Ask HN: Do you design your own website? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do you design your own website?

#61

Post by Scott_MacGregor » Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 8:37 PM UTC

We both do front end and back end coding and design, and have the tools (and knowledge) needed to do it properly.

As advice from someone with experience, I would say do not expect to hit anything close to home run on your first attempt. It might be easier for you if you can find a front end that you like and do a screen capture as a jpg and try to build that verbatim using your own code. Then modify that code to do what you want. Dreamweaver might be a decent tool for doing this. You could pull all of the code and pics from a working site and rebuild that as your first model, but you can probably code it yourself quicker and better.

If you want to build from scratch, knowing how to use Photoshop or a similar tool might make your vision for the site easier to implement. Plus you can give the jpg you make to someone who can write code in your desired language and have it implemented by that person.

Anyone can build a webpage but, if you are trying to do this in Notepad or something similar, it is going to be a tough uphill climb, and you may never fully reach your desired goal. So make sure you have some good tools for the job.

Re: Ask HN: Do you design your own website?

#62

Post by eagleal » Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 8:53 PM UTC

anon-e-moose wrote: post #58

oneplusone wrote: post #21

Well first off, CSS and design are related by they are not the same thing. You could be the best CSS guru out there, and still not know how to design. Don't believe what 37 Signals say, if you skip the Photoshop step in the design process then you will end up with crappy looking designs, and most likely, badly functioning ones as well. If you do hire a designer you should know that there are really two different clas…

You can definitely skip photoshop. http://24ways.org/2009/make-your-mockup-in-markup QED

The one you linked, is a design of a blog. (That problem has already been solved, and it's a memorized pattern.)

Try designing the entire UX of a web application, from idea (how about we do X ...) to every single case, directly in HTML and CSS. Designing for GUIs it's more difficult when you don't have direct visual feedback.

(I do this from time to time, but only for very simple things.)

Re: Ask HN: Do you design your own website?

#63

Post by eagleal » Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 8:58 PM UTC

PStamatiou wrote: post #28

jamii wrote: post #19

I found this guide incredibly useful: http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/169/ It gives step by step instructions on building and refining a design.

Thanks for this. Just learned about css_browser_selector. This will be super handy for me. http://rafael.adm.br/css_browser_selector/

You can also do it directly from useragent, or jQuery.browser (maybe with $.browser.version). (other js frameworks should have it under utils)

Re: Ask HN: Do you design your own website?

#64

Post by wdewind » Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 10:35 PM UTC

alextgordon wrote: post #51

wdewind wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thats not a mockup thats a wireframe web designers absolutely should use photoshop, because they are essentially providing the "theme" around the wireframe, that may be designed by the UI designer.

It depends on the specific design. If it's wordy and document-like (eg: http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/ ) then it may be better to bypass Photoshop and start writing the HTML/CSS, since Photoshop is ill-suited for mocking up those kinds of designs. On the other hand, if it's more graphical (eg: http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop ) then I'd agree that Photoshop is absolutely necessary.

Don't you mean GIMP? ;)

And no, I still disagree slightly. It's not about the kind of design the final product is, it's about what function your role is fulfilling. Are you designing the way the people interact with the application, the way the application looks and feels, or both?

Re: Ask HN: Do you design your own website?

#65

Post by AndyKelley » Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 10:40 PM UTC

I've had success with this technique:

1. Sketch it on paper.

2. Draw it using https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8487/ without regard to how hard it will be to actually implement with CSS and html.

3. Make it so.

Re: Ask HN: Do you design your own website?

#66

Post by cperciva » Thu, Aug 05, 2010, 11:06 PM UTC

wwortiz wrote: post #39

cperciva wrote: post #2

I designed my own website, but I'm sure tptacek will tell you that I shouldn't have done so. :-)

I admire tarsnap's design it is clean and rather functional (except for maybe the tables for usage). I don't mind websites trading style for functionality

except for maybe the tables for usage

What's wrong with them?

Re: Ask HN: Do you design your own website?

#67

Post by wwortiz » Fri, Aug 06, 2010, 1:34 AM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #66

wwortiz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admire tarsnap's design it is clean and rather functional (except for maybe the tables for usage). I don't mind websites trading style for functionality

except for maybe the tables for usage What's wrong with them?

Personally I find them hard to read without any padding and it is much easier to read tables when they have alternating colors (I think some people like to call them zebra tables).

That is about it though, just a nitpick with my tastes.

Re: Ask HN: Do you design your own website?

#68

Post by jsarch » Fri, Aug 06, 2010, 2:05 AM UTC

As someone who is about to have gone through the process twice of starting from scratch and launching (with a team of at most 3), I recommend that you use your time wisely.

The first time through, we had my design up for the first 1.5 years followed by a professional overhaul from a close friend when it started to gain some traction. The difference between the two designs was night-and-day.

This time through, I put up a quick landing page with some basic "coming soon" boilerplate at the beginning. Since I enjoy a minimalist and clean design, I can hack together a site rather quickly. Yes, it is functional. Yes, it appeals to me. No, it doesn't look professional. But most importantly, updating and maintaining it occupied a lot of my time that I could have spent working on the back-end.

The 2nd design was crafted by a designer. Unfortunately, because I had spent all of my time doing the design the first time, I now had no content to give to the designer to work with. I'm sure that he hated the fact that I kept changing my mind on the public pages every other week. To his credit, he created a very impressive set of internal pages for the web-app even though that wasn't his strong suit.

With some content finally available, I hacked the public pages to create the 3rd (and current) site to accommodate the new content.

With an imminent launch, I've finally done what I should have done first: place an ad in Smashing Magazine and hire a designer! In fact, I was able to find a gfx/web designer for the front 4 pages (home, features, tour, signup) and a usability designer in our scientific discipline to evaluate the internal pages. Best of all, I get to launch the company sooner!

Long story short, our launch is imminent because I get to focus on what I do best (HPC back-end) and the front-end gets done by an expert.

Re: Ask HN: Do you design your own website?

#69

Post by foxtrot » Fri, Aug 06, 2010, 3:20 PM UTC

http://themeforest.net?ref=motlive Try This Website - Now it will completely circumvent the need for you to learn CSS, however if this is a one off website you are doing it would be much easier and save your a lot of hassle. The templates can be as little as $8 so wont break the bank either.

Re: Ask HN: Do you design your own website?

#70

Post by mistermann » Sat, Aug 07, 2010, 4:07 AM UTC

kls wrote: post #44

oneplusone wrote: post #21

Well first off, CSS and design are related by they are not the same thing. You could be the best CSS guru out there, and still not know how to design. Don't believe what 37 Signals say, if you skip the Photoshop step in the design process then you will end up with crappy looking designs, and most likely, badly functioning ones as well. If you do hire a designer you should know that there are really two different clas…

99 Designs is not the place to go you know, if I am at that point, I just go buy a template and am done with it. at least a good portion of the templates, on reputable sites, have clean code underneath them. I saw some work from a 99 gig and it was the most atrocious thrown together, to save time, job I have ever seen. Sometimes you need cheap and fast, I am of the opinion that when you do, it is better to adapt to a…

Anyone care to list any reputable sites they have used in the past?