For web designers around the world building websites has been dumbed down to the click of a button. We just kind of drop the engine in and tinker around with some settings, un-hook a couple of plugs, re-plugin a couple that were loose and flip a couple of switches and bam you're done. It's as easy as that...in theory. You have you're Joomlas and Wordpress and in my world of ASP.NET I am in the world of Dotnet Nuke and Blogengine along with a number of pretty high dollar proprietary e-commerce and cms solutions. Don't get me wrong I use 'em and I prefer them over something like Joomla. How many times have you gone to a site and you see the little joomla favicon in the url bar. So just for kicks you append "/administrator/login.php"? Lol. I will admit at least once or twice just for the heck of it. So I have digressed and do apologize. The point I'd like to make is for the website designers (or are they?) out there that click once and pop a logo in the header area and are finished - It get's really boring when your clicking through the web and you see template after template. And the creativity has been sucked out of 90% of the design community. So realizing that the law of averages also applies to the web design community and that 10% of the designers out there are pushing out 90% of the fancy pixels on the web, I present you with some tips in an effort to raise that 10%:

So you just clicked and deployed your CMS / Blog / E-Commerce. What do you do hotshot? <--- Speed reference for you movie buffs out there

1. Well hopefully you have some kind of design which fits inline with the brand of the company your building your website for

a. If you don't then how can you call yourself a web designer but alas this post is for you

b. Keep reading...lol

2. Ok so be a sport and choose your skin or theme to compliment the colors of your unfortunate client's company logo

3. If you can't find a color what you do is choose your theme / skin that you like the best and work some photoshop magic

What is the definition of photoshop magic? Hmmm. How about opening it up for starters. Then you create a droplet with a workflow to change the color of all your images in root folder of your theme. It's a pretty quick process and if you really need the help google creating a droplet in photoshop. This will allow you to adjust the color the same across all your images, no fail.

4. Ok so now you got your theme looking good with your client's logo. Good. Don't stop there though.

5. Most of these one-click solutions have default styles that flow throughout the site for your html type elements - p, h1, h2, ul, li etc.

a. For god's sake if you go with the default hopefully a 50 pixel meteor will shoot down from the sky and bean you in your head.

b. Now locate the style sheet or sheets and work over the basic styles. You can do simple things like changing the header font families. A great tool to use is font-squirrel for some custom fonts. Now font-squirrel has, as of late locked down fonts that are proprietary but there are always ways to get around that if you are one of those font junkies that just has to mainline that cool font straight into your jugular.

c. A css property that always pimps out a paragraph is the line-height. You would be surprised how much of an improvement this can make to a site right off the bat. And you kind of kill a couple of birds with this stone. Line-hieght spreads everything out a bit, making it easier for the reader to digest with their burning eyeballs. At the same time it spaces everything out a bit and allows pages with sparse content to stand on at least one and a half legs.

6. So here are a couple tips for you but you're not gonna stop there.

7. It is crucial to strip the branding of whatever system you are using for your clients application. This is pretty easy. Just go into your images file and overwrite all the brand logos with the client's. This actually has a couple benefits.

1. Your clients will be happy with their unique CMS / Blog

2. It will make you less vulnerable to attacks if other hackers can't spot the type of platform from the start. Obviously we all now that if a hacker wants to hack your site then they will but this at least is one simple thing you can do. By no means preventing attack. You still need to update with new patches that your third party provider puts out daily.

8. Going one step further - You can actually go and change the design for the login screen and the admin dashboard. Doing this definitely takes the cheese out of going to the home page and then clicking login and being hit with a Joomla login page or Blogengine for my matters.

Paying attention to all these types of details in the one-click world of website design can defintely bring positive experiences with your clients and your community in general. This takes a bit more time with every site but is very rewarding when it's finished and stands out from all the other cookie cutter templates. Doing this type of stuff allows you to learn more about the application your deploying and become more confident overall when approaching your next client.

I hope this was helpful to all the web designers out there. Remember one thing - In the world of web design you have your McDonalds and you have your fancy restaurant. Always strive to be the fancy restaurant because in the end they always offer the best experience!