Give New Heights To Your Web Designing Creativity – Useful Guide For Web Designers

Are you looking for some superb designs or just an inspiration to work on your own design? In this article you will come to know some best creativity works to serve as fuel for your website. In this collection you will come across some excellent work regarding logo designing, web designing, and some useful designing tips. These collections are from different galleries and also the best available over World Wide Web. Have a look and fine one best inspiration for your web designing effort.

Carbon Made Design Stock

This website is an excellent stock for web designers with its more than 174,00 master pieces specifically carrying web designing, and 3D animation background. You will get better insight after visiting this website.

Lemon Flip

This website is carries Slovakian collection of web designing to inspire designers who are involved in making posters, printed material, website designs, and logos.

CSS Mania

This gallery is more inspirational compared to previous one of CSS. This Drive equips designers with amazing color schemes along with a hover box. Designers can also get useful tips and tools for working in CSS environment.

CSS Elite

This gallery also contains CSS work. Designers can explore through different designs in accordance with their own preferences. They will get a variety of designs carrying features of

• • Uniqueness
• • Colorfulness
• • Dark layouts
• • Clean clutter free
• • For blogging websites

Minimalsites

This again is a CSS gallery of designs. These designs are excellent for designers who want to make simple websites with minimal use of CSS.

CSS Remix

Designers will find this website great while looking for best designs obtained after mixing different designs and them reaching the one they were dreaming.

Link Crème

This website has earned a good repute among others providing good websites portfolio. Here designers can find web design made by using Flash technology or CSS.

Design Snack

Here at this website, users categorize web designs of their choice. Therefore, this site provides good collection of best designs as preferred by users. Designers are provided with facility of sorting out web design depending on Flash, HTML, CSS, or by the design category they are looking for like they want to work for music website or for some charity based websites.

Logo Pond

This website provides superb logo designs made by professionally expert web designs. These designs are provided by users that may inspire you if you are looking for something unique.

Logo Sauce

This is another website that displays logo designs. Here the amazing thing is the competition held for users who come up with unique logo designs. There is also prize money for the winner of competition that has a minimal worth of $200. Competitions are held under strict control of site editors.

Logo Design Love

This website carries lots of logo designs to inspire designers for their own work. This website will actually increase your love for logo designing.

Get inspiration from these websites and give a new direction to your creative skills. Your clients will really love your work.

SEO Advice: Effective Site Structure & Content Building

In this article, we discuss two basic issues that effect many websites around the world; website structure and content building.

With more websites on the planet than ever before, finding the right website structure and having an appropriate architecture is paramount to a websites continual success. While it may seem like a common sense issue to have an easy navigation system and good interlinking in a website, many webmasters unfortunately fail to hit the target and although create beautifully well designed websites; these websites can be hard to navigate and hard to serve their given purpose

From Boutique (template) websites to large online databases and commerce sites, having an effective structure and navigation system is imperative.

In the case of small template websites (Boutique Sites) they are typically designed for displaying a companies business details and their core services. Simple in design and functionality, the idea is to direct users to a contact form, subscription page or services listed page by the company straight away.

The focus is on providing a direct targeted approach for the user, in terms of what they are looking to obtain. Each user should be able to find out exactly what there are searching for within one or two clicks.

As most website visitors browse a website homepage quite quickly, there should to be an immediate USP for them to dig deeper into your website. Generally, users will want to find information quickly and clearly without being confused by irrelevant distractions.

When a website visitor has progressed from the homepage, they need to be led to the next page that will either interest them or lead towards a point of action. If there is no such structure or focus, the chances are that the visitor will leave the website shortly after a couple of page views.

Overall, the following tips are recommended for small business websites:


• Ensure that the website is fresh and simple
• Use a standardised set of colours
• Keep the overall style and font standardised
• Try not to over complicate the site with too many graphics

Adding Extra Content to Websites

In general terms of SEO, with one of the core principles being that “content is King,” an average rule of thumb would indicate that the more relevant content you have on your site and the greater number of relevant pages indexed would therefore lead to a greater web presence.

