What is Digg?625 Comments
- putergirl, on 02/28/2008, -2/+175Run if you see the "Frontpage Webmaster" certificate on the wall
- kurrent, on 02/28/2008, -1/+169site went down after 63 diggs...
1. He Calls Himself a "Webmaster"
Any web guy that calls himself a "webmaster" probably isn't a master of anything. The term "webmaster" has become a translation for the word "amateur." The web has diversified into so many different realms that webmaster is no longer meaningful (was it ever though?)
2. He's a FrontPage Expert
Any developer / designer with a degree knows that Microsoft FrontPage most definitely isn't a professional tool. FrontPage will pass for Mom and Dad who want to create a website dedicated to their dogs, not someone who's trying to do business. I'd argue that a solid Web Developer should work at code level.
3. He'll Submit Your Website to [Inflated Number Here] Search Engines
Submitting your website to hundreds of search engines would be great...10 years ago. Websites are indexed by relevant search engines by how rich their content and keywords are. Search engine optimization is big business and submitting sites to search engines simply isn't the way to get to the top of Google.
4. He Wants a "Designed By ...." Plug on the Bottom of Every Page
You've paid this person to create a marketing tool for you -- not a billboard for him. Your website is a launch pad for your business and Poindexter McScooner is simply the man behind the curtain -- keep him there.
5. He Created a Cool Website for [Insert Family Member / Friend Here]
Your business needs someone who's been there before. The most common answer to my "Who was he and what business did they work for?" question is "Oh, he did a website for the CEO's daughter's [insert lame organization here]." I honestly hear that friend-of-a-friend story all the time. Choose someone with a sizable portfolio that can provide references.
6. He Can Make You a Great Splash Page Flash Animation
Translation: "I can spend dozens of hours wasting your money to create something that will take too long to load and will be skipped more times than dessert at a bad restaurant." Consistency and website flow are important to web design -- not meaningless animations that waste visitors' time and your money.
7. He Mentions He's a HTML Expert
Who the hell isn't? I would argue that dropping any language acronym on a customer (PHP, Ruby on Rails, ColdFusion, etc.) unless they ask is meaningless fluff. A mechanic could use a banana on my car if it would fix it. Keep your tools, especially HTML, to yourself -- the customer doesn't care.
8. He'll Fit a Cool Counter on Your Site
You'll add an ugly relic of the early internet on my site so that my competitors have an idea of my web stats? Sweet!
Counters make a website look as unprofessional as possible -- don't use them.
9. He'll Place a "Best If View in..." Message on Your Website
Any real Web Developer knows that he doesn't make the rules. Follow standards in the initial build and then fix it in Internet Explorer -- that's the flow. No responsible programmer would place a "best if view in..." message on the front-end of a website. - LaSepultura, on 02/28/2008, -4/+168Apparently you aren't a professional unless you can type a novel worth of code into notepad.
- VanD, on 02/28/2008, -8/+153I love people that hate dreamweaver users. "Real designers use notepad" or whatever variation.
***** you, the best designers are the ones that create great websites, who cares what tools they use.
That being said, ***** frontpage. - brandonchicago, on 02/28/2008, -0/+110#10 - His personal website is a MySpace page
- CharlesSaint, on 02/28/2008, -17/+127I dealt with one of these "Front Page Experts" this morning when he tried to ridicule my analogy on on a particular story, only to have me shoot back (upon discovering his "blog" was coded using Front Page) and proceed to exact my linguistic revenge via comments.
http://digg.com/music/Music_exec_Music_1_0_is_dead ...
Too bad I couldn't have pointed him to this story earlier... - DarthDaddy, on 02/28/2008, -44/+150#10 - Dreamweaver developer who uses the GUI.
- spammishking, on 02/28/2008, -7/+93I thought all web browsers viewed the internet the same till I opened one of my sites with Firefox. Damn you Firefox for pointing out my lack of coding skills!
- tekmonkey, on 02/28/2008, -1/+83#10 -- you can't connect to his database.
- rhylan, on 02/28/2008, -2/+66nice counter on the bottom...
- skidooer, on 02/28/2008, -0/+59Yes. It is now Webmastr (BETA).
- digitalpencil, on 02/28/2008, -16/+74All designers use WYSWIG editors to create sites and there use is indefinitely not an indication that he/she is less than adept with raw code.
You use the quickest, easiest tool for the job. If assembling tables or div structures is easier in DW than it is notepad, then do it in DW.. You're going to ahve to end up interacting with the base code at any rate. - ZachSka87, on 02/28/2008, -2/+56I just checked out his blog. Holy *****. He is THAT web designer!
- hollywoodphony, on 02/28/2008, -1/+52"Unable to connect to database server"
Um, is that page supposed to be down? Could I take that as a big sign not to hire a web designer? - tehbeermang, on 02/28/2008, -0/+48If you like firefox, install firebug. It will help you understand what exactly is wrong.
- roadnottaken, on 02/28/2008, -4/+50Hey, old people object to #1! Those of us who were around when the Web wasn't - who were happily using DOS before there was Windows - still use old-fogey terms like "webmaster". We may be uncool in our terminology, but that doesn't mean none of us have learned to make a decent website.
Love your article, seriously. Lots of substantial advice in there. Sounds like you're a Unix guy - working product over flashy useless stuff. - MythMaker9, on 02/28/2008, -3/+48#13 submits a site to digg without enough server capacity to support the load.
