Linked here is the design concept i had started, we can:
1. All decide to scrap this and start anew after the weekend. 2. All decide to continue with this concept now. 3. Leave it up to @andrewsellenrick because he's next in line.
I will not be offended if we don't use what i did.
About my idea: Being that this is a community project, i thought it would be fitting to do something that benefits the community as a whole. The basic idea is that every act of kindness we do, makes this world a better place for everyone. What i envisioned is a bright design (colors in the files are totally just placeholders), where ppl can come and be a part of something good by submitting their commitment to do something nice.
Once again, i will not be offended if we don't use this.
I guess we just need to take a vote, I think that we should start on monday personally, skip all this holiday madness. Also, we need to decide what time zone do we want the person to be finished by, our days may end at different hours and someone might start working as another still is if we work late.
Pretty nice design. Personally, I would rather give the design away to Cuppy Cake Sam and use it on our portfolio. Remember that the concept was to design a piece of the website not a whole page lol. But again, I like the design and maybe that could be implemented somehow?
I think the only way to vote is to write: for example three options. Fully in detail, about what we are going to do, when what needs to be done and in what order. Then we make a vote. We make sure the voting is done before Monday. And in all options the start is Monday. (In the options we also mention the timezone to make sure there is no confusion)
What do you think?
P.S. PeretzM: I really like your design, good job! Depending on the direction we go we will or will not use the design. But either way, great job :)
I will be traveling a lot for the holidays and will be in Hawaii for a few days also. I can try to work on this when my day comes up but If I'm driving to a family Christmas it might be tough. I'm in favor of starting this after the new year.
That actually might be the best idea, give us plenty of time to plan everything before hand as well. I would be in favor of doing this, allow us to get our heads in order and come up with a legitimate plan and better execution.
Im all for waiting till after the hollidays. Also, Im good with donating the site. If we can get in contact with them, and they like the site, I would also like to build it for them.
UPDATE: I just got an email from Sam's parents saying they are all for this idea and gave me their number. She said they have been wanting to update their site for a while now. I really think we should jump on board after the holidays asap on this.
EDIT: Sam's parents would rather us re-design their charity website Kindness For Kids. His mother said she made the website through a web builder so she would appreciate an update and wanted to thank all of us if we decide to go through with it.
That's pretty awesome they are on board with it and sound like they'll definitely use the final product. I can provide free hosting if that's needed, and help convert the final design into a website. Probably thinking too far ahead but we might wanna consider something like PageLime to makes updates easy for them.
I talked to her on the phone around 7pm (EST) and she said she's definitely all for it. She was talking to me about what Sam is doing and what not. She wanted a page for Sam and she mentioned "Sam's World". Therefore Sam could post pictures since he's getting a camera. A blog might be cool for that. I asked a few questions about hosting but didn't really get a final answer or maybe she wasn't clear or knew what I meant. Chris, if you could provide free hosting including helping us code it, that would be extremely generous and appreciative. Also I definitely think we need some sort of CMS since they have no idea how to code. Anyway, below is the email from me and her.
Email To Sam's Parents: Good Afternoon,
We are trying to get in contact with the legal guardians of Sam. In the wake of the holiday season, we would like to donate a modern website to Sam courtesy of CSS-Tricks.com, a ChrisCoyier.net community. 10 website designers have come together to work on this project. If you could please get back to us, we would appreciate it. I would just like to mention we are not soliciting anything, we just wanted to do something for charity for the holidays and we noticed Sam's achievements with his book and his fight to find a cure for IGM Nephropathy.
Thank You, Christopher William
Reply From Sam's Parents Angie Allred to chris show details 6:03 PM (6 hours ago) Hi Christopher,
Thank you for your kind offer, we have needed some help for quite sometime. I am Sam's mother, Angie, you can contact me at (PHONE NUMBER EDITED FOR PRIVACY) I look forward to talking with you.
Thank you, Angela Allred President Kindness for Kids Inc.
This is fantastic, I think we should jump the gun asap too and get this guy going on monday, try to make this as painless of a process as possible for them.
@CWDESIGN I just read up on all of this, this is tottaly awesome! I could also help code it. I do think it has to be coded by one person. That's probably the easiest. If Chris wants to do it, i'm fine with that.
PageLime as a CMS could work, it's very simple. But if he want's something to blog I would suggest Wordpress. It's not difficult to use at all. And it's nice for when he wants to get more control. This is just my opinion, but we do have to take it into consideration.
Awesome that Chris is getting involved. We shouldn't wait to long I suppose. Keep us all posted through this post. I'm looking forward to make someone happy ;)
@rickylamerz I think it would be best if we all coded it, and Chris can go through it to add/delete things or take a turn in coding it.