Given the nature of which each company website is made, there are certain limitations to the choice of pages created, the topics / themes of discussion and the amount of content that can be made.

For new and developing websites, it is wise to consider how you could develop your website to x3 its current size. If you have plenty of content, design ideas on hand then you are heading in the right direction. If you are struggling with ways to increase your website size you should re-consider your site structure and its associated content and navigation system.

One simple tip if you are struggling with the current amount of space on your site is to set up sub categories, folders and sub domains as this will allow you as a webmaster to create more defined, targeted content pages to attract particular niches to your website.

5 easy website content building techniques


• Set up a blog
• Have testimonials / Reviews section
• Case studies / Application Stories
• Online Newsletter
• Online Press Releases

Overall, in terms of content building and effective website structure, the core principle of keeping user interest and leading users to a point of action should always be a priority.

By-line: Stephen McAllister is the Marketing Manager at More Control Ltd who specialise in bespoke Automation Solutions and Automation products.

5 Ways to Keep Readers Interested in Your Blog

If you have a website or blog than you probably want more visitors.  But even if you got the number of visitors you wanted, it wouldn’t do much good if they didn’t hang around long enough to sign up to your list, buy your product, or at least check out a few pages.  You just can’t have a boring blog today.  There are simply too many websites out there and people have shorter attention spans than ever before.

So how can you engage your readers and keep them coming back for more?  Here are 5 helpful tips for keeping your visitors interested and turning them into faithful fans.

1.  Use lists as much as possible.  Never underestimate the power of bullet points.  I read about 20 blogs a day and I just don’t have time to read every word on a page.  If there are bullet points it allows me to quickly browse through the article to see what it’s all about.  And then if I am intrigued by the content I will take more time to read every word.  Lists are also great because they give you the chance to give the readers steps to follow.  We all love step by step instructions, especially if it’s for a topic we are passionate about.
2.  Get to know your audience.  You might think you know who your readers are, but do you REALLY know?  Stroll on over to Alexa.com or Google Ad planner, or even Quantcast.com to see what demographic you are actually writing for.  I was shocked the other day to find that most of the readers for one of my blogs are between 20-25.  This was a much younger demographic than I had thought I was writing to.  Knowing your audience helps you to write articles that cater to their interests.  You should also encourage interaction on your blog so you can get to know their concerns, questions, and insights as well. 
3. Run a contest now and then.  You don’t have to have a giveaway every week, but having one at least once in a while does help to keep people coming back.  And no, you don’t have to give away an Ipad2 all the time.  You can just give away something small if you are on a tight budget.  Contests help to bring in new people and to also bring in old readers that had long forgotten about your awesome blog.   Whoever wins the contest will probably end up being a loyal fan of your blog too.  Got an old, tired blog?  Spice it up with a contest.
4. Do a video series.  We all love pictures, but videos are even better.  Nothing will help extend the length of time for visitors on your site like a quality video.  You already write posts on your blog, right?  So why not just talk instead of write.  It will probably even be a lot easier than typing out a post and your readers (watchers) will get to see a more personal side of you with a video.  So it not only helps to keep their interest, but it also helps them connect with you on a deeper level.  If you are uncomfortable going on video then just do a screencast and show them a cool tip online.
5. Do regular case studies.  You can give your opinion all day long, but it really doesn’t matter unless you have some concrete proof.  We all love case studies because it allows us to learn from someone else’s mistakes and see some solid evidence to support why a certain method does or doesn’t work.  If you do a case study every week, I guarantee you will have a lot of people coming back to see the results.

There are many other things you can do to keep your reader’s interested in your blog and coming back for more.  One question to ask yourself is this: “If I didn’t own this blog would even I come back?”  If your site wouldn’t keep you interested it probably won’t have a different effect on your would-be readers either.

Phillip is a writer for a few dental related websites.   He actively helps the marketing for a teeth grinding mouth guards website as well as a local dentist office for Shelby NC dentist.

Free Software Alternatives for Work, Creativity, and Play

Finding quality software for your work, creativity, and entertainment does not have to be expensive. With the following free and open source software alternatives, you can get good software for free, without the strings attached to most commercial software.

