From up North. Design Instruct: A Web Magazine for Designers and Digital Artists. Nettuts+ | Web development tutorials, from beginner to advanced. LifeClever ;-) — Career Advice, Productivity Tips, and Life Hacks for Designers. The Role of Promotion Buttons and Submissions to Community Feeds. How do we all drive people to our site? To see the articles we all slave over for hours each day? Each of us are all out here to get the most hits we can onto our pages, (whether it’s to create advertisement revenue or not.) There are several ways in which to achieve this, and I hope to discuss two of the easiest and simple in which to setup and carry out. Promotion Buttons There are various ways in which to promote your design articles, whether its just a few tweets, diggs, bumps or blends. Facebook Share Button Facebook quite possibly is the most popular social network and looks like it is going to be around for a while, businesses are also drawn to the site.
Design Bump Button Download-able from the design bump website, each click of the bump propels you further up the sites chart of the most popular articles on the bump site. Digg Button Web Blend Button Much the same thinking as Design Bump, the Web blend is another voting up of design articles. Reddit Button Retweet Button Google Buzz. Tips for Designing Unique and Attractive Blog Posts. Designers have began to inject increasing levels of creativity into their blog posts and articles, throwing out the traditional and generic style of blog posts in favour of a much more attractive layout that’s themed specifically to the content.
Let’s take a look at some of the best examples, and see what makes them work so well. In his fantastic article ‘The Death of the Boring Blog Post‘, Paddy Donnelly sums up this method of fusing together a blog post with the style and design of a traditional magazine article and coins the name, ‘Blogazine’. Be sure to check it out for a great introduction, and to hear from some of the pioneers of this style of blogging. Examples of the best Scrap the traditional website layout We’re all used to blog themes with the traditional two-column content and sidebar layout. Take inspiration from print design For decades, designers working in print have used the core design principles to create balanced layouts in magazines and posters. A grid is your friend. Event Calendar. How to Display Your Content on a Blog’s Front Page.
The front page of a blog is obviously of great importance to the overall design. Up until a few years ago, most blogs simply showed posts in order of publication, the most recent at the top. Then excerpts became popular, and later magazine-style front pages. The purpose of the front page will, of course, vary a bit from one type to another; for example, a personal blog will be different from a professional multi-author blog.
In this post, we will take a look at the options that bloggers and designers have for showing content on the front page, and some reasons for choosing each. Before getting into the details, let’s consider the purpose of the front page, so that you can make a more informed decision about the type to use for your own blog. The front page is important because it has a substantial impact on the first impression of visitors. New visitors expect to be able to get a good idea of what the blog offers from the front page alone. Options for Displaying Content on a Front Page 1. 2. 300+ Resources to Help You Become a WordPress Expert.
WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms available today. And for good reason. It’s powerful enough to be a complete CMS, has every feature or function a blogger could dream of (either built in or available via plugins or custom functions), and it’s free and open source. While WordPress is incredibly powerful and easy to use on its most basic levels, it can also get pretty complicated, pretty quickly. Below are more than 300 resources to help you master WordPress no matter what your skill level is. Everything from premium and free themes to plugins to WP hacks and everything in between is included.
If it’s possible with WordPress, it’s likely you’ll find it below. Theme Roundups, Theme Templates, and Theme Frameworks WP can have an almost infinite variety of designs applied to it. WordPress PSD Framework – A free PSD template that includes all the common elements in a WP design for you to build on. Thematic – One of the most advanced theme frameworks available. Plugins. The Art Of Apparel. Tee Biz. PopCultureTees - Covering the style and trends of the entire t-shirt world, one shirt at a time. How to Start a Clothing Line | Fuel for Design. AssaultBLOG - Music, Design, and Apparel. 20+ Brand New and Incredibly Useful WordPress Plugins - Nettuts+ With more than 7000+ plugins, WordPress is the most extendable Content Management System available; in fact, "WordPress is infinitely extensible" as Matt Mullenweg says.
