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Blog Details for "Web Design Blog"
Web Design BlogWeb Design BlogA web blog focusing on advice, tips and guidance for web design and development. Articles
SEO Tool, WordTracker
2007-08-06 13:15:00 If you’re a professional web developer then SEO, or search engine optimisation, should be one of the most important services you offer regardless of client size and target demographic. Optimising websites to perform well in search engines plays a vital role in the success of that website; if a local estate agents hired you to build them a website which, ultimately, no one ever visited because it scored too low in search engine rankings, then the client is really no better off than beforehand. SEO isn’t easy, and there are a multitude of tricks and tools that developers use. One of the more prominent, and immediately useful and accessible, is WordTrac ker . WordTracker allows you to enter the keywords for your market — for example, ‘teddy bears’ — and it’ll scan the top hundred performing websites ranking for those keywords, pulling keywords from their sites and examining them to see how they got to the top positions. It’ll then compare the resul... More About: Tool
Shared Vs Dedicated Web Hosting
2007-08-03 13:22:00 As a web designer/developer, one role often required is to secure adequate web hosting for the website(s) you’ve been assigned to build. The kind of hosting you should pick should certainly be matched to the website ? any colossal site rolled out for a new corporate product would not be hosted on a super budget ... More About: Hosting , Web Hosting , Dedicated
Flash Vs Shockwave; Which Should I Use?
2007-08-01 14:40:00 I know that, for a lot of web users and even web developers, that there is some confusion between Flash and Shockwave. Thats understandable because they’re very similiar looking, seem to perform the same functions of embedding rich interactivity within webpages, and even come from the same company. However, there are some fundamental differences that dictate ... More About: Lash , Wave
Premium SMS Services For Your Website For Free
2007-07-30 14:09:00 A few people have asked about the fact that I offer my blog feed as an SMS subscription service, presumably because its an unusual feature and I’d guess that most blogs (even the largest ones) don’t have that functionality. Although premium SMS services seem like the domain of corporations with deep pockets, the reality is ... More About: Services , Website , Free , Premium , Remi
Design Resources: SXC, BrowserCam, and Fluid Mask
2007-07-29 21:24:00 In this post I’ll be talking about a few more resources which I think you’ll find useful for web and graphic design. I’ll also be adding these to my Resources page. stock.xchnge The free photo stock exchange, called stock.xchnge or just SXC for short, is a handy resource in finding stock photography for your web or graphic ... More About: Design , Misc , Mask , Sources
Design Resources: SXC, BrowserCam, and Fluid Mask
2007-07-29 21:24:00 In this post I’ll be talking about a few more resources which I think you’ll find useful for web and graphic design. I’ll also be adding these to my Resources page. stock.xchnge The free photo stock exchange, called stock.xchnge or just SXC for short, is a handy resource in finding stock photography for your web or graphic ... More About: Design , Mask , Browse
The Laws of Design: Printed Media
2007-07-27 17:19:00 After being tagged by graphic designer Paul Enderson in his excellent article on interface design, I thought I’d take a slightly different approach and put together a short article on the laws of design in relation to printed media, such as business cards and flyers. One thing to remember is that a skilled designer can manipulate ... More About: Media , Design , Laws , The Law
The Viewpoint Clash: Designers vs Surfers
2007-07-25 13:32:00 As a web designer, its my job to put together websites that are attractive, immediately accessible and easy to use. These things seem obvious to anyone who develops websites, but a crucial problem over the past five years or so is that surfers see and mentally interpret website layouts in a different way to how ... More About: Designers , Viewpoint , The V , Lash , Clash
Where?s Damien?