1. Instant Messenger

Non-Free: AOL IM, Yahoo IM, Google Talk

Free:

Pidgin – Pidgin supports a wide range of IM protocols, including Yahoo, AOL, Facebook, Google Talk, MSN, and many more.

Adium – Adium is specifically designed for Mac OS X, providing full Mac integration. Like Pidgin, it supports just about everything from Facebook to Google Talk.

aMSN – aMSN is an MSN Messenger clone that focuses primarily on being compatible with the Windows network. Nevertheless, it is available for Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and other operating systems.

2. Web Browser

Non-Free: Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, Google Chrome

Free:

Mozilla Firefox – The browser that made open source cool is still one of the most widely used. It is available for just about every desktop and mobile platform in nearly every language you can imagine.

Chromium – Chrome is Google's entry into the Browser Wars, but its license is non-free and has raised some privacy issues. Fortunately, the underlying code, Chromium, is free and open, and you can find versions of it for just about every OS.

3. Image Editing

Non-Free: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Paint.NET

Free:

Gimp – Gimp has been called the Poor man's Photoshop by some, but it is also a unique and powerful image editor on its own.

Inkscape – Inkscape is to Illustrator what Gimp is to Photoshop. It is a vector image editor that has a boatload of features and native SVG support for creating standards-compliant web images.

Pinta – Modeled after Paint.NET, Pinta is a free and open alternative drawing/editing program that is designed to be simple.

4. Music Player

Non-Free: iTunes, Winamp

Free:

Amarok – This KDE-based music player contains all the major features you would expect, including Internet streaming.

Songbird – More than just a music player, Songbird is also a music browser. It is like the Firefox of music players and has its own share of extensions and themes.

aTunes – If iTunes were free and available on every platform, it would be aTunes. Cover art, lyrics, playlists, it's all there.

Exaile – Exaile could be considered the GTK version of Amarok 1.4. It is lightweight but powerful, providing all of the music player features of much larger programs.

5. Mp3 – Mp3 is a widely-used audio format, but it is laced with patents, making it non-free. Moreover, it is not even the best quality format on the market.

Ogg Vorbis – Ogg Vorbis, despite its strange name, compresses files that are just about as small as Mp3 files but with a much better audio quality. According to UK server hosting provider 34SP.com, it is a web standard format and streams audio through HTML5-compliant browsers.

FLAC – Free Lossless Audio Codec – FLAC is lossless, meaning you get CD quality at a fraction of the file size.

6. Torrent download

Non-free: uTorrent – BitTorrent went commercial a few years back, but that does not mean you have to do the same.

Free:

Transmission - This Mac/Linux torrent client is very lightweight and gets straight to the point: downloading torrents.

FrostWire – FrostWire supports Gnutella and BitTorrent, and is part of an entire network (called FrostClick) of artists who give their music and other works away freely for people to enjoy.

qBittorrent – qBittorrent provides the features of uTorrent but is free, open source, and available on all platforms. Based on the QT toolkit, it is also very fast and easy to port to new OSes.

There are many other free software alternatives out there. Feel free to share your favorites and help others enjoy the freedom.

Tavis J. Hampton is a writer web specialist with over a decade of experience in writing, information services, and Linux system administration.

A Writer's Guide to Formatting Blog Posts

Guest post by: Tavis J. Hampton

There is a certain art to writing for the web, and anyone who does it has developed a skill that took time to learn. From mastering search engine optimization (SEO) to understanding image copyright restrictions, one could probably develop an entire course on web writing. Formatting is unfortunately one that sometimes gets overlooked. How you format your blog posts or online articles can affect everything else: SEO, presentation, clarity, and ultimately your reputation as a professional.

The good news is that it is far easier to format web articles now than it was five, ten, or even fifteen years ago. With dynamic websites and content management systems, publishing is a cinch, but there are still possible hiccups along the way that can cost you. This quick guide should help you learn or remember some of the more critical aspects of web formatting.

