The Birth of Web Do’s & Don’ts
The first month of WebD&D is almost behind us. We’ve enjoyed bringing our project to life and now we’re enjoying seeing it stand on its own two feet. The response from the public has been great. Siniša and myself would like to thank all of you for your support.
Some of you were curious to find out more about the project, so this post should answer a few of your questions.
The Idea
Good ideas often come out of the blue. Siniša asked me one time on IM, while we were talking about random things, if I knew of a site that lists the do’s and don’ts in web design. I didn’t. We both thought a site like that would be useful and we started working on it almost right away. Just a couple of weeks later, WebD&D went public.
Most of the initial tips we published were pretty much answers to questions from novice web designers that were asked in forums we participate in. Many of those were being repeated over and over and it was clear a site like WebD&D would be ideal to spread the knowledge.
The traffic
We did not expect the heavy traffic WebD&D got so early on. All we did was told a couple of our friends and colleagues and made a tweet. The rest we owe to our fans.
How much traffic was there in the first month? Well, let’s just say it took just three days to burn the first 5 gigs of bandwidth. Not bad for a small site, aye?
What WebD&D offers
We offer what the web dev community thinks is best practise. Are the tips we publish rules set in stone? Probably not. We’re providing what we think is good advice, and we do that with the best of intentions. Whether you’ll follow the advice is up to you.
Yes, some of the tips tell you to do extra work on your website and may not seem to be of great contribution to your site’s quality at first glance. Do remember though, the devil is in the details. It is the details that can, and often do, make the difference.
Tip Suggestions
We got a fair share of tip submissions. Very few have actually been published, though. We’re looking to provide quality resources and link concise articles whenever possible. The aim is not to simply pile up as many webdev-related tips as we can. Quality over quantity is what WebD&D will always be focused on.
We have nothing against self-promotion. Feel free to submit your own articles. If we feel they can be useful and fit into either the Do or the Don’t category, we will publish them.
Do’s or Dos?
There was some debate whether it should be Do’s or Dos. Since we’re not from an English speaking territory, we’ve asked for your help on Twitter. A lot of you folks thought dos was correct, but we’ve went for do’s in the end. Thanks to @kbeck for the help.
Future plans
Our initial goals are achieved and we can look ahead and set new goals for the near future. We’ll keep the features we will introduce to WebD&D to ourselves for the time being, but what we’d like to see is your suggestions. How would you improve the site? What features would you like to see? We’re open to reading all of your comments.
Remember, you can subscribe to our feed and follow us on Twitter @webdosanddonts.
Great insight. Hvala!
I think WD&D should be translated to more languages, in order to provide some basic guidelines for designers worldwide. After 9-year experience in this, the first thing that comes to my mind is that people start off wrong. If they’re very young, they learn design from unreliable sites, if they’re oldschool they might have some difficulties making a switch to today’s standards…et cetera.
Iva on June 2, 2009
Thanks for your comment, Iva.
The tips we write on WebD&D are always connected to a full article. I think if someone does not understand English, then those articles would also have to be fully translated.
One of the most important pieces of advice I give to novice web designers is that they learn the language. English is the official language of the internet, so you can’t really expect to learn much if you’re unable to communicate.
Bojan on June 2, 2009