the same as doing this:

code:

padding:20px

I'm used to seeing four values when written shorthand and I'm trying to understand.

# ? Oct 22, 2015 19:15

ddiddles: Oct 21, 2008; Roses are red, violets are blue, I'm a schizophrenic and so am I

me your dad posted:

I sometimes see padding shortened to only three elements:
code:
padding: 20px 20px 0px
How does this work? Is it because a value is set to zero and it's the same as doing this:
code:
padding:20px
I'm used to seeing four values when written shorthand and I'm trying to understand.

The first value is top, the middle is left and right, and the third is bottom.

# ? Oct 22, 2015 19:18

me your dad: Jul 25, 2006

ddiddles posted:

The first value is top, the middle is left and right, and the third is bottom.

Thanks. This is much clearer.

# ? Oct 22, 2015 19:26

kedo: Nov 27, 2007

me your dad posted:

I'm used to seeing four values when written shorthand and I'm trying to understand.

If you don't declare all four values for padding or margins, the browser assumes you want the same value for the bottom as the top, or the left as the right.

So this:

code:

padding: 20px 20px 0px;

is the same as this:

code:

padding-top: 20px;
padding-right: 20px;
padding-bottom: 0px;
padding-left: 20px;

Check out this jsfiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/nr3r9bkv/

# ? Oct 22, 2015 19:28

Omits-Bagels: Feb 13, 2001

I have a question about web development pricing.

I own http://thesavvybackpacker.com

It uses a premium theme that I'm generally happy with but there are a few small issues I have with the design � mainly spacing/aesthetics.

I'm assuming the theme is fairly bloated so I'm curious how much it would cost a developer to take what I have now and recode it so runs more smoothly (and fix a few of the design issues).

# ? Oct 23, 2015 05:21

Impotence: Nov 8, 2010; Lipstick Apathy

Omits-Bagels posted:

I'm assuming the theme is fairly bloated

# ? Oct 23, 2015 05:46

Omits-Bagels: Feb 13, 2001

Biowarfare posted:

<link href='//fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans:100,100italic,200 ,200italic,300,300italic,400,400italic,500,500italic,600,600italic,700,70 0italic,800,800italic,900,900italic%7CRaleway:100,100italic,200,200italic ,300,300italic,400,400italic,500,500italic,600,600italic,700,700italic,8 00,800italic,900,900italic%7CLora:100,100italic,200,200italic,300,300ita lic,400,400italic,500,500italic,600,600italic,700,700italic,800,800itali c,900,900italic%7CMontserrat:100,100italic,200,200italic,300,300italic,4 00,400italic,500,500italic,600,600italic,700,700italic,800,800italic,900 ,900italic%7CMontserrat+Alternates:100,100italic,200,200italic,300,300it alic,400,400italic,500,500italic,600,600italic,700,700italic,800,800ital ic,900,900italic%7COpen+Sans:100,100italic,200,200italic,300,300italic,4 00,400italic,500,500italic,600,600italic,700,700italic,800,800italic,900 ,900italic%26subset%3Dlatin%2Clatin-ext' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css' /> <link rel='stylesheet' id='ls-google-fonts-css' href='//fonts.googleapi s.com/css?family=Lato:100,300,regular,700,900%7COpen+Sans:300%7CIndie+Fl ower:regular%7COswald:300,regular,700&subset=latin%2Clatin-ext' type ='text/css' media='all' />

I don't know what I'm doing. Help me!

I'm using this theme: http://themeforest.net/item/cabin-a-beautiful-vintageinspired-theme/10721312?s_phrase=vintage&s_rank=2

It seems to be from a good developer so I'm surprised how crappy it is.

Omits-Bagels fucked around with this message at 06:17 on Oct 23, 2015

# ? Oct 23, 2015 06:11

DarkLotus: Sep 30, 2001; Lithium Hosting
Personal, Reseller & VPS Hosting
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Omits-Bagels posted:

I don't know what I'm doing. Help me!

I'm using this theme: http://themeforest.net/item/cabin-a-beautiful-vintageinspired-theme/10721312?s_phrase=vintage&s_rank=2

It seems to be from a good developer so I'm surprised how crappy it is.

Themeforest and good developer cannot exist in the same sentence...

# ? Oct 23, 2015 14:03

fuf: Sep 12, 2004; haha

Omits-Bagels posted:

I don't know what I'm doing. Help me!

I'm using this theme: http://themeforest.net/item/cabin-a-beautiful-vintageinspired-theme/10721312?s_phrase=vintage&s_rank=2

It seems to be from a good developer so I'm surprised how crappy it is.

Premium themes like that (even if well-developed) are always gonna be bloated because they rely on offering a lot of options.

Genesis themes are pretty good at keeping the code clean and optimised:
http://my.studiopress.com/themes/
(but it means you have to get your hands dirty if you want to deviate from their design)

# ? Oct 23, 2015 14:21

Omits-Bagels: Feb 13, 2001

DarkLotus posted:

Themeforest and good developer cannot exist in the same sentence...

drat themeforest!

# ? Oct 23, 2015 14:50

kedo: Nov 27, 2007

Omits-Bagels posted:

I'm curious how much it would cost a developer to take what I have now and recode it so runs more smoothly (and fix a few of the design issues).

It seems you've posted this a couple of places now with no real answers. This is probably because your question fits the classic "how much is a car?" analogy very well. It's also likely because diagnosing what is wrong with your site and coming up with an accurate estimate is work which you're not going to end up paying for. Have you actually spoken with a developer yet and are you trying to see if the price they've quoted is justified?

You can expect to pay between $20-200/hr for a developer depending on talent and location.

kedo fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Oct 23, 2015

# ? Oct 23, 2015 15:55

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# ? Jun 2, 2024 16:34

Omits-Bagels: Feb 13, 2001

kedo posted:

It seems you've posted this a couple of places now with no real answers. This is probably because your question fits the classic "how much is a car?" analogy very well. It's also likely because diagnosing what is wrong with your site and coming up with an accurate estimate is work which you're not going to end up paying for. Have you actually spoken with a developer yet and are you trying to see if the price they've quoted is justified?

You can expect to pay between $20-200/hr for a developer depending on talent and location.

I'm 100% cool with paying a developer to poke around for a bit and let me know the best way to move forward. Any recommendations on where to look for quality help?

EDIT: jfeess at gmail

Omits-Bagels fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Oct 23, 2015

# ? Oct 23, 2015 16:06

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Cavern of COBOL > The Web Design & Development Megathread

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