What? You’re still writing your own HTML and CSS?

Six months ago I decided I was no longer going to write my own template code for websites and applications. I was frustrated by the headaches of cross-browser testing. I dreaded the thought of spending days building simple templates when I could be designing, managing projects or signing new work.

There was a time when I took great joy in doing everything by hand. I started using CSS for layout in early 2001 and enjoyed being able to control all aspects of the development process from start to finish. I took pride in writing lean, semantic markup that loaded fast and was easy to understand.

Now, almost a decade later, I’m running my own business and always looking for ways to trim costs, free up my schedule and increase efficiency. I can provide better service to customers if I’m not buried neck-deep in template code for days, sometimes weeks, at a time. Outsourcing has proved to be very liberating in this regard.

As for who I now choose to write HTML and CSS for Subvert, it’s CSS Ninjas.

For each project I’ve engaged them on, CSS Ninjas has been responsive, polite and professional. The code they deliver is well-built, thoroughly tested and very easy to customize or extend later on. In most cases, it takes 1-2 weeks for CSS Ninjas to turn around their final template code. As for price, at approximately $300 Canadian per page, well, how can you beat that?

If you’re a designer who is still writing your own HTML and CSS for client projects, I strongly suggest you give outsourcing a try. Yes, you will lose some aspect of creative/technical control, but the type of control you re-gain - available time and effort - will prove to be much more valuable to your sanity and bottom line.

Excellent post. I couldn’t agree more. While I am not a designer, I see the the big-picture message here of sticking to your strengths. I am coming from a programmer perspective. While I appreciate clean CSS and clean/semantic markup, I also know there are other people more passionate (and probably skilled) about it than myself - and I want to let them do what they do best, so I can stick at doing what I do best.

So, I have the eye to find a good Markup/CSS person, I can qualify and weed out the good from the bad, but at the end of the day I would rather be programming.

Beyond just sticking to your strengths, I believe there’s value in determining which tasks bring you, the business owner, the most joy and pleasure. Profit margins are also an important consideration, which is why I’ve chosen to outsource. I consider myself a capable HTML/CSS coder, but the amount of time I spend building vs. billing for those same hours are far from equal.

I’ve recently found myself in the exact same situation and CSS Ninjas came to my rescue too. While I do enjoy creating HTML/CSS, the headaches of cross browser issues is huge, time consuming and not my strength. It was keeping me from the bigger issues of developing the actual web app!

CSS Ninjas provides some of the highest quality code out of the many PSD to HTML shops I’ve tried out there.  They are my #1 choice and recommendation.