Website software and templates have made it easier for inexperienced website designers to create and maintain their own websites. Prior to the development of such items, if you wanted a website for your company you had to retain a reputable website design firm to create a website for you. Website development is not an easy procedure, but if you decide to undertake the process yourself, there are a few simple strategies that can make the process of creating a high-quality website a little bit easier.

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I’ve used this code in a large amount of business websites I’ve produced. It allows users to see at a glance whether a business is open or closed. If the time is within the specified hours, it will display an open image, if it any other time, it will display the closed image. It is easy to implement and looks great on a store hours page. It goes by the time of your server however so if your server is in a different timezone, adjust the hours accordingly. See a demo in action here.

<?php
/**
* Open / Closed script
* Try to edit only the ‘$hours’ array and the <img /> tags later on
* Editing anything else could give undesired results
*/

// These are the hours, correlating with the above days, in AM and PM format separated by ‘-’
$hours = array(’Sunday’ => ‘Closed’,
‘Monday’ => ‘By Appointment’,
‘Tuesday’ => ‘10AM-5PM’,
‘Wednesday’ => ‘10AM-5PM’,
‘Thursday’ => ‘10AM-5PM’,
‘Friday’ => ‘10AM-6PM’,
‘Saturday’ => ‘10AM-5PM’);

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Opinions are bound to vary on such a crucial and potentially controversial subject but … when do you think a design is done? Sure, there are goals to be met, clients to be appeased, but at the end of the day it is the designer who decides when something is actually finished. Is it alright to simply meet the expectations of someone else or do you need to have your own goals continually in mind as well?
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Science Machine from Chad Pugh on Vimeo.

The design process is always something of a mystery to people new to a program. One great way to start learning how to use a design program is simply by watching someone at work. Now, try this on for size: approximately forty hours of using Illustrator all compacted into a few short minutes. The artist considers this part art, part music video, and it is certainly all kinds of interesting.

Whether you are just starting out or a seasoned veteran these tools, tutorials, lists and other resources are great sites for any web designer. Organized into helpful categories (design inspiration, CSS resources, web design guides, color tools, free fonts and more) this collection not only has useful resources but also categorized links to other lists with 100s more. If you’re not a designer but still need to create sites you still might be best off spending a few bucks on a web page creation tool with a simple GUI than hiring a designer but can still use the first section below and these great wallpapers to get design inspiration!

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