YoDiv Tips, Tricks, Help and Chatter

YoDiv gets a makeover!

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:45:06 +0000

It’s celebration time at YoDiv, with the launch of a completely new backoffice studio system.

The Divlets have been beavering away in their cubicles the last few months, it’s finally ready!

Now with full E-Commerce fulfilment and a redesigned interface, users will notice the system is cleaner, more agile and a lot easier to use.

YoDiv is the chosen supplier of clean, compliant code for hundreds of clients including national theatres, government blogs, charitable organisations and even some famous sporting personalities!

To celebrate our fresh lick of paint, we’re giving away 10% off all orders during March and April (Limited to one per person).

To take advantage of this offer, simply enter ‘CELEBRATE’ in the Notes field when uploading
your job for 10% reduction on the bill!

US Customers get cheaper prices!!

Dan Griffey — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 16:56:40 +0000

Thanks to the ~~glorious~~ current economic conditions, and the falling value of the pound against the US Dollar, we are, err, pleased to remind our US customers that this equates to almost a 15% discount on our pricing. That means all the usual great XHTML and CSS work for a *really great* price.

Submit your first job in our easy to use studio, and take advantage of better rates!

As featured on: sixrevisions.com / dezinerfolio.com

Dan Griffey — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 10:13:05 +0000

We’re pleased to see our Twitter based inspiration website is featured on the latest article at sixrevisions.com.

Check it out here!

Update!: We’re also being featured on the latest article at dezinerfolio.com

FOWA - Vote for your favourite web apps.

Dan Griffey — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:56:09 +0000

Next week it’s Future of Web Apps London (a great event from the team at Carsonified) and in order to ~~jump on the band wagon~~ celebrate the occasion we want to you to vote for your favourite web apps.

Jump over to the great little Twitter app - DivVoted.com - and follow the simple instructions to vote for your favourite most loved Web Applications. Vote every day and check back here where we’ll be blogging about more YoDiv and DivVoted related FOWA greatness as the event approaches.

Global recognition and awareness for YoDiv.com…

admin — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:42:21 +0000

Since their birth / arrival into this digital global world, the Divlets not only have they been trying to get to grips with numerous task’s set apon them from they’re counterpart foe’s, Mrs PNG, MR PSD and Junior AI, but appear to be gaining quite a reputation for being featured amongst all sorts of various magazine feature’s (most notably for good illustration examples) and design galleries. Now, seing as this is the world wide web, tracking all these recognitions can be a difficult task to accomplish for any no matter how popular one may be. Soooo, we got all excited and decided it be a good idea to keep all this awareness under one hat and provide you with a pre-compiled list of where the Divlet’s have been seen / heard.

Magazine Features:
Noupe.com has very kindly listed the Div army under item 30 in this list of character illustrations in modern web design.

Smashing Magazine, quite a widely known magazine amongst budding designers, listed the footer of YoDiv.com amongst their examples.

Design Galleries
1. StyleCrunch.com
2. csscatwalk.com
3. commandshift3.com
4. bestwebgallery.com
5. cssartilliery.com
6. designshack.com
7. cssmania.com
8. webcreme.com
9. cssmoon.com
10. w3csites.com

Miscellaneous Locations
1. YoDiv screenshots featured on sulcalibur flickr and lilit flickr accounts.

Many thanks to all those listed here (and more soon to come as time goes by) for accepting us on your site. Please feel free to drop by any more Divlet sightings on your www surfing’s by posting a comment below.

Want More…. Just ask!

Dan Griffey — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:32:10 +0000

Here at YoDiv our team of dedicated Divlets are talented, they turn your designs into great sites with perfect CSS and XHTML, but there is more than just slicing.

Clients often ask us extra questions: “How can I make this blog work?”, “Can you put my Flickr feed on this page?”,”Hey, it would be great to show my Twitter status here!”.
Our response - “Why not!”

So we are pleased to say that our team of Divlets can cater for your extra needs, including:

Wordpress Integration / Themes (inc version 2.5) from your designs.
Integration of API’s - Flickr, YouTube, Upcoming.org
Integration of Micro Blog services - Twitter, Pownce

How do you get these services - just ask. There’s a small fee for each of the items we plugin to your site, but it’s not going to break the budget, and we do it a lot so can make sure it works for your site.

And what if it isn’t on this list - just ask. We’re happy to keep the Divlets busy with your every need!

