How often do you change?

[Elli]

So, those of you who design or run your own sites: how often do you do a "look" change of the tour/free areas? Not just adding content, but giving the site a whole new feel. Or do you just build a new site instead?

[Hell Puppy]

Short answer is when it quits working.

Our best sites are 8 years old and have had maybe 2 upgrades to the look and feel over the years, and only then to modernize and make look more contemporary.

If the conversions aren't working, I might change it every 3-4 months til I get the results I want or cut bait.

[cj]

when I get sick of looking at them :agrin:

I think once you've got something that works there's no need to change it, I just get bored easily and can design pretty quick so I just do it when *I* need a change.

stylesheets babee - if you design it right, you can change the entire look with a few keystrokes ;-)

[Titan]

cj s right css is def the way to go

i just took back my original site from my brother and am going to be starting it from scratch with a total css style which means i can tweak all the pages look at once without any issues at all :) should be fun

[Nickatilynx]

Depends on the site what you have the site for etc etc etc..

But I've always been fond of building it , forgetting it and on to the next thing.

What I'm working on now is a constantly changing ,morphing site that changes depending how you got there , where you are from and with constantly changing relevant content.

This is why for me , I'm quit quiet at the moment. :)

Secondly , why update and modernise one site , if you can update...1000s ;-))

[cj]

you are working on something involving constantly changing relevant content and you haven't contacted me yet?!

:yowsa:

hit me up on icq, i'll show you our celeb backend and what it can do ;-)

[Elli]

Hmm interesting replies, thanks folks! :) I do use CSS, but I'm not talking about just changing typefaces or table colours. I mean moving things around.

[Jesse_DD]

Originally posted by Hell Puppy@Mar 21 2005, 11:02 PM
Short answer is when it quits working.

Our best sites are 8 years old and have had maybe 2 upgrades to the look and feel over the years, and only then to modernize and make look more contemporary.

If the conversions aren't working, I might change it every 3-4 months til I get the results I want or cut bait.
Bingo

[cj]

Originally posted by Elli@Mar 22 2005, 09:34 PM
Hmm interesting replies, thanks folks! :) I do use CSS, but I'm not talking about just changing typefaces or table colours. I mean moving things around.
stylesheets are just for changing typefaces and colors?!

shit ... and here I've been using them to design & layout pages all this time ....

*shrug*



refer to HP's answer
good luck!

[Hell Puppy]

I'm a fan of style sheets.

Unfortunately, the majority of the designers out there doing tours have gotten stuck in a rut in recent years of designing a really intense graphic design and just slicing it up using ImageReady or similar.

Drives me crazy that I have to teach our FFD's the virtues of putting text in html instead of making the whole freaking page an image.

[cj]

hp, that drives me nuts too ....

in defense of designers though, most of us are trained to work in photoshop or a graphics program ... and few designers now have had any training on desktop publishing programs which allow you to see a 'page' as opposed to a graphic.

I find often if I want to design a flyer or something for print, I have to go into photoshop and whip it up to 'see' it before I can reconstruct it in a vector based program - and I trained originally as a print designer!!

its mostly laziness ... since imageready launched with the last version of photoshop, few designers even bother editing the page to add text to the graphics.

I have a way now to merge my laziness with my practical knowledge of how a web page should be built ... big graphic on the top, text/tables at the bottom LOL http://www.giantvegas.com/ladies_night.html

[Hell Puppy]

Originally posted by cj@Mar 23 2005, 07:10 PM
hp, that drives me nuts too ....

in defense of designers though, most of us are trained to work in photoshop or a graphics program ... and few designers now have had any training on desktop publishing programs which allow you to see a 'page' as opposed to a graphic.

I find often if I want to design a flyer or something for print, I have to go into photoshop and whip it up to 'see' it before I can reconstruct it in a vector based program - and I trained originally as a print designer!!

its mostly laziness ... since imageready launched with the last version of photoshop, few designers even bother editing the page to add text to the graphics.

I have a way now to merge my laziness with my practical knowledge of how a web page should be built ... big graphic on the top, text/tables at the bottom LOL http://www.giantvegas.com/ladies_night.html
Ok, this should give you an idea of how fucked up I am when it comes to design....

Little Known Hellpuppy Fact: In college, I made a little walking around money doing typography and graphic design.

