12 WordPress Plugins for Theme Development

One of the great things about using WordPress as a content management system is the huge community of users and all of the resources that are available. While all plugins could be used by theme developers, the ones featured in this post have features that can be especially helpful for various aspects of theme development.

If you design and develop themes for you own use, custom themes for clients, premium themes for sale, or free themes to distribute, I think some of these plugins will be very useful to you.

Theme Switch

When you’re designing and developing a WordPress theme, you obviously won’t want the public to see your theme until it is ready. However, it’s helpful to also be able to test the theme in a live environment in attempt to find any flaws before officially changing over to the new theme. The Theme Switch plugin will allow you to control what theme is seen by logged in users with specific access privilege, and what theme is shown to regular visitors. This is a great way to test your theme before going live. It’s especially useful when you’re designing a new theme for an existing site or blog.

25 Scripts for Dropdown Navigation Menus

Navigation menus are important to any website. Well designed navigation can improve the look and appearance of a site as well as the usability. For larger sites with a lot of content or pages, drop down menus are popular because the can make it easier to move through the site with less clicks. In this post we’ll feature 25 scripts for drop down menus that you can use on your own site.

jQuery Multi Level CSS Menu #1

25 Incredibly Artistic Websites – Part 5

Highly creative and artistic designs are an excellent source of inspiration. More and more websites are going with this style of design, so I’d like to continue the series of posts that features outstanding design of this style. To older additions are available here:

• 25 Incredibly Artistic Websites
• 25 Incredibly Artistic Websites – Part 2
• 25 Incredibly Artistic Websites – Part 3
• 25 Incredibly Artistic Websites – Part 4

ANidea

Design Inspiration: Lighting Effects – Part 3

Those of you who read this blog regularly probably know that I enjoy browsing through inspirational designs that make use of lighting effects. I’ve showcased a few collections of lighting effects in the past, and today we’ll look at a 3rd collection. For more lighting inspiration, please see:

• Design Inspiration: Lighting Effects
• Design Inspiration: Lighting Effects – Part 2

25 Beautifully Colorful Websites – Part 4

During the past year or so, I have published 3 collections of colorful websites. Today we’ll take a look at another 25 sites that make exceptional use of color. There is a wide variety of color schemes and design styles represented here, so I hope the work of these designers provides some inspiration for your own work.

• 25 Beautifully Colorful Websites
• 25 Beautifully Colorful Websites – Part 2
• 25 Beautifully Colorful Websites – Part 3

By Marina

30 Photo Manipulation Tutorials for Photoshop

With Photoshop, amazing results are possible for photo manipulations. In this post we’ll feature 30 tutorials for creating your own photo manipulation. The tutorials shown here will teach a wide variety of techniques and will work towards end results of all kinds.

Combine Photo Elements to Create a Surreal Photo Manipulation

25 Nature-Inspired Website Designs

Inspiration or web design can come from anywhere. An increasing number of websites are including elements from nature in the design. Background images, photos, illustrations… nature can be used a number of different ways in web design. In this post we’ll look at 25 excellent examples.

For more nature-inspired web design, see 25+ Inspiring Designs by Land, Sea and Air.

Revyver

40 Photoshop Illustration Tutorials

While Adobe Illustrator is the preferred tool by most designers for illustrating and drawing digitally, Photoshop can also be used for some types of illustration. This post includes a selection of tutorials that cover the process of drawing various objects in Photoshop.

Creating a Cartoon Hot Air Balloon Scene

35 Inspirational Website Designs from the Music Industry

Within the music industry there is a great variety in terms of the quality of websites. Some bands have excellent, creative websites, and others have sites that are not so friendly for visitors. In this post we’ll feature 35 websites from the music industry. Some are band websites and others are involved in the music industry in various ways.

The Blizzards

37 Shopping Cart Options for Developers

If you’re building an e-commerce website or adding a small store to an existing website, you have plenty of options to choose from. With so many different options and so much variety from one to another, there is no right or wrong solution, just different choices that may work best for you in different situations.

You may want to choose an open source option that you can learn well in order to build a number of different client websites. Or, your client may want to go with a hosted or licensed option that can be up and running quickly. In this post we’ll look at more than 30 different options, provide some basic details, and point you in the right direction for getting more information to make a good decision.

If you don’t already have a preferred e-commerce system to work with, be sure to do some homework or experimentation before making any important decisions that could be difficult to change later.

Open Source Shopping Carts and E-Commerce Options:

There are a number of open source options that are popular with developers.

Magento