No matter whether you are a fresher or a seasoned professional, the field of web programming calls for constantly updating your skill-set. This continuous updating of your skills is extremely helpful for your career because you get to learn the latest techniques and apply them on live projects before others even hear about them. In short, if you want to stay ahead of your competitors and be in the good books of your clients, there’s no match to constant learning.

Apart from books and video tutorials, there is a wealth of resources available on the internet. Explore the net and make use of these resources. Remember, as a web programmer, you can never learn enough. Subscribe to newsletters, talk to learned people in the programming field, visit a local library and read latest editions of magazines. Join web programming related forums and take part in discussions. You can also clear your doubts by asking questions to other members in these forums. Follow some good programming-related blogs and read articles.

Here are some of the things you can do to keep your skills up-to-date.

Read jQuery Tutorials

I do not need to tell you what jQuery is. Visit the jQuery site and read the tutorials. These tutorials, composed by expert developers, authors and professors, will also inform you about a lot of things you might not know.

Opt for Free University Courses

You can take free courses at some online universities. These places offer study options or crash courses for busy professionals like you who have to work in a web programming company and have little spare time. Do your research well before entering any such university. You never know what kind of scams are there on the internet. Opt for a university that offers video lectures, webinars and study materials.

Attend Conferences

Conferences are the ideal place to meet other programmers and expand your network. This is something you do not want to miss. Attend conferences that are related to your field and who knows, you may also get your hands on some good whitepapers that would help you.

Conferences are held quite regularly. Professionals from all over the world congregate to share their ideas, opinions, challenges, experiences and above all, knowledge. Plus, there are a lot of other things that you get to know about in conferences such as business ethics, copyright law, best practices and most importantly, user experience.

The websites that host conferences often put up videos of past discussions and speeches. If you can watch such videos, you would acquire an enormous amount of knowledge without even stepping out of your home.

Go open-source

Join communities like Dribbble, where you can ask questions, learn new techniques and showcase your experiments.

Doing the aforementioned things will give you valuable information. The more you expand your knowledge base, the better it is for you. Try these things regularly and you will never have to face any problems regarding custom programming ever in your career.

When we talk about customized web development, there is hardly any comparison to WordPress. For a web developer, to be able to develop a WordPress theme is a coveted skill. This post will discuss some must-follow aspects of WordPress theme development for a client as well as for your own purposes.

The job of WordPress theme development may have come to you from a client or you may be wanting to customize your own weblog or portfolio website. In both the situations, the common factor is a defined requirement. If you are creating a theme for a commercial purpose, try any of these:

• submit the theme in themes directory of WordPress for free download

• advertise and/or offer the theme in your own site

• sell the theme on theme markets such as ThemeForest or Mojo Themes.

Determining Your Audience (For Client’s Project)

Commercial theme design starts after a thorough analysis of your client’s target audience. You have to find out your audience’s age, sex, location, lifestyle etc. Plus, you have to have a clear knowledge of how web development through WordPress can help your client achieve their goals. Not only that, you have to know how easily your client will be able to manage the website. Only then can you build the admin part of your WordPress website.

Determining Your Audience (For Your Own Project)

This also requires you to find your audience but in a different manner. Since you cannot tell who your target audience will be, design something that will be universally liked. Remember, the theme you design for your own blog customization, would be used by many internet users in different ways. Your aim should be to ensure seamless user-experience. Even if it’s a niche you are targeting, try to reach out to the widest audience possible within that niche. A number of developers base their customizations on themes designed by others but a lot of non-developers use themes too. So, keep in mind developers as well as non-developers when you design themes.

Design Elements to Keep in Mind (For Client’s Project)

When you are designing for clients, your have to create everything according to their requirements. You have to build a layout that would frame and present your clients’ content in the best possible manner.  You would also have to ideate the way the information will flow through the website and then implement the navigation of the theme. However, you can experiment with something like the typography. For example, try services such as TypeKit for ideas. This is a liberty you do not have when designing for public use.

Design Elements to Keep in Mind (For Your Own Project)

This is naturally a more liberal process. You do not have to show the design to anyone for review. There’s no contract involved. However, users’ feedback is important. Keep your design simple and pay attention to the design approaches that get the most downloads and sales. Also, try to make provision for different types of content, so that various content including images and videos  can fit into the theme. In addition, make some design features optional so that users enable/disable them according to their requirements.