In this post, we'll examine twenty-one really useful plugins to take your blog to the next level. 1. Drag To Share "Drag to share is the newest trend in social sharing. Just drag an image and drop it into any social website to share the whole page in real time. Download the plugin 2. "Paginator is a pagination technique based on the idea of scrolling. " Download the plugin 3.
"This is a convenient way for WordPress users to use the Typekit font service in WordPress web sites. Want to learn more about TypeKit? Download the plugin 4. The "Custom Coming Soon Pages" WordPress plugin allows you to display a "Coming Soon" or "Under Construction" page to normal visitors or regular members of your WordPress site, while the site administrators continue to see the fully functional website. Download the plugin 5.
Download the plugin 6. 7. Kindle Publishing: Sign In. Resources for Online Business Owners. When To Use Magazine-Style Themes For Blogs? - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement When designing a custom theme or deciding on an already-existing theme, bloggers have a lot of factors to consider and there is no shortage of options, particularly for WordPress users.
A growing number of blogs are moving away from traditional blog layouts in favor of magazine-style themes; however, the layout and presentation of content has a major impact on visitors and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Key Differences Magazine themes have a few characteristics that distinguish them from traditional blog themes. Magazine themes only use excerpts or headlines on the front page, while standard blogs will use either full posts or excerpts.A magazine theme functions more as a portal to content on the rest of the site. A good visual guide for the distinction between a traditional theme and a magazine theme is the Gridline series. Gridline Lite1 uses an excerpt for the most recent post and smaller excerpts for other posts below that. Pros and Cons Pros of Magazine Themes 1.
8 tips to enhance your WordPress blog SEO. 1 – Optimize your title tag In terms of SEO, the title tag is one of the most important things: In fact, the title appears as a link in search engines results and social bookmarking sites. Unfortunely, most WordPress themes displays the title tag in a non-optimized way. I had recently written a tutorial here at Cats Who Code to obtain a really SEO-friendly title tag. 2 – Create an archive page In my opinion, all blogs should have an archive page: It allows your readers to quickly browse your blog and find what they’re looking for, and this page is also very good for SEO. 3 – Use the correct H tag structure (h1, h2, h3..) When I download free WordPress themes, I’m often scared to see how badly the H structure is used: h2 are everywhere. h1 for the post title h2 for inside titles h3 for inside subtitles and so on… 4 – Use a good permalink structure If you’re not using permalinks yet, don’t even ask why do you get so bad results from search engines. 7 – Create a robot.txt file.
25 Premium Like Though Free Blogger Templates | Graphic and Web Design Blog -Resources And Tutorials. Last days I was “assaulted” with questions about Blogger tips and tricks and also how to’s about design. Few years back my web blogs were based on Blogger and that’s why I have tested lots of Blogger themes and designs. Most of themes below are magazine style and some of theme are just designed for personal blogs. All of the themes were created by highly experienced web designers and they meet all professional criteria. A great part of the themes bellow were originally designed for WordPress and converted to Blogger.
Just to avoid repeating the same words…Demo and Download, I’ve decided to add a link to official template page on template name and the Demo link on the screenshot. Hope you will enjoy! 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. I would like to thank for this beautiful templates to all webdesigners and contributors and as a sign of respect please leave the footer copyright notice intact. 80+ Photo Manipulations Art to Ignite Your Creativity. Throughout history, great designers always found new ways to show their creativity to express themselves and create new trends and techniques to remark their work apart from the rest of the crowd. Photo manipulation is an art in itself, that requires a skill and precision as we know, it is one of the most creative artforms to come out of the digital age.
This presentation shows an incredible collection of photo manipulation art related to nature, photography, objects, illustrations, HDR as well as some abstract and fantasy-related concepts. Hopefully, everybody will find something interesting to ignite their creativity. You may be interested in the following related articles as well. Feel free to join us and you are always welcome to share your thoughts that our readers may find helpful. Don’t forget to and follow us on Twitter — for recent updates. Photo Manipulations Art to Ignite Your Creativity Photo manipulation can serve as an excellent source of inspiration. More Resources. How to Create Business From a Blog.
