I design and maintain web sites for a living, and the one thing that I see most often is too much of a focus on the graphic design of a site, or the “look and feel” and not enough on the idea of interaction with the site.

Design on the web is a very different beast from designing a print brochure, or a newsletter, or a trade show booth. I’ve spent my career doing all of these, and would like to share a bit of my insight into an effective approach to successful website planning and implementation.

Above all, you have to realize that websites are resources to be used. Unlike a magazine or a brochure, they have a bit more of a complex role when it comes to interacting with their audience – and more appropriately, vice versa. This doesn’t make them any easier or harder to implement, but web interface and interaction does bring a unique set of challenges and considerations to the table.

Anybody who thinks they can separate design from structure from content, has not spent enough time working with good teams to develop an appreciation of the importance of all three.

Structure is King

Yes, yes, I know that’s not how it goes. Everybody keeps saying that content is king, and I’ll agree with you in the next section, but for now, just bear with me. Structure determines how the entire site will work. Think of wanting to build your office. Yes, you have to know who’s working there, but much of your planning involves figuring out the space you need, and getting the doors right, and hiring the right architects and structural engineers before going to Ikea to buy all of your furniture. Yes, you need to know the basics of your intended content, but at this point, it’s at a very high level. Don’t get carried away with too much content development without determining a strategy to deliver and navigate it.

When it comes to websites, structure is something that every designer needs to think about before choosing a typeface or a colour scheme. The planning in these stages shapes how your content is presented and accessed, but in some cases, may actually influence appropriate content choices. Decisions about navigation shouldn’t be left to the end of the planning process, for your designer to deal with as an afterthought. Content is what you want on your site, but it’s extremely important that you make a commitment to a method of organizing it.

Use your target audience to guide you. No marketing decisions should be made without appropriate research, so make sure you’ve got as much information as you can before you start deciding on technologies and colours and neat Flash splash pages. Let that research take you to competitors, and put yourself in the shoes of a customer. What makes things easy for you? What frustrates you? What are you doing just before deciding to buy, or deciding to leave?

Content is King

Okay, that’s more like it, you say. The medium is the message? Not if you want that Google PageRank (sorry, Mr. McLuhan, I’ll make it up to you in another article). The medium only gets you so far, but the swing for the internet is back to purity of content. People are becoming a lot more flexible in the way that they access content, and to some extent, it’s created a platform war — from huge desktop screens to tiny Blackberries, iPhones, and UMPCs. Fortunately, we’ve got the standards and tools that are up to the challenge. A good separation of content and presentation is all that’s needed. Make sure your users can change the medium, and still keep the message intact.

Search engines play the part of a user as well. Make sure they have information to digest. Google in particular is almost entirely geared towards finding and ranking relevance of information. Their entire credibility relies on making sure they have information on sites that let them return pertinent search results. Their ad systems also work this way. All other successful search engines follow a similar path. If they don’t know what your site is about, they can’t send interested people there. Content should be written in such a way as to not only inform a human reader, but to make sense to a artificial intelligence, as well.

Design is King

Oh, come on. We all know that form follows function. A good and successful design needs to be more than just pretty, however. This is where your users get the opportunity to interact with that properly organized content. The site should be clear to them, and often what looks good is not necessarily what makes for good design on the internet. Make no mistake, the demographic is very different from a magazine or newspaper reader. The time to grab someone’s attention is very short and there are always millions of competing sites at their fingertips, seconds away.

Some things in design don’t change, however. The basic principal of design is that you’re communicating effectively. That’s your job. You can be more successful if you’re creative, but don’t let the quest for aesthetic appeal overshadow the job that a designer has to keep in the fore — effective communication of ideas and content. To that end, use good design principles when thinking of your typography, page flow, and whitespace. Add to that a clear and consistent method for navigating from area to area without surprising, confusing, or insulting the user, and you’ve got the makings of a good website.

User experience is King

A site needs to look well-organized, not too boring, but not too confusing. The design is there to help guide the user, and to help them find what they want. You can’t force a path on them, unless they cooperate. Remember, just because there’s only one path to follow on your site doesn’t mean they won’t just go away to a site with more choice.

