25 Beautifully Dark Websites – Part 3
Published December 29th, 2008 in Galleries - 44 Comments
Although most websites use dark text on light backgrounds, but sites with dark backgrounds with light text can be very striking when executed effectively. In the past, I’ve published two collections of great dark designs (see part one and part two), and here is part three.
December’s Best: This Month in Web Design
Published December 28th, 2008 in Links - 10 Comments
2009 is almost hear, and that means it’s time for the last monthly roundup in 2008. This month’s edition includes links to a wide variety of design and development-related blog posts, and some inspirational resources as well. if you’re looking for a good roundup of all of the best content from the past year, see Noupe’s 2008 Most Popular Design Posts, Tutorials and Resources.
Web Design and Development:
10 Ways to Cut Down Web Development Time – Six Revisions
How to Make Your WordPress Title Tag SEO Friendly – WP Recipes
8 Useful WordPress SQL Hacks – Smashing Magazine
Top 29 Free UX Tools and Extensions – UX Booth
Win a Free License from BannerSnack
Published December 26th, 2008 in Competition - 58 Comments
Christmas may be over, but you still have a chance to get a great gift for yourself. A few weeks ago we ran a giveaway from Jumpeye Components that provided 3 lucky winners with an unlimited license for FlashEff. With a strong response from readers, Jumpeye is now giving away five one-year Premium Plus licenses ($149 value) to their new online, flash banner maker, BannerSnack.
25 Websites with Lighting Effects
Published December 22nd, 2008 in Galleries - 82 Comments
Lighting effects are often used in modern web design to give a site an interesting and different look. Several months ago I published 40 Photoshop Tutorials for Lighting and Abstract Effects, which includes plenty of tutorials that can help you to get this type of look in your own work. Now, I’d like to share this gallery of sites that are putting those techniques into practice.
35 Excellent Church Websites – Part Two
Published December 17th, 2008 in Design - 43 Comments
Several months ago I published 50 of the Best Church Websites, which has been one of the more popular posts on the blog. Since I published that collection I’ve come across many other noteworthy church sites, so I thought I would add a second post on the topic.
For those who never work on church websites, these are great sources of design inspiration in general. If you do work on church sites, I’m sure you’ll appreciate these as well.
Win a Free Membership to Templatica!
Published December 16th, 2008 in Competition - 159 Comments
Alen Grakalic of Templatica has graciously offered to give away three one-year memberships to his club that provides members with templates to use on their own websites.
If you’re not familiar with Templatica, there are two options for using/buying the templates. A one-year membership costs $24, or you can buy individual templates for $5 a piece. All of the templates use valid XHTML and CSS coding, and have been tested in all major browsers. Alen is a skilled designer and all of the templates will give a website an attractive and professional appearance.
40 Tutorials for Working with Shapes in Illustrator
Published December 15th, 2008 in Design - 24 Comments
in this post we’ll feature 40 Illustrator tutorials for working with shapes in various ways and for a variety of purposes. As you’ll see in these tutorials, shapes can be used for plenty of real-world purposes in every day design.
Simple Organic Shapes the Illustrator Way
10 Resources for When You Need Help with CSS
Published December 11th, 2008 in CSS - 36 Comments
From time-to-time there will probably be situations where you could use some help or guidance with CSS during your web design and development work. While there are plenty of great CSS resources available, I would like to point out 10 that can be very helpful resources in these situations.
Stack Overflow
Stack Overflow is sort of a combination of social media and a forum. It is a niche specific site focused on programming and development (CSS is just one of the topics being discussed). The purpose of Stack Overflow is to ask and provide answers to questions for programmers. Anyone can post a question (you don’t even have to create an account) and then other members will be able to provide answers to your questions. Other users can then vote up or down on the various answers so it’s easy for everyone to identify the best ones.
50 Inspirational E-Commerce Website Designs
Published December 8th, 2008 in Galleries - 236 Comments
Many e-commerce websites aren’t the most attractive websites. There’s often a lot of clutter with little to distinguish the design from any other site. Of course, selling products is more important to an e-commerce site than having a pretty design, but these 50 examples show that some e-commerce sites display excellent design.
17 Specialty WordPress Themes
Published December 7th, 2008 in WordPress - 48 Comments
One of the great benefits of using WordPress is the wide variety of themes that are available for all kinds of purposes. As WordPress has become more popular as a CMS rather than just a blogging platform, specialty themes have also become increasingly popular.
About 10 months ago I published a collection of 20 specialty WordPress themes that I had come across at that time. Today I’d like to feature another 17 specialty themes, all of which are free. Over at DesignM.ag I published a list of the top ten premium specialty themes.
A life streaming WordPress theme.