Lastly, before putting them up for download or sell, do not forget to check your themes thoroughly so that there are no bugs in it.

Have you ever developed a WordPress theme? Tell us how it went.

To design a mobile website is difficult and to design a mobile ecommerce website is like trying to domesticate a wild animal. Today, even with the popularity of smartphones and tablets, there is a minimal chance of getting traffic from mobile internet users and an even lesser chance of making sales to such users. However, success can be calculated and assessed beforehand with the right mobile ecommerce web design.

Here’s a quick look at what constitutes as effective mobile ecommerce solutions

• Introduce a home-page that’s portal-type.

• Create the website in a grid-style. That would make browsing easy.

• Integrate text with icons. This would make it easy to ‘click’ on the desired buttons.

• Keep the buttons well-organized.

• With the intention of preserving space, do not make your mobile ecommerce site’s buttons too small or the users will not be able to figure out which button to press. Let them scroll down and find the buttons. Think about it, if they can’t figure out what is written next to which button, how would they notice your call-to-action?

• The buttons should be easy to tap.

• The layout of your mobile ecommerce website should be simple and neat so that they can provide information clearly.

• If yours is a large store with lots of products, have drop down menus. That would help you showcase all your products within limited space and also let the visitors choose the products they like.

• This should be the ideal format of your mobile ecommerce website – logo sitting at the top, a search box under that, a graphic that would showcase a particular product or offer and then, the category list of your products.

• Avoid long-breadcrumbs in your ecommerce website design for mobile devices.

• Pay attention to the photography. Images should be crystal clear and relevant.

• Make the check-out button easy to find.

• Pay attention to the quantity option. Your customers should be able to specify how many of the same products they are buying.

• In the home page, you can highlight a particular product that’s on offer.

• Provide full information about each and every product.

• Introduce some special offers and/or deals for mobile users exclusively .

Creating mobile ecommerce sites is definitely challenging and so are helping your customers find the products they are looking for and making them buy. Hope this guide will be helpful.

Feel free to share your comments!

Some people believe that over the years, the web programming industry has changed a lot. Others, however, believe that it has changed apparently. According to them, the industry repeats the same issues after every few years. Obviously, this cannot be termed as progress. They argue that the industry moves two steps forward, only to slip back to the earlier position.

In this post, we will highlight both aspects of the debate. Furthermore, we will discuss few examples that will help you to acquire better understanding of the issues.

Is Web Technology Equipped to Handle Complicated Issues?

Customized Sites or Uniform Ones?

One of the major problems that web developers faced earlier was that various browsers highlighted the same website in different ways. Now, this problem confused developers. They were wondering whether they should develop a uniform website or create different sites for different browsers.

Verdict was ruled in favor of creating custom web programming, with IE earning credit for this. The reason is that IE introduced the concept of launching new versions of browsers with additional features.

Problem with Responsive Web Design

The popular trend of using mobile phones for exploring the Internet forced developers to shift attention to other issues. Initially, they attempted to create various versions of a website, depending on specifications of various phones.

Unfortunately, with the launch of iPhones and SmartPhones, this trick lost popularity. It was impossible to design various versions of a single site for all mobile devices available in the market. This problem forced developers to come up with the concept of responsive web design.

Responsive web design refers to design that modifies itself on its own, according to device specifications of the user. Now, many people argue that responsive web design works best for simple sites and not for the complicated ones.

According to our opinion, this is true to some extent. Web developers are yet to find a solution that can create mobile version of complicated websites as well.

Problem with Introducing New CSS3 Features

Many developers love experimenting with new CSS3 features. They plan to incorporate cool code in stylesheets. Unfortunately, they later realize that the browsers are not upgraded enough for accommodating the changes. As a result, they need to modify their stylesheet strategy and opt for conventional ones.

So, What’s Positive about this Industry?

The above discussion might have confused you about the positive aspects of the web development industry. After all, this industry highly depends on technology. If it fails to accommodate new technologies, how can it grow?

However, we chose to evaluate the situation from a positive point of view. It is true that the web development industry highlights similar issues in different ways.

However, as compared to people associated with other industries, web developers are tech-savvy and possess in-depth knowledge about technological issues. We may not always adopt new technologies immediately. However, even when we are standing still, we are evaluating our weaknesses and working on our thinking power. That is definitely a good thing!