Angie (Sam's Mom) said she really doesn't let Sam on the computer to read his youtube comments and I'm sure everyone is aware why (Negativity). She said he was getting a camera because he goes on all these trips and wants to take pictures, and maybe he could have a "Sam's World" Page where he could upload photos. So I suggested a blog of some sort where he could give a description of where he is and what he's doing. I tried pressing for a twitter account but i'm not sure she is aware of what twitter really does. I think she's very cautious on the negative comments he is receiving through youtube and does not want him to see it of course. Chris' suggestion of offering free hosting is beyond what I had in mind, and is extremely generous, so thanks @ChrisCoyier for that offer, I think we should take you up on it. I checked PageLime and Chris is right there, we should use that instead of wordpress because of its simplicity. Throw out some ideas!
Also: I emailed Chris asking if we could have a private discussion forum or password protected page to discuss everything without being indexed on search engines.
That would be really good too. The design process should only be handled by us and if it is on a public forum like this, somebody could easily destruct what we have done. I am really proud of this community and everybody coming together like this. I looked at PageLime as well and it is extremely easy, I think that will be just fine to use.
@CWDESIGN, does the organization already have a logo that they would like to use for anything or would she like something done in that area?
Wow this is shaping up to be quite a neat little project :)
I'm slighly worried about the "everyone coding it" part. Too many hands in the kitchen can get REALLY messy on the coding side.
My thought is that we should have 1 person code it, but everyone pitching in ideas for what elements to code into it (or at least a code design phase, or window of time, before we complete it). We could spawn quite a few neat little visual tricks between everyone giving ideas. And I'm fairly sure it'll be a learning experience as well to come up with how do to some of our ideas - those I'm kind of looking forward to some of Chris' input.
Would it be worth asking if they have any interest in having the logo revisited / revised / redesigned? We could create quite a few designs and have them choose the one they would like, then revise it and then deliver it to them for any use they might want. They could also be in love with the logo, but I'd like to make sure.
All great ideas! I have another suggestion, can we share a Dropbox folder with all the files. So we all have acces to things like previous .PSD version for when we're designing. And we all get instant updates on when things are being made. It will also be very nice for when we start coding.
We could list our email adresses and share the Dropbox folder that way. What do you think?
Good idea. I would rather have one link to the files and not jump around where people are hosting them on their site and so on. One link for all the files would be great.
Before we even start, we should all be at an agreement as to certain things for this website. Such as do we all agree
-Chris codes the site at the end -Use dropbox for the files -etc
My Email: christopherwilliamdesign@gmail.com
I also use gmail chat incase anyone wants to add me there.
I'll agree with whatever we decide. I'll be in Hawaii tomorrow through the 4th. If my turn comes inside of those dates please just skip over me and move me to the bottom of the list.
I have everyone who has given their email in a list in my gmail account,once everyone has given their email, we should discuss it further through there or like @CWDESIGN said, a private thread or forum.
I'd like to throw in my two cents to how this is organized. Chris Coyier, I know you're wanting to limit this to possibly ten people, which is a good idea if you want to avoid the Too-Many-Cooks problem, but I want to offer you another idea so more people can have at least a little input:
Set up a repository, be it SVN, Git, Mercurial, whathaveyou. Let people pull the project, make modifications, and let them submit patches up. You have a team of qualified people, the moderator team, who could monitor the patches, approving or dropping them. In a sense, this would be following a congressional style, letting everybody contribute but still have a reasonable and fair congress to judge the modifications. And, yes, Git CAN monitor binary blob changes, so the .psd file would have a change-log description on it.
My hope is that such a plan could let this be a project that would be a true CSS-Tricks-community project that was curated by the CSS-Tricks team. As it stands now, it's just you (Chris Coyier) leading a small section of the CSS-Tricks community.
Essentially, you're taking a small-group profession (web design and development) and applying a Computer Science methodology to development.
Sorry, I would love to help, but between school and private contracts, I'd love to use the little bit of free time for the little bit of a social life I can afford ;)
I wish luck to you guys anyways! Hope the site comes out as great as I think it will.
@ChristopherBurton and @ozee, assuming you didn't read my comment, I was giving an option to you guys so you could have a _real_ crowdsourced project. As it stands now, it's an amateur ring with a professional sponsor, not really a "crowdsourced" project.
I like your suggestion if possibly it wouldn't get out of hand. What we have going right now is a great thing but maybe we can do this again in the spring or whenever with a much much larger group of people.
1. All decide to scrap this and start anew after the weekend.
2. All decide to continue with this concept now.
3. Leave it up to @andrewsellenrick because he's next in line.
I will not be offended if we don't use what i did.
About my idea:
Being that this is a community project, i thought it would be fitting to do something that benefits the community as a whole. The basic idea is that every act of kindness we do, makes this world a better place for everyone. What i envisioned is a bright design (colors in the files are totally just placeholders), where ppl can come and be a part of something good by submitting their commitment to do something nice.
Once again, i will not be offended if we don't use this.
Good luck.
Pretty nice design. Personally, I would rather give the design away to Cuppy Cake Sam and use it on our portfolio. Remember that the concept was to design a piece of the website not a whole page lol. But again, I like the design and maybe that could be implemented somehow?
Where is everyone else who volunteered?
What do you think?