2007-07-21 11:35:00 Just a super quick post here at the moment ? I want to inform you (my lovely readers!) that theres been a bit of a crisis come up in my personal life, which is taking up a lot of my time. Thats why I haven’t been posting lately; once things clear up a bit, I’ll ... More About: Misc , Where , Damien
uVme Business Card Mockup - Opinions Wanted
2007-07-17 20:19:00 Just wanted to get some people’s opinions on a business card design I’m currently working on, to promote the uvmeassociate.com domain. This mockup has only had about fifteen minutes put into it. Colourwise I aimed to represent the vibrance of online gaming, with a strong blue gradient to match the orange of the uVme logo. I ... More About: Business , Card , Opinions , Misc , Business Card
The Golden Ratio In Web Design
2007-07-17 17:12:00 The golden ratio, also known as the golden mean or golden section, is a representation of the number phi which is believed to create the most visually pleasing result possible. Its been used for thousands of years in all fields of design, from architecture such as the Parthenon statues, to art such as Leonardo da ... More About: Web Design , Design , Golden , The Go , The G
Home Based Business - uVme Associate
2007-07-16 18:56:00 I’m still barely recovering from a very hectic weekend which included Sunday’s prelaunch event of uVme, an interesting online skill gaming website that launches in September. I thought I’d blog about it while its still fresh in my mind. uVme describes itself as online gaming meets social networking, where people can challenge friends, family and ... More About: Business , Home Based Business , Home , Base , Associate
Monetising Your Website
2007-07-13 16:01:00 Regardless of whether you’re running a hobby website about needlecraft, a social community discussing classic movies, or a personal blog, you’re probably going to want to be able to make a little money from it ? even a few extra bucks in your pocket each month wouldn’t hurt. But what is the right option for ... More About: Website , Misc
Simple Pattern Backgrounds For Website Layouts
2007-07-10 18:20:00 Here we’ll create a clean, simple background that can be used in pretty much any style of webpage or MySpace layout you may design. We’ll make it tile too, so that you only need a very small image that will seamlessly cover as much space as you need it to. First off, create a new document ... More About: Website , Pattern , Simple , Backgrounds , Round
Blogger’s Priority: Branding Or SEO?
2007-07-08 13:43:00 I’m fully aware that the title for this blog — Website Design Blog — isn’t all that amazing, original, or catchy. It’s not a funky word like “Pizam!”, or even simply using my personal name, like DamienKing.com would. So why use it? Although this blog only started just a few weeks ago on the 19th of June, I already rank well with the search engines. I was surprised to see the kinds of hits I was receiving after checking my WordPress stats, and peeked into some of the bigger search engines to get an idea of what’s what. Lets take the term website design blog for example. For that search term alone I’m ranked 12th on Google, 12th on Altavista, and a whopping 5th on Yahoo!. Thats amazing for a PageRank 0 blog thats still so new you can still smell the freshness. I rank well for similar search terms too, and its already generating some nice traffic for me. Theres no doubt that a strong brand is an effective marketing tool. Websites I’v... More About: Branding , Blogger , Logger , Blogg , Priority
Quick Fix: PNG Transparency In IE 6
2007-07-06 15:55:00 If you’re accustomed to designing intricate layouts in Photoshop then you’ll know how annoying transparency is. Although useful, GIFs are severely limited by their 256 colour palette making attractive transparency or translucency virtually impossible. PNG graphics in their 24 bit glory offer perfect transparency, but aren’t supported in versions of Internet Explorer lower than IE7. Given ... More About: Quick , Transparency , Spar , Tran , Pare
My First Website?
2007-07-05 00:50:00 Who remembers the very first website or webpage they ever built? Regardless of whether it was built with FrontPage, an online “wizard” or in a text editor, everybody started somewhere. I remember my very first website. I had started attending college way back in 1998 and the computers there were newly equipped with internet access. A ... More About: Website , Misc
Web Design Quotes: The Price Is Right?
2007-07-02 23:07:00 One of the biggest problems I’ve always had with website design work, is the issue of cost. How much should one charge for this or that? Personally, I have a habit of charging less money than perhaps I should and its a difficult habit to break out of. Many designers, especially those who haven’t been employed ... More About: Web Design , Design , Misc , Quotes , Price
Useful Resources: Prototype, Lipsum, and DaFont
2007-06-28 16:01:00 In this post I thought I’d share some of the resources that I use pretty often, or feel that you’d benefit most from. There are a thousand useful resources out there, but I think you’ll find something handy here. If you use JavaScript or Ajax in your websites then Prot otype could save you a lot of time and effort. Its a JavaScript framework that, as well as optimising XML and JSON calls, works cross browser so that you don’t have to code the same thing multiple times just to ensure it works exactly the same across all browsers and platforms. Definitely worth a look if you’re interested in coding Ajax heavy sites. A few people have asked me where all the “lorem ipsum” filler text comes from, that they’ve seen whenever I do webpage or print mockups. Lorem ipsum is a false language that has been classically used as filler text and is readily available either within high end publishing software, or with free websites such as Lipsum.com. Li... More About: Resources , Useful , Sources
Web 3.0
2007-06-26 18:03:00 The nineties saw the internet become known and used by the public. Dubbed the “information superhighway”, the world wide web enabled businesses to reach a global audience. Communication services enabled people all over the world could communicate with each other, with both email and real-time text chat software such as IRC and ICQ. With such ... More About: Misc , Web 3
How Accessible Is Your Site?
