Last year we partnered up with Paper Tiger to sponsor a small ExpressionEngine meetup during the festival. This year, we're paired up again with a slew of great sponsors to bring back the meetup and take it to the next level. You read that right... PARTY!

Saturday, March 10, we'll be hosting a blowout at Opal Divine's with free snacks and an open bar.

Special thanks to our great sponsors: EllisLab, Beanstalk, Firefly, EngineHosting, BroBible, mithra62, Mijingo, Vector Media Group and Paper Tiger

Come chat with us, meet our sponsors and have some fun.

Our RSVP list is already full, but if you add yourself to the waiting list and get in touch on Twitter @confluxgroup, we'll gladly add you to the guest list.

If you aren't able to make the party, find us during the festival. We'd love to meet up. And ask us for one of our cool rocket ship or laser gun stickers.

There are so many of our customers, vendors and colleagues who have helped make this year a tremendously successful and fun year. We're thankful for each and every one of you.

Specifically we want to thank:

All of our customers. Our development and design partners. The EllisLab team that makes so much of the work we do possible. Our faithful ExpressionEngine add-on developers. And the ExpressionEngine community at large.

I hope that you do get some time away from these interwebs that we spend our lives building to enjoy your family and friends. And I look forward to connecting and working with you all again as we start a new year together.

Release and pricing details will be available shortly, but we don't yet have a release date. Check out our demo video below for a preview of what SafeCracker Swipe can do for you.

SafeCracker Swipe is an ExpressionEngine extension that ties in with the first-party SafeCracker module. The SafeCracker module allows you to place forms on your site that create channel entries in EE. Normally you have two directions you can go with SafeCracker. Submissions from non-logged-in members, if allowed, are assigned the author from the SafeCracker settings, or the logged_in_member_id parameter of the form tag. Even if the user logs in to the site after, the entries are still not tied to their account. The other option is to force users to log in first. It works fine, but may not be the best user experience. Often, you might want to allow the user to see and interact with a form before having to commit to registration or login.

Enter SafeCracker Swipe. This extension creates a session entry queue, that stores all the entries created by a user before they login or register. Then, when they login or register the entries' author gets reassigned to the logged in user.

Look out for more information in the next couple weeks about SafeCracker Swipe. And feel free to get in touch via the comments on this post or on Twitter: @confluxgroup or @dreadfullyposh

We're also giving away one free ticket to the conference to a lucky winner.

To make things interesting we're going to have a small competition.

To Enter

Take a photo illustrating what you would do for a free CICON ticket.

Post the photo on Twitter and mention @ConfluxGroup and @CICON2011

After the contest closes, Conflux Group will choose a winner and notify you that you have won via Twitter.

Rules

The winner will be selected at the discretion of Conflux Group. The selection will be final.

Nothing too obscene, please.

Prize is the ticket only. Transportation and lodging for the event are up to you.

Any questions? Feel free to drop us a line on Twitter @ConfluxGroup or via e-mail at hello (at) confluxgroup.com.

The Design Brief

 Design briefs are one of the best ways to begin a project. A design brief is an explanation you give to your designer to outline what you’re looking for. Design briefs often contain information about your company, your industry, what your want your website to do (for example, generate sales), your target audience, your budget, your competition and design preferences.

Many designers have a creative brief they will send to you to fill out, but in case your designer doesn’t have one, or you’d like to download one ahead of time, I’ve included a sample one here for you to download.

Download a sample design brief.

Be Specific

Try to be as specific as possible when you’re filling out a design brief or communicating with your designer about your project. For example, if you’re making a website for your beauty salon, it would be important to communicate where your business is located, your typical cliental, how large your salon is, the average price for services and your competition.  Based on those factors, we would expect the website for an upscale Palm Beach salon to look entirely different than the website of a Brooklyn barbershop.

It’s also important to communicate what you’d like your website to do. Should it list your services and prices, allow customers to book an appointment or list staff information? 

If you’re not sure what features you’d like on your website, try looking at your competitors and other websites from companies in your industry.

Send Samples

Designers are visual people. They need images and examples to understand what you’re looking for. It’s a really good idea to send samples of websites you do and don’t like. These samples may come from your competition, places you shop, news sites you visit regularly or a design gallery. Try CSS Line, CSS Elite, Dribbble or CSS Heroes. Try to send as many samples as possible to give your designer plenty to draw from when they start your project.

When giving samples, also indicate what you like and don’t like about each one. Is it the fonts, the colors, the layout, the images or something else? The more detailed you get, the better the designer can understand your preferences.

