Check out these 44 great design tools for a freelance web developer (or graphic designer) that I stumbled across today. Lots of useful stuff to help you during any stage of the design process.

I was stumbling through pages tagged with photography and I remembered something that I really hate, and is used on a lot of photographer’s websites. The number one complaint is of course that it is flash. But mostly, it’s those stupid flash pages.

Almost every single photographer’s website has a flash page with a little logo, and text that says “enter” or “enter site.” Hey, web designer: Do you know why I went to the site in the first place? to go to the site! Why do I need to go to your site and then enter the site! It’s ridiculous! And then you want to all open another window on me resized however the hell you want. I browse with tabs. If your site breaks out of my tabs, you can be guaranteed that I won’t be staying on your site any longer than it takes me to click the close button.

I keep doing little bits of web design despite wanting to get rid of it. I think over the last two days I have gone through about 25 different designs for the church website. I finally settled on using Wordpress as a CMS instead of coding it all myself. I did have it mostly coded but it would just be so much easier for everybody to update if it were using Wordpress.

I’ve never actually made a Wordpress theme before, so I did that on Sunday. I kind of succeeded. I started making a theme from the new design that I wanted to use, but then created a whole new design after that. Then I had 3 different designs in Photoshop that I liked, and now I think I am just dumping all of them and going with a pre-made theme that I will just customize how I like. I have about 15 of those I am choosing from right now.

So yeah, just little bits of web design. Once I’ve decided on the theme, most everything else is done. I still need to find out how to incorporate easyphpcalendar into a Wordpress post, but that shouldn’t be too hard (I hope). After that, it’s just thinking of new ideas. I need to sit down with a couple of people and start just thinking of things to do with this.

One month! Only one month!

So my church site is done. Just showing it around now to see if there are any changes to be made. I just like it so much better than the rushed version I had up before. I can’t wait to use it over the coming months either! I really have gotten sick of websites lately, and have been putting a lot of them off.

I really am just disliking websites and computers all around right now. I worked for 2 years in computer repair and website design. I hate it. I don’t think I ever want to do it again. I do seem to have a talent with computers, and it has really worked out for me, but I absolutely hate them now. I’m fine to work on things on my own computers. The small things are fine. I just hate working on everybody’s computer. Which is nice because I got all those business cards a few months ago. They’ve come in handy and I’ve done quite a bit because of them… But I’m done. This is it, it’s official, I quit computers.

/rant or something

I am working on a couple websites right now. I am finishing up the new site for my church, which I like oh so much better than the old, very ugly version that I quickly made. It looks so much better, and will be maintained so much better. It will make it easier for everyone: visitors, department heads, everyone. I have the design done, and I’m working on the rest of the pages. There are 3 or 4 pages left to do (all pull info from a database).

Sammiching: I am still kind of working on this. I am slowly getting all of my ideas down for it and doing small bits of coding on it. It is still now something that I will be able to complete on my own, so if you know php or ruby, I would welcome your help!

At Work Arcade: I just posted on this before, but I also just finished updating it. There are about 1200 games on it now, and a few random videos (that are either Broken Fork’s, friend’s videos, or some that I liked).

PHP Stack: This is a website I bought a while ago and I haven’t updated Wordpress in a while. I took it offline because I didn’t want it to be exploited. I am working on getting it back up. It had a few nice PHP tutorials on there.

I think there are a couple more but I don’t remember. I am trying not to work as much on websites anymore, because I am really just sick of working on computers and websites. I have another update about school I want to post, but it will be made public in probably a couple of weeks. I am excited about it.

I just finished adding the new script and design for At Work Arcade. I don’t have all of the games re-uploaded yet, just the most played ones. I will be adding the rest of the games shortly, as well as a game pack with tons more games. Make sure to check it out and play some games. There is a new feature where if you play more than 15 games in a certain amount of time, you need to register on the site. Registration is easy, and it tracks your stats a lot better. I may up this limit or remove it completely.