2007-06-26 01:59:00 Over the past few years quite a bit of fuss has been kicked up over the issues of usability and accessibility with regards to web design. Often it comes down to web savvy developers arguing the case for adding site accessibility against clients who aren’t at all interested, preferring to have more time devoted to ... More About: Site
MySpace Styling: Custom Contact Table Graphics
2007-06-25 17:22:00 Here we’ll take a look at one of the fundamental things changed by custom MySpace layouts. Many MySpace users simply grab premade layouts (which contain ugly advert linkbacks, by the way) as they don’t know how to put together their own layout. Lets start by having our own custom contact table. First of all, load up ... More About: Graphics , Myspace , Contact , Table , Custom
Stylesheet Basics - What Is CSS?
2007-06-24 16:27:00 CSS, or Cascading Stylesheets, are additional elements that allow you far greater control over the appearance and layout of your websites. You can tweak the exact colour, positioning, spacing and much more, of any element on the page. Styles are usually saved in a separate file, with each page of your site accessing that file ... More About: Basics , Shee
Fixed Width vs Fluid Width Websites; Which Is Right For Me?
2007-06-23 15:37:00 A lot of intermediate and professional website designers squabble over their preferred method of laying out websites. Should you go fluid to maximize space, or stay fixed to keep control over appearance? In this post I’ll break down the pros and cons for each option, and let you decide for yourselves. Fixed width websites Designing a website ... More About: Websites
Curvy Colour Correction
2007-06-22 23:30:00 In this tutorial we’ll explore Photoshop’s mysterious Curves function, seeing how it can be used to quickly and effectively correct the hues, tones and colours of an image in just a few clicks. Heres the image we’ll use for this one. As you can see, the colours are way off: Regardless of whether the colours were studio/live ... More About: Colour , Rect
Changing Image Colours In Photoshop
2007-06-22 15:26:00 Photoshop can be used to quickly, easily and realistically alter the hues and colours of any part of any image. There are a number of ways of doing this, and here we’ll take a look at the quickest - and usually most effective. Here’s the image we’ll be altering: Pretty enough, but lets give her striking ... More About: Photoshop , Colours , Changing , Image , Chang
Top Five Webpage Mistakes - Design Crime
2007-06-22 14:02:00 This post will be short and snappy; I’ll point out horrendous design mistakes which crop up on amateur webpages (and most of MySpace) again and again. If you do something on this list, do something about it immediately! Here’s my current top five incidents of what I dub ‘design crime’. 1. Background music From MIDIs playing on Geocities ... More About: Design , Crime , Five , Webpage , Rime
One Click Borders For Images
2007-06-21 06:42:00 If you’re not used to adding borders to your images to improve their clarity and cosmetic appearance, you’ll appreciate this method. We’ll create a Photoshop action which will automatically add a clean, one pixel border to any image regardless of dimensions. Load up an image you want to add a border to. Any image will do for now, we’re only using it to record an Action. Create a new action and name it “1px Border” or something similiar. Next, create a new layer. Go to Select > All (or press Ctrl-A, or Command-A on a Mac) to select the entire image range. Next, go to Edit > Stroke. Here, choose a 1px width stroke, choose pure black as a colour (you can recolour it for individual images after the process), and make sure the Location is Inside. Hit OK, and then press Ctrl-D (Command-D) to deselect everything. Finally, click on Stop playing/recording on the Actions panel, and you’re done! What this action will do in future, is create a ... More About: Images , Click , Borders , Order , Orders
Look Sharp With The High Pass Filter
2007-06-20 23:34:00 WordPress database error: [Table 'cssblogdb.dwp_tla_rss_map' doesn't exist] INSERT IGNORE INTO `dwp_tla_rss_map` SET post_id = '7', advertisement = '' Photoshop’s High Pass filter is one of those obscure “Other” effects that is rarely used, most likely because they can’t figure out what it could really be used for. This quick tutorial will show you how the High Pass filter can be used to sharpen images clearly and effectively, without generating artifacts. Here’s the image we’ll ... More About: Sharp , Filter , Look
HTML for beginners: making your first webpage (Part 2)
More articles from this author:2007-06-20 16:58:00 WordPress database error: [Table 'cssblogdb.dwp_tla_rss_map' doesn't exist] INSERT IGNORE INTO `dwp_tla_rss_map` SET post_id = '6', advertisement = '' This is the second in a multipart series of posts about teaching the fundamentals of putting a webpage together. Read Part One here. So far we have a very basic webpage with just a simple message on it. Lets improve it and make it into a fully working webpage, with tables, links and images. First ... More About: Html , Maki , Webpage , Makin 1, 2, 3 |
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