Most business owners will agree with the fact that retaining good clients is critical for the growth of a business. This means that if you manage to find a client who loves your work, you need to invest extra effort to make him happy. Here are few ideas that will allow you to build a long-term relationship with your clients.

Stay in Touch with Them

Every one loves being remembered. The same rule applies for clients as well. Staying in touch with clients is the easiest way to make them feel special. Consider the fact that by staying in touch, we did not mean that you have to contact them during the customized web development projects. It is obvious that if you are working on a project, you would stay in touch with the client.

We mean that you should stay in touch with the client, even after the project is over. Holidays offer the perfect opportunity to convey your good wishes to the client. Send them a mail, inquire about their current projects or whether they require any help.

You can also send them your latest creations and offer suggestions, regarding the website or newsletter of the client.

Getting in touch with clients occasionally will remind them that you are active and convince them that you loved working for them.

Understand their Needs

In the web development industry, predicting customer requirements is an acclaimed skill that can enhance your reputation. Of course, one may argue that predicting customer requirements is not essential, because clients are already aware of their requirements.

However, we believe that to attract good clients, you need to suggest ideas that the client would not think on their own. For example, if you are creating Joomla website design for a client, ask whether they require newsletter design. If they are unaware of the benefits of newsletter, educating them can be a great idea.

Avoid Making Clients Wait

To maintain a good relationship with clients, reply to their mails or messages as soon as possible. Sometimes, we tend to become little lazy in staying in touch with clients, once the project is over. However, to maintain a professional attitude, getting in touch with clients is critical.

Offer them Special Benefits

Rewarding clients who respect your talent can be a great idea. You can reward long-term clients in various ways-by offering them discounts, free services or domain name renewal at no extra costs. Remember that appreciating gestures of good clients will further strengthen your bond with them.

Consider these strategies to enjoy a long-term relationship with your important clients.

Most e-commerce sites register the highest sales during the holiday season. If you own an online shopping store, holiday season can be the perfect time for taking advantages of the increasing traffic. Here are few strategies you can consider for enhancing conversation rate of your e-commerce solutions.

Simplify your Navigation System

Holiday season brings in loads of stress for people. They feel pressurized to buy interesting gifts for their loved ones within a short time. Now, if they visit your site and find it confusing, they will leave it immediately.

The best way to retain interest of buyers is by simplifying navigation system of your e-commerce web design. For improving your website navigation, consider this general rule-no page of your site should require more than 2 clicks. To further enhance appeal of your site, incorporate a site map. This will allow people to understand structure of your e-commerce website design quickly.

For best results, place the holiday offers in the upper section of the site. You can even incorporate a holiday shopping tab in your site. This will allow users to purchase their preferred products in a hassle-free manner.

Updating Site Map is Critical

Possessing a site map is not enough. You need to update it during the holiday season. This will ensure that the holiday deals are also included in the list.

Market the Products as the Perfect Holiday Gift

To enhance conversation rate of your site, promote your products as the perfect holiday gift. Write description of the products in details, so that buyers do not require to search for additional information. Simplify the process of decision making by describing the products as ‘perfect gift for your mom’ or ‘the ideal gift for your guy’.

Modify the Keywords

While searching for an item, holiday shoppers commonly use words, such as presents and gifts. If your keywords do not include such terms, try to incorporate them. This will enhance SEO rankings of your site, thus allowing people to come across your site quickly.

Pay Attention to SEO

In the quest of modifying your site, do not forget to pay attention to the basics- i.e. SEO. Check whether the links are working. Do title tags of your website pages possess the ideal length (70 characters maximum) ?

Consider the fact that ignoring SEO of your site can lower its rankings. This in turn, affects its visibility  and relevant traffic.

Update your SSL Certificate

Online shoppers usually do not buy from a site that does not offer secured transactions. In case you need to update your SSL certificate, update it now. This will encourage people to buy products from your site.

If you want to increase conversation rate of your e-commerce solutions, considering these strategies is essential. This will allow you to take advantage of the holiday season rush.

The dictionary meaning of “agile” is “mentally quick”. When it comes to being agile in web development, it does not mean you have to embrace new techniques or tips and tricks related to web programming. It means you have to embrace a particular approach.

