Paul Burgess

Over the past few months, Web Designer Magazine has been including photos from my Urban Dirty website on their free CDs and using the images in their Photoshop tutorials. The latest appearance is in the Dutch version of the magazine where 80 photos are on the free CD, more photos from Urban Dirty are set to be included in a few other prominent design magazines over the coming months.

» See all of my magazine and press appearances

Delarge is the main creative outlet for myself and a few friends. I have redesigned and restructured it:

Delarge is a place for all the things we like to do and features loads of original desktop wallpapers, sticker sheet downloads and a Flickr-powered photo gallery amongst other things. The first version of this site went live in July 2000 (it looked like this) and has grown whilst building a steady stream of traffic ever since.

The web has changed a lot since this project started, what I wanted to do with this version was bring in content from other sources in a wise way. The homepage features the ‘Open Mic’ shoutbox using the same code as my Bandnamr project, we have a link column featuring stuff we love which is powered by bookmarking site Del.icio.us, making it a breeze to update. There is also a nice image slideshow of images we like which is sourced from weheartit.com. Plus a feed of what we are listening to via Last FM, most of this is achieved by using a service called Yahoo Pipes, which allows you to play and mould a lot of data from the web.

Another touch which allowed some interaction is the ‘Choose header’ option at the top which lets you pick from 3 header designs, and the site will remember what you chose. In the version I also pushed a lot of the old, less updated content to the background by leaving them as links in the footer. I am very pleased with how this design turned out and I hope it carries the site well in the future as we head for the project’s 10th year.

» Visit delarge.co.uk

Nettuts is a popular tutorial website offering useful tips and tricks on web design and development. I wrote a tutorial on how to ‘Build a ‘WordBurner’ Email Newsletter Manager using WordPress and FeedBurner’ which was published on the site. I run through a technique to create and send email newsletters using the Wordpress blogging system combined with a service called FeedBurner.

The ‘WordBurner’ method was an idea that struck me when Miss Aniela asked me to provide her with the means to send out a newsletter. She already had a Wordpress blog which she was comfortable using and a FeedBurner RSS feed, so I combined the two to create this way of handling email updates.

This is the first tutorial I have written and I’m so pleased to see it up on Nettuts, the feedback seems positive too. Massive thanks to Collis for publishing it.

» Read my tutorial on nettuts.com

8 Facts is another small just-for-fun personal project that builds on the techniques used in creating Bandnamr. The idea behind 8facts is simple, you submit 8 random facts about yourself, one of which should be made up. I had the idea about a year ago but never did anything with it, the a recent phase of ‘tagging’ people in blogs to publish facts about themseleves spurred me to create the site. Again, this is open to anybody, no sign up required and the submission system uses the ‘honeypot’ method to avoid spam (as mentioned in the Bandnamr summary).

This site was another experiment is a form open to the public, user experience and avoiding spam. I also wanted to try out ‘widgets’ with the facts. This means that after you make a submission, you are able to copy and paste some code into your own blog of website that will display your 8 facts. Adding to the ability to share the information. So far the submissions give a unique and very interesting insight into people’s lives, which was the ultimate intention.

» Visit 8facts.com

Bandnamr is a small fun personal project that acts as an open pool of band names and suggestions. You simply enter your name and the band name idea into the form and submit it. The result is a collection of funny, decent and sometimes downright rude band names.

Behind this simple idea was an oppurtunity to practice a technique called ‘ajax’ and to experiment with a website and form left open to the public. After reading the book ‘Bulletproof Ajax‘ I was keen to try out the techniques involved, so when you submit a band name you will see a smooth seemingly instant procedure, rather than the typical scenario of the whole web page refreshing.

I also tried out something known as the ‘honeypot technique’ to protect the site from spam submissions. This involves including a hidden field named ’subject’ which attracts spamming systems, just as bees would be attracted to a honeypot. When the form is submiited it checks to see if ’subject’ has been filled in, if it has, it ignores the submission… so far so good.

» Visit bandnamr.com