- kingmanic, on 02/28/2008, -2/+47-----joke----->
0
/|\ you
/\ - kingmanic, on 02/28/2008, -9/+53NotePad? Real Web Designers use Cat or C-x- M-c M-Butterfly.
- brocej, on 02/28/2008, -1/+41I liked the article.
The only thing I wonder is how a web designer / developer is meant to start out. You haven't got a portfolio of work because you haven't got clients, and you haven't got clients because you haven't got a protfolio. - tehbeermang, on 02/28/2008, -0/+37Find a subject that interests you. Build a site about that subject. Start a community. Adsense can help pay for hosting/domain. Repeat.
- spidamonkey, on 02/28/2008, -6/+38#11 uses frame sets
#12 Says he knows ASP but can only create it with Dreamweaver built in behaviors - SteaminTmann, on 02/28/2008, -0/+31Dreamweaver is fantastic as an IDE . The split screen is great for jumping around within code, to find the element you need. Working with tables is very easy. The libraries of code reference, (PHP and Javascript Functions, CSS elements). The site manager pane (with automatic upload on save is great). Also, the find and replace, with settings for specific tags, along with regular expression support. If you use it properly, it can really help to ease some headaches as a web developer.
- Braxo, on 02/28/2008, -2/+33I got started because my company needed a website build and hired somebody to do so. For 3 months the person was getting no where and I have a computer science background so said I would do it.
Taught myself HTML and CSS in that week and over the years added in other web technologies. Because of the computer science, I never opened dreamweaver or front page and worked strickly using textmate and other text editors. You'll learn faster that way I believe. - sgtpppr, on 02/28/2008, -3/+33No, douchey coders who masquerade as Web designers do that.
- carolinaws, on 02/28/2008, -0/+29I haven't used the "webmaster" term in years.
When people ask what I do I tell them, "I play keyboards." - noots, on 02/28/2008, -0/+28i think "web developer" and "web designer" are the current trends at the moment. Web developer if you are ***** at anything visual. Web designer if you're retarded at coding anything useful.
- MWeather, on 02/28/2008, -0/+27I'm Notepad certified.
- sambapati87, on 02/28/2008, -0/+27i disagree. nothing screams 1995 like framesets.
- tubaros, on 02/28/2008, -0/+27Well done to you - that site is abysmal. I run websites for a living and if someone showed me that as portfolio work, Id tell them to F off!
- bjs3171, on 02/28/2008, -5/+31speaking as a (shoe) designer who visits many "designer" websites, i ***** hate flash splash pages. infact, i just hate flash altogether. when i hit my browser's back button, it needs to go back to the previous page of the website, not back to google. and if you must use flash, then figure out some way to fix it. i don't care "what's possible", all i care about is your end product. fix it, or ditch it, douche bag.
- sputty, on 02/28/2008, -2/+28mirror: http://64.233.183.104/search?hs=sUq&hl=en&lr=&c2co ...
- drakenlot, on 02/28/2008, -2/+27Well, I for one only read articles that he approves, so I'm glad this one passed.
- drakenlot, on 02/28/2008, -0/+24Note to IE: Get a f'in Firebug equivalent! and not that ***** IE DevBar or some crap.
- spiffywilco, on 02/28/2008, -0/+23I'm a "Hotdog Expert Webmaster" according to my certificate. So there.
Anyone at all remember hotdog? Or am I remembering it wrong? - Mardala, on 02/28/2008, -2/+25The next level of amateur web developer is the one who claims they only use notepad. Seriously ... notepad is for writing ***** down. Maybe fixing a typo. If you are really going to brag you might as well say you use VI or Emacs ...
- mattmcm, on 02/28/2008, -0/+21Unnecessary use of Flash everywhere === epic fail.
- pintomp3, on 02/28/2008, -0/+20wow, his blog is terrible. you have to make quite an effort to be that bad.
- vat0r, on 02/28/2008, -2/+21Run if you even see the word "webmaster". The 90s are over.
- vibrokatana, on 02/28/2008, -0/+19Try writing a large amount of javascript for an IE only application... It gives you "invalid character" randomly just for the ***** of it, gives completely useless line number and character positions determined from who knows what and that is if IE just doesn't crash.
- colincornaby, on 02/28/2008, -7/+25#13 Codes in ASP instead of PHP
- LogicBomB, on 02/28/2008, -4/+22So what you just said: "Don't judge people by the tools they use, unless they use..."
- bjs3171, on 02/28/2008, -0/+18a good company should hire both, pure designers, and designers who know a bit about coding, so they can tell the pure designer he can't put a giant ***** picture in the background.
- fancypants, on 02/28/2008, -0/+18Design and coding are just two sets of skills. With proper training, plenty of practice and an effort to always improve, anyone can be excellent at both. These aren't mutually exclusive skills.
- HeL1ves1nYou, on 02/28/2008, -1/+18My eyes... THEY BLEED!
- twoboxen, on 02/28/2008, -1/+18yeah, but he looked so pretty in the all-black
- sfrench, on 02/28/2008, -1/+17=== is a valid operator in php, used to check not only value, but also type of the parameters (actually checks for "identical", which is slightly different than type + value).
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/language.operators.co ... -
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