Don’t ever think of your website as finished. You have to set objectives — milestones, as it were, but don’t ever think of a site as, “in the can,” throw-it-on-the-shelf-and-let-the-hits-come finished. This is where real website development sometimes starts. Sometimes it’s a bit painful to take a look at all your hard work and decide that you’ve made some mistakes – but it’s harder still to leave things to atrophy. Business models and advertising strategies change with their respective trends, and so should websites. Listen to your visitors. Find out why visitors are coming, and why they are coming back. Use the information to constantly tweak (not redesign!) the experience for the better. Don’t fall into the trap of changing things just for the sake of change, however. Inconsistencies in usability and design risk alienation, if there’s not a good reason for them.

Users are getting more savvy and have their own ways of doing things — make it easy for them to still access your content, without forcing them away from their preferred access method. Don’t re-invent the wheel, or solve problems that don’t exist.

At the end of the day, you’ll learn best from the people on the other side of the screen. Those people are your readers and customers, and they’ll be your best resource, through emails, forums, letters, purchases, visits, and comments. At the end of the day, treat your users like royalty.

Well, if you’re a geek, or a geek in training, you’ll appreciate almost every one of this man’s lyrics. I like to think of it as witty music for adults (or those that are in an adult frame of mind). Almost three years ago, he quit his job as a computer programmer to pursue music full-time. He started a project called “Thing-a-Week,” a regimented approach to his creative side, and one that would cement a great connection to his fans. The concept was simple, but required dedication to pull off. Every week, he would release something. Anything. Most of it was cool stuff. Some of it was übercool. Much of it was about monkeys, and other everyday topics. He’s also the man behind the song at the end of the Valve game, Portal, but you have to play it through to fully appreciate the lyrics in that one.

His recordings, while good, don’t come close to the experience at a live show. I had the privilege of attending (and helping out a bit) at his first show in Canada, and it was a truly fun and amazing experience.

The venue was West of the Toronto downtown core at the Lula Lounge, a great little place that was a first for me. (I plan on coming back on a Friday or Saturday, they apparently have dinner shows, salsa lessons, and dancing). I’ve been planning on trying that for a while. The middle of the room is a big open floor, with rows of loose chairs set up, with an aisle down the middle. It’s a testament to the audience that this structure pretty much stayed intact until the end of the show.

I owe my first awareness to a friend of mine that was in town that day, so he got to see one of his idols in person, and we helped out and manned the merchandise table for him and Paul and Storm, along with my lovely girlfriend Jennifer. The fans were great, polite and genuine, and there was a good, open source feel to the entire night.

That self-selected community is what is so nice about people that promote open exchange of ideas in their daily lives and work. Jonathan Coulton makes a point of releasing his songs to his public under the Creative Commons license, and encouraging them to riff and play with as they please.

The crowd was nicely warmed up by a wonderful, vibrant performance by Paul and Storm, with the duo making a big impression on me with their live show. They enjoyed themselves on stage, and it showed. They enjoyed the audience being there, and it showed. The audience fed into this, and so that dialogue that’s so important between performer and crowd got well-established.

By the time Coulton came on, the crowd was beyond warmed up. Paul and Storm actually stayed up on stage longer than they intended, but nobody noticed, since they were all having a blast.

Coulton started the show with favorites, just him and a guitar for the most part, but there were a few highlights, with a drum/sample contraption for his performance of Mr. Fancy Pants (I had hoped for a Bruce Campbell reference) that couldn’t have been more appropriate.

The single guitar made Coulton’s soulful styles come out, but it’s his lyrics that really capture the hearts of geeks, and he definitely delivered, clear and crisp, verse and chorus went out to the crowd. The sound man knew what he was doing, from where I was listening. Paul and Storm got up for quite a few numbers, and there was much friendly banter.

I was a fan before, but the live show made me an advocate and an enthusiast – I’m going to make sure that people know about the three great performers I saw on stage last night.

Links

• Yes, he’s got a wiki of his own
• and a blog
• the author’s favorite songs include Code Monkey, Still Alive, Re: your brains, Ikea, Skullcrusher Mountain.
• Paul and Storm
• The Lula Lounge
• Hopefully, Dale May will forgive me for taking advantage of his cool photography skills.

There are a few defining characteristics for geeks, many of which can be hotly debated. Using a custom version of Linux as your day-to-day operating system, knowing how to code in the assembly language of an obscure piece of hardware that doesn’t even get used anymore, scolding your friends for not having strict doctypes on their webpages about cats they own.

There’s another sort of geek, and that’s the one that gets chills when he or she sees an opening cinematic crafted by the team at Blizzard.