1. Avoid the direct Microsoft Word copy and paste. If you must use something like Word, turn off your blog's WYSIWYG editor (select HTML in WordPress), and paste directly into the plain text box. Then, switch back to rich text and format the document. Pasting from Google Docs is also much cleaner than pasting from Word, but it does put a DIV tag around the text and also does not preserve bold and italics in the paste, meaning you will still need to do some formatting within your blog's backend.

2. Use an HTML Editor. A simple way to ensure you provide the clearest, unmolested text to your readers is to use an HTML editor from the beginning. Wordpress and other content management systems tend to use XHTML 1.0 or higher for formatting. That means that old HTML 4.0 editors will use deprecated tags for line breaks, images, and other tags. You can avoid this by using an HTML editor like Amaya. As HTML 5 becomes more prevalent, blogging tools may soon adapt.

3. Avoid inline styles and extra code. This point relates to the previous two. Many word processors can format HTML, but they often leave inline styles within paragraph and span tags. First of all, these make the document unnecessarily long, and secondly, they cause problems when you try to edit them within the content management system. If you absolutely cannot use an HTML editor before pasting text into your blog, paste plain text and do all of your formatting within the blog's editor.

4. Include alt attributes for images. For both SEO and accessibility, alt attributes in image tags are important. They describe images to non-visual browsers, both search engines and visually impaired humans. Wordpress and other blogging software include title and alternate text entries. Make them clear and descriptive but not too wordy.

5. Resize images to fit your blog. Some blogging systems will automatically resize to the dimensions you specify, but older systems may only set dimensions in HTML, leaving the actual file size larger than it should be. Furthermore, by resizing in your own image editing program, you can control the amount of compression and also tweak and crop the image. If you intend to show detailed screenshots, consider using thumbnails that will display larger versions of the images upon clicking.

6. Use CSS styles for frequent formatting. If you have a little knowledge of CSS, you can add styles that you know you will use frequently to your WordPress or other blogging CMS template. That way, whenever you need to apply a style, you can use a quick CSS class. many web hosts, such as dedicated hosting provider 34SP.com, will install WordPress for you, but you can still edit the theme's CSS file within the backend's theme editor.

7. Preview before posting. You may think your post is formatted correctly, but it is always better to double check to make sure it looks the way you expect. This is particularly important if you pasted from another editor. Wordpress, for example, removes some code and modifies others, which can sometimes lead to formatting problems.

Formatting your blog can often make or break your article. Text or images that are malformed or incorrectly displayed often turn readers off before they even start to read your work. No matter how good your writing skills are, it is the presentation and appearance that will make the first and often lasting impression.

Tavis J. Hampton is a seasoned writer with a decade of experience in IT, web publishing, and free and open source software. Some of his services include writing, web design, electronic publishing, and information management.

Hide or show div element

Want to learn how to hide div element on your HTML page with javascript? Or how to dynamically show div element? You are on right place. Here you will find simple tutorial, demo and code how to toggle (hide or show) <div> element with its content. With help of javascript div visibility is dynamically changed.

More article and samples how to hide or show HTML element find on Show and hide with javascript summary.
If you are interested in some other fancy javascript effects follow the link.

Demo for hiding and showing div element:

SHOW/HIDE <-- press here

Div is visible

Here is the sample HTML and Javascript code:

<script language="javascript">
    function showOrHide() 
    {
        var div = document.getElementById("showOrHideDiv");
        if (div.style.display == "block") 
        {
            div.style.display = "none";
        }
        else 
        {
            div.style.display = "block";
        }
    } 
</script>
 
<a href="javascript:showOrHide();">show/hide</a>
<div id="showOrHideDiv" style="display: none"><h4>Hello</h4></div>

What is happening in the code:


• When user click SHOW/HIDE link javascript showOrHide() function is called


• Method showOrHide() checks the value of the display style for the div showOrHideDiv


• If the display style of div is none (div is not visible) function will set div style to block - so the div will become visible


• If the display style of div is block (div is visible) function will set div style to none - so the div will be hidden

Demo for div element containing other HTML elements

The <div> tag is often used to group block-elements. You can put any HTML element inside div tag. In this example we put some text and two input HTML element. When user click link both textboxes are hided or showed.