We're talking old school here. The Mac had just debuted. There was no WYSIWYG. You created the type on an old nasty terminal that only showed you the code, set it on typesetter, develop the film in processor, and then you get your glue and exacto knife and you cut and paste to build the page baby!

I learned code markup on old Compugraphic equipment (now Agfa). The sucker didn't even kern text automatically, you had to do it by hand. Want a capital A next to a capital V to be nice and tight? You had to do a backpoint. A<BP7>V should do it in most fonts.

Gotta key all that text by hand, and you cant even proof it without taking the time to set it on the typesetting, then develop the damned film. And if you dont get it right within 1 or 2 tries, you get yelled at for wasting film and chemicals.

A designer gets no sympathy from me when I ask him to make a section of a page HTML instead of a graphic.

:biglaugh:

[cj]

:lol:

oh god you had it even worse than I did!!

I did work experience at a place in '93, and one of my jobs was to cutout letters and stick them onto a page so the plate could go to print :biglaugh:

my first entire year of college was learning how to use a bromide camera and layout each color on 4 separate clear sheets ready for prepress - by the 2nd year they said 'fuck it, computers are here' LOL

I'm glad I learnt the hard way though ... i feel like I have a deeper understanding of the tools these days because of it ... but it did take me over a year before I could switch to imageready from manually cutting out slices in photoshop using guides and lots of cntrl c / cntrl n / cntrl v LOL

oldskool babee :rolleyes:

[Dravyk]

CJ, HP, What's this, the dozens???

I worked on Compugraphic, develop the paper. Linotron. Magnetic tape. Pink paper-ribbon hole-punch. Just about anything computerized that came after the IBM cards that had to do with typography, I've done it.

Ah the days of calculating X-Y values to create mathmatical three columns with gutters. Or the days before that with the waxer. Or later when the copy would get married to a photo and you had to create invisible matrixes to represent where an image, let's say an airplane wing, might go "into" the type and have to wrap around the nonexistent object.

Penta, LinoVIP, IBM XT I-O table interfaces with S&R routines to flip the quote marks, changing the fonts on the spin drums ... :ph34r:

[Hell Puppy]

Originally posted by Dravyk@Mar 25 2005, 01:51 AM
CJ, HP, What's this, the dozens???

I worked on Compugraphic, develop the paper. Linotron. Magnetic tape. Pink paper-ribbon hole-punch. Just about anything computerized that came after the IBM cards that had to do with typography, I've done it.

Ah the days of calculating X-Y values to create mathmatical three columns with gutters. Or the days before that with the waxer. Or later when the copy would get married to a photo and you had to create invisible matrixes to represent where an image, let's say an airplane wing, might go "into" the type and have to wrap around the nonexistent object.

Penta, LinoVIP, IBM XT I-O table interfaces with S&R routines to flip the quote marks, changing the fonts on the spin drums ... :ph34r:
Cut it out, I'm having flashbacks!

:unsure:

[gonzo]

Originally posted by Hell Puppy+Mar 25 2005, 02:34 AM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Hell Puppy @ Mar 25 2005, 02:34 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Dravyk@Mar 25 2005, 01:51 AM
CJ, HP, What's this, the dozens???

I worked on Compugraphic, develop the paper. Linotron. Magnetic tape. Pink paper-ribbon hole-punch. Just about anything computerized that came after the IBM cards that had to do with typography, I've done it.

Ah the days of calculating X-Y values to create mathmatical three columns with gutters. Or the days before that with the waxer. Or later when the copy would get married to a photo and you had to create invisible matrixes to represent where an image, let's say an airplane wing, might go "into" the type and have to wrap around the nonexistent object.

Penta, LinoVIP, IBM XT I-O table interfaces with S&R routines to flip the quote marks, changing the fonts on the spin drums ... :ph34r:
Cut it out, I'm having flashbacks!

:unsure: [/b][/quote]
Tegra Varityper RULEZ!

[Elli]

Alright, maybe I have to go look at CSS again. I never did hammer the whole thing into my head. Thanks for the nudge. :)

hehe my mother was a typesetter while she was going to BCIT to be a systems analyst. I am so glad I never had to do that.

I was editor of the school paper in high school though, so I started my "design" in PageMaker. I draw out my website designs on paper first, then make the graphics in Photoshop, stick them together in Fireworks, then trim up the code in Dreamweaver. I'm not too advanced on the graphics end of things, though. I just keep it simple.

This is my latest redesign of my front page: http://www.ellinude.com/first.htm