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15 Gorgeous "Under Construction" Themes - DesignFestival. Almost every website worth its clout goes under construction at one point or another. Frequent redesigns are often a sign of a very well-curated website and a business behind it that’s willing to invest in maintaining a modern, effective web presence. As designers, even if we get it our design right the first time, we’ll eventually want to make some changes. When you’re strapped for time or resources, handling the redesign yourself can take longer than expected. Even hiring a professional team to handle it can result in the same delays due to unforeseen issues or complications. Besides favicons, landing pages, and even invoices, “Coming Soon” or “Under Construction” pages are among the most overlooked design opportunities. 1.

Type Anime Email notification opt-inCSS3, including text animationsCountdown tickerEasily integrates with TwitterChrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE 8+ 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. eConstruction. 18 Examples of Yellow Websites. 18 Examples of Yellow Websites It’s been a long time since I have written something on here. Not only that but it has been a long time since we visited the “colour” posts. There has been a lot of feedback on posts like; Web’s Brilliant Blues 2, So Fresh and So GREEN!! And 30 Black and White Websites. I thought we would continue these type of posts to go through all the colours we have. I find that more and more I am searching for website by colour. “Yellow shines with optimism, enlightenment, and happiness. Nissan Journey to Zero Booreiland Ryan Keiser Helveticons.ch Postmark Mooze Design BeerCamp SXSW 2010 Lise Marie & Tobias Bennyroth Loaf Creative The Other Design Agency Strange Native FontShop Creative Spark Roome Lipton The FontFeed.

24 Examples of Orange Websites. 24 Examples of Orange Websites Last week, we posted 18 Examples of Yellow Websites, while I was scouring the web for yellow websites, I seen a bunch of awesome orange websites. Obviously I said to myself, next colour post is orange. We use orange as an secondary colour for Projekt19, and I found that orange was a great secondary or accent colour in a bunch of websites.

It is also used similar to yellow to draw all your attention and just be loud. Orange combines the energy of red and the happiness of yellow. It is associated with joy, sunshine, and the tropics. What are your thoughts on the colour orange – do you use it? These examples are throwing nothing but orange at you, full screen orange backgrounds, huge orange graphics and headers. Concentrate Thrive So1o Sticker Mule PanelFly Happycom Giblette Design Saturized WPactive Big Lux Design Orange is only a small part of the “hot” colour wheel between yellow and red.

Swung House Funky Art Pampaneo Mealeo Senso Studios OrangeYouGlad made my day. Analog. 404 Error Pages, One More Time - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement The design of 404 error pages is often overlooked and underestimated. However, designed carefully, these pages can make a random visitor stay on your website, take a look around and eventually find the information he or she was looking for in the first place. Effective 404 error pages communicate why a particular page couldn’t be displayed and what users can do next. A search box and list of useful resources (possibly related to the missing page) could be helpful in this case. We’ve already covered the design of 404 error pages in previous1 posts2. Also note that some examples used in this post were suggested by our Twitter followers: please follow us on Twitter3 to vote on which article gets published next, discuss new ideas, get fresh updates and suggest great ideas for our next posts.

Beautiful 404 Error Pages Cut & Taste4 Cut & Taste claims that “Someone on the staff is to blame for this! Mundofox.com6 A 404 error page with a not-so-eloquent Homer. jhuskisson.com14 (al) A Crash Course on A-B Split Testing. The most basic technique available for testing and validating landing pages is called A-B split testing. The name comes from the fact that two versions of your landing page (“A” and “B”) are being tested. Split testing refers to the random assignment of new visitors to either version A or version B. In other words, the traffic is split (unbeknownst to each individual user) and the different versions are shown in parallel throughout the data collection period (usually in equal proportions).

Parallel timing and random visitor assignment are important requirements in A-B split testing. In contrast to sequential tests, in which one variation is run for a period of time and then replaced with the second variation, testing your landing page variations in parallel allows you to control for as many outside factors as possible. Split Testing FundamentalsIn split testing terminology, version A is usually defined as your original control page, or baseline (commonly called the champion version). Beautiful and Useful 404 Error Pages for Inspiration. Six Revisions Menu Main Categories CSS HTML JavaScript Web Design WordPress Web Development Design Inspiration UX Design UI Design Freebies Tutorials Tools Links About Contact Advertise RSS Twitter Facebook Beautiful and Useful 404 Error Pages for Inspiration By Rishabh Agarwal Errors don’t need to be ugly. Option 1: Present the user with an old and boring default error page, which displays no information other than "There’s an error.

" Option 2: The second solution is to present them with a custom error page design that can suggest alternative things they can see or do in order to resolve their problem. Which one do you think is better? Here is a collection of 30 beautiful and creative 404 Not Found error message pages. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. daniel karcher 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. deviantART 11. ferdaze.com 12. habrahabr.ru 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. swissmiss 28. 29. 30. iStockphoto Related Content About the Author Rishabh Agarwal is an Engineering student from India. 75 Comments Thanks. Best Practices For Effective Design Of “About me”-Pages - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement The “about me”-page is one of the most overlooked pages in development and one of the highest ranked pages on many websites. In a world that’s becoming increasingly connected through the Web, it’s important that you engage your audience in a personal and friendly way, otherwise you risk just being another faceless web designer among a sea of websites.

We had to go through hundreds of sites to come up with the following list. It seems most designers and developers run out of steam by the time they got around to developing their about pages. Most designers we came across simply threw up a few hastily written words about themselves instead of treating the page as an important asset. Others, however, have truly taken the time to treat their about page as if it were important as the home page. In fact, some went as far as using their about pages as their home page. We present 60 beautiful and effective about pages that engage users and neatly present their designers. Direct. Design an Appealing, Effective "Coming Soon" Page - DesignFestival. Whether you’re working on a new site or redesigning an old one, a stylish “Coming Soon” page is a great way to keep your loyal followers informed.

