This is when I decided that we need to have a consistent method of getting this information from our clients. Theses are the initial questions you should ask before even giving your (potential) clients a quote, because they are integral for deciding what the project will cost you.

How many pages will your website have? What are they?

Although with the emergence of the CMS, pages have become easier and easier to add, it’s still important to understand how large the website will be. The amount of pages you have on a website effects both the design of the project, and the methods used to create the website.

How do you want this site to be built? CMS, blog, or Static

You’re going to have to explain this one to them. Make sure your client has an understanding before hand of what each of these options mean. If all your client needs in one page that they won’t edit, why take the extra steps which will cost them more?

What is your budget?

Some people like to avoid this because they can’t think of a good way to bring it up. That is not a good idea. Once you get an understanding of the clients situation you can better explain to them what features would be the most cost effective, and best for them. Your not helping either of you if you give them a quote before you know what type of budget they’re working with.

Are there any questions you have for us?

Sometimes clients forget to ask questions which could be very important for the designing process. You shouldn’t expect a client to understand your process as a web developer, there are things that they wont understand about how their webpage will be created.

Who will be providing content for this site?

Again, clients don’t always know the web development process. They may think that in agreeing to create a website for them, you are also agreeing to populate that website. While some web development companies offer this, it is always best to get content from professionals and those who know the information best.

What is your timeframe for this project?

Although important this question is often forgotten. Sometimes you might just have to much work on your hands to work with a new client who needs a website in two weeks. If you take too much work you’re doing a disservice to you and your client.

What other questions do you think are important to ask your clients during your first meeting?

On the whole, I’m really happy with my decision. There are some features that I sacrifice, such as processing power, and the lack of a disk drive, but I think that the netbook makes up for that in portability. However, this is one ‘sacrifice’ that I deal with on a daily basis, and that is screen size.

My netbook has a 10.1″ screen at a resolution of 1024 by 600…slightly smaller than a standard resolution. However, despite that fact, some websites aren’t displayed correctly.

While the problem with some websites are often minor, it is still a problem that needs addressing. Since I’ve invested in my Dell, I’ve found myself designing with smaller screen resolutions in mind.

Previously, as time goes on the trend has been for screen resolutions to increase in size. However, with the increased popularity of these smaller computers, maybe we as designer need to rethink our approach. I know that I really take advantage of my 19″ desktop monitor, and fail to recognize the fact that a majority of computer users have a smaller screen.

Now I like 960 designs as much as the next guy, but I think that designers really should be careful about the content we place on the edges of our sites.

Of the two of us, Tim is more of the WordPress savant than I am. While I understand the features, and I can muddle my way through designs, I cannot say that WordPress comes easily to me.

Because of this lack of aptitude, I find myself searching far and wide for different methods of Content Management. I spend time perusing Smashing (which, for the record, is published using WordPress) and making ambiguous Google searches looking for other options.

I’ve looking into Drupal, Light CMS, and Frog CMS. I’ve even had a terrible experience using Joomla in an internship back in May. They were (and are) all nice in their own respects, save Joomla, but they just weren’t what I’m looking for. I want something that is simple to use, all of the features that a user would need without all of the complexity of the typical CMS back-end.

Part of my search stems from a need to find a simple CMS for non-computer-savvy customers. I know that these business owners want to be able to update their site without having to learn all of the ins and outs of their Content Management System. Something that gives them the power to easily edit any content, without all of the “fluff”.

Then, a few days ago, I found my proverbial “Holy Grail” of Content Management. I stumbled across Cushy CMS by a chance Google search…so I decided to investigate further. I watched their video about “How to Edit a site using Cushy CMS (in less than 3 minutes)” and I was hooked. The dulcet tones of their Australian narrator complemented, and even accented, the simplicity of their demonstration.

Cushy, in a stroke of pure brilliance (on par with the first slicing of baked bread), created a system to allow a user to edit the content of a web page externally, and then use the ftp information for the server to update the page. Perfect! Like witnessing a true masterpiece, I sat back in my computer chair, reveling in it’s magnificence.

I exaggerate to prove a point, but I was really impressed. Cushy was created by Melbourne based company Stateless Systems which deserve a lot of credit for a very smart system. I highly encourage you to look into Cushy, and see if it is the right system for you.

Needless to say, I’m going to be using CushyCMS for many pages here to come. That is, when I’m not using WordPress.

Before I start this post, I just want to say, that I may have a bit of a bias on this issue. I’ve been designing on, and religiously using a mac for my entire life. That said, I’m not going to try to tell you whether Mac or Windows is better for web design, but the benefits and difficulties that arise during the design process. Perhaps later on Sean will give an alternative viewpoint on the issue, and give us the pros and cons of Windows.

We’ll start with the cons.