Blizzard’s official site has cinematics and screenshots, as well as some FAQs and their usual frustrating lack of a release date.

Diablo III has been announced.

Which has me in a mind to wax nostalgic about Diablo II. If you’re a new geek, or one in training, you may not have gotten bitten in the past with this addictive franchise, created by Blizzard Entertainment (Heard of World of Warcraft? Same guys).

Some of us were caught up in the Diablo II and Starcraft days – this author remembers the earlier days of the original Warcraft and Diablo, released in the late 1990s when Blizzard was making itself known as a serious contender in the game industry. Warcraft II cemented that place, and when Diablo II came out with shine and polish on an already great game, it seemed like they’d have fans for life.

They do. Ask over five million Koreans, still playing a game that’s over a decade old. The Diablo franchise is even older, and has a fanbase that ranges far beyond the übergeek. It is one of the top selling titles of all time.

The gameplay is straightforward — you have a character which you view from above, whom you direct by clicking your mouse. Right-click, and he or she attacks or casts a spell. Simple, no?

Your character walks around the world, with settings ranging from desert to lush jungles, and you fight your way through quest after quest. Defeated enemies drop items and gold, which you can pick up to sell, equip, or use to purchase other items. Of course, there’s something about an eternal struggle between good and evil, and your place in the middle, I think.

The real fun, however, is in how your character progresses. Although your character gets further along in the game to advance the story, the real appeal is in the changes you can make to your character.

You decide what happens in terms of adding skills, weapons, armour, magic, etc. And before you run away with memories of people dressed up in funny cloaks and rolling 20-sided dice, understand that all this happens in a deliciously simple way. Diablo is often frowned upon by those into ‘true’ Role-Playing Games, because it takes a quick arcade approach. A friend of mine once summed up the core of her addiction with the statement, “It’s a shopping game.”

Add amazing voice acting and stunning cinematics to advance a great story, and you’ve got a winner.

News on the Diablo III is sketchy as it’s just been announced, but if you haven’t tried its classic of a predecessor, I’d suggest picking up Diablo II. A surprising amount of retailers still carry the Battle Chest edition, which bundles the sequels and expansion sets. Even the most pokey computer you’re likely to surf with should be able to run its 7-year old graphics with ease – and the game looks surprisingly good, given its age.

I for one look forward to a good old (new) hack and slash – a worthy successor to the ones I’ve spent hours playing with my friends and girlfriend.

And, of course, when you’re done that, keep a keen eye on Blizzard’s official site for all the news about Diablo III.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS allows you to grab up-to-date data feeds in your favourite reader/aggregator, or even display the feeds on another website.

Both Geeks in Training and my blog have all posts and users’ comments available in Wordpress feeds. For example, if you found a post on here that really interested you and it was very active, you could subscribe to the comment feed and all of the data would be delivered to your reader.

There are stand-alone readers, web-based readers, and most browsers have built in readers too. If you are interested in getting started but don’t know where to begin, I would recommend trying out Google’s reader. This is a web-based reader that you can access from anywhere. Some people also download feeds to their Blackberry or smart phone so they can read them on the way to work.

Find out more about RSS on Wikipedia.

Click the subscribe link on any page in this site to subscribe to Geeks in Training, or subscribe to the comment feed at the bottom of any individual article.

Thanks to FastIcon, for the icon.

If you haven’t already, you should download Firefox 3. It’s a great browser, and Firefox has long been the darling of the Open Source community. I’ll have an article detailing exactly why, but this is just a quick report on the great evening I had.

I was at the launch of Firefox 3 last night, and was pleasantly surprised at the number of people there at 6pm. A couple of hours later, with the beer and cheer freely flowing, the numbers of partiers was over a hundred, and the downloads were in the millions.

I had no idea that Mozilla (the team behind Firefox) had offices here, nice open-concept ones at that. There was beer and food and screens showing the thousands of downloads they were getting every minute – it was really a good time. A few people have asked me, “Why all the excitement for a browser” and my answer has nothing to do with the browser — it’s all about the people involved. People that make free software (that’s free as in speech, not beer) are committed on a level that makes them interesting and generous and passionate. That sort of dedication is infectious, and makes for a good community.

Just like any other launch party, there was lots of swag to be had, people were milling about and talking about almost everything under the sun. There may have been a few more topics that leaned towards the geeky – but I’m sure you can go somewhere else if you want to talk about Paris Hilton.

