Customer Service

February’s Blog Post is Customer Service.

On that note, Customer Service is important in ANY job. The ability to successfully deal with people, good or bad, is crucial to a successful job. Whether it be dealing with a co-worker, a customer, or your boss; because if word gets around that you can’t/couldn’t handle a problem well, then your job becomes endangered.

Lets focus on just the customer aspect, and how this relates to the Web Profession.

Say you get a job, and you set up everything the client says just perfectly, yet they seem unhappy when you show them the finished project. In this case it was probably an instance of miscommunication that caused the problem. When your dealing with a case like this, then how you deal with, and solve, the problem is key to Customer Satisfaction, and inherently displaying your Customer Service abilities.
The best way would be to sit down and discuss when the problem had occurred, for your own future reference and the clients, and work out a compromise to fix the issue, like you could work on the project longer for little to no cost.

Although not every encounter with a dissatisfied customer will turn out perfectly, you can usually come out with both parties benefiting in some way or another.

But be forewarned, even one bad case of Customer Service ‘can’ have a devastating effect on your business. An example would be a well-known blogger is unhappy with your work, and you both can’t come to a good compromise. And (s)he rants and raves about how awful you are, word will get around and you may lose potential business.

Diversity

I do believe that diversity is an important Professionalism skill. This is because, If you can only do one thing, and there are a lot of people who can do that one thing, then your chances of doing it for a living decrease. But if you can do a few things really well, then you should be fine. Although you probably can’t do everything perfectly, there are some extreme cases, it still helps to know other skills and have other abilities.

Just think of what the world would be like without diversity! How boring and monotonous everything would be… There would be no creativity or inspiration, because everything would be about the same. Diversity cures a lot of these issues. While creating very few, a problem that I can think of is people being unable to accept the diverse workforce, and just unwilling to work/do anything different. But, while there are still some people, I think that most of the workforce expects some degree of diversity between people, even in very a specialized area, like carpeting.

But as this is so supposed to tie into Web Design, If a person, who is a very good programmer, knows a bit about graphic design, then he can do his job a little bit better as he takes some different perspectives while he is programming.

Accountability

The professional word for October is accountability. Accountability,as you can see in the picture, means Actions toward or involving others that reflect the integrity of the person your want to be. I believe  accountability has a ton to do with Web Design, like people have to count on you to be accountable. If you are not accountable then how can people take you seriously? Also how can people truly tell what your intentions are? Everyone, not just Web Designers, needs to be accountable and have good intentions. These things should be consistent with most mainstream careers like: Doctors, Politicians, Managers, etc. Sadly this is not always the case, and many people are not accountable, many people fake being accountable. I couldn’t get at least 200 words into this months blog post =[

Passion

Today was a day to just explore what I wanted to about being a  Web Designer. I had no assignments or projects, just a free day. The first thing I did, of course, was check my facebook. But then I realized what I could be doing with my free 3 hours of class, so I started to think about what my passion for web design was. Then I came to the conclusion the first thing that I would do is find something different to put on my homepage, while learning a few things along the way.

So I looked around for pictures and internet tutorials for some kind of picture that would look nice on my page, and I found one. This “Twitterbird” was different and obvious enough to be put on my homepage and make it stand out a little, while still being easy to tell what it does. I found this in a tutorial for Adobe Illustrator in my Google Reader subscriptions. As soon as I saw it I knew I needed to make one, so I did. After I made completed this tutorial, which took quite a chunk of time, I spent a few minutes adding it to the correct place in my page. Afterwords I looked for other unique things to add to my homepage, and expand my Graphic Design knowledge, but I found none. So for my free day I completed one tutorial and learned a ton of tricks for Illustrator, which I will surly use again.

Technology Research

PHP

What is the technology?

PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (Personal Home Page)

What it does?

PHP is a general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for web development. PHP generally runs on a web server. Any PHP code in a requested file is executed by the PHP runtime, usually to create dynamic web page content. It can also be used for command-line scripting and client-side GUI applications. PHP can be deployed on most web servers, many operating systems and platforms, and can be used with many relational database management systems. It is available free of charge, and the PHP Group provides the complete source code for users to build, customize and extend for their own use.

Who developed it? When? Why?

• PHP/FI was created by Rasmus Lerdorf in 1995, initially as a simple set of Perl scripts for tracking accesses to his online resume. He named this set of scripts ‘Personal Home Page Tools’. As more functionality was required, Rasmus wrote a much larger C implementation, which was able to communicate with databases, and enabled users to develop simple dynamic Web applications.

• PHP 3.0 was the first version that closely resembles PHP as we know it today. It was created by Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski in 1997 as a complete rewrite. PHP 3.0 was officially released in June 1998, after having spent about 9 months in public testing.

• The new engine, dubbed ‘Zend Engine’ (comprised of their first names, Zeev and Andi), met these design goals successfully, and was first introduced in mid 1999. PHP 4.0, based on this engine, and coupled with a wide range of additional new features, was officially released in May 2000, almost two years after its predecessor, PHP 3.0. In addition to the highly improved performance of this version, PHP 4.0 included other key features such as support for many more Web servers, HTTP sessions, output buffering, more secure ways of handling user input and several new language constructs.

• PHP 5 was released in July 2004 after long development and several pre-releases. It is mainly driven by its core, the Zend Engine 2.0 with a new object model and dozens of other new features.

What groups were/are responsible for managing it?

PHP’s development team includes dozens of developers, as well as dozens others working on PHP-related projects such as PEAR and the documentation project.

Explain its growth or diminishment.

Growth, 4 updates since release planning on a 5th. Also working on improving it more and more.

What are related technologies?

