This event is being held at the University of Hull’s Scarborough Campus. Initially there will be eight, twenty-minute, slots available per stream to people who have an issue they want to talk about, a piece of technology they want to shower praise upon or simply need a soap-box for that axe they need to grind.

Since interest in speaking has been a little bit low, I have been asked to prepare some kind of discussion to share with the world – and by world, I mean probably about 15 people.

So what am I going to talk about? I think I am going to pickup from where Chris Spooner left off, and talk about various web debates such as design below the fold (which seems an issue which business folk in Scarborough do not seem to want to grasp), opening links in new windows and designing for older browsers.

If you want to check out more information, or even sign up, head on over to the official BarCamp Scarborough event on the Digital Scarborough website.

• A free .co.uk address
• Free updating and customisation
• Access to new customers
• Traffic monitoring
• Website-enhancing Gadgets

So, why am I writing about this? Surely it would be a bad move on my part to publicise such a service. I am posting this in an attempt to inform people about why they shouldn’t go with such a service – and my clever post title will become clearer.

You get what you pay for

This statement is true. It is a very rare occasion in life that you’ll get something you really want that’s really good quality for free. In my post early last month, I wrote about why you should leave it to the professionals when getting your website designed. In summary, it outlined why you shouldn’t just let anyone build your website.

Web design is a profession. We are skilled and trained (sometimes self-taught) and the best of us know what we’re talking about and why we do certain things in design.

Building your website through the GBBO service may well get you online quicker and for free – but this isn’t a good thing by any means. It rules out the careful consideration of viewers, site goals, important traffic analysis and marketing strategies – all of which are important to a successful website.

GBBO only offers the basics

Want something a little more complex? GBBO doesn’t offer it. In the help section of the GBBO website, there is a question entitled, “What if I want a more advanced website?” The answer to that is:

Our step-by-step tool will help you publish a basic website for your business, and Google Sites will let you improve and expand upon this later. If you’d like something more advanced we recommend you speak to a professional website designer who may be able to create a more sophisticated home for your business.

Unless you want a basic information page with who your company is, then GBBO is going to come up short. Want a blog on your website? Want a shopping cart? GBBO fails.

What’s this about marketing strategy? Getting number 1 on Google is easy!

In a perfect world, you would just be able to type whatever you want, and everyone will magically find your business online. Sadly this is not the case. Careful consideration must go in to every part of a website build, all the way down to the wording of simple sentences.

But it’s free

This is true. But free things may come at a cost believe it or not. Most people know nothing about marketing, or the effects of bad marketing. If you publish a bad website, giving your company a bad image, it will reflect on you as a person or a business. If you go in to a scruffy looking clothing shop, will you buy a nice pair of shoes from there? Or will you go to the nicely presented looking shop down the road that’s offering the same thing?

For basic websites such as these, especially due to the recession, you will be able to agree a feasible price with many professional web designers and developers who are looking for smaller projects. GBBO is not a good solution in my opinion. In this day an age, most businesses do have websites, and a free website isn’t going to get you seen or set you above the rest.

Getting British Business Offline

Offline? No, the intention is to get businesses online. Ok, so what about professional web designers and developers who rely upon contracts from small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to live. Suddenly, all of these businesses can get their new websites for free. Ok, so you’ll put 10 plumbers online, but you’ll take out a web designer. We’re already at an all-time low for the unemployed in the UK – this service isn’t going to help that.

What are your thoughts and opinions on GBBO?

Find Creativity is a directory website listing creative people in your area – linking you with people you may never knew existed. The main focus behind Find Creativity:

• Make you aware of other creatives in your area that you may want to work with, or get help from, on your next project.
• Increase your publicity on the web.
• Let others know if you’re available to work. Or if you’re not, when you will be available.
• Provide simple user profiles.

You can see this website as a streamlined version of Yell.com – with a specific focus on the creative industry; focusing on the following professions:

• Web designers
• Web developers
• Photographers
• Digital Artists
• Painters
• Video/Film editors
• Musicians
• Software developers
• Publishers
• Printer designers
• and more…

These listings will be carefully monitored to ensure a high quality and acurate directory – you won’t be finding entires of your local plumber in here, or a web designer from London spamming up the Scarborough section.

I plan on launching this project on 1st April. Keep an eye out in the blog to check for any updates.

