spiced2 logo

Do you really want the perfect website?

January 8th, 2010

Getting the perfect website designed – the last 10% will cost you more that the first 90%

Most webdesigners have had clients that wanted the perfect website for their business and that is a nice goal to have. But getting there will take a lot more effort and money, than getting a website that’s great, but not perfect.

I might be letting some big cat out the bag here but having the prettiest website does not make you content or your product great! Canned spam in a Louis Vuitton bag is still canned spam!
Read the rest of this entry »

Squeeze more speed out of your wordpress blog!

December 25th, 2009

Page speed is all the rage right now. And although wordpress is a fast blogging platform, it can get really bloated, really quick. With all the free plugins and themes using a lot of requests. Here are some tips to get a faster loading wordpress blog.

First Grab yourself some tools to measure the speed

Get yourself some tools to test your speed.
Yahoo’s Yslow, Firebug firefox extension, google pagespeed are just some of the speed tools out there. Try them out to see which one you like.

Backup everything!

Make yourself a backup of all your WordPress files and you database. Just to be save :)

And lets get on with it.
Read the rest of this entry »

5 things to learn from print designers

November 3rd, 2009

Print designers struggle, when they have to make a web layout. And with good reason, websites don’t have the same dimension constraints and a web page calls for a more fluid layout. Some things are not easy, nor smart, to do on the web. Drop caps, Image wraps, large images just to mention some. But we should learn from print designers. They make great designs in the offline world and some it can be used online too. Below you’ll find 5 things to look out for and some examples of webdesigns that already use these techniques.

Read the rest of this entry »

8 places to start learning jQuery

October 21st, 2009

Okay, right off the bat. I’m no jQuery expert and I’m by no means a coding expert. I can code CSS/HTML in my sleep of course, but I have not worked a lot javascript. I have been learning it a bit at the time as I’ve had the need for it.

And then along came jQuery. That really made me get a lot more into javascript as it made thing so much easier. Know having said that jQuery takes a bit of time to learn too. Here is the list of sites I like to visit when I want to learn a bit of jQuery:

Read the rest of this entry »

3 tools to help you hide your identity online

October 15th, 2009

Ever felt a bit paranoid when you’re surfing the web, wondering “who knows what I’m doing right now?” Okay quick – go put on your tinfoil hat, so big brother doesn’t dig into your mind. Done that? Let’s go on then. These are the tools to use when you feel a bit paranoid (with good reason) or when you just want to be able to surf privately and not leaving a trace.

Read the rest of this entry »

Doh! Usability tip #3 Make it easy to compare your products

September 27th, 2009

Have you ever been to a website and had a hard time finding the product that would be the best for your needs? Have you checked lately that you aren’t making the same mistake on your own site? You really should. It might be really easy for you to decide which product is the best, but are you part of your own target audience? Often you won’t be. I have a few examples for you from the web hosting business. A business where people need to compare different packages.

Let’s start with one of the worst examples I could find. Laughing Squid

squid Read the rest of this entry »