Comprehensive Web Design Checklist Ð When it comes to pleasing customers, there is no better way than to know exactly what they want and need from your services. This checklist leaves virtually nothing to chance, and runs through everything you need to know from start to finish.

How I Approach Logo Design Ð A Checklist Ð For those who are designing a logo, itÕs important to remember that itÕs almost impossible for the customer to convey what they want the first time around. This checklist will help eliminate any issues that may arise from the start of the project.

20 Questions to Ask Prior to Designing a Logo Ð This is a more in depth look at logo design, and will quite easily put your work a cut above the rest for your client, as well as making the whole process much smoother.

4 Critical Logo Design Details You May Be Forgetting About Ð This is a great supplement to ensure that youÕre delivering the highest quality work possible with your logo designs.

Web Design Best Practices Checklist Ð By using this step by step, very detailed checklist, you can ensure that your website will launch without too many issues slowing down the process. This is the perfect checklist to live by if youÕre building a site for someone other than yourself.

25-Point Website Usability Checklist Ð ItÕs important to make sure that your site not only looks its best before launch, but also that it is completely navigable. This checklist should help knock out any unknowns before you open it up to the public.

Quick Usability Checklist Ð Even after youÕve checked your site over and over again, there is still going to be room for improvement. This quick checklist will help you eliminate any easy problems related to usability.

The Ultimate Website Launch Checklist Ð HereÕs another comprehensive checklist that will allow you to be sure that your website is ready to be launched. Some of the points will seem redundant, but they are all things that are commonly overlooked, especially by those who build sites for a living.

Bloggers To Do Checklist Before Hitting the Publish Button Ð This is obviously geared towards those who own a blog. This checklist will help you edit your posts to ensure that they will actually be read.

Web Standards Checklist Ð For those people who are trying to conform their site to a set of web standards, this is the perfect checklist that will encompass all of your needs.

Successful Website Checklist Challenge Ð For those who want to earn an income online, this is the ideal checklist. It will walk you through the process of designing a website in an easy to follow format, and will allow you to make sure that youÕre doing everything you need to in order to succeed.

Free Website Design Planning Checklist Ð Offered by Moore Business Results, this checklist is geared towards those who know what they want, but need a little guidance and help to be sure theyÕre going about things the right way.

Essential Navigation Checklist for Web Design Ð This checklist will run through all of the necessities of navigation on your website to ensure that you have everything setup for the end user to be able to use your site properly.

Checklist for Usability Forms Ð If you use forms, you need to go through this detailed checklist. It offers great advice for being able to allow your users to actually get through your forms and also offers you an in-depth perspective about how someone may view it on your site.

WebmasterÕs Turbo Kit Ð This is a checklist that offers fifty tips and tricks that will ultimately increase your site’s performance and decrease load times.

50 Questions to Evaluate the Quality of Your Website Ð Pretty straight forward title. This list will help you to ensure that you are using the best possible design for your website, and help you see and evaluate problem areas. This is perfect for someone who does most of their own website work.

BeginnerÕs Checklist Before Debugging CSS Ð This checklist is designed to reduce the time that you have to spend going through CSS code in an attempt to find a problem. It does this by allowing you to find problem areas and fix them before they act up.

Everyday Usability Ð This is a fourteen point checklist that will help you to design and maintain a properly functioning website. The idea is that you donÕt make money if your website is down half the time, and because of variations in people and other computers that interact with your website, it is inevitable that it will go down without the right maintenance.

Website Design Checklist Ð Though this isnÕt a traditional checklist, there are a great number of tools available that allow the webmaster (you or someone you pay) of your site to take advantage of. It has been included here because of the advice and tools that you normally wonÕt see.

Checklist for Securing PHP Configuration Ð Here is a checklist that is vital to ensure the security of a time honored coding that comes with a terrible default setting.

Ruby on Rails Code Quality Checklist Ð Although many people consider Ruby and Ruby on Rails to be a superior language and framework, this doesn’t mean that it’s easy to master. Because doing well with Ruby and Ruby on Rails may require you to change your mentality about development, this checklist can help you ensure that you’re on the right track.

