Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with webdesign

Looking for good, easy to set up 'Content Management Community' web-software

0bvious — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:03:29 -0800

Web-Design-Filter: I am looking for a free (or very cheap) and easy to use Content Management System that I can use to set up a private, dynamic blog, content and community space for multiple users. I would be willing to look at Wordpress type software bases, but would like to integrate something of the functionality of lifestream systems like Facebook and Sweetcron/Tumblr. I want to set up a private web-space to be used as a university-department community hub. I want it to be much more dynamic than a simple 'forum/message-board' for the department. I envisage a kind of 'University-news meets facebook meets tumblr' community space.

These functions would be pretty central to the site:

- Every user can set up their own blog space within the system

- There is a central 'calendar' type section to the site, where events and important dates can be posted.

- Users can also or instead (of a blog) submit RSS feeds from content systems such as delicious, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter which would automatically be archived and published by the site, ala Tumblr. I want users to be easily able to share content, such as links or videos, within the system or via an external rss feed that automatically gets added to the site content.

- All the content, whether from users blogs, from the feeds or the calendar, is aggregated to a central web-hub. So, any registered user - whether they have a blog/feed or not - can see every other users postings in a single, centralised location. It would be great if every post could have a date attached to it, so that these postings could easily be turned into events that would show up on the calendar view.

- The integration of a tagging system that allowed users to see only posts about a certain topic. It would also then be possible for users to subscribe, whether by RSS or email, to tags of their choice, users of their choice, or the entire output of the web-hub

- Lots of nice customisation for users, so they can feed in facebook profiles etc. to their user pages.

- Users can choose whether their content, whether from RSS feeds or their entire blog, is visible only to registered users of the site, or to the world at large (e.g. dynamic privacy options built in to settings).

I realise that this might be a tall order, especially for free software, but I am sure it is possible to do this quite simply and without having to strap loads of plugins onto a wordpress blog or whatever. I have ~some~ experience with CSS, PHP and MySQL, but the less I have to do the better really. I would ideally like to set up an URL, setup a MySQL database, install some systems, tweak a little, and finish up. I realise this, also, is a tall order.

If it takes several different bits of software to acheive this, how difficult would it be to stick them together to create the illusion of coherence?

I would love your advice and input.

HTML 5 Filter: jQuery HTML 5 Selectors, do they work?

willcosgrove — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:03:22 -0800

HTML 5 Filter: jQuery HTML 5 Selectors, do they work? I'm designing a Wordpress blog for my friend, and I'm making the (perhaps stupid) move to make it with HTML 5 and CSS 3. I've had no trouble thus far, but when I added in my jQuery (v1.3.2), I'm having trouble using its selector engine to grab the new HTML 5 elements. Specifically the

element.

The full reason I need to do this follows:

I'm using a custom font for the nav, and rather than using CSS 3s new @font-face, I've just decided to go with Cufon. Cufon has a very limited selector engine, but it's made to work with jQuery's, and many other frameworks' selector engines. So, I'm trying to couple those two things to replace the font of the a tags inside the

What's the best WYSIWYG software for web design these days?

julen — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:03:57 -0800

What is the best WYSIWYG website builder for PCs out there these days? My uncle is still using an archaic version of Front Page to produce his family websites. The results look OK but are unusable (hyperlinks don't work) if you are using a Mac or Firefox, which is pretty much rules out 90% of his audience.

So what is the best desktop app for designing websites on a PC these days? He doesn't know HTML, and online webapps aren't an option. It should be easy to use but produce good clean code. Help me only fix the HTML once!

Why do online news sites post articles over multiple pages?

jonesor — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 03:59:59 -0800

Why do online magazines/news sites post articles over multiple pages? You find an interesting headline, you click through to read it and are allowed to read a couple of paragraphs, before being invited to click through to page 2 of 5.

A quick survey of my friends found that nobody likes this. They regard it as irritating and entirely unnecessary.

Why is it done? To increase the number of clicks? To ensure that you view more advertisements?

You know that website built in the 1920s?

prophetsearcher — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:39:16 -0800

It's 1925. I own a General Store. The General Store has a website (obviously)... Can you describe what that website might look like? How can a visitor to that site recognize it immediately as owned by a 1925 General Store (visually)? I'm trying to design the web site for a 1925- (or so, the specific year isn't too specific) era general store. What elements can I use, specifically, to help establish the style?

To be clear, I don't want the site to look like you're shopping in a nostalgic memory of a 1925 store (so no b/w photos of storefronts, or sepia tones, etc). Rather, the idea is that you're shopping in a store that would have been designed in 1925... Does that make sense?

Also, because I'm aiming for real 'Americana,' I'm less interested in Bauhaus or other 'avant-garde' 20s styles.