Trust the Expert but Ask Questions

You probably hired this designer because you have no idea how to create a website but you want something polished and professional. Your designer is an expert in the Internet industry. Trust them, but don’t be afraid to ask questions about why they’ve added certain elements to a design. Designers understand that you probably don’t know exactly what goes into making a successful website and most of them are more than happy to answer your questions. 

Conclusion

As you and your designer work through the designs, remember to be specific, to keep your audience in mind and to ask questions.

Good luck! 

We’ve put together a glossary of sorts to help you understand important words you’ll see throughout the website design and development process. 

HTML – HTML actually stands for HyperText Markup Language, but no one refers to it by its full name. HTML code is the glue that holds websites together.  It structures images, text and other elements into a hierarchy, much like a Word document, with headings, paragraphs and lists. This basic structure is what will later have design applied to it.

CSS – CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. If a website were compared to a house, CSS would be the paint, the hardwood flooring, the tiles and cabinets – basically all the finishing touches. It’s a different language than HTML but they are deeply connected. CSS defines fonts, colors, positions, borders, images, hover states, and more to the structure that HTML creates.

JavaScript – JavaScript is a programming language used to enhance the user experience of a website, and it runs right in the browser. JavaScript makes things move and function. It takes what otherwise would be a simple document and adds actions and events, allowing it to interact with the user.

jQuery -  iQuery is a free collection of JavaScript code created to make it easier to add animations, events, sliders, photo galleries and other advanced features to websites. It’s the most popular JavaScript library in use today. It enables designers and developers to add features much quicker than if they were to do them by hand.

PHP – PHP is a programming language used for the back end of websites. It processes forms and allows sites to connect to databases and other sites.  It runs on the server and handles everything in the background, so it's never visible -- except by the developer.

API – Application Programming Interfaces are a special type of website interface. Unlike the interface that you see when using a website, APIs allow computers to interact with each other to share data. It all happens in the background and there’s nothing to see. APIs allow other sites to access various site functions. While this all sounds quite complicated, APIs enable you to have Twitter feeds and Facebook logins on your site. RSS feeds are also an example of a very simple API.

Content management system (CMS) – Content management systems are online software systems that allow people to update websites and blogs without knowing how to code. Websites running on content management systems are easier to manage than straight HTML websites. If you update your site often or want to publish a blog, you will need a content management system. Examples include WordPress, ExpressionEngine, Drupal and MojoMotor.

WordPress – WordPress is a free content management system. It’s often used for publishing blog posts but can also be used for non-blog websites as well.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Search engine optimization is the process of improving a website’s likelihood of showing up in search engine results. A site’s images, text, menus, design, videos and more can be optimized to help search engines find and index all of the site’s content.

AJAX – AJAX stands for asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It’s a series of techniques used to improve the user experience on a website. AJAX allows the browser to talk to the server without redirecting the users to new pages, this allows for a more instantaneous desktop application-like experience while using the web.

Blog – The word blog comes from the term web log. It is a type of website, or part of a website, where authors publish their thoughts, interesting trends, or news. Blogs are usually interactive and allow other people to leave comments on posts.

Domain Name – A domain is simply the address of your website.  For example, Facebook’s domain name is Facebook.com.  Domains can be registered for a fee through various providers and need to be pointed to a hosting account, where your website is actually stored.

Favicon – A favicon is that little image that appears next to your address bar when you go to certain websites. For example, if you visit Wikipedia, you’ll see a little “W” next to the url. Likewise, Target uses their bull’s-eye logo for their favicon.

Hosting – A web hosting service is an Internet service that provides a place to store your website on the Internet.  A domain name must be pointed to some sort of hosting in order for a site to be live on the Internet. Unless you own your own server, you’ll need a hosting company for your website to be up on the web.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) – An FTP is a way to transfer files from one network to another. In website design, FTPs are used to upload finished files to the web.

RSS – RSS is a computer-readable format for website content. Many blogs and news site publish RSS feeds, which allow you to read the site’s content from a variety of readers, including Google Reader, Thunderbird, and others. RSS feeds make it easy to keep up to date with the latest content posted on sites you visit regularly.

Wireframe – A wireframe is like a blueprint of a website. It’s a rough sketch of all the different elements a page needs to contain as well as where the elements should be positioned on the page. Wireframes are an important part of the web design process because it’s easy to see if any elements are missing before the actual design is started.

Why? Because we want them to be perfect. We want them to be different. We want them so show off our prowess in design and coding. And because we don’t have a client who knows what they want telling us how to do it, the options are endless with our virtual toolboxes completely at our disposal.