Cons

Internet Explorer

Yeah, Internet Explorer was on mac. It was bundled with the OS until 2003, when it was replaced by Safari. What does that mean for you as a web developer? You can’t test your websites on Internet Explorer. That is, unless you want to code it for IE5.2. That cuts you off from cross browser testing for nearly 50% of internet users. There are a few solutions though. First off, there’s IE4OSX. IE4OSX uses the WINE environment to emulate Internet Explorer 6. This still cuts you off from IE7&8 though. Our second solution is to simply put Windows on your Mac. There are a few ways to do this. One is to use Apple’s Bootcamp software. It’s a pretty useful piece of software. It partitions your hard drive into a Mac disk, and a Windows disc. This seems all fine and dandy, but it’s really not all that fun to have to boot back and forth to check how IE’s doing. You’ve also got to set up your whole web development environment on Windows anyway, to fix your site for IE. The second fix is to buy Windows virtualization software like Parallels. Parallels is a fine piece of software if your willing to shell out the money for it. It saves you a lot of trouble by letting you run Windows inside of your OSX environment.

Image Editing

Macs really don’t have a very good free image editor. Photoshop is great if your willing to pay the money, but a lot of what is so enticing about web development is that it’s something that doesn’t require an investment to get into. All you should need is time. Yes, there is Gimp, but it’s horrid to work with regularly. If your someone who doesn’t work with images regularly it’s fine, but it just wasn’t created for the Mac. There are two versions; the native version, and the XWindows version. To be honest, neither of them are particularly good. The XWindows is basically an emulation of the Windows and Linux versions, which just doesn’t work well on the Mac. The native version is just plain old buggy. Half the features don’t work, and the ones that do look weird. It’s like taking the skin of OSX and draping it over some ugly, other unfortunate program.

Pros

Software

There’s a reason so many web designers use Macs. They simplify a whole lot. There is some great software out there, like Coda and Espresso that really simplify your coding experience if you want to make the investment, but today we’re going to stick to free and open source software.

Cyberduck

Cyberduck is a great piece of software. I use it almost everyday. It’s an ftp client, that’s simple, easy, and free.

TextWrangler

TextWrangler is another great one. TextWrangler is a text editor that’s designed for web development. It supports hundreds of languages and has built in FTP support, but it still manages to function like a pro.

ImageOptim

ImageOptim is about as basic as it gets. Just put it in your dock, drop your images on top of it, and watch as their file size gets into a portion of what it was before.

MAMP

Mamp is like OSX’s verion of WinAmp, except better. It’s not that it has any extra features that WinAmp doesn’t have, or any special little catch, it just does what it says it does. It runs a local server. I’ve never had any problems with it. I run a local version of every WordPress blog I have on the internet to test everything. I’ve never had any problems yet, and don’t expect to.

Wireframing your designs is like journaling your thoughts. You take everything, put it into perspective, and can then analyze, and get input on your designs even before you make them. What first took you a few extra minutes to maybe an hour now saved you hours of work reworking your website until you’ve got exactly what your client wants.

Do you design your homepage in your image editor of choice before actually creating your webpage already? Why not take it just a step farther? Rather than plan out just a portion of your site, you can do the whole thing, and it will take a whole lot less time. Then once you’ve done that you can clearly understand your project and you can use a backbone for the rest of your project. Now you can design your homepage, then break out the text editor and code your site.

You can make things much more complex and different if you think everything through. If your anything like me, you have a few moments of great design time, and the rest of the time your working you’ve got no idea what you’re doing. This is another benefit of wireframing. Why not take one of those moments and think out your whole site. This way, rather than getting stuck on the little details, you can spend the rest of your ‘dull’ time working on the little things, fixing the little details. So get on out there and try wireframing. Just once, I promise good will come of it.

Web designers aren’t the first group of artists be be awed by their surroundings. Look at any of your favorite artists work from any time and much of the work you see is of a tree, a lake, sunset over a mountain, or a night sky. So it comes to no surprise that web designers do the same thing.

Everything has a source. So, when all there was around us was nature, nature was what inspired people. Still our surroundings are comprised mainly of things that are not man made, and still the majority of what we do has it’s source in nature.

Examples of Nature in Web Design

Valen Designs

Valen Designs created the websites for Envato, a very popular web based tutorial website. Be sure to take notice of his logo.

Viget Inspire

Viget Inspire is all nature. They made a beautiful watercolor inspired design of a mountain landscape, in a sunset.

Ali Felski

This is another really cool one. She uses a night scene, with a grungy floral layer over it as her header.

Story Pixel

A corn field. This is a perfect example of taking part of your everyday life, and portraying it in such a creative manner.

Sunrise Design

This ones really cool. If you visit their site, you can see a cool moving cloud effect done in JQuery which actually inspired the bubbles in my own personal portfolio site.