Thanks for your help the pages came out great
By Donovan | March 17, 2006
“In case I didn’t say it, the Greatest Needs pages came out great. Thanks for your help, handling many iterations from me, and turning it around quickly.. It looks great and I’ve made an edit to a typo on one page that was easy to fix thanks to the new database structure.” – Birger Dahl, Marketing Manager for Give2Asia
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i would highly recommend donovan watts’ services to anyone
By Donovan | January 31, 2006
“Donovan is hugely knowledgeable about all things web-related. working with him has enabled me to bring my website up to date with the current technology and has been a valuable learning experience for me as well. i would highly recommend donovan watt’s services to anyone looking to bring their website into the new millennium. in this world dominated by gigantic corporations, his personal attention, focus, and dedication to help you succeed is truly a rare thing.” – lori nova (founder & owner, www.thenovastudio.com)
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Working with Getting Sites Built was an excellent experience.
By Donovan | January 23, 2006
“Working with ‘Getting Sites Built’ was an excellent experience. We switched out a primitive website and turned it into a WordPress powered, custom built site that’s much easier to look at and organized. It was a pleasure to work with Donovan Watts, a brilliant, patient web designer. We are very pleased with their work!” – Geoff Brady/producer / lawanddisorder.org
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Law and Disorder Site Redesign
By Donovan | January 22, 2006
LAW AND DISORDER CREATES compelling radio covering such topics as surveillance, civil liberties, and torture. Getting Sites Built redesigned the site from the ground up… built on a WordPress foundation, which is open source. The site now has an RSS feed, a podcast with logically named MP3s, properly labeled ID3 tags, a search engine, multiple author support.. and more.
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Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist
By Donovan | December 19, 2005
A List Apart: “Sometimes it’s the little things that drive you nuts. As many of us have probably noticed during this season of holiday shopping, usability problems in online forms can be infuriating. Brian Crescimanno helps solve the problem with a checklist of form-usability recommendations.”
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Try Basecamp for your next project
By Donovan | December 14, 2005
I’ve been using Basecamp to manage my client web site projects and it’s fantastic! Not only does it allow me to collaborate with my contractors, but it allows my clients to see what is going on behind the scenes as we build their site.
Since getting totally organized on Basecamp, I’ve suggested the service to others and they’ve found out how great it is as well. Now, whenever someone signs up because of my praise, I’ll get credit as an affiliate. Give Basecamp a try, click the graphic below.
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The Website Development Process
By Donovan | December 11, 2005
The Website Development Process
The three characters: a programmer, a designer and a client.
This is a funny and fun way to explain the process. Not totally accurate but fun and basically the way it works, nonetheless!
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Email Design Guidelines for 2006
By Donovan | November 30, 2005
For those of you who are looking for an email list service, check out Campaign Monitor. Their service is top notch and the interface is a dream. This list of key email design trends and guidelines from their weblog is handy.
- Never use images for important content like headlines, links and any calls to action.
- Use alt text for all images for a better experience in Gmail and always add the height and width to the image to ensure that the blank placeholder image doesn’t throw your design out.
- Add a text-based link to a web version of your design at the top of your email.
- Ensure your most compelling content is at the top (and preferably to the left).
- Test your design in a preview pane, full screen and with images turned on and off before you send it.
- Ask your subscriber to add your From address to their address book at every opportunity.
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Test Post from Flock
By Donovan | October 29, 2005
There’s a new browser being developed called Flock. It’s got a lot of innovative features such as del.icio.us and flickr support. And it also has a built-in weblog editor that I’m using right now to post to this WordPress weblog. Nice!
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The top 5 red flags of software development
By Donovan | October 28, 2005
- ‘Wouldn’t it be easy to…’ (the hidden cost of change)
- ‘This shouldn’t take long’ (artificial time frame)
- ‘Can you make this small change real quick?’ (‘small’ and ‘quick’)
- ‘Before you finish X, could you do Y?’ (the mental costs of interruption)
- ‘Let’s push this today’ (artificial scope)
(Via [SIGNAL VS. NOISE].)
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