I’m having an affair. And my wife isn’t happy about it. You see, I’ve been spending every spare minute I have with Wordpress. It’s been a while since I designed or coded anything, but a short while ago I decided to get a personal website up (for shit’s and giggles). I downloaded Wordpress 2.5, and it was love at first sight site.

So, here are a few reasons why I’m so infatuated with it:

• Quick install - 5 minutes - seriously!
• Support - more than you could ever need.
• No PHP experience needed - just look who’s talking!
• Easy to reskin - look around.
• Beautiful - inside and out.
• Complies with web standards
• Powerful - packed to the brim with features

I’m absolutely convinced that Wordpress is the PERFECT solution for personal and small business websites.

Has anyone ever had the good fortune of being on hold within the matrix that is Telkom’s telephonic helpdesk system? I can quite honestly say that their “on hold” music is the most irritating tune on the planet. Take a listen…

With an average 20-30 minute wait, you would think that they would think about the “user experience” of this interaction and at least attempt to do something to ease the pain. Here’s a thought… play the radio! Hell, even ABBA’s Greatest Hits would be better than this pain. Oh… and to rub salt into the wound, every 2 minutes a voice tells me that I can also report my fault online. Urm… if I could get online, I freekin would! And with that, I bid you farewell and continue to hold…

An uninspired designer is a dangerous weapon. Being inspired is a CRITICAL component of the web design process. At Stonewall+, we’ve found that the greatest source of inspiration is the internet, which incidentally is the medium we’re designing for anyway! The first step of our design process involves browsing the web for inspiration, taking screenshots of stuff that grabs us, and dropping them all into an “Inspiration” folder

This process helps us to:

• define the creative benchmark - finding the best and trying to better it is a tried and trusted approach (just look at Apple and their product development approach)
• refine the desired art direction of the project - narrow down the overall style, colour scheme, etc.

Without a clear vision of what you’re trying to achieve, you’re likely to get lost in the design process, lose motivation and ultimately deliver something that you’re not entirely proud of (and, quite frankly, could be a hellova lot better). So, to help get you started, here’s my ultimate inspiration list.