The Best Damn Web Marketing Checklist, Period! Ð If you want to run a successful site, web marketing is a must. This checklist will allow you to see how you can improve your marketing skills, and help you to be more successful.

Common Sense SEO Checklist Ð This is a great, down to Earth checklist for SEO purposes. This checklist will help you to be more concise with your SEO content, and allow you the most bang for your buck.

Web Redesign Checklist 1 Ð This is a great checklist that offers you a ton of useful information for improving your site design in many different ways. ItÕs long and very comprehensive, but most people will find it to be extremely useful.

Firebug Lite Ð Firebug Lite is a smaller version of the ever-popular Firebug tool for Firefox. It’s used to view and change the coding of a particular website quickly and easily, without the need to leave a browser. The ÒLiteÓ version for Chrome is ideal for someone who needs to make quick repairs.

IE Tab Ð This tool allows you to view your webpage through the eyes of an Internet Explorer user (the most popular browser for the average person).

Chrome SEO Ð Chrome SEO is a great little tool for anyone who uses a search engine to increase traffic to their site. It takes various data sets from different engines and allows you to use them in an attempt to make your site more search friendly.

Resolution Test Ð Ensuring that your site is viewable and accessible at different resolutions is important. This Chrome tool takes all of the guess work out, and allows you to view your site in various resolutions.

Speed Tracer Ð Finding the point that makes you site run slowly is important for everyone involved. If a site owner canÕt fix a slow site, they will likely lose customers in todayÕs fast paced world. Speed Tracer tells you exactly how long it takes for certain aspects to load, giving you an easy way to edit different areas.

BuiltWith Ð This is a tool that is useful for tracking down that special something that you see on someone elseÕs website but canÕt quite figure out what it is. BuiltWith will tell you what widgets or tools were used to create a particular part of any website.

Domain Availability Checker Ð Tools like this are the perfect accessory to anyone who is building an online business. With this tool, you can check the availability of possible mirror site domain names from your toolbar, instead of running all over the internet.

Pendule Ð Pendule allows you to look at the linked and embedded style sheets in the same browser window, but just on a new tab.

Aviary Ð This allows you to take screen shots and edit them without having to transfer programs. By being able to do this in your browser, you can get a better feel for what youÕre going to end up with, and also decrease the amount of time it takes you.

PlainClothes Ð For anyone who ever wished it was simpler to get through the actual content of a website, this is your tool. Instead of styling everything up with newer and fancier aspects, it quickly and effectively renders everything to its most basic form, allowing you to get through it simply.

Snippy Ð Snippy is a great way to take little pieces of individual websites and store them on Google Docs for later use.

FlashBlock Ð This does exactly as the name implies. It blocks all flash from loading until youÕre ready to view it.

Validity Ð This tool allows you to validate your HTML documents quickly and easily from the toolbar. By using this tool, you can get through more of your daily workload in a more time effective manner.

MeasureIt! Ð MeasureIt! is a simple tool, but one that is very necessary. It takes an area of a webpage that you determine and tells you its exact size in pixel height and width.

LastPass Ð LastPass manages your passwords, and can even fill out forms for you to be more efficient. This is a more secure management program than writing it on paper or keeping it in a file on your computer.

Chrome Sniffer Ð This tool will allow you to examine all of the framework and JavaScript libraries that are present on a particular page.

Google Tasks Ð Google Tasks is a great little tool that allows you to easily access your schedule so you can make notes or simply look at what you have planned for the day.

JavaScript Console Ð If you use JS and want to start using Chrome for your development needs, this is the tool for you. It offers a Chrome compatible console so you can do simple prototyping on any page.

Ibrii Ð Ibrii allows you to snip anything, from basic text to streaming audio and video, and later send it to your friends and/or colleagues. This is a great tool if youÕre just getting setup and want to share ideas about different things with all of the parties involved.

Webpage Screenshot Ð This is an extension for Chrome that will allow you capture an entire page with a single screenshot, no matter the size.

