web site progress

I’ve been working on the mock-up for my “client pages” landing page. The plan is to allow clients that want one to have a web page on my site on which I will post design images, details and related links to their project. They will then be able to post feedback to me any time they want and they will be able to share this page with friends and family to get their feedback. The whole point is to improve and sharpen the communication between my clients and myself particularly during the early stages of the design process.

I also want to develop a way to engage the secondary customer, the spouse, close friend or other person that my primary customer will likely seek approval from for their investment.

I am also creating a database of my work with associated images, bid spread sheets, product name, product ID number related thumbnail images, etc. I’ve looked at a lot of options for applications to help and have decided to stick with Excel to create a spreadsheet/ database and use Windows Explorer to add key words, i.e. product ID numbers, to the image files. This means that I have to save all the images that will be uploaded to my new web site as jpeg files. I use Paint Shop Pro to edit the images and optimize them to a resolution of 29 pixels/inch as well as to minimize the colors used. I cannot use PSP to add key words though because if I do it wipes out the key words Windows had as well as  the key words Picasa, another image sorting application I use, uses.

It became tiresome entering all of the file paths and file names into the spread sheet as Windows Explorer only allows you to copy the path, then to separately copy the file name. I decided to nose around a little on the web and I found this cool utility that adds an option to copy the path (with file name) onto the clipboard when you right click a file in Windows Explorer. It’s called ClipboardPath.  It saves a lot of time and aggravation.

~ by Todd Fillingham on November 14, 2007.