Hey guys, my name is Samih - I wanted to share with you a small success story in case it motivates anyone.

A few months ago I was laid off from my developer job as the position got offshored to India, been with my company for a few years and my manager basically threw me under the bus when layoffs were happening.

It turns out this was a blessing in disguise as I realized how toxic that place was and I was able to launch my startup InboxPilot it’s an email chatbot that connects to support email accounts (info@ support@ privacy@..) and replies to all incoming emails using the company’s data (website, faq..)

Last week, I gottttttt a customer!! Even though it’s only 10$ it felt 10x better than the thousands of dollars I was making as a developer!

I just wanted to share this small win! If you have any questions about the product or anything else, feel free to ask! I’ll be happy to answer :) thanks!

Summary

Looking for advice on setting up a secure, GDPR-compliant membership registration for a WordPress site that involves Swedish social security numbers.
Also need recommendations for a premium membership plugin that makes it easy to import and manage 7,000 members.

Background

I’m building a new WordPress site (see plugins below) for a client with ~7,000 members (shareholders in the company).
Currently, members log in using their SSN (social security number) as their username and a password of their choice. The client wants to switch to using email as the username instead.

Problem

The membership register is outdated, meaning many members may not be reachable via email, phone, or mail. The only accurate and up-to-date information available is their social security numbers.

Proposed Solution

We considered transferring the membership registry to the new site, requiring members to enter their SSN first to match it against the database. If successful, they would proceed to a screen where they enter new login credentials (email + password).

This approach allows the client to reach as many members as possible while still letting those who cannot be contacted log in with their existing credentials before being prompted to update their login details.

Questions

• Is this a good approach?
• How can I set this up securely and efficiently?

Plugins in Use

• WordPress
• Elementor Pro
• WooCommerce
• YITH Bookings & Appointments
• ACF

I came across the stunning website of huly.io. It is simply gorgeous. Even better on desktop than mobile.

I wonder: How was the lightning/electricity frame on the pricing page (https://huly.io/pricing) made? I'm looking for the tools and if you've got a tutorial, even better.

I'm curious how folks go about deciding and creating visually interesting hero backgrounds for SAAS products which don't have product photos you can feature (because it's just a tool or plugin).

I see folks use abstract shapes and lines, mesh gradients, textures, etc. I feel a bit overwhelmed and lost by what to do for some of my hero sections. I want my hero sections to look cool and interesting, but I also want them to serve a design purpose and support the messaging or goal of the page.

How do you decide when to use gradients/textures/shapes? How do you determine what gradients/textures/shapes to use? What does your process look like from start to finish? Are there any particular tools or resources you use?

I'm really focused on designing with intention, and want to understand the creative process people go through to arrive at their designs. I am looking for a lot more than "I just pick something that looks cool"

Alright, people, I need some real talk.

I’m finally getting my blog off the ground—just a little project (for now) that I’m hoping will eventually cover the bills… or at least keep me caffeinated. But now I gotta figure out hosting, and I don’t wanna end up with some overpriced, glitchy nightmare.

I need something solid—good speed, won’t crash on me, decent support, and most importantly, won’t jack up the price after the first year.

So, what’s the move? What are you using? Any hidden gems?

Hello,

I have been building/designing websites since 2005 and wanted to get other web designer's thoughts on the current AI climate. Recently, I noticed that website building and hosting services are now incorporating AI into their services. In essence, the user gives AI a prompt describing what their website is and AI will create the website for them, including custom imagery and content, all within a matter of a minute.

Although I have never cared for any SaaS website building platform, this AI tool not only undermines the work it takes to be a true web designer (I will build more on this in a minute), but also takes away from a huge demographic of clients.

Client Demographics: Most of my ideal market pool is individuals and local small businesses, which mainly require simply sites without advanced complexity (once in a while needs advanced functionality and features) .Because of this, AI sites might seem more feasible to the user because of the instant turnaround rate at a cheaper cost ,"Want to create a website by tonight? Use AI over a web designer!". AI and these platforms automated services can do everything for them instantly, including domain/DNS, emails, SEO, etc... How can one compete? All you can really sell over these services is the 'Human Touch' and offer quality consultation and customization in the work that you offer. While I know there will always be a demand for more complex websites, those tend to be far and few in-between (especially for the freelance web designer who does this part time). In short, AI is going to take away a lot of potential clients in the market.

Undermines 'True Web Design' - You already have 'AI artists' claiming to be true "Artists", and people who use AI to write articles as "Freelance Writers", devaluing the actual skill that took a long time to develop and work towards. However how do you stop people from abusing and "gaming" this AI system?

Anyone now can create their own "Web Design business" using AI to create websites and then charge clients for "their work", once again undermining actual web designers. (Although they will be in for a head scratch once a technical error occurs and they cannot figure out how to troubleshoot the issue). Still, it is frustrating and leads to scammers and factory-farm-esque "web design businesses", which can cause a lot of problems in the web development space.

Just venting and wanted to see how everyone else feels about AI. I even refuse to use AI for content creation on my site, I would rather write it all myself.

Thanks for reading!

TLDR: AI is becoming a real threat to web design and could possibly make the client market scarce and allow scammers to abuse and game the web development realm as a whole. Thanks for reading!

