Ryanware

A site I design and now maintain (but do not own) has just gone live today. It’s called BackyardDiscounts. We sell stuff ranging from barbecue grills to playground equipment. Basically, stuff for your backyard. We are going to be adding hot tub/spa accessories, more backyard/outdoor furniture, more bbq grills, more hammocks, etc. Right now there isn’t a huge selection of products online, but we’re constantly adding more (about every other day).

I really like how the site turned out. Please let me know what you think. If you have any comments on the CSS/XHTML I’m interested in hearing them. I don’t have access to a Mac so I don’t know what it looks like in Safari. Now… the site does use tables for it’s layout (I know! I know!). I wanted to make it easy for someone else less experienced (not that I’m the best) to change in the future without ripping their eyes out. So since it’s in tables I really really doubt any good browsers will have problems with the CSS. The only browser work around was for IE (surprise!), using “html > body”.

For the shopping cart and e-commerce, I decided to use ICCart, by Home on the Web. I know them very well and really like the ICCart backend system. It rocks. If you’re running a drop ship business there is no better solution.

I created the site with Dreamweaver MX , TopStyle Lite, and EditPlus.

All of this is only a partial shameless plug since I don’t own any of the sites or services I’ve mentioned (especially not the last three). So give me some slack, okay?

www.backyarddiscounts.com

It may just be because I’ve been very out of touch with what has been happening on the web for the past two weeks (lots of work being the reason), but it seems odd that there hasn’t been a buzz about MSN.com’s complete CSS Redesign. People went nuts when Yahoo did it to their home page.

Way to go MSN.

I seem to go through phases. Some days, months, weeks, whatever I want to mess around with CSS and lots of design oriented things, although I’m generally not very good at design. Other times though all I want is to code code code (not CSS/XHTML code). For the last month all I’ve wanted to do is write code. Problem is, I’m in the middle of several design projects, but I can’t seem to get into them enough to get them done in any good amount of time! Give me a text editor and let me write code! No more data entry, CSS, tables, or Dreamweaver! No more HTML, XHTML, or CSS (well, unless needed for the following…). I want PHP. I want MySQL. I want JavaScript. I want to swing dance! But I digress, but I also can’t help it. I really love swing dancing. Anyway, I can’t seem to get myself to really put my full efforts into these other projects. While I don’t want this geek code phase to pass I really need to finish what I’ve started with the design projects.

I also need to get off my rear end and do something besides programming and swing dancing. I need to hang out with some people (preferrably girls) in non-dancing environments, but I digress. Skiing was fun last week. I need to get my film developed. I need a digital camera. Okay, I want a digital camera. I want to get my film developed. I need to go buy a USB key. Okay so I don’t need that either. What was I talking about again?