Category archive: Web Design

New Blog

I’m gonna’ be honest with you all… I rejuvenated my blog for a few reasons:

First, I am fighting for my name as search result on page one of google ( when you search for Blake James I want to show up closer to the top of the page).  The old blog template I used was terrible for search engine optimization (SEO). So, I decided like a year ago that I needed to redo the design and code… and I just now got around to the rebuild.

The next reason is, that because I design websites for a living, I thought that it would probably be a good idea to have a blog that reflected SEO industry standards and was designed a little better. Let me tell you though, it is really hard to find the time to work on my own websites when business is so stinkin’ crazy. However, I guess it’s a good problem to have!  In defense of all web designers out there… Don’t judge them completely based off of their website, because they might also be so stinkin’ busy that they don’t have time to work on their own sites.  For example, I have been wanting to get my portfolio up on BlakeJamesDesign.com for a while now… yet, it still doesn’t really have anything up there because I JUST DON’T HAVE THE TIME!

The last reason for the rejuvenation of Blake James .com is because my wife was watching Grey’s Anatomy… which means I was really bored out of my mind!  So, “Thanks, honey for providing me with the freedom and opportunity to work on my blog!”  I was also sitting next to her the whole time, so that has to count for quality time together in some way or another.

Anyway, here is the redesign…. Like I said, I can barely find the time to work on my own websites. So, my new Blake James .com design is a customized, tweaked, and manipulated version of a free template ( Amphion Lite 1.7 by Towfiq I. ) downloaded from WordPress.org. I thought I would throw that out there so it didn’t appear that I was claiming full credit for the design of this template.  I just thought that this free template was almost what I was looking for, and I settled in to it… with a few upgrades of my own.

Customizing themes/templates like this one, instead of creating a theme from scratch, saves a ton of headaches and time.  Shoot… I design for other clients all day long and I just want to take the easy approach, for myself, for once!

If any of you, reading this post, would like me to make adjustments and customizations to an already existing site… just let me know and we can get something up and running for you at a fraction of the price of creating a template from scratch.

Also, if you hear a little voice in your head telling you to help me out, please link to my blog by copying and pasting this link Blake James Blog on your site. Or, create your own link to BlakeJames.com . Thanks for the help!

New Projects Underway

I have been working on some new projects using wp-ecommerce by Instinct.  I am very impressed with the flexibility of the plugin. There are some snags here and there, but the forums and community are very helpful.

Email Campaign Design – Testing Tips

When testing an email campaign design, there are a few things you want to keep in mind.

First, set up multiple accounts with email providers, and spread them out among email clients on PC and Mac. I do have to say that I am an Apple guy myself, but the majority of users still use a PC. It is imparative to test both Mac and PC. Great email clients to test in are Apple’s Mail app, Thunderbird, and Microsoft’s Outlook/Outlook Express. The following email providers’ online clients are a must: Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and if you host a domain with a provider try their email client. I personally have found success in designing for Google’s Gmail, and then testing the other clients later.

Like I said earlier, I am an Apple guy! However, testing in Mail will proove to be tough because it supports all kind of CSS strategies, divide based layouts, and background calls in div style tags. For the user, all of this is amazing to have and makes viewing a great experience. But, keep in mind that online clients like Gmail will strip out any external calls to CSS or any CSS embedded in the head, and kiss div tag reliability goodbye. When designing email layouts, it’s time to go ‘Old School’ and use tables for everything. Yes, a pain in the butt, but reliable and consistent. With tables, you can successfully call backgrounds in Gmail and trust that the layout will stick to placement and dimensions.

If you are having issues with font styles when testing, try calling the styles using a div tag. (I know I said divs are unreliable, but in the specific case of font styling, I have not experienced any issues.)

Don’t forget to test on mobile devices!!! If you don’t want to compromise your design to work around mobile limitations, then make sure you have a ‘view in browser’ link at the top of your layout. More and more people are using mobile devices to check email especially following, my personal favorite, the iPhone. With ‘new school’ devices, email still seems to be stuck in the ‘old school’ ways. So, brush up on your tables!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone (while driving somewhere in the middle of the Rockie Mountains)