Archive for category: Random Stories

Original Source: https://inspiredm.com/breathing-new-life-into-an-old-website/

Everyone working in development is bound at some time to discover they’ve been shelling out good money for hosting an old website that has been forgotten about.

Rather than letting this investment go to waste, you could actually revive the old site by updating it. What you do with it after that is entirely up to you. You could sell it on to a new owner, monetize the content with advertising, use the site to promote a new product or service, or simply keep it as a portfolio example of your work.

The longer the site has been sitting around, the more work you will need to do to getting working well. What follows are the basic things you’ll need to check and basic steps you can take to correct any problems you encounter.

1. Make sure you actually own the rights to the site

This is not always as simple as it seems. Sometimes you may have developed the site on behalf of somebody else, in which case they may be the legal owner of the site under most circumstances.

It gets complicated if:

the business that contracted the original site ceases to exist
the client never pays for the work
the site was developed in partnership, and the other partner withdrew from the partnership

If the site was one you developed entirely on your own and entirely for yourself, you can do as you please. In all other cases, you should check your ownership.

2. Scan for any trademarked or copyrighted content

This is similar to the above. You don’t want to have a problem from somebody else claiming you have infringed their copyright or trademark. Also you’ll want to know if somebody else has stolen your content and is using it on another site.

illustration by Kyle Anthony Miller

3. Check for broken or outdated links

The web is a dynamic place and sites come and go all the time, and site owners sometimes move content around without redirecting properly. Broken links can be frustrating and detract for the user experience, so we should always attempt to fix broken links when we find them on our sites.

These are the steps to take when you discover a broken link:

Try to discover the new home of the content the link was supposed to point to
Try to find an alternative content source that would be sufficient
Search the Wayback Machine to discover if there is an archived version of the content you can link to.
If all else fails, remove the link.

Obviously also you should make sure the link is still relevant to whatever purpose you originally included it for, which brings us neatly to our next tip.

4. Make sure content and links are contemporary

If your original content was all about getting ready for the 2014 Singapore Film Festival or an article extolling the virtues of XHTML as the perfect development language, or recommending Flash as the perfect online animation tool, you’ll want to update that content and the links that go with it.

The site for the 2014 Singapore Film Festival may still be online, so the link might not be broken, but it would normally be of more value to include a link to the upcoming or most recently completed Singapore Film Festival.

Likewise there may still be a few dinosaurs making sites in XHTML instead of HTML 5, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but if you are extolling the virtues of technologies that most coders consider to be virtually obsolete, it runs the risk of you appearing to be obsolete.

Keeping your content contemporary and fresh is important, and an often overlooked requirement. It’s most noticeable if you’re talking about technologies, scientific theories, health issues, and so on.  New discoveries can make your site content stop being factual, and as a publisher you have a responsibility to not present wrong information.

5. Don’t forget about social media

There are two ways you can have problems about social media in relation to your websites. The first, and most common, is that your site doesn’t link to your social media (and your social media doesn’t link to your site). This is simple enough to correct.

The second problem you could face is that your site might point to the wrong social media. For example, you may have had a Facebook page back in 2012 and your site pointed to that, but since then you no longer have control of that Facebook page even though it still exists.

illustration by Csaba Gyulai

That’s a problem because the traffic flow isn’t working for you, it’s working for someone else or it’s working for Facebook. You should fix these kinds of problems.

You should also consider creating a new social media presence specifically for this site, as that can give you the most value from traffic flow.

6. Fix security and privacy flaws

There are things we used to do, like putting our plain-text email address on a page, that we really shouldn’t be doing now. You may also have published content in a more innocent age that today would be considered a serious privacy risk to yourself.

You should check for this kind of stuff and remove or censor it. There are definitely better ways of allowing users to contact you than publishing your email address in plain text, and that image of your car showing the license plate number really should be doctored to obscure the number and any other features in the image that might put you at risk.

There’s no need to be paranoid, but sensible precautions certainly won’t do any harm. Failing to take precautions, on the other hand, has been known to create problems for some people.

illustration by Hurca

Giving your old site a new lease of life can be a good thing

The decision about whether to delete a site or revive it depends on a lot of factors, and it’s not always best to keep that old site up and running.

On the other hand, if you’ve been paying to host it, it has some half way decent rank on Google, and gets a reasonable amount of incoming traffic, it would feel wasteful to squander the opportunity reviving that old website represents.

You can benefit from that positive traffic and relatively good Google rank, and possibly your old site can bring new traffic to other sites you want to generate interest in. It may be prudent to hesitate before hitting the delete button, and think about the potential value your old site still holds.

header image courtesy of Mansoor

The post Breathing New Life into an Old Website appeared first on Inspired Magazine.

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Designrfix/~3/LvFJvIKYfyQ/drive-more-quality-traffic

Driving more potential customers to your website can have a major impact on your bottom line. Netting more traffic takes a combination of web design, user experience, marketing, and outreach. In fact, the top five traffic driving assets include email marketing, landing pages, content marketing, search optimization, and social media.   More quality traffic, the […]

The post How To Drive More Quality Traffic To Your Website appeared first on designrfix.com.