Designing with folders in mind

Wez Maynard — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 12:21:35 +0000

In order to be 100% confident that your design will be made exactly to your specifications, its helpful for the divlets if your files are structured in a logical and methodical way. The easiest way to achieve this is by using clearly labeled folders within your psd / png or eps file.

Within the three premier design suites, (photoshop, fireworks and illustrator), folders can help keep you structured and save you valuable time.

By creating your master page layers, (see the “help” section to learn the difference between master and sub pages), within one folder and then duplicating the folder once you are finished with the design will give you a ready to go template to work your sub pages into. This in turn will save you time and make sure all your sub pages start with the same layout.

Below is a simple folder hierarchy for a site YoDiv has recently built. It is labeled perfectly and was very quick and simple for the divlets to create the subsequent site. There were 3 pages in this site, 1 master and 2 subpages. The site contain a home page, about page and a contact page. Within the homepage the designer had added other smaller folders that contained various complex elements such as picture buttons and “sign up” boxes.

In this image you can also see how the designer added header and footer folders. These could be anything, but if you have content that you’d like on every page, side navigation for example, it helps if it’s in its own folder.

When composing your creation, web design also allows the designer to think of additional elements unique to interactive design, “change states”. These are simply the effects the user experiences when they place their mouse over something, or visit a page.

These changes are usually unique to navigation elements, research has shown that if the user experiences one of these “change states”, it becomes naturally intuitive to think of these as links.

The various “change states” are written into your pages in 3 various stages. Its resting state, the state at which a mouse arrow hovers above it and how it looks when you press down to activate it. Its a useful tool to have at your disposal, and to keep the divlets on the same page as you (no pun intended) please create a seperate folder and keep all your “change states” within this folder. (It might be helpful to categorize your pages in sub folders within the main “change state” folder).

In the example below we’ve shown just a few of the great ways other designers engage their audiences with “change states”.

Make it easier with labels

Dan Griffey — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 16:14:00 +0000

Some of our clients use YoDiv again and again, to work their great designs into some XHTML and CSS Magic. To make it easier for them to use our handy Studio we have added a place to add your own label to a job, meaning you can file your jobs for easy access.

It’s a bit like Gmail. You could label your own jobs ‘Personal’, and jobs for your own clients with ‘Clients’, or the client name. This will make it easy for your to filter your jobs when you come to downloading your files, or even recharging your clients for the great design you have done for them.

We hope you like the added feature, and if there is something you want to see in the Studio, write to us and let us know!

Starting your web app? Sprinkle it with some YoDiv Code…

Dan Griffey — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:36:34 +0000

The team at Carson Workshops (the guys behind such great events as FOWD and FOWA, as well as ThinkVitamin.com) have put together a list of useful tips and tricks that should help you when building your web app.
Featured at Number 6 on their list of things they have learned:

6. Don’t have your developer do the XHTML and CSS.

This may seem like a small point, but it’s one of the reasons why YoDiv really exists, and we couldn’t agree more.
Your web app is the money maker, your website is your billboard, so use experts for each section of your new business. After all when you work on your house you don’t trust the builders with the interior design !

The developers can work up their magic behind the scenes, and by trusting YoDiv with your great designs you can guarantee a great XHTML website that is search engine friendly and faithful to every element of your designers work.

Yet again we agree with the Carson word, and if you are at the next FOWD (London) why not look out for us.

Site Showcase: YoDiv

Wez Maynard — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:30:58 +0000

Our site showcase section is where YoDiv will display our favorite designers work, with their permission of course! Once the divlets have finished creating your masterpieces, if they have enjoyed building and like what they see, this is the area your designs will feature. On occasion we will endeavor to ask our designers to give us an insight into their thought process as well.

So our first entry into our showcase, is. . . . Well its YoDiv! So just to give a quick overview of why we love our site, here are a few things you might like to know.

The divlets have constructed YoDiv in such a way that it confirms to even the most stringent web standards, which we are very proud of. Also we hope that the site gives our designers everything they need to know before they choose YoDiv. Our site footer provides our designers with the latest useful web resources all available without cost.

Our greatest feature is our solid web studio application, where our designers upload and manage their projects from concept to packaged site ready for download. If you look really hard you may find our link to our downloadable goodies, including divlets ready for customization as well as a few other little surprises.

The reason we feel YoDiv works for our designers is the simplicity and speed with which they can have their visuals built into live websites. Designers are then able to present to their client and receive the praise they deserve for their concept. We hope all our designers enjoy having their own divlet workforce and love YoDiv as much as we do!