OK, now that you’ve gotten your domain name registered and it is pointing to the correct hosting provider, what now? The first thing to do is choose the blogging or CMS (content management system) tool you want to do. Their are a lot of tools out there and though this list is not meant to be an exhaustive list, here are several tools that you can use: WordPress Joomla Drupal Typo3 b2evolution Xoops PHP-Nuke Dotnetnuke Moveabletype The two I typical use is Joomla and WordPress, both are great tools with a vibrant support base and a community that is eager to help. I don’t want to discount any of the blogging tools I’ve listed or start a flame war for those of you that might use tools
So your out one day when you are struck by lighting, well metaphorically, the strike of lighting was an idea of writing the next great blog on art after a stroll through the Art Institute of Chicago and viewing Roy Lichtenstein’s Ohhh…Alright…. Though you know art you have no idea on where or how to start creating a website, well you are in luck; in this two part series we are going to find you a domain name, register it, find a hosting company and get you URL online. In part 2 we will pick a blogging engine and a design so you can start showcasing your art prowess. Find a domain name Finding a domain name can be hard, especially today with cyber squatters and others looking
Every designer has its own secret collection of Photoshop Brushes. They are meant to be like real brushes, making it possible for you to draw with them. But, with the help of technology, they have become much more than that! Today you can find every kind of Free Photoshop brushes you need. There are options that start with more abstract cloud or naturepeople silhouettes or famous world landmark brushes and go up to more detailed . Whatever you need, you can find a great brush that replicates it. But, finding great brush sources is not as easy as it seems. You have many websites, but only a few are well organized and have easy to find brushes. That is what we will try to bring you with this post
According to Wikipedia, Vector Images are: “Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon(s), which are all based on mathematical equations, to represent images/computer graphics.” Because Vector Images don’t lose quality when stretched and are easily editable with any vector software, many great designers use them to enhance and create great design pieces. Since they are not as popular as regular images and sometimes more complicated create, there are not many quality websites where you can download vector images for free. The list below was created for you to find those resources without much trouble and time. Please comment if you know any other good vector image source to share with us! 1. OpenClipart.org The OpenClipart.org is a “public domain” project and aims to create an archive of clip art files that can
If you’re looking for a way to share bits of designs for feedback (or vanity) but you’re still waiting in the queue for an invite-only site, you might want to give Favwork.com a try. The concept of the site is delightfully simple: Just upload a small- to medium-sized JPEG of your current favorite piece of work, and tell the world why you like it. Other users can comment on, like, share and link to your favorite; and you can browse popular images, new favorites or images that you’ve liked. To say that Favwork is a clone of the so-hot-right-now Dribbble would be an understatement of the greatest magnitude. In the following screenshot, you can see Favwork above and Dribbble below; while not identical to the last pixel, there’s certainly
The more the web becomes an application source, icons become more important t to make the software/design stand out from the rest. We have decided to come up with a list of the top 5 free websites that provide quality icons. These 5 websites that we have found are absolutely awesome and can help anyone who is quickly looking for a free icon! 1. IconFinder Probably the best known source to find your free icons (most of them are Creative Commons licensed), IconFinder had to be first on this list. It works like a “Google for Icons”, you just need to search for the name or type of the icon you’re looking for and IconFinder brings you all the results and download links on a superb user interface. 2. IconsPedia Very
Every now and then it is important for a designer to look around for some new inspiration. There are many web design blogs around, but there are honestly only a few that are worth looking at (besides ours of course). Check out the list of the top 3 web design blogs we found for learning new techniques, understanding trends and keeping up to date of what’s going on in the web designer realm. 1. Webdesigner Depot (WDD) WDD Rocks! They’ve created this site around the end of 2008 and after a couple of years it’s boosting in quality content, has thousands of followers on Twitter and is, for sure, one of the big players around if you’re looking for quality web design content. As they say: “Webdesigner
Choosing the right color palette for your next web design project is a science of its own, and if your a designer you`ll agree with me on that one. Projects with colors that don’t work together look unprofessional and even if well coded don’t provide a good user experience. Short version: color is KEY in web design and can make or break a website. So I have went ahead and put together a list of the best free online color scheme generators that I could find! 1. Color Scheme Designer Probably one of the most professional color scheme designer apps you’ll find around, Color Scheme Designer goes deep into color theories and gives you options of choosing Mono, Complement, Triad, Tetrad, Analogic and Accent Analogic color pallets fot the color
CSS galleries are a great source of inspiration for many designers. CSS galleries have become very common which makes it hard to find “the best” of the best. We have made a list of the top 4 CSS galleries that we found on the web based on their Alexa rank. 1. CSS Mania CSSMania was created in by Gabriel Segura in 2004 and at that time, was one of the few CSS galleries around. Today, it is probably the biggest resource for great css websites with aprox. 18.000 listings. 2. CSS Drive Besides being an awesome and complete CSS website gallery, CSS Drive is also a great blog about webdesigna and of course, CSS tools, lessons and examples. 3. BestWebGallery Great CSS gallery with a clear structure and showcase
We have another great interview for you today with the founder of Forrst.com Kyle Bragger. Forrst is a community of developers and designers that share their work with eachother, giving and receiving feedback to help them improve on their skills. Created in 2009, Forrst has a userbase of over 50,000 developers and designers. Could you tell us a few things about yourself, what do you do when you are not working extremely hard developing and managing Forrst? Kyle: I like hanging out with the lady, thinking about products, enjoying a good craft beer, trying not to let work get the better of me. What is a typical day in the shoes of Kyle Bragger? Kyle: I get up, run, head to the office, work with our designer, Keith,