Without such a page, visitors might interpret your site as broken, down, unfinished, or even permanently gone. Make it known that you’re not neglecting your website, in fact, you’re actually investing even more time and energy into it. Designing a temporary page with information about your future plans (including a countdown that keeps you on schedule) is a perfect way to distinguish between a dormant, inactive website and a very active one with lots of plans in the works. Of course, if you want your “Coming Soon” page to leave a great impression on your visitors, then your design has to be thoughtful and appealing.

Let’s have a look at our final design before we start. Step 1 Open Photoshop and create a new file with a 750px width and a 575px height. Step 2 Create a new layer and fill it with color #a61c1c using the paint bucket tool. Step 3. Designing “Coming Soon” Pages - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement Deciding what to do once you’ve purchased a domain but haven’t yet launched the website is always a bit of a conundrum. Leaving up your domain registrar or Web host’s generic page seems unprofessional, especially if you’re trying to drum up advance press for your new project. At the same time, you don’t want to spend too much time on a temporary page when you really should be working on the website itself. The best thing to do is create a simple “Coming soon” page to notify visitors of what will eventually be there. 1.

Here are some best practices and tips to keep in mind when designing your own “Coming soon” pages, as well as examples. Tell Us What to Expect When someone lands on your “Coming soon” page, they should get an idea of what your website will be about and why it might be useful to them. Give us at least some indication of the website’s purpose. BirdboxxBirdboxx gives a basic explanation of the services it will provide when the website launches. Create Some Intrigue. Designing “Read More” And “Continue Reading” Links - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement Most bloggers and website designers understand how difficult it can be to attract visitors to a website. In fact, most websites have just moments to attract potential readers. Several factors contribute to how well a website attracts its readers. These factors include well-written headlines, interesting content and design quality. While all of these aspects are important, today we will focus on a very specific and sometimes overlooked element in a website’s design: the “Read more” or “Continue reading” link that follows a headline or summary of an article.

Every website has its own way of asking readers to click on an article link. Some websites have very prominent links, others are a bit subtler. Best Practices Before we present the showcase, let’s understand why “Read more” links are so important. Also, “Read more” links allow website administrators to more easily track the most popular content. 1. Tutorial9 PSDTuts Smashing Apps CSS Tricks David Airey Freelance Switch slashdot. Effective Maintenance Pages: Examples and Best Practices - Smashing Magazine.

Advertisement Every website has to perform maintenance at some point or another. Whether it’s just to upgrade a portion of the site or because of some problem with the site, it’s an inevitable fact of website ownership. And in many cases, maintenance requires taking your site offline for at least a few minutes. So what should you do if your site is going to be down for maintenance? You don’t want users coming to a 404 or other error page. You may want to take a look at the following related posts: 1. The entire point of a maintenance page is to let visitors know that your site is still around and that the maintenance is only temporary.

Another useful function for simple maintenance pages is to include your maintenance message in multiple languages. Delicious with a simple and clear message (via). This Twitter maintenance page gives the bare minimum of information and keeps a simple design while still being inviting and friendly toward users. 2. 3.

Mozilla: “Repairs in Progress” (via). 4. 5. FiveSecondTest. Pricing Tables: Examples And Best Practices - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement Pricing tables play an important role for every company that offers products or services. They are a challenge from both a design and usability standpoint. They must be simple but at the same time clearly differentiate between features and prices of different products and services. A pricing table should help users pick the most appropriate plan for them.

Once you have identified the most important features, go ahead and create a more detailed list of features for users who are interested in a particular plan. For a good grounding in exactly how to design and present a pricing table, let’s examine some that other designers have created and analyze them according to the following important criteria: Design: colors, style, typography, icons.Usability: What happens if we turn off CSS and JavaScript? You may also want to take a look at the following related articles: Best Practices and Guidelines Designing a pricing table is a tricky task. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. ActionThis16 iPhone31. Table of Contents: Creative Examples - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement Table of contents is often considered to be one of the most unspectacular design elements ever invented. Because of its simple, usual form, table of contents is often not given the attention it may deserve — after all, it is just a list of the parts of a book or document organized in the order in which the parts appear.

But why not use exactly that and surprise the reader of a booklet, brochure, annual report or a book with some beautiful and original table of contents? In fact, many creative approaches are possible. And this post attempts to prove exactly that. This post showcases creative and/or beautiful tables of contents. You may want to take a look at our related posts Please notice: some photos look not beautiful at all — here the idea matters more than the quality of the screenshot. Creative and beautiful examples So how beautiful or creative can a table of contents be?

PRINT Magazine Spread: Table of contents Table of contents Flavors“Flavors” Mason Williams. Indice A. Welcoming And Informative Introductions In Web Design - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement Corporate Web design has certain elements designed to attract customers. One of those elements is the introduction. The page or website introduction does what you would think: it introduces the website or page to the user and entices them to visit more of the website.

Using an introduction has several benefits. Where To Use An Introduction You will most often see introductions on general corporate pages. Freelance/Studio Websites You will also notice these introductions on the websites of freelancers more often than not. In the personal portfolio below, you can see this technique in action. Software and Application Websites You will also see introductions on websites that promote software and applications. Here’s a website for a Web application that includes an introduction. The Layout And Components Web design is about layout first and foremost. Text with Hierarchy 1. 2. Graphical Element to Grab the User Buttons to More Information/Sign Up Showcase of Introductions (al)