You have to start with streamlining. Streamline the entire project, eliminate whatever that consumes time and ‘sanity check’ your project very frequently. Being an agile web developer is all about investing your time to those things that will add to your project’s overall success. You and your team will be able to achieve the same desired results in a short span of time, much shorter than a standard completion of a project.

Let’s find out how you can be agile in your web development project:

During the last 5 years, the website design and development industries have been through 3 massive changes:

• First of all, everyone uses and has access to the net. 10 years earlier, this was not the case.

• Second, both a website user and owner understand what should be where. Even 5 years ago, a website designer had to guess how a user will use a site and then work accordingly. But today, both parties know what to do.

• Change number 3 is probably THE most important change. CMS or content management systems have made things a lot easier for a web designer, as well as a website user. Customized web development has become not only possible, but a breeze for anyone. There are plenty of open-source CMS platforms on the web and a developer and a usability consultant can customize them to create ‘n’ number of websites.

All these have eliminated 80% of the time that would have been otherwise spent unnecessarily.

Now, let’s give you an idea of how you can create some flexible processes to boost productivity of your team members.

• Put a restriction on emailing and phone.

• Stop having frequent team meetings.

• Stop talking about the same issues.

• Make sure all your team members are at their workstations when needed.

• Bring some new people around, such as the content specialists, the IT experts and those who are in charge of making decisions.

• Reduce the time spent on things like feedback seeking, scheduling, recapping, training, team reorganization and so on.

Encourage your team members to ponder over a few questions in every step of the web development process like -

• Does this change contribute to successfully achieving the goal?

• What would have been the worst effect if a certain change took place for a week?

• Are these graphics and content related to the brand? Do they promote the brand?

Remember, when you are agile, the time taken in your web development will be a lot less than usual. Reduce the building process to the essentials and your project will be quickly completed and a successful too!

Do not forget to share your opinions!

Most bloggers will agree with the fact that after some time, publishing fresh posts everyday becomes a difficult task. You look around everywhere for inspiration, hear conversations of other people, and try hard to come up with a topic. If you fail, you feel frustrated.

Today, we will provide you with some ideas that will allow you to discover blog post topics with minimal efforts. This will also help you in your blog customization effort, and generally, in customized web development.

News Posts

Publishing news posts in blogs can be a good idea. News posts are usually short and informative. Bloggers love reading news posts because they are interesting and allow them to stay in touch with current trends. For example, if you are associated with the web development industry, you can publish news about it.

However, the problem with this type of post is that you need to publish it quick. Publishing yesterday’s news is a bad idea. Furthermore, these posts expire quickly, with people losing interest after few days.

Also, if you publish news posts regularly, continuing it regularly is essential. This is because your readers will expect you to publish such posts regularly. Disappointing them can result in loss of trust.

Profile Posts

These posts highlight biographical information about a famous person. They usually include issues such as their background, accomplishments, and contributions.

To develop a popular profile post, you do not have to follow any rules. However, you need to select the target carefully. Additionally, you have to find intriguing information about the person, so that the post retains interest of users.

Controversial Posts

Most users love reading controversial posts. These posts provoke people, forcing them to share their opinions. Of course, some bloggers may not like the idea of writing controversial posts. However, the truth is that controversial posts attract attention and comments.

Inspiring Blogs

Inspiring blogs possess a feel-good factor that many people find heartwarming. To create maximum impact, select a person who fought against various odds to achieve something.

The main problem of inspiring blogs is that you have to research well to find an inspiring story.

Stories

Everyone loves reading a good story. If you can publish an interesting story in your blog, chances are high that readers will leave positive comments about it. You can also convey an interesting message via these stories.

Case Studies

Case studies highlight real-life problems and offer practical solutions. For best results, explain the problem and logic behind the solution you offer, clearly.

List Posts

In link posts, blog owners offer various solutions for a particular topic. The unique fact about list posts is that the solutions are unrelated to each other (though they are related to the primary topic). This means that even a distracted person would be able to understand link posts.

Definition Posts

Definition posts are similar to Wikipedia articles. Here, you select a specific topic and define it. Also, you need to use a simple language, while writing these posts. It will allow even a non-technical person to understand them.

Apart from these conventional blog posts, you can also opt for uncommon strategies. For example, you can publish interviews of famous personalities in your blogs. Alternatively, you can start a debate or ask readers their opinions about a specific issue.