• » PEAR, the PHP Extension and Application Repository (originally, PHP Extension and Add-on Repository) is PHP’s version of foundation classes, and may grow in the future to be one of the key ways to distribute PHP extensions among developers.

• The » PHP Quality Assurance Initiative was set up in the summer of 2000 in response to criticism that PHP releases were not being tested well enough for production environments. The team now consists of a core group of developers with a good understanding of the PHP code base. These developers spend a lot of their time localizing and fixing bugs within PHP. In addition there are many other team members who test and provide feedback on these fixes using a wide variety of platforms.

• » PHP-GTK is the PHP solution for writing client side GUI applications.

Are there certifications for its use? If so, what? Where and how can one acquire them?

PHP 4 and PHP 5 certifications that you can acquire from brainbench after you complete and past their respective tests

Predict the future for the technology.

PHP 6 and Zend Engine 3 are the next updates that will eventually come out for the public use.

Home Page Designr

I preformed a 5 second test on this website. the first thing that caught my eye was the flash picture
pop-ups in the upper left side of the page. Although they are the same pictures every time, they add a sense that the site is for or
about pictures. After that I was able to see the text right between the pictures, which looks very nice and readable.
The next thing I noticed was all of the black negative space, which I neither like nor dislike, which just seems to fill up
the extra area. The last thing I noticed about this homepage were all of the different links on the left side. All of these different links have
assorted colors and fonts, which can be an eyesore for some people (especially with the black background). one thing that I didn’t
really notice in my 5 second test was the copyright information, which is not up to date and located in the center below the photographs, and the extra two lines of text.
while the text isn’t necessarily needed it does offer help when your about to navigate through the galleries of pictures. If I were to
improve this site I would first set up the three pictures to randomly generate some from the galleries, to add a new experience every
time the site is refreshed or revisited. Next I would re-group and re-design the links to the left, to add usability and get rid of any confusion.
I would also try to highlight the copyright and extra text a little more, instead of them kind of floating out in the black space. No logo of any kind anywhere.

I liked this Websites Home page, because it is simple yet gives you all the information you need, all in
easy to read and easy to see text. Also, if you actually visit the site, there is a little animation of the red animal on the magnifier kind
of leading you around the page. At the very top is a list of all file formats this program works with, and in the very center it gives a list
of some of the features it provides. The page is centered on the screen, with just white space on either side, but it is not such a stark contrast that it makes it hard to look at. The home page has the current version posted and links to download the current version, also mirror sites to download it from. Although there could be some more color, there isn’t much that needs changed on usability for this site. Logo is in the top right.

The last site I looked at was for BitTorrent. This site is well designed for usability and easy to navigate, since it’s basically one page. The flash in the center gives you a good understanding of what BitTorrent is and does, and a big green download button to the left helps you get it. There are advertisers in the bottom right of what networks support BitTorrent, but these are not pesky links. Also there are other more in depth pages located under the flash, that are there for first time users, or those interested in BitTorrent. Once again  a lot of white space, but the flash keeps your eye centered, at least until you have looked through it all, and it is very informational. Overall I liked this homepage the best, and don’t see a lot that needs to be changed. Also the logo is in the top right like most sites.

Goal Setting

Each month I am required to write a blog about that months professionalism skill topic, and how it relates to me and Web Design.

This months skill is Goal Setting – Goal setting is one of (in my opinion) the best skills to have in the workforce and in everyday life. It is such a valuable skill for any big project or obstacle that happens to be in your way. I actually have a set of goals already for this class which I have pre-posted in an earlier blog, but i also have goals set out for the rest of my high school and beyond. Like I expect to make at least straight Bs for my Junior and Senior years, and then I plan on attending c0llege (although at the moment I am undecided on a certain college) and seeing it all the way through. After college I my goals are to either follow a career in Web Design or become a Marine Biologist, like college I am still a little undecided between the two. Those are my major goals for the rest of my life but i do have smaller stepping stone goals that I will complete to get to them.

This was my professionalism skill of the month post, I will do one each and every month.

Taking Stock

This is my second post. It will be about my assets and goals as a Web Designer.

My goals – to learn more skills as a designer, and get better with the skills I already know, also maybe become a professional web designer or have the ability to create a web page for whatever career path I choose.

The aspects of designing that interest me most are how creative  designers can be with there work, especially if it is a personal page.

I took a Web Design class last year at Edmond Memorial, so I have some knowledge  in the class.

I will need to touch up on coding because I kind of struggled with it last year.

Some of the software and hardware I have are the ones on the Francis Tuttle computer, plus I have a few adobe programs on my pc at home.

I will probably need to get Dreamweaver, and a few other so I can work from home if  i need to.

This is my second blog ever, so still trying to figure out pictures and other little things. I just answered the questions out of a book so… Soon these will be more personal and actually about my current projects and other things.

First Post

This is my first time posting a blog so…
Q&A from the LAP

The aspects of Web that interest me most are the customization, creativity, and freedom involved in the design of web pages.

The aspects of Web that interest me least is the all of the Coding involved, I’m not very good at coding yet and I want to get better by the end of the course.

I hope to gain better coding abilities from this class, along with a better understanding of web design and development.

My biggest fear is to fall behind on projects, and not be able to catch back up and eventually fail the course. which would not be good…

The part of this course that most excites me is the fact that we move at our own pace and have the freedom to get help from the people around us.

I need at least 200 words in length, so i will be adding some down here. My name is Kody, I go to Edmond Memorial High School and Francis Tuttle. I am writing this right now as a requirement for my Web Design class. I will be posting more when I learn and do more in this class. Well, that’s my first post sorry no pictures this time.