

How I Create Websites: A Look Inside the Creative Process - mdolon
http://devgrow.com/how-i-create-websites-a-look-inside-the-creative-process/

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ashleyw

         1. Draw some ideas out on paper, and work out the minimal viable feature set.
            I try and convince all clients to do this, that way we can get something out 
            the door ASAP, and then take a breather before adding the remaining features.
            It also gives them more time to think their ideas through; the amount of
            features a client has decided against a few weeks later is pretty
            unbelievable. Before I started following the MVP way with clients, I very,
            very rarely got any requests for features to be *removed*. As a developer,
            it's just as much my job to keep the client's applications lean and
            bloat-free, as it is to actually write the code, I think.
    
         2. Use Balsamiq mockups to neatly replicate what I've drawn and make
            adjustments (this step could be skippable, but it only takes 10 minutes
            generally, so it's nice to have. I would get Draft for iPad or something,
            but I find it a little *too rough*, especially when working with clients.)
    
         3. Create the design in Photoshop, rarely pixel perfect, I just use it as a
            supped-up Balsamiq, to get a feel for the design.
    
         4. Create a Rails or Sinatra base, depending on the complexity of the project.
            For a Rails project, I git clone http://github.com/ashleyw/Slate
    
         5. Write some Cucumber features, referring to any notes or drawings I made in
            step #1
    
         6. Design the model structure, write some unit tests for them, and then
            implement each model until the tests pass
    
         7. Once I have a model basis, I move on to the controllers and views (HAML),
            going by the Cucumber features I wrote until they pass. Semantic markup is
            important here, but styling is not.
    
         8. Replicate the Photoshop design in CSS (or SASS)
    
         9. Launch
    
        10. Reiterate adding features which didn't fit into the initial version

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syncopated
these are very, very broad strokes that basically anyone who has done a single
freelance project would already know. is this really HN quality?

~~~
aberkowitz
I don't know how you define "HN" quality, but at the time of writing, the
submission has 35 points. The post provides a great overview of how the author
consistently succeeds at freelancing jobs that I found insightful.