P.S. PeretzM: I really like your design, good job! Depending on the direction we go we will or will not use the design. But either way, great job :)
LOL I saw I was #10... makes me self concious about what I'd do with it heh.
I've got gmail/gchat so after all the end-of-the-year madness I'll join whatever and get cracking on a plan.
EDIT: Sam's parents would rather us re-design their charity website Kindness For Kids. His mother said she made the website through a web builder so she would appreciate an update and wanted to thank all of us if we decide to go through with it.
Email To Sam's Parents:
Good Afternoon,
We are trying to get in contact with the legal guardians of Sam. In the wake of the holiday season, we would like to donate a modern website to Sam courtesy of CSS-Tricks.com, a ChrisCoyier.net community. 10 website designers have come together to work on this project. If you could please get back to us, we would appreciate it. I would just like to mention we are not soliciting anything, we just wanted to do something for charity for the holidays and we noticed Sam's achievements with his book and his fight to find a cure for IGM Nephropathy.
Thank You,
Christopher William
Reply From Sam's Parents
Angie Allred to chris
show details 6:03 PM (6 hours ago)
Hi Christopher,
Thank you for your kind offer, we have needed some help for quite sometime.
I am Sam's mother, Angie, you can contact me at
(PHONE NUMBER EDITED FOR PRIVACY)
I look forward to talking with you.
Thank you,
Angela Allred
President
Kindness for Kids Inc.
PageLime as a CMS could work, it's very simple. But if he want's something to blog I would suggest Wordpress. It's not difficult to use at all. And it's nice for when he wants to get more control. This is just my opinion, but we do have to take it into consideration.
Awesome that Chris is getting involved. We shouldn't wait to long I suppose. Keep us all posted through this post. I'm looking forward to make someone happy ;)
- Rick
Angie (Sam's Mom) said she really doesn't let Sam on the computer to read his youtube comments and I'm sure everyone is aware why (Negativity). She said he was getting a camera because he goes on all these trips and wants to take pictures, and maybe he could have a "Sam's World" Page where he could upload photos. So I suggested a blog of some sort where he could give a description of where he is and what he's doing. I tried pressing for a twitter account but i'm not sure she is aware of what twitter really does. I think she's very cautious on the negative comments he is receiving through youtube and does not want him to see it of course. Chris' suggestion of offering free hosting is beyond what I had in mind, and is extremely generous, so thanks @ChrisCoyier for that offer, I think we should take you up on it. I checked PageLime and Chris is right there, we should use that instead of wordpress because of its simplicity. Throw out some ideas!
Also: I emailed Chris asking if we could have a private discussion forum or password protected page to discuss everything without being indexed on search engines.
@CWDESIGN, does the organization already have a logo that they would like to use for anything or would she like something done in that area?
I'm slighly worried about the "everyone coding it" part. Too many hands in the kitchen can get REALLY messy on the coding side.
My thought is that we should have 1 person code it, but everyone pitching in ideas for what elements to code into it (or at least a code design phase, or window of time, before we complete it). We could spawn quite a few neat little visual tricks between everyone giving ideas. And I'm fairly sure it'll be a learning experience as well to come up with how do to some of our ideas - those I'm kind of looking forward to some of Chris' input.
Would it be worth asking if they have any interest in having the logo revisited / revised / redesigned? We could create quite a few designs and have them choose the one they would like, then revise it and then deliver it to them for any use they might want. They could also be in love with the logo, but I'd like to make sure.
We could list our email adresses and share the Dropbox folder that way. What do you think?
Before we even start, we should all be at an agreement as to certain things for this website. Such as do we all agree
-Chris codes the site at the end
-Use dropbox for the files
-etc
My Email: christopherwilliamdesign@gmail.com
I also use gmail chat incase anyone wants to add me there.
My email adres: ricklames@gmail.com
Also available for Gchat ;)
Indeed we should make write a list. Like CWDESIGN mentioned.
also, i don't know if i have the time to be first this time round, maybe we can reorder.
please send me your email so I can invite you to the private group.
I have created a private google group as Chris Coyier suggested for privacy. I need emails to invite you.
ChristopherWilliamDesign@gmail.com
Set up a repository, be it SVN, Git, Mercurial, whathaveyou. Let people pull the project, make modifications, and let them submit patches up. You have a team of qualified people, the moderator team, who could monitor the patches, approving or dropping them. In a sense, this would be following a congressional style, letting everybody contribute but still have a reasonable and fair congress to judge the modifications. And, yes, Git CAN monitor binary blob changes, so the .psd file would have a change-log description on it.
My hope is that such a plan could let this be a project that would be a true CSS-Tricks-community project that was curated by the CSS-Tricks team. As it stands now, it's just you (Chris Coyier) leading a small section of the CSS-Tricks community.
Essentially, you're taking a small-group profession (web design and development) and applying a Computer Science methodology to development.
I wish luck to you guys anyways! Hope the site comes out as great as I think it will.
I think when everyone gets back and settled from the holidays, we'll start.