SHOW/HIDE <-- press here

First name:
Last name:

This is a code:

 
<script language="javascript">
    function showOrHide() 
    {
        var div = document.getElementById("showOrHideDiv");
        if (div.style.display == "block") 
        {
            div.style.display = "none";
        }
        else 
        {
            div.style.display = "block";
        }
    }

</script>
<br/>
<a href="javascript:showOrHide();"><b>SHOW/HIDE</b></a> <-- press here
<br/><br/>
<div id="showOrHideDiv" style="display: none">
First name: <input type="text" name="FirstName" value="Donald" /><br />
Last name: <input type="text" name="LastName" value="Duck" /><br />
</div>

Purpose of this example is to demonstrate that in div tag can be many various HTML elements. So, when you hide div tag you hide all HTML element this div tag is contain. Same thing count for showing div.

If you want to change text of your link to Show or Hide when div tag is showed or hided take a look at change link text with javascript.

Demo of one javascript function for hiding various div elements

show/hide Div A	show/hide Div B
Div A	Div B

Here is a code of reusable javascript function divHideShow for hide div elements. This function can be called from various places. The input parameter in function divHideShow is id of <div> tag you want to hide or show.

<script language="javascript">

    function divHideShow(divToHideOrShow) 
    {
        var div = document.getElementById(divToHideOrShow);
        if (div.style.display == "block") {
            div.style.display = "none";
        }
        else {
            div.style.display = "block";
        }
    }
    
</script>
 

    <table style="width: 28%; height: 54px;">
        <tr>
            <td>
                <a href="javascript:divHideShow('divA');">hide DivA</a>
                </td>
            <td>
                <a href="javascript:divHideShow('divB');">hide DivB</a></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>
                <div id="divA" style="display: block"><h4>Div A</h4></div></td>
            <td>
                <div id="divB" style="display: block"><h4>Div B</h4></div></td>
        </tr>
    </table>

In above code example same jscript function divHideShow(divToHideOrShow) is called from show/hide Div A link and from show/hide Div B.

One more thing, if you need here you can find instructions how to place two div elements in one line side by side.

Website Structure Advice

Guest post

There are several types of websites on the internet. Some websites are selling a product or service while others are more informational. Whichever type you are creating, the text should be concise, short, and to the point, and the website itself should be well structured.

No matter what type of website you are creating, know your target audience (a stay-at-home mom, business community, sports fans, artists, etc.) and adapt your website as specifically as possible to the audience you desire to reach. Knowing your audience makes it easier to write text for your website that is effective, appropriate, and interesting.

Before creating your website there are various questions you need to ask yourself. Why is this website being created? What do I plan to accomplish with the creation of this website? Who is my target audience? How do I communicate most effectively, with words, graphics, video, audio? How do I capture my audience?

A website is composed of a series of individual pages. No matter what type of website you are creating, your site should be well organized. Before creating your site, decide on the how it should be structured.

A website structure is basically made of first page (referred to as the home page and/or index page), the next level down known as the "main sections", and the third level down referred to as subsections and/or content pages. Try to imagine your website as a hierarchy of pages, with your home page located at the top.

The home page should be short and to the point. This is the front door of your presence online, the first impression of your site to the majority of your website's visitors. This is the page that will capture the reader’s interest and give them reason to go deeper into your website.

The main section pages should contain the overview of the general topics your website covers. For example, if you own a website that is selling doors, this would be where you would list the various types of doors that you are selling but not yet sharing the details of a specific model of door.

The subsection pages are where you offer the specific details. Using the same example as above, if you own a website that is selling doors this is the level where you list the detail description of each door, a picture of the door, the cost of the door, etc.

Some people sketch out a diagram of what they want their website structure to look like on a piece of paper. I prefer to use index cards to get an idea of how the website structure will look since they can more easily be moved around. Once you have the index cards in the structure fashion that you want, sketch the diagram on a sheet of paper to capture the layout of the index cards. Then, you can get work!

Bio: Kate Forester writes about web hosting providers, web design tools and other online products and services for Consumer-Rankings.com.

