[benediktdeicke]

Oh wow! My post made it on Hacker News!

Thanks so much for the nice comments. I'm glad my story inspired some of you :)

If you have specific questions about anything or would like some more details about any part of the story, please let me know. I'll happily answer them.

[roel_v]

Do you do your own design, do you work with someone or do your customers work with a designer?

[benediktdeicke]

Yes :) I do some of the design on my own (like the UI), work with a designer (the marketing website) and my customers usually work with a designer for their website design.

[raverbashing]

Care to elaborate more? Does the CMS has things like /news, /bio, /photos etc and then the designers/front-end work on top of that?

Great project btw! I am a fan of these bands as well

[benediktdeicke]

The websites don't have a fixed structure. As a front-end developer/designer you're able to define templates with a set of elements (text, image, datetime, concerts, twitter integration, collection of other templates, …). The schema of the templates define the forms in the content management section of the CMS.

I hope this screenshot helps to clarify things a bit http://drif.tt/1KfpfoI :)

[roel_v]

Right, so that UI (which I presume is the admin backend), did you do the design yourself there? I'm having a hard time getting something coherent together for my own projects, and templates (also paid ones) only get you so far.

[benediktdeicke]

Yes, that's the UI I did.

My tip to improving your design skills: Try to replicate designs you like. Pick one and analyze every pixel (literally!) of it and try to build it yourself. The techniques you learn in the process make it easier to come up with a nice design of your own eventually.

It's a great exercise and helped me a lot in the past.

[raverbashing]

Cool, thanks!