Company Blogs

A website that includes a blog should consider:

  • Blog posts must be professional. Language, vocabulary and spelling should be consistent with the target audience. If it is a professional services company, there should be no misspellings, no slang, no casual language.
  • Comments and feedback should be managed carefully to ensure they are consistent.
  • Blog content should be integrated into the site search. If there is more than one application running, the search system should search all content.
  • Current content is vital. An inactive blog projects the image of an inattentive administrator. If you don’t have time to post material, it is better not to have a blog.
  • Truth and honesty are extremely important. If a client was lost, regardless of the reason, associated posts should be modified to focus on the services performed and the client identification should be completely removed.
  • Avoid negative connotations. If a client was desparate and you helped them, the circumstances should not be described, only the assistance provided. No one wants to be labelled as ‘in a panic’. No one wants it publicized that there were problems.
  • All posters should avoid a personal perspective (unless appropriate). Posts should be written as representing the company’s activities, not an individual’s experiences. This will vary based on the people involved.
  • Don’t brag, inform.

eZ publish sitestyle color mapping

robots.design was used on the eZ publish Website Interface to recolor the CSS.

Steps

  1. Copied a static version of the eZ Web Interface files. The demonstration does not require a full installation of eZ.
  2. Made a backup of the .css files
  3. Used the first set of sed commands, but didn’t like the results
  4. Used the second set of sed commands
  5. Tinted bg.jpg, the background image, with Jasc Paint Shop Pro
  6. Changed background color of body to white
  7. Changed background color of usermenu to light brown

Observations

  • The design relies heavily on images. This is a disadvantage when using robots.design, because it can be difficult to recolor the images. It is important to remember the objective of robots.design is to replace the mechanical task of updating the CSS, it can’t redesign the images site. The tool is intended to help a person reskin or redesign the site. This link: http://www.wirehopper.com/eZ/eZ_files/images/images.htm lists the images, with their dimensions, to help a designer select those that should be updated.
  • There are eight CSS files. In this case, robots.design allowed them to be modified very quickly and accurately. Adjustments were made manually (steps 5 and 6 above) using Firebug to identify the CSS file.
  • The impact of robots.design can be subtle. It does a good job recoloring the CSS, and it is easy to forget how long it can take to the same work manually, and without missing anything. For a large eZ publish site, with many content classes, this can be tremendous timesaver.

Conclusion

Prior to choosing robots.design as a design tool for eZ webin, it would be better to create a greyscale version of the eZ web interface images. This would allow the images to support a wide range of colors. Another option would be to develop a custom skin.

Opportunities

A very real possibility would be to integrate a tool similar to robots.design into eZ. It is a simple, mechanical substitution process, the image processing software required is usually installed on the server with eZ, and it is an extremely cost-effective way to update the CSS files. It would fit well under the design settings.

Side by Side Demo

This page shows an HTML page before and after robots.design runs.

Let the client pick the colors for their site ...

Automated tools that skin a site allow people to choose the colors and see the effect without any technical knowledge or access. This is the perfect way for a web client to ‘design’ their own site. They have the time and ability to select the colors they like. Once they are satisfied, the site provider can ‘lock’ the colors. This saves a tremendous amount of time for the client and provider, as well as avoiding alot of friction.

The are obviously limitations to this approach, and clients and providers must be aware of them.

The Name robots.design

robots.design is derived from robots.wizard, which is a robots.txt file generator and editor. There are also robots.spider and robots.checker, which are related to robots.txt.

robots.design is not related to robots.txt, but the term robot is still somewhat applicable. It indicates a machine is being used to support design, as well as being consistent with the naming of software from the same source.