E-books are King! Finally They Pass Up Paperbacks in Sales

Guest post by: Rodney

In a huge bit of tech news today, E-book sales actually passed paperback books in total sales for the first time.  The study by the Association of American Publishers showed that E-books exploded during the month of February due to holiday gifts such as Kindles and various other readers.  It is amazing that we have already begun to see the change over that was made years ago for other types of media such as music.  It is only a matter of time before we erase the need for books completely it would seem.

While this feels sad in some ways, there are some wonderful reasons to embrace the new revolution of electronic words.  Here are some great reasons to embrace the technology:

• Kindles and e-readers are lightweight and easy to carry around. This means that kids at school will no longer have to lug around huge book bags.  You can carry around your books with a simple pocket.

• Kids will no longer have any excuses for “forgetting” their textbooks.  Homework completion will have to go up.

• E-readers are the perfect way to broaden your horizons.  You can quickly and easily pull up the classics and usually for free.

• E-books are flexible in that you can increase or decrease font size, etc.  For those people that have vision problems, the ability to change the size of the text is huge.  Finding some books in large print are nearly impossible.

• E-books allow the average writer a chance to break into the “big-time” in the writing world.  If you are trying to get in, then you can relate to this advantage for sure.

• Books that would not have made it to print because of production costs can now make it.  Digital expenses are much cheaper than printing on traditional paper.

• Books will be cheaper and you can buy more of them.  While this is likely to change and adapt, the simple fact is the reduction in printing costs are going to keep costs low.  This is good news for all readers.

• The depth and breadth of information available to our students should increase as well.  Organizing lesson plans, putting together class projects, pulling in literature and so on should all be much easier and productive in a digital reading format.  Everyone can be on point at the same time.

• Less paper and glue to make books means more trees and less environment destruction.  With the way our natural habitats are being destroyed, we are sure to run out at some point.  This is a natural and clear way to help with this problem.  The best part is, we lose absolutely nothing in doing so.

• Finally, E-readers are simply compact and will create tons of space in your living areas.  I know that if I eliminated all the books I have in my home, I could add another child to our mix with no problem from a space standpoint.  Making things less crowded is always a good thing.

While books will be missed and will likely always play some role in our entertainment world, the E-readers and E-books of the world are welcome additions as well.

Rodney is a freelance writer and sports columnist based in North Carolina.  Rodney is a regular contributer of technology articles, such as comparing Direct TV and Dish Network.

Does content really make you money?

Guest post by: Paul

Everyone’s gone marketing crazy lately and I suppose I don’t blame them either. With more competition than ever you really have to work to get your site noticed online. For many webmasters this involves many hours/days of link begging until some blogger eventually gives in and links to you from their resources page (which is buried 10 levels deep from the homepage).

So the marketing side of being a webmaster is un-avoidable but I’ve noticed that many forget you need great content on your site if you expect visitors to convert into sales, either for yourself or your advertisers. How many times have you been to an ecommerce site that’s just had a bunch of technical info on each product that they got free from the manufacturer? I’m not sure why people think boring content increases sales but they seem too.

How about instead of some forgettable technical specs you shot a video of yourself using the product and explaining the features and benefits of it? People love to watch video online because it requires even less effort than reading, people are lazy and I include myself in that bracket. I know some webmasters are worried about how to put a video into web format and maybe also bandwidth costs. However this is no longer a realistic excuse because Youtube will now do it all for you including converting the video. All you have to do embed the video code on your site, plus you will attract visitors from people viewing it on Youtube too!

It’s not just video that can increase sales on your site, info-graphics are also great for explaining something complex quickly. If you’re not sure what an info-graphic is it’s just an image with lots of labels explaining a process, the key is to keep it light-hearted with cartoon characters and fun colours. Try not to let it become a power point slide, otherwise people will feel like they are at work!

The best reason to create useful content though is because long term it’s really the only strategy. Untimely at some point someone at Google may review your site and if you have a 1000 pages of junk you can’t really complain if your site disappears the next day. When it comes to quality creating something worthwhile is the best bet you can make.

I have more articles like this on my blog at earning money online which has lots of marketing advice for webmasters.