Allowing visitors to leave comments has many benefits Article
29th January 2010 18 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/418
The Comments vs No Comments debate has been a hot topic for some time and is something I have never really been able to get my head around. I am absolutely in favour of having comments enabled on blogs, especially on sites that are writing and promoting great content worth discussing further. Not wanting to kick up another big debate about it here, but I did feel compelled to write about why I have them enabled and the benefits that have come of it.
The importance of teaching your clients and being the boss Article
20th January 2010 50 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/416
What I have come to realise over the last few years is that too many people are trying their best to please the client over the visitor. The client is not the primary aim, the visitor is. Of course the client has to like and approve the site but you should not be letting one persons clouded judgement determine the outcome of the entire project – design is personal and subjective – the sooner you realise that and the sooner you teach your client that, the better off you will be.
Helping Carbonmade keep their finger on the Pulse Article
13th January 2010 22 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/415
Web apps generate a lot of data, popular and successful web apps even more so, and when you are at the helm of one of these applications you need to be able to peer in at a glance and get a good overview of how things are doing on a daily basis. Carbonmade hired me towards the end of December 2009 to design and build a backend interface for them to view what activity was happening on the Carbonmade site each day, let me explain what we created, Pulse.
How to stay sane when freelancing from home Article
5th January 2010 22 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/414
Freelancing from home can be a lonesome job fraught with a multitude of interruptions and distractions but with the right setup and a bit of discipline it can be a very enjoyable and fun environment to work in. Here are some of my top tips to help keep yourself sane and help you be the best work from home freelancers around.
Fever° Red hot. Well read. Article
17th June 2009 http://sam.brown.tc/386
Fever is now available! The moment you have all been waiting for.
“Fever takes the temperature of your slice of the web and shows you what’s hot.”
Shaun Inman’s latest creation will ultimately change the way you use RSS. Massive unread counts, unsubscribing from the noise and dreading opening your feed reader will all be things of the past. Find out why I’ve been on a subscription binge with Fever.
The new Massive Blue Article
12th May 2009 21 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/379
Today I launched my new portfolio site, Massive Blue. This has long been my online business site that drastically needed an overhaul and I finally managed to find the time to do it. Not that it was a particularly easy process, countless versions later this one emerged, I am clearly my own worst critic. Read on to find out more about why and just how big it really is; 1080!
Why I think SEO is bullshit Article
23rd April 2009 29 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/374
An email arrived in my inbox this week asking me how I managed to generate so many inbound links from high page ranking sites, why I didn’t optimise my anchor text with keywords, how to get to the top of Google for the keyword ‘web designer’ and did I even care about search engine optimisation? In short my answer was a resounding no, here’s why.
Why you should reconsider working with friends and family Article
12th March 2009 22 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/364
So your friends and family know that you make websites, but do they really realise how much effort and work goes into creating each site you work on? Probably not. This is likely because of a fundamental lack of understanding of what it is you actually do on a day-to-day basis.
You know the situation, someone in your family needs a website and knowing that is what you do, it almost becomes your duty to create that site for them. You are thrust into the limelight with little or no choice, just like the mechanic in the family fixes car related issues or the DIY guy gets roped into small around the house jobs. Here are some tips, ammunition if you will for getting out of this tricky situation that will likely go wrong or become awkward down the road.
RSS Feeds, some stats. Care to share yours? Article
21st January 2009 16 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/352
Following on from my previous article ‘RSS Feeds, full or excerpt… How do you eat yours?’ I thought I would share some of my personal and site feed data and ask a few more RSS related questions in hopes of trying to understand how people are using RSS.
Safari's text-shadow anti-aliasing CSS hack Article
4th December 2008 8 Comments http://sam.brown.tc/348
Now if that’s not a buzzword laden post title to get you interested I really don’t know what is! Wilson Miner posted a message to Twitter earlier today stating that he was removing the ‘text-shadow Safari anti-aliasing hack’ on his site as it was bugging him. Let me explain what it is exactly and how I think it can help improve the look and legibility of some text in Safari.