When you have nothing to say, make a list, as Wittgenstein might have said - had he been a blogger. This particular list is of some of my favourite tools for website development under Windows (XP Pro): some well known, others less so.
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[Edit 11 June 2008: this post is somewhat out of date as I've now stopped using sIFR on this site. I got rather fed up with its imperfections to be honest. ]

The typography of this site was looking a little dull, so I thought it might be nice to use sIFR to jazz things up a little. sIFR - which stands for the rather daunting-sounding Scalable Inman Flash Replacement - uses a some neat trickery, a combination of Flash, Javascript and CSS, to change fonts on a page dynamically when it is loaded. This means you can use heading fonts which are

without having the pain of creating substitute images for every item of text.

So, what does it take to get sIFR working with WordPress? (more…)

Wolf and Water Arts Company is a charity which does art work with various groups. The company wanted a new website to help them manage and present their extensive archives of material related to past and present projects. Their old site was hard to update and hence new content tended to be added belatedly or not at all.

Drupal provided a good match for their needs, with its flexible categorisation and general ease of use. Although the new site has a lot more content, it is more accessible due to the clearer menu structure and other navigation options.

“Likemind were excellent - they took plenty of time to fully understand our requirements, exceeded our expectations & delivered a splendid website on time. Training & follow up was also excellent. I would not hesitate to recommend them to anyone.” - Peter Smith, Wolf + Water.

The brief for the web site of this popular North Devon tourist attraction was to create an attractive modern site with a clear organisational structure which would be maintainable by L&B staff.

Given the large amount of content with varying needs for its presentation and management Drupal was the obvious choice. I created a custom theme and companion module that matched the major divisions of the site and installed and configured other appropriate modules. One of the challenges was in the Visitor section, which is internationalized (in seven different languages) whereas the rest of the site is not.

The result is both aesthetically pleasing (the graphic design in large part thanks to Nik Barrie, the L&B webmaster) and highly functional.

“The web site was excellent, containing a vast amount of information, supported by photography of the highest standard. With an easy to browse layout, the pages provided all the information a potential visitor was likely to need, as well appealing to the narrow gauge railway enthusiast.” - VisitBritain inspection report.

I was asked by unit9.com to help develop the backend administration for Metro International’s new website. This involved radical customisation of the Drupal content management system so Metro staff could easily maintain the content of this beautifully designed site with its many complex page structures. It doesn’t look like a Drupal site, does it?

“Working with Alfred from Likemind was great, he knows how to use Drupal to do what is needed and make the project happen. I am very happy with his insight into what features will be useful to the end user without laboring on what will not be as effective.” — Yates Buckley, unit9.

Bitweavers asked me to turn their complex graphical web design for the PhysioDirect site into working HTML and CSS with the requirement that the design should not break when text was enlarged and that it should be compatible with a wide range of browsers.

“… a brilliant job.” — Mike Bridges, Bitweavers.

The Great Torrington Cavaliers are an energetic local fundraising organization. They had an existing website but they were struggling to cope with the changes required whenever they ran a new event. They also wanted a site which would act as a centre for the exchange of information amongst their membership. I chose to use Drupal to build the site which, with its great flexibility and power, has made it much easier for the Cavaliers to publish information and present it in a well-organised fashion. The new site also has a much stronger visual design than the old one.

“Likemind Web services have helped bring the Great Torrington Cavaliers into the 21st century.

Alfred’s knowledge and understanding of the extremely clever Drupal software is second to none. I gave him our requirements and within a couple of days he had a demo site up and running for me to look at.

Having used Microsoft FrontPage previously I had a job getting my head around this new way of administering, and made several desperate requests to Alfred to get me back on track. He was always there to help and never once made it feel awkward or inconvenient.

I would have no hesitation in recommending Likemind to anyone for the website needs.

Thank you Alfred from ALL the Cavaliers — ” — Steve Blake Secretary, Great Torrington Cavaliers

Helen Palmer of Tailor Made South Africa Travel wanted to get control over her website, which was based on an unsatisfactory custom-made PHP application. She already had a Wordpress blog so I suggested using Wordpress for the entire site. This would mean she could update her pages whenever she liked, which would be a major benefit to the business.

I converted the site template to a Wordpress one and migrated the existing content to Wordpress pages. This also necessitated some PHP coding to generate the two-tier menu structure she required. At the same time I made the menus keyboard accessible and adjusted font sizes for greater readability. I also added the facility for pages to have fully customisable titles and meta data for search engine optimisation purposes. Finally, I made a little favicon to enhance the site’s identity.

I’ve given this site a makeover with a new CSS stylesheet, as I was bored with the old look. One of my aims in this revision was to minimise the weight of the page by reducing the number and size of images, and the new style definitely wins on that score: only 2 images in the page template at a total size of just over 3K. Beat that!

Arguably, less is more in page design, especially where colour is concerned. Even the most beautifully-designed colour palette is likely to clash with some random images you put it against, so to reduce the risk of offending your visitors’ aesthetic sensibilities it makes sense to limit the range of hues in any template that’s got to work across a range of content.

Some bloggers have gone in the other direction by customising the page colour scheme to fit an image, Mezzoblue being an example. I’m no Dave Shea, though.

I’ve opted for a fixed width design for a change, partly because it makes the layout much easier to develop in a hurry. Currently it’s a bit too wide for anyone using a low resolution monitor or browsing with a window that’s not full width, but I plan to fix that, possibly using the charmingly named Switchy McLayout technique.

I don’t think this design will win any awards, but it’s easy on the eye and modern without presenting too many Web 2.0 cliches. Not a rounded corner in sight!

drinkmilk was set up by Simon Williams, aka Crayola, as a home for his graphic design / record label / music distribution business. I was asked by Simon to tighten up the site’s design. Our brief was to ensure his graphical ideas were given a setting that was consistent and user-friendly. Accordingly, I converted his original site to one based on templates and CSS, thereby minimising page size, reducing maintenance overheads and making the site more search engine friendly. I also installed a simple content management system so Simon can manage the site himself.

“Having chosen Likemind to work on the build of our website I immediately knew we had made the correct choice. Likemind were friendly, helpful beyond the call of duty and uncompromisingly professional in their approach to our needs. I would recommend Likemind wholeheartedly to everyone.” — Simon Williams, drinkmilk.