Every now and again you work on something that you feel truly proud of, that you feel showcases the best of your abilities. The new David Naylor website is one of those moments for me.

Back in December I took the decision to finally look into redesigning davidnaylor.co.uk. The previous design which I did only back in March 2008 appeared dated and when initially building the website certain decisions were taken that later created problems resulting in what felt like an incomplete, rushed and under developed website.

As most designers should attest to a client that knows too much about the web can be as difficult to design for as one who knows nothing, if not more difficult. When that client is your boss the process becomes even more complex. To remove the potential for issues I designed the new website at home. This allowed me to take my time with the design and concentrate on my own ideas, without outside interference. I prefer to work this way if possible and then amend or change a design upon gathering people’s opinions. Of course I would never recommend for a developer to work for free in their personal time, however in this case it was an enjoyable project and one I knew would benefit from being undertaken in my free time. Continue reading “Portfolio Website: David Naylor” »

Last year I found that migrating a WordPress blog is a difficult task. In March I redesigned and rebuilt davidnaylor.co.uk with the intention to create a more business orientated website. The site was to become a fully functioning website with a blog attached rather than running everything through WordPress. Because of this the site was built from new on a development area, this was fine until it came time to move the WordPress database.

As the new site was more than just a WordPress theme the new site could not be simply integrated into the old website, the WordPress database would need to be moved. Simply importing the exported XML file from the old website was not possible due to the size of the file. The site had amassed 8MB of data while WordPress stated an upload limit of 2MB.

After failing in my attempt to do the same with the SQL export file, I was left with splitting the XML file into 2MB chunks. This is a long and boring process.
Now the problem has cropped up again, with an even larger XML file and I have tried once again to find a solution. Continue reading “Importing Large Wordpress Databases” »

The customer is always right, and when they’re paying for a service it’s their decision that is final. But at times a client can bypass all experienced views and proven testing to impart their own personal tastes on a project. This may be suitable for a personal website but not for a business site.

In most cases a clients modifications can be worked with to ensure the final website is still an example of good design. However there are cases when a clients wishes result in a website more at home in the 20th rather than 21st century. Luckily at this stage of development you can disassociate yourself from the project if you wish. Continue reading “Help! A client ruined my work” »

After writing about my highlights of 2008 it seemed appropriate to now look forward to 2009 and write about what I will be doing this year and what I hope will happen, my New Year’s Resolutions I suppose.

The Killers

Obviously not web related but after a few years of trying I finally got tickets to see The Killers at the O2 in February. Although I’m still warming to the new Killers album I’m really looking forward to seeing them live as Hot Fuss is one of my favourite albums of all time and really want to see my favourite track ‘Jenny’ performed live. Continue reading “Welcome 2009″ »

Let’s get this straight before I start, I’m not an Apple fanboy, I don’t see the point in spending over the odds for a laptop or PC equivalent just because it gets less viruses and it’s pretty. That being said I do own an iPhone, still a bit over priced but I feel it’s a product without equal. As I own my little piece of Apple technology I do keep up with the new developments to see if there’s anything new on the horizon to supplement or enhance my iPhone. Continue reading “Macworld 2009″ »

As we move into 2009 I thought I’d post about some of my highlights from the past year:

My Weblog

On March 21st I launched a new but incomplete website and blog. Although blogging is something that has possibly already reached its height of popularity it still seemed like a good way to expand upon and complement my portfolio. The version of the design that launched in March did not last too long however as this version of the site was rushed and a successor was quickly put into development. Continue reading “Farewell 2008″ »

As I’ve now officially finished work for the year and tomorrow will travelling across country to Cheshire I thought it best to add one last post before the inevitable blackout that is Christmas.

I’m hoping over Christmas I might write some posts ready for next year, hopefully these will include a review of my 2008, a quick mention about attending FOWD London again, most certainly some rants about clients and hopefully something of benefit to those people reading.

In the mean time however have a good Christmas and drunken New Year.

You’re shopping online and have chosen the product you want, continue to the checkout and the form requests your house number and postcode, but does not return your address. Then what?

I’ve come across this issue numerous times, over different addresses. In most cases I’ve been able to provide a similar address, accepted by the system and have the products arrive correctly. The issue arises because of poor usability from the inconsiderate implementation of advanced functionality. Continue reading “Usability Tip: Postal Address Forms” »

A client will always be looking to get the most for their money. One way they do this is by Web Designers presenting multiple design concepts, only for the majority of this work to become worthless when a single design is selected.

So why create multiple designs when there are so many benefits in creating just one:

1. Waste

Imagine that for each client you create three designs working a full day on each. When you go to the client to present the design they chose their favourite and the other two are binned leaving you with 2 days of work lost that could have been spent on other projects. Continue reading “Presenting a single design” »

When developing a website I have always worked on a live development server. This allows me to build the site on the exact server setup to that the live site will run. When developing this of course can be a slow process due to the constant uploading of changes to view their impact on the website.
I’ve always viewed installing a local server such as Apache to be a complicated and messy affair. However after reading the Installing WordPress Locally post by the WebDesignerWall the process did not seem as complicated as I once imagined. Continue reading “Premium WordPress Theme: Installing XAMPP” »