Yesterday my website was down again and that forced me to selet another hosting company. I have selected Webreus (tip of the hat to Bart, check out some of his articles here) and they will move this domain a.s.a.p. Sorry for the inconvenience. Besides the downtime the worst thing was: I could not get in touch with the hosting company. No response to my emails (expect for an auto-reply) and the phone was not answered. Well, what other medium do you have left after that? Answer: The fax.

Digital-Engineer.net was offline for several hours. CCC Hosting “had problems with the database”. This had happened quite a few times now and if it keeps happening I’ll move the site. The worst is I just told a friend of mine to let CCC host her webshop and her site was down as well… So my question to you guys is: What hosting company do you use and are they doing a good job? (Becasue of taxes and international banking I prefer Dutch company’s by the way).

Het is duidelijk dat je als DTP’er steeds meer werk aan je voorbij ziet gaan. Voor klanten is het veel goedkoper en makkelijker om zelf de relatief simpele updates of aanpassingen van hun drukwerk te verzorgen. Je kunt hierbij denken aan eenvoudig opmaakwerk als visitekaartjes, maar dan denk je eigenlijk veel te beperkt. Met hedendaagse Web 2 Print oplossingen kan je klant bijna alle herhalende klussen zelf uitvoeren. Te denken valt aan advertenties die regelmatig geplaatst worden maar ook folders, flyers en posters behoren tot de mogelijkheden. Het wisselen van foto’s in ‘online’ opmaken is erg gemakkelijk en zelfs complexere zaken als streepjescodes, vrijstaande beelden en steunkleuren zijn voor moderne Web2Print oplossingen geen enkel probleem meer. Daar heb je echt geen dure InDesign Server oplossingen voor nodig.  Read more

A great deal of corporate identities can be found at the website of Hans Stol (just click the names on the right). A lot of the identities of the companies, schools —or even entire cities— are Dutch. As such you might not always be able to read the text, but you do get a great inside look of Dutch Design like the city of Amsterdam. Dutch readers might want to download Hans his PDF-presentation at the bottom of this page. It’s a great catalogue and you can learn a lot just browsing through all the different identities or study how to best set up an advanced online corporate identity.

Ever needed to send really big files to a client that can’t use FTP? Then you know it’s not easy. Services like YouSendIt or Send2Deliver are free but usually have a limit of just 100 Mb and they’ll send out advertisement-emails to you and your client. Now there’s a new Dutch Service that’s absolutely free and supports up to 2 Gigabyte. It’s WeTransfer. The service is free, requires no registration, holds up to 2 Gigabyte and keeps the data for two weeks. Perfect! How can they do it? They sell advertising-space for the entire background. And some of those those backgrounds look really nice. (Just a thought but they would make nice wallpapers as well guys!)

By WoodWing: WoodWing’s product evangelist Victor Cardoso is about to start his Webinar sessions titled “Enter the Social Media Scene with WoodWing Enterprise”. Kick-off is September 10th. SMS, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter… these are the entities that make up today’s social media scene. Publishing to these services is as easy as pressing a button for customers of WoodWing’s Enterprise content publishing platform. In this webinar, learn how server plug-ins make integrating these services easy in the Enterprise product. See how to preview, publish, and unpublish content using the Content Station editor. Anyone looking for a system that has the power and flexibility to work with these new media entities should register. Read more

Well it’s video time here at Digital-Engineer. Right after Guy’s very good video about Illustrator’s Pathfinder, Adobe releases Peter Villevoyse’ video’s about: 1. Dreamweaver & Smart Photoshop Files, 2. InDesign & Flash integration and 3. Dreamweaver & Spry. I love the way Peter demonstrates. He doesn’t just present the facts, no he tells an actual story. And being Peter that also means you say exactly what’s on your mind. Including starting the video like this: ‘Hi my name is Peter and I’m a Adobe specialist. Well at least that’s what people say. Or: ‘Before Creative Suite 4 Dreamweaver’s Photoshop-import was half-backed’. Like I said: He tells it like it is. (Peter’s video’s are Dutch by the way).



And Peter: Thanks for using Digital-Engineer.net as an example in your new Dreamweaver book!

Now here’s a free PDF-book written especially for designers who seek to understand the Web as a medium and learn how they can move to a career in web design. It’s also suited to designers who wish to add web design to their repertoire of client services.
Please keep in mind the book was written in 2001. Screenshots are outdated, but the book still contains a lot of great and useful information. If you’re short on time I would suggest reading the part called ‘Riding the Project Life Cycle’. Because if there’s one thing you might get bitten by it’s the fact that a website can always be updated. Make sure you’ve documented all your clients wishes and set out boundaries. If you don’t the website will become a never-ending story. Print designers tend to forget there’s no such thing as a printer delivering a finished product. Some clients just keep piling up requests for their website. (Yes, I learned the hard way).