Touch Screens

The most necessary aspect of creating a mobile website is to make sure that itÕs touch screen compatible. With the sheer number of touch screen phones flooding the market, it is imperative that you are able to reach out to as many of these users as possible. This doesnÕt mean that you should ignore other aspects of the site, just that it is a priority with all of the phones available.

Geolocation

Here is another great tool to use. The GPS locators on most phones can be used (if not turned off by the owner) to locate where a potential customer is currently using their mobile device. Whether you have a brick and mortar store or are building a site that allows people to connect with each other, there are an endless amount of interesting things you can do by integrating geolocation into your design process.

Creating a Usable Mobile Site

In order for a mobile website to be useful to people, it has to be optimized so that they donÕt have to constantly zoom in and out in order to read the text or see the pictures. To do this, many applications have been developed for specific websites (WordPress and WPTouch or WPTap, which optimize the WordPress platform for iPhones and Droid devices) that allow you to create the ideal mobile site for your target audience.

Other tools include things like Mobify, which will help create an easy to use and follow compression of the site in order to make it more user friendly when accessed from a mobile device. Mobify in particular creates an environment that anyone with CSS or HTML coding can almost effortlessly make the necessary changes to their website.

Opera is a great browser to test all of your new mobile website configurations. You can use actually use a feature of Opera to see how your website will appear on a standard cell phone screen.

Conclusion

With all of the tools and information that are available to you, it is easy to get carried away in an attempt to reach out to as many people as possible. However, it’s important to remember that people still prefer clean lines and smooth functions over gaudy websites that degrade the speed and quality of their device. Keep in mind that this doesnÕt mean that you canÕt do new things and make a fun and interactive site; just remember that itÕs still a phone and has another, more important purpose. Nevertheless, by using one or all of the services that caters to your style website, you can easily increase traffic and (hopefully) profits in a short amount of time by harnessing the power of mobile.

Web Developer Ð If you want to get the most out of your browser, you need to get this add-on. Web Developer is an easy to use system that adds several development tools to your browser’s toolbar and allows you to make changes quickly and easily.

Codetech 0.4.3 Ð This is a must have extension if you need to make changes to your documents on the fly. Codetech allows you to open your documents on a half of the window so that you can continue to browse while making any necessary changes. This particular plug-in is often said to have the feel of Dreamweaver, but just in a Firefox environment.

Greasemonkey Ð This add-on takes the JavaScript on a website and let’s you sit down and customize it until you get it just the way you want. Greasemonkey is an easy to use add-on that will even allow you to write different scripts for other areas of your life (i.e. games). Unfortunately, it does take up a fair bit of memory, and may need to be adjusted if you donÕt have several GBÕs installed.

Alexa Sparky Ð Alexa Sparky goes with you on all of your travels through the Internet and, as a non-intrusive way to gather data that could help your marketing plans, relays Alexa data to you via a small toolbar on your browser. This can allow you to adjust your advertising, product or service expansion and marketing plans ahead of what trends are forming in the online marketplace.

ColorZilla Ð Have you ever wanted the color that you see over and over on the Internet but canÕt seem to find it in any program that you have on your computer? Well, with ColorZilla, you donÕt have to struggle to find a color anymore. With this tool, you can quickly and easily find any color code from any website for your own use later.

FireShot Ð With this tool, you will be able to take screenshots of a website (visible or entirety) quickly and easily. This add-on also offers annotation tools that allow you to noticeably mark an area of a webpage.

OperaView Ð This add-on allows you to open different pages in Opera while you are using Firefox to browse the Internet.

Window Resizer Ð One of the most difficult parts of creating a website is making one that works with every computer and every program. Window Resizer allows you to resize windows in other standard resolution sizes to ensure that it works properly across multiple resolutions.

IE Tab Ð When it comes to making a website that works for everyone, nothing is more important than making sure that your site is viewable in as many browsers as possible. With this tool, you can quickly check for compatibility with IE and never have to leave the comfort of your Firefox window.

Palette Grabber Ð This tool allows you to get a color scheme for one of a number of photo/image editors. However, unlike other similar tools, the scheme that is generated is based around the website that it’s being used on, and not just created randomly.

