I have just finished work on dahost.net – the main web server for Design Extreme that hosts hundreds of websites from all over the world.
The previous design was really bad, it had a splash page that made people turn away, a cluttered design, complicated tables of hosting services, nine sets of prices for each hosting service… I am thinking of showing how the site design has changed over the past few years with a few screens side-by-side.
I have always had the intention of getting someone else to do this website design – but other designers have always shown some really crap ideas. First Ben produced some brightly coloured boxes as a "design" and then a friend of Alex Beston, Neil produced a "design" that was simply a few words in light grey… I still have no idea what he was trying to achieve by this. I’ll see if I can find them for you to show you what I mean.
The new website is written by me from scratch in PHP (my first real PHP website). The design is plain and simple and kind of boxy (not my usual style). The payment forms are really clever and remember everything you enter so that you can go backwards and forwards as you like. It sends out a nice HTML email on completion too. I asked to create a new header design as mine is a little dull.
You can see some of the past designs if you click on the "version 3" link at the bottom of the page.
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