After quite a lot of thoughtful deliberation, which could possibly be termed procrastination by the uncharitable, I’ve decided I’m going to look at self-employment as a career option, as the current project draws to a close I’m going to investigate this further drawing up a business plan to see exactly where I stand, the SWOT analysis is already complete and I’m focusing on costing/pricing  at the moment, one thing is certain times are difficult at the minute and this is not a task to undertake lightly, the current company name will be Carl Potts Web Design. and I will be seeing what advise I’m entitled to

Unfortunately I don’t have time to maintain this blog at the moment due to other work commitments; rest assured the blog will be back to regular weekly updates by mid-November

This week I’ve been getting to grips with my latest project and my time has been spent on Keyword research necessary for the SEO efforts. This means I’ve not had time to work on my projects here however I strongly suspect I’ll be working on the Rhapsody Nightclub project next week, probably developing it as a WordPress site along with a custom theme This week I’ve been getting to grips with my latest project and my time has been spent on Keyword research necessary for the SEO efforts. This means I’ve not had time to work on my projects here however I strongly suspect I’ll be working on the Rhapsody Nightclub project next week, probably developing it as a WordPress site along with a custom theme

Family and other Commitments have meant I’m not been able to complete or indeed progress the Mr Drenching site this week however a new logo has been developed for this project

I’ve instigated major changes to the Mr Drenching project this week by switching to a Magento based store, the initial static prototype was not really adequate so I’m hoping by switching to Magento I’ll be able to create a professional looking store which will actually work properly, currently I’m having to create 50 different umbrellas for the store to stock, I’d like to thank Julie Elamfor her excellent guide to setting up VAT for UK based store owners

This week I’ve revisited the Mr Drenching project I started a fortnight ago apart from one or two minor problems in IE6 (quelle surprise!) the project has proceeded at a reasonable pace, unfortunately these problems meant the project is not quite ready for uploading yet, I’m not yet completely happy with it

This week I intend  to put the finishing touches to Project 1:The fictional Finnish restaurant Ravinola Kuu, the logo & home page are already completed, now the rest of the site needs to be finished off and tested, if you’re interested you may view it here

This week’s project is a fictional Lancaster Nightclub called ‘Rhapsody’, the Nightclub theme will mean a darker Palette is more appropriate, as with previous weeks the development materials and project plan may be downloaded from the Project page

This week’s project is for a fictional umbrella company called Mr Drenching, this is a new clicks & mortar business situated in Lancaster which wishes to establish an online presence, I’m keen to develop this site within 5 days so I will turn to the logo/branding design methods suggested by David Airey in his Book Logo Design Love, I intend to use these methods and Apple style navigation to give the website a sleek professional appearance and for the simple reason I’ve never used one before, I’m interested to see how this turns out in practise

The first site I will be developing is for Ravintola Kuu (Moon Restaurant), a fictional Finnish restaurant based in Morecambe, this has been an interesting project for a number of reasons, my knowledge of Finnish cuisine was approximately zero when I started this project, through research I’ve been able to identify a number of popular Finnish recipes and obtain creative commons photographs of them. This is the first site I’ve used the 960 Grid system to develop the  prototype something I’ve been meaning to do for a while, this speeds up the development process a great deal once some familiarity is gained with it, for me the beauty of this is that I’m able to rapidly create web pages that comfortably pass my cross browser checking process,  in addition this project has allowed me to start practising on my newly acquired copy of Adobe Illustrator a program I’m keen to become proficient with. This is the first opportunity I’ve had to utilise Google web fonts within a project to add some typographic flair