FireFTP Ð If you get tired of having to access your server from a separate window, this is the perfect add-on for you. This is a free, secure and easy to use cross-platform add-on for anyone who needs to use FTP.

Font Finder Ð When people build a site, they tend to worry about every little detail. If youÕve been trying to get the perfect font but canÕt seem to find it, then you need this tool. This add-on will allow you to find any CSS font in an easy to follow format.

Save As Image Ð This particular program allows you to save any part of the screen youÕre looking at directly through Firefox. In general, more people use Firefox for its capabilities in web design and other areas, and this add-on is just one more reason to make the switch from IE.

Pearl Crescent Ð Pearl Crescent is yet another Firefox plug-in. However, it does allow you a few more options over Save As Image.

ieSnapshotter Ð This extension of Internet Explorer is compatible with any IE version, as long as it is being run on a WindowÕs 98 or newer platform. ieSnapshotter allows you to take screenshots of any webpage and turn them into thumbnails or keep them the same size. You can also adjust the colors and look of the page.

SnagIt Ð SnagIt is one of the best standalone screen capture programs available on the market today. It can be used in conjunction with Firefox or separately, and you can even replace the Òprint screenÓ function with one of its own.

FastStone Capture Ð This is a great utility tool that allows you to select and capture any area of the screen at a single time or at individual intervals. With the freehand options you can focus in on anything from text, to pictures and even just individual areas.

Paparazzi! Ð This is an application specifically designed for the Mac OSX system. It is a lightweight program that allows you to easily take screenshots when you need them.

WebShot Ð This is the perfect screen capture program for when you need to get a whole website at once. WebShot allows you to capture individual pages or an entire site. It features an automatic system that let’s you bypass the tediousness of taking individual screenshots.

I4X Screencatcher Ð This tool allows you to adjust how much of the screen you want to actually capture in the screenshot. From smaller areas that you delegate to the entire screen picture to just the page youÕre working on, it will do it all.

Thumbalizr Ð This is an online tool for taking screenshots of websites. You simply input the URL of the site that you want, and you get a screenshot in return. The downside is that, like most web based screen capture programs, this is unreliable. Nevertheless, it would do in a pinch (such as when you’re out of town and away from your normal computer).

FormSpring Ð This is a great all around tool that allows you to create forms for nearly anything you could ever need. There are a great number of options for the beginner, as well as the expert, to use in with this service and a pricing plan that can suit any budget.

Wufoo Ð This tool uses HTML to create surveys, registrations and even online payment forms to suit your business. Wufoo offers a simple, step-by-step process to create whatever it is that you need, and to do it in a format you can simply past over to your site. Because of its more specialized forms, the depth of creation is excellent and its ease of use makes it great for anyone with a website.

Icebrrg Ð Icebrrg offers more flexibility in their form creation than some others by allowing it to easily be exported to Excel so you can match it up with other documents you are keeping there.

FormSite Ð When it comes to getting the most bang for your buck, FormSite is second to none. With a free service that allows you to create five forms and process one hundred submissions, it is by far, one of the best values available.

FormExperts Ð This service has more than one hundred different templates that encompass a wide variety of uses. However, in order to accept payments from people using these forms, you must sign up for an account, which starts at around $17.

MachForm Ð MachForm is your one stop solution to easy PHP forms. The rates are competitive, and they save you from the headache of having to code each piece of the form.

Email Me Form Ð When it comes to templates, this free unlimited service takes the cake. There are almost endless options for creating forms with PHP and HTML that are all for free, as long as you include an advertising link back to the site. Advertisement free plans start at $9.99 per month.

FormLogix Ð This tool is on the high end of the price scale, but the features are well worth the money. In many cases, with the unlimited plan, you can create forms that will greatly increase your site’s organization, and can save or earn you hundreds to thousands of dollars each month.

FormAssembly Ð FormAssembly is an ideal option for small business owners who do some business online, but not the bulk of it. This tool offers a wide variety of forms that are at your disposal, and there are many payment plans to fit any budget.