Web Development Blog

When I was designing Make A Dare, I really wanted to highlight the major features and let the new user know what they were in for right away on the landing page. On its homepage, I put in a big banner the general concept of the site.

Watch – Check out the crazy things our members are doing everyday!

Join – Why just sit there when you can be a part of Make A Dare?

Dare – Got something you want to see? Dare someone to do it!

Vote – Like what you see? Hype it! Think it’s lame? Diss it!

Compete – Earn streetcred by completing dares and impressing your friends and fans.

Beneath the banner I placed a large featured video section to give a general sense of the type of dares one could expect to see/complete on Make A Dare. This is followed by a featured user and the most popular dares on the site. Upon seeing all of this, I believe it is immediately recognizable just what kind of a fun, addicting site this can be.

The second likely landing page was the individual dare video page. On this page we see clearly in the title what the dare is, how much streetcred has been earned so far and who completed the dare. We also have social sharing buttons in the title section. On the right side we put a section for “more about the dare” which explains the dare more in depth in case it wasn’t clear from the title, as well as a section for what the user had to say about the dare and which other people had completed the dare previously. There is also a related media section at the bottom of the page which encourages deeper site navigation for a new user and fuels addiction to the site.

Although typically referred to as “Jackass meets YouTube,” we really wanted to emphasize in both the design and concept that this was not just a site to show how much pain you could withstand, but was also a site about how much fun you can have out in public or in your own bedroom. In reality, the dares range from the funny, humiliating, gross, off-the-wall, to painful. Because of this, the design really stays away from being really crazy and all over the place and really sticks to clean and fun.

Sign up at Make A Dare and find out for yourself just how fun and addicting this new social network is.

Last weekend I had a really interesting project. I redesigned and developed an existing site called MakeAGif.com to make it more user friendly and to give it a nice boost in traffic. MakeAGif is a clever site that was started by my favorite partner in crime, Troy Osinoff, that lets users create an animated .gif online out of still images they have on their computer in just 3 easy steps. The main problems with the old version were that it was hard to figure how to make a gif and once you had made it you were redirected to a page that was only temporary. Check out the old site by clicking the picture to the left.

Anyone with knowledge of HTML can do this and trust me it will save you loads of time in the long run. The main idea behind this structure is that anything that is going to be on more than one page in your website is going to be called through a php include. The reasoning behind it is that if you ever plan on updating the design or structure of your site, you’ll be able to do so much quicker through this method because instead of updating each page individually, you’ll only have to update one file. It is also a wonderful solution because of how clean your markup will look.

This is part one of a mini-series of blog posts that I will be referring to as “The Flaws and Delusions of Web Designer Depot”

I don’t get particular enjoyment out of pointing out the flaws in others, but in this case it is so worth it. For over a year, WebDesignerDepot (Web Designer Depot) has been handing out terrible advice and ripped off posts to its users. Their articles lack attention to detail, sense, and quality of any kind.

“I could ramble on about how talented Jared Lunde is at programming and design, but like any other artist or dedicated professional, I believe it is best to let his work speak for itself. After engaging with Jared and similar vendors on countless large projects, however, I can honestly say there is one thing that truly …absolutely…unequivocally set him apart from the rest: the process. In a business environment in which your success is becoming more and more interdependent with the success of outside vendors, I wholeheartedly felt Jared took the time to understand my needs and my goals which he then translated into the final product. He gave me a powerful level of confidence in his abilities that eventually developed into an incredibly trusting customer-client relationship.”

Frank O’Driscoll
E-Revenue Project Manager
American Cancer Society
Eastern Division, Inc.