Ebook Review – Online Reputation Management from ViperChill
Published May 29th, 2008 in Reviews - 6 Comments
Reputation management has become necessity for most businesses in today’s internet environment. With a growing number of sites publishing user-generated content and the incredible ease involved with the average person setting up a new blog, anyone can post a harmful message online that will leave an impact on your business.
Recently there have been a growing number of individuals and companies that are specializing in providing reputation management services to clients to help them monitor and protect their good name. A few weeks ago Glen Allsopp of ViperChill released a 75 page eBook called Online Reputation Management: All You’ll Ever Need to Monitor and Manage Your Online Reputation.
My Favorite Sites for Web Design Tutorials
Published May 28th, 2008 in Design - 30 Comments
For those of us who are interested in always learning new tricks and improve our design skills, we’re fortunate to have a number of very valuable websites and blogs that regularly publish high quality, informative tutorials. In this post I’d like to take a look at some of my favorite places for tutorials, and I encourage you to share your favorites in the comments.
PSDTUTS
While there are plenty of blogs and websites for Photoshop tutorials, PSDTUTS is the king. In recent months their team of writers have been publishing a new tutorial almost every day. You’ll find very high quality work here in a variety of different areas. I frequently work through their tutorials and always learn a lot from the process.
From the Archives: Create a Dark Themed Web Design from Scratch, Creating a Stunning Digital Smoke Effect.
May’s Best: This Month in Web Design
Published May 27th, 2008 in Links - 18 Comments
These are some of the best design-related posts that I came across this month. I hope you will find them to be useful.
Web Design and Development:
Which CSS Grid Framework Should You Use for Web Design from NETTUTS.
Improving Code Readability with CSS Styleguides from Smashing Magazine.
30 Websites to Follow if You’re into Web Development from Six Revisions.
SEO Guide for Designers from Web Designer Wall.
40 Options for Converting PSD to HTML
Published May 26th, 2008 in Design - 252 Comments
I’m sure you’ve seen advertisements for a few different services that will convert your PSD files into HTML and CSS. If you’re looking to save some time on your next project you may want to consider trying one of these services. In this post I’ve compiled 40 different options. If you have experience with any of these companies please feel free to leave a comment.
CSS Rockstars
Turnaround – 2 Days
Starting price – $149
Additional pages – $65
Excellent Uses of Excerpts in Blog Design
Published May 22nd, 2008 in Blog Design - 16 Comments
Blog designers consistently face the decision of showing full posts or excerpts on the front page. Personally, I prefer excerpts because they make it easy for the visitor to quickly scan the most recent posts and see what’s of interest to them. The downside of course is that they’ll have to click through to a post in order to read it in its entirety.
Displaying Excerpts on the front page can also give the designer an opportunity to add some creativity to the design and to make it a bit more visually appealing. In this post I’d like to take a quick look at 5 blogs that are effectively using excerpts to create a functional and attractive front page.
50+ Designers to Follow on Twitter
Published May 19th, 2008 in Social Media - 450 Comments
Twitter seems to be gaining popularity almost every day. As a new user I decided it would be helpful to do some research to find designers who would be worth following. This list is not intended to be all-inclusive (so please add a link to your profile in the comments if you like), but it should give you a great start to following some talented designers. This is a list of over 50 designers, in no particular order, with a link to their Twitter profile.
cssglobe - Alen Grakalic of CSS Globe
chriscoyier – Chris Coyier of CSS Tricks
snookca – Jonathan Snook of Snook.ca
zeldman – Jeffrey Zeldman of Happy Cog
vpieters - Veerle Pieters of Veerle’s Blog
Display Your Feed on a Static HTML Page Using FeedBurner’s BuzzBoost
Published May 18th, 2008 in Tools - 45 Comments
Almost every blogger now is using FeedBurner to publish their feed. The most obvious benefits of using FeedBurner are the statistics and the subscriber count, but there are plenty of other free options that you can use or customize to enhance your blog. One of these options is called BuzzBoost, and essentially it republishes your feed as HTML so that it can be used anywhere.
What Makes Someone Leave Your Website?
Published May 14th, 2008 in Design Process - 78 Comments
Part of having a successful website is attracting visitors. Keeping those visitors on your site, however, is another topic altogether. Of course, once you have the visitor on your site you’ll want to keep them around for a while rather than seeing them quickly leaving to go somewhere else.
In order to do a good job of retaining visitors, increasing pageviews and time on the site, it’s important to think about what could cause visitors to leave. By knowing some of the major reasons that people are leaving your site, you can make adjustments to improve this situation.
25 Beautifully Colorful Websites – Part 2
Published May 12th, 2008 in Galleries - 57 Comments
A few months ago I posted a collection of beautifully colorful websites, and I wanted to follow up with 25 more sites that provide excellent inspiration when working with colors. The 25 sites displayed here use a wide variety of design styles, but all make effective use of color to create a fabulous look that leaves an impact on visitors.
Options for Easily Adding Flickr Photos to Your Website
Published May 11th, 2008 in Design - 13 Comments
Flickr is of course the most popular photo hosting and sharing service online. Many Flickr users also want to display their photos on their website or blog. Fortunately there are a number of different options for users. Here we’ll take a look at some of the best choices.
Official Flickr Badge – Flickr allows you to choose between two types of badges – HTML or Flash. Photos can be selected by using tags. (You’ll need to be logged in to Flickr to access this page).
