If you’re like most parents with younger kids, you step on these damn things every day. Wouldn’t be nice to build awesome, useful things out of them instead? Here are some great ideas to inspire you at Viralnova.
Design
Taxonomy: What media professionals need to know
All media websites need a taxonomy. A carefully crafted taxonomy improves the usability and searchability of your website. The process of thinking about, building and maintaining a good taxonomy will force a healthy examination of the relationship between your content, your readers, and your business.
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How to use website wireframes
Can you save time and money with your next site launch by using website wireframes? If you are careful about setting expectations up front, wireframes can be an excellent tool for getting everyone on the same page before your designer invests time in developing a user experience. And since building a wireframe takes no special skills, it’s easy for marketing folks to lay out their expectations and then iterate quickly.
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Website redesign roles: a template
Website redesigns are vital projects that don’t happen often enough for most of us to get good at them. Developers and designers know exactly what they need to do, but struggle because the rest of the players often … don’t. Here are some guidelines for assigning responsibilities to make your next website redesign more successful.
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Website requirements document best practices
Building a website or selecting a content management system (CMS) requires a clear idea of what features and functionality the site will need. How you define and implement those features will go a long way in determining the success of the site. That’s why a comprehensive requirements document, which gives your site developers a clear description of site functionality and workflow and the objectives behind that functionality is critical.
What should a requirements document include? Alas, there is no magic fill-in-the-blanks template you can finish in an hour. You need to do some research and thinking. However, carefully answering these 6 questions will serve as a pretty good website requirements template:
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Let your designers do their job
If you are lucky enough to have actual professional web designers on the payroll, please let them do their job.
Web design is one of those thankless professions that everyone feels innately qualified to participate in. Most editors would never consider making a suggestion about code to their tech team. These same editors don’t think twice about handing down detailed direction about colors, fonts and layout to a designer.
Design is something we consume and react to every day, so it’s easy to be an armchair quarterback. I’ve been guilty of this myself, but I learned some things which (mostly) keep me from attempting to micromanage design.
Mitch Speers 