For fonts, I found this link, and other useful ones from this post.

But what about backgrounds? Wallpapers? Colors? Icons? What was the "Web 2.0" style of the 1920s?

Any points of reference would be most appreciated. (I think there could be a whole movement of era-designed web sites, even from the future!).

Are there any worthwhile professional associations for web developers/designers?

Jairus — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:28:49 -0800

Are there any worthwhile professional associations for web developers/designers/etc?

Which NYC area colleges and Universities are teaching valid hand marked-up xhtml and css in their web design courses?

stagewhisper — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:21:11 -0800

Which (if any) NYC area colleges and Universities are teaching valid hand marked-up xhtml and css in their web design courses? I am trying to find a freelancer or small firm to take over a dating website redesign for a client in the NYC/NJ area. The back-end is/will be Cold Fusion (this is the only option as far as the client is concerned) and the front end styles and all formatting will be implemented using style sheets and fully accessible xhtml. I am having trouble finding an entry level designer who not only has the proper skill set, but who also understands why it is important that their code validates.
The best option seems to be to advertise this job on various area school's alumni and/or student job boards, but if the state university that I am currently a grad student at is any indication, not all web design courses and digital design concentrations teach much beyond WYSIWYG dreamweaver classes, and the computer science classes don't address user interface design and css much, if at all.
Is anyone here familiar enough with the design programs at other schools (Pratt, Parsons, SVA, Rutgers, etc.) that they might suggest the best programs and career services offices for me to contact?

Good examples of Social Sign In?

slactoid — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:43:45 -0800

Any good examples of "Social Sign In"? For the little web toys I make, I don't want to make full sign up forms, so I'm looking for any sites that are using Facebook / Twitter / Google / Yahoo / OpenID / etc for sign in. Something like what stack overflow is doing here: http://stackoverflow.com/users/login (only OpenID though).

What Does The Word SLACKER Mean To You?

Lipstick Thespian — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:18:39 -0800

Do-Gooder Needs Help With Amusing Slackronym! I am thinking of starting a website that would feature local people in Northern New England who have valuable job skills or passions that are lying dormant because of the economic downturn.

I want to entitle it SLACKER.com or something similar, but am having trouble aligning a SLACKER acronym (slackronym?) with it.

Ideally the Slackronym should embody the following:
- underused, valuable local resources.
- a commitment to making the world a better place through your passions.
- the idea that enormous possibilities are going unnoticed in our communities because no one is hearing about what people can offer.

Any creative, witty or sarcastic help with fitting words into a SLACKER acronym would be great. Bonus points for turning the whole "GET A JOB, ASSHOLE!" rhetoric on its ear that the far-right wingnut Tea Party folks use.

So how do I choose which blue for the header? Should it even be blue? What goes with blue?

Cantdosleepy — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 05:02:43 -0800

Give me a crash course in colour! I need to start making some flat template designs for a website but don't know where to start. I've come to web design through information architecture and writing web content. I'm a word-oriented person with essentially no visual interests; I don't own a single painting, have never been moved by an image in a gallery. All my walls are magnolia.

We've got a house style in terms of shapes for the site, and my manager has asked me to come up with a few different colour schemes to discuss. There have to be millions of colours available in #nnnnnn.

I know there's a thing called a colour wheel that shows colours that go well together. That's as much as I know about colour.

Are there any resources on the web for learning about this? Tips about how to pick colours? Is there a process by which you can come up with colours that are useful across a site?

Any help very much appreciated.

Help clear my float!

mthomps00 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:53:29 -0800

CSS question: How can I get my floated sidebar to stop overlapping my footer? I'm using clear:both! Take a look at this page.

The structure of the HTML is pretty simple:

There are three main divs - #mainheader, #maincolumn, and #footer. #Maincolumn contains another centered div - #container - which includes a div called #content, and a left-floated div called #sidebar.

After I close #maincolumn, I include a ".clear" div to clear all the floated content, and then there's the #footer.

So here's the structure:

- #mainheader
- #maincolumn
  - #container
    - #content
    - #sidebar
- .clear
- #footer

My problem is that when the text in #sidebar is longer than the stuff in #content, it overlaps the footer.

Isn't clearing all floats supposed to clear all floats? What's happening here? Thanks in advance for your help!

What's the best way to keep a viewers attention for a long manifesto from a design perspective?

brokekid — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:41:04 -0800

What's the best way to keep a viewers attention for a long manifesto from a design perspective? What elements/techniques within the document could be used? I'm working on a project where the author is trying to convey a very motivating yet esoteric idea in a manifesto. The text is good but it's a long single web page that I'm may be seen as too long. From a design perspective, what's the best way to keep the viewer's attention?