This post was a request from Eric. How to Create Business from a Blog First, let’s agree that there are many ways to create business from a blog. I’ll cover a handful to start. You’re very welcome to share more advice and ideas in the comments section. Straightforward Sales Blogs are a wonderful piece of software to use as a home base for several kinds of website projects. For example, I believe Chris Pearson used a WordPress blog to build his DIYThemes.com site. Affiliate Marketing Another way is through Affiliate Marketing. Want to learn more about Affiliate Marketing?
Lead Generation Blogs are a great way to establish thought leadership, and further, to encourage lead generation. My secondary goal is to encourage you to contact me, should you have business needs. A great person who gives in abundance with her blog is Liz Strauss. Content Marketing He could tell you this every day, but Brian Clark has been praising the value of content marketing since 2006. Other Opportunities Your Ideas. Social Blogger Community & Blog Directory // BlogCatalog.
PV.M Garage | Web Design and Development with passion. Free template, tutorials, html, css, freebies for web and graphic designer. WeblogMatrix - Compare them all. Branding & Corporate Identity Design. Vandelay Design Blog | Web Design and Development Blog. Design Blog | Inspiration and Resources for Designers | Design Shard. T-Shirt Printing Tutorials, Tee Shirt Design Videos | You Design It TV. Turn Blog Comments into a Webwide Discussion with a Powerful Comment System. Blog Ping. TSHIRT ENTREPRENEUR ONLINE. Web Design Ledger | A Publication for Web Designers. InstantShift | Web Designers and Developers Daily Resource.
Freelance Advice and Freelance Jobs - FreelanceSwitch. Creative Nerds. Feedmil.com - a "long tail" feed search engine. Street Fashion Worldwide. Photoshop Lady : Best Photoshop Tutorials. Designing Web Interfaces » Blog. We just wrapped up last day of the IA Summit 2012 in lovely New Orleans. I have enjoyed wonderful food, drinks, company and speakers including Stephen Anderson , Josh Clark , Chris Risdon , Greg Nudelman, Nadine Schaeffer and Dan Brown. But one of the talks on Saturday, a panel called Taking the Plunge: Diving into Indie UX , left me gaping.
The first section focused on design and design process and how it would be different if you are acting as an independent operator vs working within an agency or organization. I was shocked to hear the 4 panelists don’t collaborate with other designers or work with mentors because, as one said “ I’m a good designer, I don’t need help “. Other comments about 16 hour days, spending 20-40% of time on non-billable tasks, deals taking 18 months to close, and not having repeat clients illustrated the wrong way to approach indie work, not a sure path to success. I’ve been an ‘indie’ for about 7 years, but I’m no expert. 1. 2. . 3. 4. 5. Legal Public presence. CSSAddict. Veerle's blog 2.0 - Webdesign - XHTML CSS | Graphic Design. PhotoshopStar. Web Designer + Front-End Web Developer | Selene M. Bowlby. Well it’s been quite a while since my last blog post, but I’m finally back with a quick update to let you know about the new mailing list that I’ve recently started up.
I know, I know… “Welcome to the 21st century” LOL I’ve clearly gone into a bit of a hiatus with updating the web site, but plan to remedy that in the coming months. While I don’t have a set posting schedule yet, it will be fairly infrequent – likely once a month or so. In preparation for my return to blogging, I’ve decided to start a real mailing list (not just the Feedburner “subscribe via email” option), where I can easily share new posts with you.
My primary goal here is to get back to publishing regular posts on the blog relating to small business, productivity, time management, web design and more. Again, this won’t be incredibly frequent. If you are interested in signing up, you can do so directly on the sign-up page or through the button below. WebAppers.