And it's not criticism, but if you're writing a professional article, you should have it written grammatically correct.

But, you don’t care because the content you find their, the reason you went their to begin with, is rich beyond belief. You get what you came for with little effort or question.

You use "their" a lot to refer to a place—when it's supposed to be there (i.e. "We must drive in order to get there on time"). "Their" is ownership (i.e. "that is not their car"). And then there's the common mistake of they are. (i.e. "They're having a problem with my writing skills").

That's all I'm going to say about that right now. I hope this helps. Please don't think I'm being obnoxious, but if you're going to be taken seriously, you must use the correct grammar.

suzanne maestri-walters :: graphic designer :: www.onegirlcreative.com

I've been contemplating a rebuild of my site, e-zign.com. Not because anything is wrong with it, but because I'm just getting tired of looking at it.

Anyway, I built the site for pure functionality. The only images I have on my site are in the portfolio. I took this approach as sort of a personal jab at other designers who force their viewers to wade through 3 minutes of Flash eye-candy before getting access to the content.

Their should be more articles advocating such a "common sense" approach to design and content out their. ;)

Good article, and good advice.

Terry Thornhill

e-zign Design Group

Couldn't agree more, content is king. I'm doing that with my personal site, stripping away the design and highlighting my opinions. Just back to writing something after a long hiatus and I'm rusty.

It's hard to write something new.

mattmadethis

I work on many campaigns for multiple clients. One of the first things that I address is the purpose of the site. Most clients are moving from tv to web and all they want is brand awareness. That means all they want are shiny object with their logo embed somewhere. They love the Buzz words like As 3.0 and Ajax, well if their demography is Generation y or younger.
What I find very over complicated are people who want to create CMS sites because they like the buzzword CMS. It is our job as a design/developer to understand the needs of a client and don't over complicate things. If the client isn't going to be updating content for the site often why are you incorporating CMS.

I am getting to specific. I think my purpose for the comment is, most importantly some fundamental questions need to be addressed before anything is conceptualized: what is the purpose of the site?(in some cases content isn't important.) Is the site easy to navigate for the demography viewing it? (I have some clients that wanted wacky navigations. They weren't intuitive at all, however, because the purpose of the site was to get user's to engage more that was the navigation they wanted and it worked.) Can the user easily get to the key items that the clients was identified? (This goes hand-in-hand with navigation, but you don't know how many times i have been asked to remake a site when the only problem was the user's getting to content that was to deep. So, all i had to do was restructure the existing site.)And lastly compatibility; make sure the site is compatible with the demography systems. If your focus is to people 40 and over i wouldn't expect them to update their computer as frequently as 25 and younger.

There are no set of rules for websites, only questions that can be asked to help you materialize the clients vision or in some cases the client's goals. On small and big project the client thinks because they have a website they will increase business. Make sure you are aware of this and address to the client that you can visually accomplish their needs, but can't guarantee a profit to their business.

First of all,

HELLO to everyone!

Starting a business in web design is not a simple job, I agree, nice layouts and complicate coding, beside content as well have an important palce in this business. None would live without the other...
Let's face it, Google is a tool not a website...( i think so )... I do not look at it as I look on a design company website.(where people can demonstrate their skills and their approach to design)
And it is true that the content makes the site to be remembered and bookmarked.
When it comes to web 2.0 and all this trendy facelifts I could not agree more that they are going to fade (soon i hope) and some other trend willl take its place...
What i mean is,
We, as people, as little as involved in this process, we give colour and meaning to design, each and every one of us in our way.
Design is not a Bible...
It changing every day...
A site that was trendy yesterday, will look maybe not so well in 4 months, or maybe earlier.
A website which has good, useful and updated content but has no fancy design will be placed in another place in peoples mind.
Please remember, those who own a mac here, that one of the reason you bought yourself the machine was the design and i do not say , only the parts you see...I mean the whole design not only the visual part , including the ergonomic part, the way it works...
So I think that we do not have arround only plants wich are useful but we have also plants wich are giving a pleasent view even they are fading away after a while...

Have a nice day.
:)
Visit us @ www.creatives.ro

It is very interesting to me how folks have forgotten that the web was created for communication and for linking different sites together. If you don't link, you're a deserted island. :)

The more links you have the more you get. That's how SEO works. :)

----
Powerpoint is not a design application
My latest web design work

I love sites like Web Designer's Wall that have some great content and a unique illustrated site and its still functional design. Great stuff to shoot for.

Sean Hodge
AiBURN - Illustrator On Fire

"Content" can be words and links, images, movies etc. that support those words.

But it can also be something nifty, pretty, and kind of useless.

My two cents is to not kid yourself: Either you're going to be a functional site that catalogs different uses of hairspray, or you're going to be a pretty site "about something" with nifty animations, buttons, gurgles and farts, but no one will care what you're writing about.
OR some combination of the two.

I agree with Nocens Angelus: What's the goal? t's always where I start too.

Sadly, many want to skip that question...
:O