Art Gallery Web Sites?

crickets — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:55:09 -0800

Do you know of any art galleries with really great web sites? I'm not interested in museum sites, I'm interested in how small art galleries present their business and inventory online.

(Do you run an art gallery? What do you use your site for? What are people looking for when they visit it?)

How does HuffPo append URLs to copied text?

eyeballkid — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:05:39 -0800

I noticed today that text copied from articles on The Huffington Post appends the article URL when pasted and I'm wondering how it's done. Here's an example of copying and pasting text from the current front page story of the G20 meeting:

The three leaders, in their dramatic joint statement that overshadowed the G-20 economic summit here, hoped the disclosure would increase pressure on the global community to impose new sanctions on Iran if it refuses to stop its nuclear program.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/25/obama-iran-has-secret-nuc_n_299556.html

The "Read more at:..." portion never appeared on the page.

Repro steps:

1) Copy any random paragraph from a HuffPo story.
2) Paste elsewhere.

I'm using FireFox 3.5.3 on Windows 7. I don't see this behavior when copying from other sites.

Why won't mdcalc.com load in IE7?

gramcracker — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 14:28:43 -0800

Why won't my site load in some versions of IE7? Works in everything else. Recently I've been getting emails from hospital IT departments that my site doesn't load in their version of IE7, but loads in Firefox, IE6, IE8, etc. As far as I know they're running Windows XP IE7, but when I run the same thing (IE7, WinXP) the site shows up fine on my computer. Only reason I can confirm there's a problem is that running Adobe's BrowserLab gives me the error "This program cannot display the webpage." Validating the page shows just some minor errors due to javascript and alt images. I'm stumped. Thanks in advance!

help me create my site!

Salvatorparadise — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:02:55 -0800

help me get my Web site up and running through Verio... Hi - I'm new to Web sites and have never put one up. I have registered my domain name with verio and paid for hosting through verio too. I have the Windows Basic hosting package. Their "easy site" creator looks handy, but it's pretty limited. In fact, It doesn't even let me change their cheesy graphics. I'd like to create my own site using a program or templates I can find online. Can anyone take me through the basic steps of how to do this? I sell antiques, and the site would have a main page and then links off to several categories of items that would contain photos, descriptions and prices.

Is there a good site that will guide me through the creation of a site?

Once I do that, what do I do? How do I upload the site I've created to Verio to get it running?

Man, i know nothing!!!

Thanks,
Adrian

Web-audio options without Flash?

2oh1 — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 13:00:23 -0800

WebDesignFilter! Is there a way to have an mp3 play in the current page when a user clicks a gif image? Can this be done without using flash? Imagine a page with a short story that has clickable pics along the way... and when you click a pic, you hear an extra piece of the story, or some related info. The pics would be basic gif or jpeg image files.

I realize I could use some sort of button-based flash audio player (I'm quite fond of the Wimpy button, normally), but I'm trying to avoid flash, and the buttons would take away from the look of the minimalist design, unless I could use the images from the story as the buttons.

I want this to work in IE, Safari, Firefox, and hopefully on an iPhone too.
I don't want people to have to install a new plugin to access the audio.
And, naturally, I don't want the user to be taken to a blank page where the audio plays.

Is this possible?
Thoughts?
Ideas?
Workarounds?

How to apply a radial-subtle gradient to a 1px line Photoshop?

wildrain2008 — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:26:44 -0800

How to apply a web 2.0 radial-subtle gradient to a 1px line Photoshop? Hi All, I'm a freshman Web/Graphic design student and am looking to achieve the following:

How to apply a subtle gradient to a line tool in Photoshop? In other words I see a trend in web 2.0 graphic-rich websites that use these horizontal rules that fade on both sides.

I have been able to achieve all effects with linear gradients. But am unable to master the radial gradient. It seems that if I start from center it blends the middle of the line instead of the outer edges.

Essentially I'm looking to learn to achieve two effects:

1: http://www.cobblestonecn.com/
- the top-most tab's bottom border fades on both sides seemlessly

2: http://onwired.com/
- the border of the green strip fades on both sides and also has a shadow under it to make a pop effect.

Are there good tutorials for both web 2.0 effects?

I know my way around Photoshop, but have not had experience with achieving certain effects.

Thanks in advance!

Web coding questions

Badmichelle — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 09:47:37 -0800

Two webcoding questions: 1) What is the web coding name for hiding/revealing text without reloading a page? For instance, on this page you can see "Continue Reading" and "Hide this News Article" as toggles. They appear to be doing it with javascript. What is this called and are there simple free coding samples available for me to use? 2) Are there any free plugins that I can use on a blog to play audio samples? Something similar to what's used in MuFi or Wordpress's audio streamer, but without needing Wordpress. Thanks!