MGImedia was there with the cameras, it seems, and although I didn’t see them, Space network was supposed to be there later in the evening. All in all, the launch kicked off with a good bit of coverage, and my good friend Ian also has a bit to say about the party.

I ended up leaving with their washroom key, and for that, I’m very sorry. I did lock myself into the lobby for a bit, and ran into some other people that were also locked out… with the only other key. Eventually, we managed to get the key back to the waiting, eager group.

Good work, guys, it was a great time! Check out some extra pics that didn’t make it here.

Let that one slosh around for a bit. It’s a good thing.

Little Johnny down the road might not know more, but taken as a whole, the entire posting population of the internet collectively has something new for you to learn.

The trick is to find the bits that you need, amidst all the noise.

Make Google your friend

Right now. If you ever plan on learning anything, you’ll of course have to find it. Even if you know what you’re looking for, you can greatly increase your chances by using Google (or any other search engine) effectively. It takes practice and a bit of trial and error to get the right tack when talking to your search engine.

Most search engines provide a way of refining your search. For example, take a look at Google’s front page, and you’ll see an “Advanced Search” link. Follow it, and you find all sorts of useful ways to narrow down a search that may be too broad to find anything. Many of the boxes have a quick tip to let you use these options in the main search box. For example, you could be searching for things related to a red bull, but not want to have all of the energy drink links dominate your results, so you would exclude the word “drink” from your search.

Google has a great Advanced Search Tips page that covers many examples and options.

They also have a more complete list of search features to help you find anything from specific files to weather forecasts to currency and unit conversions.

Wikipedia

Let’s face it, you’ll end up there anyway. Wikipedia is, by their own description, “The biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet.”

The great thing about Wiki is that its content is collaborative. For the most part, anybody can edit and contribute to the definitions on the site, and that makes it extremely well-rounded and powerful. Many people worry about the potential for corrupt entries, and they do happen on occasion, but not as often as one would think, and with far less permanence than a misprint in a printed reference.

Wiki entries always have so many eyes on them that errors get sorted out in a very timely fashion, and many entries on controversial topics tend to police themselves, sporting disclaimers or caveats if they are needed.

Chances are, Wikipedia will be fairly high up on the list of search results for most topics. It’s a rare topic that doesn’t have a wiki article. You might not find a specific answer to your question, but you almost always have a good high-level overview.

Community

A good search and a browse of wiki pages will help with many problems and questions, but if you need more specific advice, find somebody (or a group of somebodies) who has gone through it all before you. As we said in the beginning, there’s bound to be somebody out there with more experience than you.

Forums, blogs, and news sites with attached forums are yet another way to track down answers to your topics. Find somebody passionate about a subject, and you’ll find they are passionate about sharing their knowledge.

Make sure you perform your due diligence, however — don’t make the mistake of treating your fellow web-dweller as a substitute for work or research you could do yourself. They will help and respect you as long as you are willing to put in the needed effort, and have shown that you’re willing to treat them with the same respect.

That means making sure you’ve searched the FAQ, forums, and archives before asking your questions. Many times, you’re not the first person to need an answer to a particular question, and there may be a section devoted to your specific concern.

If you’ve reached the point where you need to ask, make sure you do so appropriately. Read enough questions to find out what information is usually included by others, and make sure you follow the rules of the forum. Make your subject line informative, and avoid ‘me too’ comments.

Never post with a subject like, “Need help, pleeeeze” – be concise and descriptive.

Always remember to be polite, and follow up on the results, especially if the other members were able to help you with your questions. In that way, you’ll be helping others that follow.

Other than for bragging rights, is there any good reason to have your own domain? Can you set up the email and hosting stuff yourself? Are there low- or no-cost alternatives?

Yes, yes, and yes.

A few years ago, a few enterprising souls snapped up some cool-sounding domains, and started offering email addresses for rent. All well and good, but why bother these days, when for less than the cost of cup of coffee a day, you can have your own domain, to do with as you please.

Benefits to having your own domain

The main benefits to having your own domain are that it is personal and controllable.

Personal, because you don’t have to settle for “bob987067903@freewebmail.tv” as your organization’s email address. You may have your own website, but hosting it under “http://www.phonecablecompany.com/geocities-users/~bob987067903″ isn’t impressing any of your techy friends.