Edit: Fixed Typos

I'm looking for a subtle, yet noticeable professional way to indicate that an option has been added to a toolbar.

I've been trying to come up with some sort of css animation to have the link in the toolbar pop out and settle in it's place just to let the user know it's there and draw attention to it, but it looks kinda cheap.

Trying to keep it professional. Any ideas?

I am building a custom intranet web page that opens automatically as new tab.
However, I want to ensure that:

1. A maximum of one instance of this page is open at a time.

2. If the page is already open in another tab, the browser should switch to that tab instead of opening a new one / or close the old one.

3. If the page is not open, it should open in a new tab normally.

Due to security policy this seems very hard to archieve in modern browsers. How can I get this to work?

Okay, the title is pretty much correct. I have a question.

Let's go!

1. Is it possible to have a landing page connected to a website that only people with invites can access? Not the whole website, just the landing page.

For example, if I have a website and I'm designing a new site for a client, they might want to see it live. Could I show it to them on a real website (My own site) for a limited time (a few days, a week, or longer) while ensuring that only the client and I can access that specific part of my website—essentially a "hidden" or "locked" subpage?

Don't hold back! Be brutally honest

Developing my first website! Ideally, I'm looking for free photos, pictures, AI generated images that are copyright free and also a no cost way to search for them. My site is not for profit. Currently, I'm using photos I have taken myself but want to add more content. I should mention I'm not looking for random pictures but specific to certain topics, such as Farming, for instance

Just a rant, but I've had some interesting client meetings lately, where they are really used to cheap slave labor, their site is bad, and fixing their site wouldn't be overly expensive but they just don't see the value in it. What's disappointing is that it's almost they have no understanding that a good site would be life changing. I had a client last month say the checkout process didn't work on his subscription style site, where they charge $500 a month for a subscription, instead they have a fill a form and receive an invoice thing, and I told them I'd fix it for $2K and they acted like that was an ungodly amount of money. They told me they would hire overseas for as cheap as possible, and then complain when their site slowed down or had xyz issues, and I thought "for them to tell me that and then act like I'm expensive but my shit works" is freaking whack. They don't want to pay for anything good, they'd rather pay a slave and not have good results which is a massive road block in their journey to success.

I guess just yelling into the void here. I'm a hobbiest when it comes to website design and development, but a professional designer and tech wizard in my own niche domains... anyways, I've been learning so much building out my personal wp site, lots of data in the back end, and I find myself at a junction; "the ugh" --

In this ugh, I see how much cleaner and modular the site could be. I want to tweak some aesthics, but because I didn't build out from the start with the knowledge I have now this is not automatable and will be arduous if I do.

I feel like... I should almost just start from scratch. Not totally from scratch, as I have many many hours worth of database work with hundreds of posts content etc and custom script saved, and the text and assets are not from scratch... the the over build. Yea. I'm on the edge of doing this - any words of wisdom or solidarity?

In urban planning and design (my field) I've learned to scrap lesser designs earlier in the process with experience; the next iteration is without doubt ALWAYS superior. Sitting here wondering if I'm really ready to take this plunge here. Also,now that I'm more familiar with the API and wp dev tools I feel like I wasted a lot on plugins. So it goes...

Hello,

I'd like to share a website I made.

https://aphantasia.io

It's supposed to present an alternative to the traditional tree-structured content view and infinite feed design combo. While maybe not as intuitive, it can be fun to explore user-created content and interact with others in this way.

The web application UI is written in React and the graph rendering is done via PixiJS.

What do you think?

I came across a react web component (link below), i guess it was made with motion.dev but im unable to recreate it or particularly the revealing spring transition animation. I tried layoutId (motion property) but it was not quite right.
Any idea how to go ahead with it ? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

link - https://khagwal.com/interactions/static/video/view_on_map.mp4

Site

https://learntosurfhb.com

There wasn’t alot of good inspiration to use for this one. Not a ton of great surf sites to look at and figure out what we wanted to do. But I think we found a nice look and feel for this one.

I have a Mac at home that I develop Wordpress themes on with Local. I now have a Mac at my office and would like to be able to hop on that machine and develop too. I currently keep my designs in my ~/Documents/code/ directory so they sync with iCloud. However, I can't quite figure out if Local is the way to go.

The problem I'm experiencing is that Local at home has a Wordpress install in my theme's parent directory and that works great when I'm just using one machine. If I instally Local at the office, I'm not sure how to bring in an existing project and keep everything in sync.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hi! I've stumbled on https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/07/1138362 and found the hero image very intriguing... It seems to be an animated jpg, even when seen at it's own URL... Thought it appears in a spritesheet way (stacked frames) when the window is downsized enough... Any idea on what's happening with this image?

I came across https://xtxmarkets.com and https://wonderlandams.com and loved their design. I want to build something with similar design for my basic project but for the context I'm new to programming. Apologies if this is a basic question! But I really appreciate any guidance on your part.

If you're new to web design and would like to ask experienced and professional web designers a question, please post below. Before asking, please follow the etiquette below and review our FAQ to ensure that this question has not already been answered. Finally, consider joining our Discord community. Gain coveted roles by helping out others!

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