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/07/20-freshest-web-designs-july-2018/

Welcome to our roundup of the best websites launched (or significantly updated) this month. July is a strange time to launch a site with the Summer slowdown in full effect, but these intrepid entrepreneurs have done so. We’ve got examples of great ecommerce, a couple of agency sites that we couldn’t resist, and lots of incredible art direction.

This month sees a big trend in compass navigation (a link in every corner of the page), and parallax is definitely still a big deal. Whether it’s inspired by the World Cup, or Le Tour, there’s a subtle gallic feel to a lot of sites this month…savourer!

Drift

Drift is a creative agency with some chops. Rejecting the minimalism that seemingly every other agency opts for, they’ve put together a charmingly animated, hand-made site. Not too functional, unless your aim is to communicate creative courage—they stand out.

Unspoken Agreement

Unspoken Agreement is a creative agency that believes in beauty. Its landing page is a schooling in art direction, and the simple bold copy is persuasive. I’m not sold on the compass navigation, but you can’t have everything.

2018 Foosball World Cup

As the final whistle is blown on the Fifa World Cup 2018, this awesome site gives you the chance to relive this Summer’s big sporting event from the comfort of your desktop. Pick a team, and click and scroll your way to victory. No spinning those bars!

Pittori di Cinema

The site designed to promote a book about film artists, Pittori di Cinema, is a suitably bold site with masses of color and strong lettering. Simple to use, it features that compass navigation again. But the graphics are something to behold.

Blackbird

Blackbird is an beautifully minimal Shopify site selling perfume. The site is a great example of how effective parallax can still be, if used effectively. I have no idea what that weird frog video is for, but it’s intriguing nonetheless.

Copenhagen Bike Company

If Le Tour is making you feel like cycling, but you don’t quite have the energy to make it up the Pyrenees, wander north to discover a cooler, more laid back approach to cycling. The site for the Copenhagen Bike Company features on-brand art direction, smooth UI details, and high-end minimalism.

Care Cards

We all get a little stressed from time to time, it’s OK to admit it. Care Cards is a progressive web app with over 80 kind tips to help you cope with the rigors of modern life. Just open it up on your phone (or notebook) and swipe through the gems of wisdom. I love this site.

CHU Sainte-Justine Foundation

Promoting fundraising for Canada’s premier hospital for the pre- and post-natal care of mothers and children. The strong grid layout, coupled with smart brand choices and subtle animation is a winning combination for this important cause.

Apostrophe

It’s always hard to design a site for copywriters, but this site does so beautifully. Hooking up the leading animation to the scroll of the page is an excellent device for driving home exactly what this minimal site is promoting.

Contemple

Another design agency showing us something special, this time it’s an amazing ripple effect on their slideshow as you scroll through the featured projects on their landing page. Click through to the case studies and there’s some awesome work on display.

License IV Wine

This simple one-page site sells a wine brand perfectly, by capturing the spirit of community around a good bottle of French wine. The License IV wine label is bringing French savoir faire to wine drinkers in the USA with this charming site.

In Caso di Mag: Kitzbühel

Kitzbühel is the latest in an ongoing series of craftily designed travelogues around the world’s best ski resorts. Each location gets its own page, with custom art direction capturing the spirit of each place. I love the attention to detail.

Carpe Diem Santorini

If there’s one place I’d love to spend some time, it’s among the cycladic minimalism of Santorini. The tiny Greek island is world famous for the beauty of its sunsets, and this enchanting site sells the romance of the destination perfectly.

La Gent

Who doesn’t love quality, independent brands that put timelessness ahead of fashion. La Gent’s site is designed for browsing. I love the fact that their slider has just two items, enough for variety but not so much that you get lost.

Fortnum&Fox

Another design agency with a flair for art direction, the site for Fortnum&Fox features an exceptional split screen design showing off an impressive back-catalogue of work. I particularly like how cohesive and simple the whole experience feels.

Maman Corp

Maman Corp is a construction company and their site reflects this with a grid-based layout and animation that feels like the site is being constructed before your eyes. I love the full-screen video and beautiful typography.

Twill

Twill is an open-source CMS kit for Laravel, offering increased productivity and more control. It’s promoting itself to developers, and that’s never an easy task, but breaking down the benefits in this one-page site it’s clearly worth checking out.

Knight Associates

You don’t get more minimal than this site for a New Zealand-based interior design firm. A simple list of projects click through to case studies. It’s a exercise in restraint from the design team than fans of simplicity will love.

Bang & Olufsen SS18

Bang & Olufsen’s spring and summer collection features aloe, teal, and steel blue hues inspired by the ocean. The whole microsite feels like its floating in water, and there’s a great liquid hover effect on the images.

Harris Farm

If you’ve had your fill of minimalism for this month, then browse over to Harris Farm. The positive feeling site is packed with illustrations and lettering that capture the spirit of this healthy, food-loving Australian company.

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Designrfix/~3/faRTiMgMWRg/minimalist-business-cards

How you present yourself to the world has always been important. You learned this at an early age from your parents, your family, and the kids on the school bus. They all made it very apparent that life is about appearances and presentation. Throughout school, the right impression could win you popularity, friends, and a […]

The post The Ten Best Examples of Minimalist Business Cards to Make a Lasting Impression appeared first on designrfix.com.