Head hurts. Insert own witty title here.

springbound — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:39:31 -0800

LessSuckyThanMeAtJoomlaFilter: I'm newish to Joomla and building a website that's going to have on its front page (amongst other things) a section highlighting three services offered, in three side-by-side boxes in the main column, each with a "more" link hopping via anchor link to a corresponding heading on a "Services" page listing all services offered. To more experienced developers than I, how would you achieve this? Three articles in a "position"? A ul in a single article (not really possible if I want to use h3s in each and remain w3c-compliant)? Something else? Trying to figure out the generally accepted best way to do this, in a way that's intuitive enough for someone non-techie to update it later, doesn't break web standards with crap markup, and gives me Large Amounts Of Sweet Control of how it looks (via stylesheets). Anyone have a thought or two on how best to approach?

How to make a product catalog?

Harry — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 02:34:07 -0800

I'm looking for tips on making a product catalog for a website, but not a fully fledged online shop. What options are there? I'm building a website for an acquaintance, who is a local dealer in car cleaning products. He wants to show (a selection of) his products for sale, but doesn't actually need or want an online shop.

So, preferably, I'd like to have just the product catalog part of a webshop, but without the pricing and checkout parts. Are there any solutions out there that allow this? Or is it really something I should think about programming myself?

Sounds like I have been asked to Design an Online School... CMS Recommendations?

gonzo_ID — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:51:45 -0800

I've been asked to design a website that shows the progress of subscribers academic achievements based on what marks they get from modules posted on the site. I have no idea even how to begin this? Basically client wants to provide a service where subscribers have to pay for specific content that they will be tested on. Marks for the results are then shown on their 'academic achievement' page which can be linked to from their own site.

er... I'm pretty good with WordPress but am in the dark about a plug-in combination that could do the academic achievement bit. wp-commerce for PDF download, some sort of trivia quiz plugin for the question, but showing the results in a pretty way on their author's page?

or am i going down the wrong track? I'm guessing I shouldn't be using WordPress.

What should I be using? Is there any specific Content management system that does exactly this?

Jquery/Javascript image hover effect

Fifi Firefox — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 16:53:21 -0800

Web designers/developers: I'm looking for a script for a particular image hover effect (javascript/jquery), and I'm having no luck with Google. The effect can be seen here - there's a lot going on in that site, but the part I'm interested in is the row of images along the bottom (featuring games). When you hover over one of them, the image pans a little bit along with the mouse. I'm looking for something along those lines - an effect that subtly pans or zooms an image within a static window in response to a mouse rollover.

The site I linked was created in Flash, but my Google searching turned up this similar effect using jquery, so it seems like it might be possible to achieve in a more accessible way. (That example would be great if only it worked as a rollover instead of requiring the viewer to hold down the mouse.)

I know little to nothing about either javascript or jquery, so it may be that I'm just not searching for the right terms. If anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd much appreciate it.

Learning HTML though examples

azpenguin — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:33:36 -0800

What are some good webpages for a HTML beginner to look at for code examples? I'm working on learning HTML, and I'm finding plenty of resources for learning how to write code. However, I'm one of those people that always learns better by actually seeing things in action, looking under the hood, and seeing how everything goes together. The problem I run into right now is that while I've been trying to look at the source code on the websites I visit, most of them have such a massive amount of code that it's a little overwhelming to make sense of what does what. (MeFi's code isn't that bad, however.) What would be some good, simple pages to look at and learn how things are being done these days? (For example, pages with good clean divisions, or pages that use tables that don't look like they're from 1997, if anyone actually still uses tables any more.) Any other clues you could give a n00b would also be appreciated. Thanks!

How can I find someone willing to let me, an amateur, design a website for them for practice?

oracle bone — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:50:57 -0800

How can I find someone willing to let me, an amateur, design a website for them for practice? I've worked amateurishly with website design/coding before, largely on my own, in a learn-as-needed learn-as-I-go style. Most of these projects have been done for fun, and as a result, most of them are simple websites & have not stayed online for too long. I'd like to eventually work for pay. However, since I've never worked professionally before, I don't think I have enough experience, so I'm looking for opportunities to gain more experience & expand my portfolio.

Can anyone suggest how I can find some people who would be willing to let me design a website for them? I can work for little/no pay, but I'd really like this project to be comprehensive in the sense that I get to work with all components of a website (coding/databases/etc). Also, I'd like to be able to use this as an example of my work for my portfolio.

This could be local, but I have already tried several non-profits in the area but most already have webmasters. (I live in a pretty small, non-tech town, so to speak.) I can also consider working over the internet with someone/some group, ideally with programmers more experienced than me so I can still learn new techniques.

Techniques I'm quite comfortable with/experienced in: HTML, XML, CSS
Techniques I'd like to practice: PHP, MySQL/databases, JavaScript, AJAX.

Any suggestions appreciated!