4M

Welcome to the world of Challenge Day

Three weeks of hard labor. We redid their site from top to bottom. It’s done.

Will post more once I get some sleep.

Oh by the way watch them on The Oprah Winfrey Show today at 4PM PDT.

With 20 minutes notice, YVOD produced a banner ad for a client. Her response? Thank you for saving my a$$ … again! I thought that was pretty cool.

Sometimes our clients get a little impatient with the website process. This may be because they have hired “putter-uppers” to create websites for them in the past and “putting up” is a very quick process.

What’s a putter-upper? This is a phrase that Gerry McGovern uses and I think is very appropriate. It describes webmonkeys who take the content their clients give them and simply throw it onto a website …

Borrowed from http://gettingshitdone.com

An eloquent and brief way to say, no more excuses - just get the shit done.

Get the  shit done, man.

The shit needs to be done.

It doesn’t matter that you have your own stuff going on — the shit still needs to be done.

Shit needs to be done in any case.

Shit always needs to be done.

Everybody is sick, breaking up, buying a house, and so on.

But the shit still …

It’s been six months or so, but our very favorite nonprofit website project is finally live! Look at the before:
… and then check out the AFTER: . The old site was very text-heavy and the code was, well … dirtier than Paris Hilton’s diary. The new site is modern-looking, gorgeous, lightweight, standards-based, flexible and allows them to …

Recently a client fired us. Normally for a small web design firm you might expect this to be unexpected or unwelcome news. We were … less than devastated. Why?

Well, there is a continuum on the client scale. They go from angels, who give you content on time, respect your expertise, make quick firm decisions, cheerfully pay on time, refer their friends etc … to demons who end up costing you …

Today I had a meeting with a client. Or I thought I had a meeting with a client. Turns out it was a meeting with the client, his grandmother, his next door neighbor, his ex-mother-in-law, his inner child, his Id, and his pet monkey.

Needless to say, it didn’t turn out well.

Why do senior managers insist on doing things this way? Why can they not tell all the stakeholders after …

Well, I’m about the thousandth person to link to this site, but it’s just so darn cute - and a good representation of the process - that I can’t help myself. Go check it out.
PingMag - The Tokyo-based magazine about “Design and Making Things” » Archive » The Website Development Process
Oh, and my favorite comment:

Emphasis mine

Yikes! You let the designer and programmer talk directly to the client?!? …

My apologies to Gerry if I have misquoted anything and please don’t be angry that I am spreading your gospel truth all over the internet. I hope this links helps in some small way:Choose Gerry McGovern for all your Content Management needs.
Quote of the day:

“The hippie period of the web is over.”

Infrastructure and Architecture are givens. But it’s CONTENT that wins you the game. The way you …

Okay, think hard. When was the last time your website provider caught a cold on your behalf?

After our intake meeting at San Francisco Soup Company this morning, we decided to go and research their customers in person at several of their stores in downtown San Francisco. It was freezing cold, gustyy and pouring rain, the first all-out winter storm of the season. We trudged up and down the financial district. …