I had several issues with the first form. It goes in order, ‘first name’, then your’ last name’. So when it gets to ‘Most Recent Employer’ and then has the field ‘Website’ next to it, is that the employer’s website, or your own? It’s not exactly clear, but why would they ask for the company’s website? They’re actually asking for your own. Simple solution, rename the label ‘Your Website’. My other issue with this section is the ‘Career Status’ drop down menu. The three options are ‘Actively looking for a job’, ‘open to new opportunities’ and ‘exploring careers.’ The meaning of these isn’t abundantly clear until you click the little question mark above the form section. Why not just have a little tooltip when the field becomes active?

The next part of the profile form is your address. It has the fields ‘Address 1’ and ‘Address 2’ side by side. When you write an address, each line is always underneath one another, so I instantly assumed it meant a second address (which I’ve seen on many application type forms). Simple solution, change the field name to ‘Address line 1’ and place ‘Address line 2’ underneath it. As for the location, why is it in this day and age of the web, can the backend not deduce the town and county from the postcode?

Web design can take years and years to get remotely good at. It’s not something you can learn from reading a few books, or a few articles on the web. You must understand it to its fullest. You might be great at creating pretty little things – good for you; you’re an artist or a creative at this stage.

So what will (or should) a professional web designer consider that a non-professional won’t. Pretty much most things past the visual appeal is probably the right answer here. Past the initial prettiness, there should come reasoning to design elements. Why is this element red, why is this text emboldened and why is that big button so prominent? When a company enters the stage in their marketing when they decide they want a web presence, why settle for a cheap knock off that won’t reap the benefits and rewards, and achieve its primary objectives?

The main objectives of your website may be to create new business, get a message across or it might be your entire business (i.e. Amazon, eBay and eBuyer all operate completely online without high-street stores). Executing your website poorly will not likely produce good results. Or, it could even have a negative effect on your brand. Something subtle, or something major, what if Currys main website colour scheme was for some reason orange? That’s the colour of Comet, one of their biggest competitors. Sure, this branding mishap would never happen (I hope) with such big brands, but it can happen a lot with smaller companies.

Why would you approach someone with little or no experience in professional web design to create your online presence? Simple answer in most cases is down to cost. How many times, as a professional designer (if you are one), have you heard something like “My nephew could design what you did for £100 ($175)“? Seriously, if you’re representing your company online, don’t cut corners. I can use a needle and thread, and I know the shape of a t-shirt, so why not ask me to make your clothes? I’ll make you a t-shirt for £2. You’re not going to do it, because it’ll be very poor quality. Most cheap web designers will be students paying their way through college or university, or they may have other jobs and it’s something to do for a little extra cash.

There are so many more reasons you should consult a professional to create your online presence, and not someone who’s only after making a quick bit of moolah.

What do you think sets apart professional web designers from every other Tom, Dick and Harry who happens to have a copy of Photoshop sat on their computer?

The default template will have all the usual details. Username, gravatar and comment etc. The issue isn’t the content (unless you care about the format of the date to match the rest of your website) – the issue is the layout.

By adding some code to the functions.php file in your Wordpress theme folder, you can have more control over what is going on. The following is the template used on Castle Made.

<?php
function cust_comment($comment, $args, $depth) {
$GLOBALS['comment'] = $comment; ?>
<li <?php comment_class(); ?> id="li-comment-<?php comment_ID() ?>">
<div id="comment-<?php comment_ID(); ?>" class="aComment">
	<div class="commenter">
		<div class="gravatar">
			<?php echo get_avatar($comment,$size='140'); ?>
		</div>
		<?php printf(__('<h4><cite class="author">%s</cite></h4>'), get_comment_author_link()) ?>
		<div class="comment-meta commentmetadata"><?php printf(__('%1$s'), get_comment_date(), get_comment_time()) ?></div>
	</div>
	<div class="theComment">
	<?php comment_text() ?>
	<?php if ($comment->comment_approved == '0') : ?>
	<p><em><?php _e('Your comment is awaiting moderation.') ?></em></p>
	<?php endif; ?>
	</div>
</div>
<?php } ?>

The important part is to now trigger the template change. Open up your theme’s comments.php file, and go to line 29 (default theme) and look for the following code:

<?php wp_list_comments(); ?>

And change it to the following:

<?php wp_list_comments('callback=cust_comment'); ?>

The value of ‘callback’ must match the name of your comments function.

The blog content will range from random ramblings, to discussions on design and the occasional tutorial. I’m also hopping on the Project52 bandwagon. It’s about time I start making consistent and interesting blog posts.

If there is anything broken, please post a comment below and I’ll break out the superglue.

My task was basically ‘design a website’ – That was essentially the brief, along with a list of pages. I wanted to design something that represented the digital side of Scarborough, and to get away from the business-like image.

Through this project, I also gained first hand experience of working with the CakePHP framework.