Today, the most convenient, popular and effective way of shopping is from an online store or in other words, an ecommerce website. The key to earning success online in the retail industry is to have an ecommerce website. With ecommerce web design, a retail business owner can have a prominent web presence and offer a highly secure, simple and pleasant shopping experience to his customers – both potential as well as existing.

Ecommerce website design, if done in an SEO-friendly way, can bring huge success to an online retailer. The change in the way people shop has been noticed by everyone. If you are a retailer, now is the time to maximize your profits by going online and opting for comprehensive e-commerce solutions.

Here are the strategies you need to employ in order to achieve your desired success on the net:

• Research as much as possible. Find out as much as you can about some reputable companies that offer ecommerce web design services in a search engine optimization-friendly manner. Do background check and contact their previous clients. Compare their rates with other companies who provide the same service.
• Find out about customized services. Every retail business has different needs and therefore other business owners’ experiences with customized services may not match yours.
• Effective ecommerce website design requires a huge amount of programming and money. It’s true that as a business owner, you can’t get into the technical details of programming but you can acquire a basic idea of it. Trust me, that will also help.
• Whichever e-commerce solutions provider you choose, make sure their service includes the following:

1. Website design
2. Logo design
3. Identity design
4. Photoshop
5. Drupal
6. XHTML
7. Illustrator
8. Joomla
9. Banner Design
10. HTML
11. WordPress
12. Social Bookmarking
13. CSS Web Design Packages
14. Header Design

15. Blog Creation and Maintenance
16. Static websites

• Your chosen ecommerce web design company should be open to suggestions. They should listen to your design ideas and understand them. They should give you advice on what would be better in terms of design and effectiveness of your site.
• Most companies that offer cheap services turn out to be fraudulent. A good company will provide you e-commerce solutions according to your business needs. They will not stress on ‘cheap’ rates but on the quality of service.

Bear in mind that the regular shopper has not changed. They will go to whoever provides a better shopping experience. So, your e-commerce solutions should be aimed at delivering your customer an overall good and convenient shopping experience. Update your customers about your latest products/services. That does not mean you will not clarify your financial terms and conditions to them. You will, but you will also tell your customers what’s new in your store and how it can benefit them.

Lastly, try to add something to your service, something new and efficient in offering a better shopping experience.

The number of mobile internet users is growing in leaps and bounds. These users have the necessary knowledge and skill regarding computers and the web. They do not think twice before making a purchase on the internet using their cell phones. Hence, Joomla website design, if done cleverly, can cater to mobile internet users quite efficiently.

Though all mobile devices come with certain challenges regarding the bandwidth, the browser size, etc., a good idea is to create a mobile version of your website. That way, you could be assured of what you offer to your customers. But unfortunately, this idea presents some other problems regarding customized web development -

• Having to maintain 2 different versions of the same website.
• Having to update the same content twice – once on the website for computers and once on the website’s mobile version.
• Having to keep a record of what is being updated, where.
• Having to ensure that the change that takes place in the PC/laptop version, also takes place in the mobile version.

There are 2 ways you can create Joomla websites for mobiles.

Use mobile-friendly templates of Joomla

You can get your hands on several Joomla templates such as CloudBase. These templates are designed to run on PC/laptop, as well as smartphones, tablets and netbooks. CloudBase is a flexible template that comes with many module positions. Whenever a user browses a website using his smartphone or tablet computer, he will see the mobile template of the site and if he prefers the regular layout of the site, he can switch to that as well.

Use Joomla CMS Mobile Extensions

You can find some extensions with which you can create mobile-friendly versions of a website that’s based on Joomla CMS.

• Mobilebot 1.0 – This extension can change a Joomla  website  template whenever a user visits a website through mobile devices, including iPhone or Blackberry. It can also identify Opera Mini browser and Android OS and create a suitable template for them. It gives you the liberty to add the mobile devices of your choice and fine-tune the final HTML of your site and that too separately for different mobile devices.

If there are no variations in your mobile website template, or if no particular device is detected by Mobilebot, you can still detect a mobile device with the plug-in and create a general template for all those devices.

•Mobile Joomla! – This extension makes Joomla website design for mobiles a lot easier. You can actually make your website a mobile-friendly one for Blackberry, iPhone, WAP, Android, Nokia and last but not the least,  iMode.

If you want to include all modules of the web page, you will need to put a little more effort. Don’t worry, you can get help from the extension documentation.