Why do I bring this up? It’s just an interesting thought to ponder as we launch our new and improved Conflux Group site.

My  above statement certainly rang true as we worked on our site. We had no idea what we wanted, and so we embarked on a little mission; to create something fun and useful, and most importantly, something that represented us and the work we do.

This process was yet another reminder of something we all dread when working with our clients. Building sites is always so much harder when you don’t really nail down what you want and where you’re going before you even open Photoshop or a text editor.

All that said, we’re excited about this launch, and about a few things we have planned in the coming weeks to enhance the site even further. But we covet your feedback. Leave some comments for us with what you think.

Oh, and one last thing. Next time you visit the homepage, poke around, and you might find a little surprise here or there.

Over and out.

A few weeks later, you see an e-mail from them labeled “your designs”. You get excited. Here it is! The design you’ve been waiting for! You open up the message and... This is it? This is what you’ve paid for? This looks like crap. It’s not even close to what you wanted.

You send them an e-mail voicing your various concerns and their reply is less than friendly. You’re starting to wonder what went wrong and whether you’re going to pay hundreds of dollars for a site that far too closely resembles Craigslist.

Your web designer – who was so friendly in those initial emails – has become a b*tch. They have your money and at this point it looks like you’re either going to get a crappy website or loose your deposit.

We like you. We really do. And we want to make sure that neither of those things happen.

Communicate Clearly

Designers are visual people. They tend to think in images. If they’re doing something you don’t like, maybe it’s because they can’t understand your vision or tastes. Try sending images and examples of what you’re looking for and what you’re not. Be as specific as possible.

Not sure where to look for awesome, well designed websites? Try CSS Line, CSS Elite, Dribbble or CSS Heroes. 

Get on the Phone

The way people speak can be entirely different from the way they write. Some people just aren’t “fluffy” e-mail writers (i.e., me). Your designer may seem much colder in writing than they do on the phone. Designers tend to favor e-mail and internet forms of communication, but if you can, get on the phone with them. Talking things through tends to clarify a lot of misunderstandings.

Stick to the Contract

One of the reasons your web designer may have suddenly turned into an ice queen is that you’re not sticking to the contract. (Yes, I’m blaming you). If you keep adding features or pages or things that the designer hadn’t planned for – and might not be in the budget – you’re going to have one unhappy web designer on your hands.

Send Revisions in Batches

You got the design from the designer and immediately you sent a reply with 5 updates. Then, an hour later, you remembered something else that should be fixed and you sent another e-mail. The next morning, you sent several more changes.

This annoys web designers. Fast. Sending changes in multiple e-mails over several days, not only adds additional hours onto your bill, but it’s also more likely your designer will miss some of the changes you sent.

When you get a design, start making a list of changes and add to it over the next few days. Be as detailed as possible and try to send all the changes at the same time. 

Provide Content

It’s incredibly frustrating for designers to start a design with absolutely no content. We know, you’re eager to get started and you’ll fill in the pages after you see the design, but I promise, the design will happen much quicker (and look a lot better) if you send content before the designer even begins the project.

Start Off Right

If you’re reading this and you’ve already started a project, I apologize. I don’t mean to rub salt in an open wound. But if you’re reading this and you haven’t started a project, there are things you can do to make sure you don’t end up in a situation like I described above.

• Know your budget and your timeline before you start talking with your designer.
• Know what features and pages you want. Provide as many details to the designer up front – before you even get an estimate. Make sure it includes a detailed kill clause that explains how both you and the designer can get out of the project at various stages.
• Sign a detailed contract  - it protects both you and the designer. Don’t make any assumptions, and ensure that every feature you want is included in writing.
• Provide examples of what you like and don’t like up font. Your competitors’ websites and websites like CSS Line, CSS Elite, Dribbble and CSS Heroes are helpful.
• Provide as much content as possible before the designer starts designing.

Last Resort – Part Ways

Sometimes a relationship between you and your designer can’t be salvaged. In this case, it’s time to call off the project and find a new designer. If a designer’s done work for you, don’t expect to get away with paying nothing. Depending on your contract’s terms, they may keep your deposit or bill you for the work done so far. Different designers have different feelings about handing over the files they’ve been working on, and the terms of your contract should also dictate the ownership of them – but don’t expect to get them unless you pay the designer for their services.

Check out our new work section, featuring a selection of projects that we've worked on, as well as our blog, which will be filled with useful tips for keeping you sane all the way through the web development process.

I won't bore you with any more shameless plugs. Just check it out, and feel free to leave us some comments about what you think.