19 Things A Business Owner Can Do to Torpedo Their Website Project

In my 10 years of professional website design and development experience I have seen and heard it all when it comes to client and business owner web project dysfunction. This is not to say I don’t love my clients. Did I mention I love my clients? Because I do.  They pay my bills,...

I’m Stuck – Random Design Idea Generator

I fashion myself a bit of a web designer, and sometimes after slaving away on a client’s web design proof for hours, I run into a wall of uncreative energy or as I call it “shit out of ideas”.   I have found that many times the path around or through this wall is not...

Ebay User Experience Fail

So I recently purchased a classic Xbox game (which ended up sucking, more on that later) on Ebay and while the transaction went perfectly smooth, I noticed a small glitch in their post-purchase ‘leave feedback’ follow up.  It’s been almost 5 weeks since the auction...

11 Ways to Piss Off Your Tweeps

I follow a few hundred local Cape Codders on Twitter to give me a sense of what is happening in my geographical region (something I can’t get via the web/newspaper). By and large most of the Twitter streams that I see are a good mix of personal notes, self promotion and other...

Protect WordPress wp-admin Directory with htaccess

With all the recent WordPress security (or lack therof) news I was reminded of an SEO video talk I recently watched put on at WordCamp 2009 in San Fransisco by the one and only (SEO-God Spokesman) Matt Cutts of Google. One of the takeaways I got from the 45 minute online presentation was...

How Free is that Free Stock Photo?

Free stock photography websites are very popular these days, and there are literally hundreds if not thousands to choose from. Besides selection, quality, and featureset the one factor that is critical in evaluating these websites is the image licensing or terms of use. It doesn’t...

Email is My Least Desired Response

When I talk about websites with my local clients, the discussion often turns to “most desired response” or MDR. I ask how they’d like to be contacted by a site visitor which usually involves two options, telephone or email. Typically it’s a 50/50 split as...

Make up Your Own Reality on Twitter

Back in April I saw an article by security blogger (and CSTO?) Bruce Schneier titled Fake Facts on Twitter and was intruiged. In the beginning of April Bruce had instituted his own little Twitter experiment to see how effectively he could spread false facts among a group of eager...