Controllable, in that if you get sick of your internet service provider (something that happens more and more with the unforgivable practices of the big providers), your email address doesn’t have to change. If you don’t like your host, you can switch it. You have your choice of what your email address can start with and the availability of domains is actually fairly broad, with a little bit of creative thinking and planning.

Decide on a domain

So, the first step is to think of a good domain name. It should be something that represents you or your organization well.

Availability is the tricky part, since at this point, you’re entering into the game fairly late. There are companies devoted to buying and selling domains with good marketing value — simple dictionary words are guaranteed to be unavailable, or at the very least, for sale to the highest bidder (We’ll have more about this in a followup article). String together a few words, however, and you can have a phrase that’s just as usable as any single word, if not more.

Remember that once a domain is chosen, the content or concept it represents determines a lot as well. You can make the mundane stand out if you excel. There are trends yet to be discovered. Think of how easy it was to tack an “e” or an “i” to the beginning of almost any word and have it sound high-tech and trendy.

Even non-sense words have gained a lot of power. Slashdot is a very popular site for nerds (I’ve also known the occasional geek to visit), yet the name is not terribly powerful to those that don’t know it. It has reached iconic stature in some circles, however, because of its reputation.

A further note, related to that last example: please consider how your domain communicates aurally, if that will be part of driving traffic or using it. For example, if you have a personal email of star@comdot.com, you may run into some confusion when leaving a voicemail with a prospective employer.

Find and buy your domain as soon as you can

A good way to check availability is to use an online resource such as domaintools.com. There are the common suffixes (also known as TLDs) that you are familiar with, such as .com, .org, and .net, and sets of country-specific TLDs. There are also specialty domains, such as .info, .biz, .edu, and these will have different sets of rules concerning price and availability.

Be prepared to buy your domain as soon as you find one that you like — you may find out that thinking it over for a week and coming back to register has taken the decision out of your hands completely.

Whether it is for business or fun, it’s disappointing to have your heart set on something and find that it’s not available. No matter how much you trust your fellow internet denizens, don’t post domains that you’re thinking about in a public forum. Think very hard about posting in a private forum as well. What may be a hobby to you is big business to some, and loyalties tend to get left by the wayside when there’s money to be made. Keep in mind that it takes seconds for a computer running a script to crawl across the text, and register the domain before you.

Stay tuned for Part 2, where we’ll talk about finding a reputable registrar, setting up your hosting, and reasons for buying an existing domain name.

references and useful links:

• http://www.domaintools.com/
• http://www.morningblog.com/

Let’s face it, we’re all geeks when it comes to something. Almost obsessive, willing to stay up late to figure out why something works (or doesn’t), we’re the ones who have a passion for something – anything. We’re the ones who ask questions, are eager and passionate to learn and broaden our horizons.

There are lots of beginner how-to sites out there on any number of subjects. But you can follow step-by-step instructions on your own.

So what is GeeksInTraining.com?

Beyond the basics we sometimes find ourselves mired in a bit of information overload. Answers to questions are often confusing without a frame of reference.

Geeks in Training will try to provide, above all else, context.

Context

Think about how important that is in our technical and technology-based society, but how rarely it’s stressed. Not only how you can do something, but why you should even consider doing it. Or when or where it’s feasible to do.

Beyond that, Geeks in Training will strive to give perspective. This is in part going to be offered by the articles you see here — a lot of them will be catalysts for further research and debate.

This is, of course, the other way of offering perspective — your own point of view, and those of your fellow readers. The contributions of the writers and readership is what will shape this site, and with your feedback and discussion, it can continually improve and grow.

About format and updates

I hope to find you coming back, as content will be updated on a regular basis. You can get updates by our lovely email newsletter, if you like. You’ll find the link to subscribe shortly — there’s still a lot to do.

Geeks in Training is not a blog, although it may look very much like it. Each of the articles on here will be thought out, researched, and edited — often with many editorial revisions. They may read as news, reviews, guides, or editorials, penned by a variety of authors. There are plenty of sites that cater to bleeding-edge tech news as it happens. This is not one of those sites.

Articles will come when they are ready, but at this time, we’ll be aiming to get about two per month. Keep in mind that all of the articles should be stepping stones for greater exploration and discussion.

We’ll be moderating where there’s need, but I’m hoping the discussions police themselves — in the future. Like most forums out there, keep things civil, help where you can, and we’ll all get out our inner geek.

Best regards,

Michael Zimmermann
(Geek in Training)