Creative Logic - Web Solutions

Ethics and Templates

Trevor — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:37:58 +0000

These days too many “designers” out there are taking templates, often free ones, ripping them off and charging you a lot of money for work they didn’t even do. This is both illegal and in our opinion immoral. Our clients deserve much better than that. And that generous people that make free templates and ask only for credit deserve a lot better. That is not to say templates are in themselves evil or bad. Far from in in fact. We love to keep costs down for clients so if your budget necessitates a templated design or a template can simply do what you want for less cost we’ll jump to recommend that.

Of course in most cases you don’t want your site to look exactly like another site. No problem. That is where Creative Logic comes to your aid. We’ll work to customize a template so that you can maximize your value while still getting a unique look for your site.

But if you need or want a 100% unique design, then rest assured that we will not ever take a template, and hack it up and spit it back out as a unique design that brings with it unique design costs. Never.

So how can you defend yourself against this? Well it isn’t easy. For one, dig hard to make sure you are working with a reputable web designer. Second, one thing you can do is look in a source file for the website. In Fifefox this done with “Ctrl+U”. Alternatively, just look for “View Source” somewhere in your browser’s menus. If you don’t know HTML the resulting information might be a bit overwhelming for you, but I will try to show you a few things to look for.

WordPress -> www.example.com/wp-content/themes/THEME NAME HERE/….
Drupal -> Look for references to “modules” then for this kind of path: /sites/all/themes/THEME NAME/…
Joomla -> www.example.com/templates/THEME NAME/…

So then if you see you have a CMS system, and you’ve located the Theme Name, then simply search in you favourite search engine the theme name combined with the platform name.

If the site is a plain HTML/CSS site, in other words not built in a Content Management System (CMS), it will be harder to find out if it is a template. However, the fastest way for an unscrupulous web designer to build you a templated site is with a CMS so you have a decent chance to find them out. It would be simple for them to change the names / locations I listed, but they are lazy and bad in the first place so there is hope they didn’t even bother to hind their tracks.

The Reinvention of Creative Logic

Trevor — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:27:54 +0000

Welcome to Creative Logic 2.0! After much delay, and with great fanfare the new version of Creative Logic is alive and breathing. I am very pleased to present it to you today because it very much showcases where the company has gone recently and should take us nicely into the future. Also, I really hope and believe it presents a better vessel with which to work with our clients and to provide information to the outside world.

Further to that, we have formed some great partnerships over the past couple of years and I wanted to feature the great depth of services available through Creative Logic because of our partners. So come, explore, commment and enjoy. Thank you for visiting!

Trevor Robertson
Principle – Creative Logic

CSS 3 For Thee

Trevor — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:24:14 +0000

It is just me or does it so often feel like we are still limited by the same old design techniques of the last century. CSS 2 was released about a decade ago and things have changed a lot since then. We are now fully immersed into the web 2.0 world but we are having to design with web 1.0 (not that we ever call it that) techniques. As anyone who has tried to design rounded corners for an element of a website knows, there are not many easy ways to do it. As prevalent as things like rounded corners are now, it should simply be something a designer/developer should be able to do with a few CSS selectors.

Abacus CountingAnd while in this case the designer’s usual foe, Internet Explorer, isn’t helping advance us to CSS 3, they are not solely to blame. The W3C has really been dragging their heals on this one and the web community is getting upset. But other browsers have not been sitting around waiting for the bell to ring. Progressive browsers such as Safari, Opera, and Firefox are already implementing CSS 3 ideas, albeit in a yet to be standardized way of course. As such you need to use different techniques for these to work in each browser, but you can do some pretty amazing things with it.

Take a look at this list of just a few things you can do with CSS 3… It is everything you need for Web 2.0, yet with using entirely CSS techniques!

Rounded Corners
Gradient Borders
Drop Shadows

Take a look at this Webmonkey article to find out how to start implementing the future of design on your website!

Photo Editors – Free Style

Trevor — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:41:54 +0000

Software piracy is never a good idea. I remember when computer games basically couldn’t be copied and life went on quite well. In fact, when the rules changed so that copy protection didn’t exist anymore computer game prices doubled! It is true that some companies charge exorbitant prices for their products and in those cases I agree it might tempted one to find an illegal copy of the software.

But now more than ever there is an alternative to ripping off software. The Open Source world is huge and I bet there is a free piece of software out there that does what you want and is perfectly legal for you to download. A great example is Paint.net. Photoshop is hugely expensive and frankly not very easy to use because for most cases it does more than what you need. So why not use something that is free, is amazingly easy to use, and is developed by people who use it!?

Do you need more graphic editing power? Well there is an open source solution for that too: The GIMP. Horribly named product, but GIMP has basically all the power of Photoshop, and like all Open Source is totally free. Admittedly it is a bit awkward to use at first, but that too is changing and in next few months a new version with an improved UI is coming out. One thing to add–while this software is free, if you do love it, use it a lot, and can spare the cash, most projects have an easy donation system. So if you can donate it truly is appreciated as most people working on Open Source projects are doing so on their own time so donations really help the development of the software. Enjoy!

Free Time Trackers

Trevor — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 23:30:47 +0000

Do you have a side project, or simply a need to see where your time goes in your daily business or personal life? Well a Time Tracker might be just what you need. There are a lot out there to choose from, and like more and more software these days, many time trackers are available as an online services (aka: cloud computing). As such they are very easy to use and require no installation.

The best simple free time tracker I have found so far is SlimTimer. It is easy to use, web based, and it works! What else can I say other than check this or others out and find out if they help you keep track of that ever slippery element of daily life–TIME!

The best overall free time tracker is without a doubt PayMo. It enables to manage projects, expenses, invoicing…it really does it all. And if your business grows you can upgrade the number of users that can use PayMo for a reasonable fee.

Find other time trackers by simply searching the web; they vary in price from free ones to some pretty hefty monthly fees.

I guess the only question left is whether organizing and tracking your time takes more time than it saves. That is always something that one must be wary off, but that is another topic for another time.