TEN REASONS DESIGNERS SHOULD BE FLUID WITH THEIR SKILLS AND BUILD THEIR OWN SITES

1. It’s never been easier

Now here’s where the definition of ‘build’ is going to get a bit loose and people are going to get angry, but when I say it’s never been easier I mean because of the existence of apps and software like WordPress, Squarespace, Tumblr, et al. It’s easy to make something and get it out there into the world, and these are all gateway drugs to hard coding!

2. You’ll understand how it feels

How it feels to be so proud that something actually works that you momentarily don’t notice if the kerning is off or the padding is inconsistent. How it feels to see your site appear when you’ve redirected a URL. How it feels when you just can’t work out where that one extra space is in a line of PHP that has killed your whole site.

3. It makes you a designer

Not a better designer, it makes you a designer when you are designing how things look and how they work.

4. You learn about movement

Photoshop and Sketch just don’t cut it yet. Until you see your site in a browser or your app on a phone, it’s hard to imagine how it moves. Building your own sites shows you that it’s not just about how the content looks on the screen, but how it moves, interacts and feels.

5. You make techie friends

All the tutorials and forums in the world can’t beat your network of techie friends. Since I started working in web design I have worked with, sat next to, and co-created with some of the greatest developers. Developers who’ve shared their knowledge, encouraged me to build things, patiently explained HTML, CSS, servers, divs, web fonts, iOS development. There has been no void, no versus, very few battles; just people who share an interest and love of making things.

6. You will own domain names

When something is paid for, online and searchable then it’s real and you’ve got to put the work in. Buying domains has taught me how to stop procrastinating, but also about DNS, FTP, email, and how servers work.

7. People will ask you to do things

Learning about code and development opens a whole new world of design. When you put your own personal websites and projects out there people ask you to do more things. OK, so sometimes those things are “Make me a website for free”, but more often it’s cool things like “Come and speak at my conference”, “Write an article for my magazine” and “Collaborate with me.”

8. The young people are coming!

They love typography, they love print, they love layout, but they’ve known how to put a website together since they started their first blog aged five and they show me clever apps they’ve knocked together over the weekend! They’re new, they’re fluid, and they’re better than us!

9. Your portfolio is your portfolio

OK, it’s an obvious one, but as designers our work is our CV, our legacy! We need to show our skill, our attention to detail and our creativity in the way we showcase our work. Building your portfolio is the best way to start building your own websites. (And please be that designer who’s bothered to work out how to change the Squarespace favicon!)

10. It keeps you fluid!

Building your own websites is tough. You’ll never be happy with it, you’ll constantly be updating it to keep up with technology and fashion, and by the time you’ve finished it you’ll want to start all over again. Perfect for forcing you to stay up-to-date with what’s going on in the industry.

Personal Branding Guide for Designers

Personal branding is the practice of people marketing themselves and their careers as brands. Being good at your craft is not enough these days, being unique and authentic will make the cut, but only if enough people know about you. As Michael Simmons writes, authenticity is key in the digital age. Having a strong personal brand and following can lead to enormous opportunities and recognition.

Personal branding is becoming one of the most important key factors in any industry. Skills and boring resumes are not guaranteeing you anything anymore. You have to really start developing your own brand and building a tribe, or in other words an audience that will help you getting jobs, supporting you, sharing your work and getting recognition.

In today’s article I’d like to share some personal branding guidelines I’ve been experimenting with in the last couple of years. The techniques and methods used led me to speaking engagements, interviews on Forbes and Fast Company, business growth and business leads, not to mention the connections and friendships I’ve made.

Why should you care about building a personal brand?

There are numerous of reasons why you should consider strengthening your personal brand. The thing is your personal brand exists anyway, it’s how people perceive you, your work and your actions. To make sure that your brand goes together along with your values and how you wish to be perceived is to manage it. Moreover, building a recognizable personal brand will help you with the following:

  • Professional opportunities;
  • A better job;
  • Better contacts and clients for your company;
  • Industry recognition.

Vision

Develop a strong vision and make sure that you use it everywhere you go. Whether it’s to go to the moon or sail around the world, make sure it’s something big and bold, people remember these things. If you haven’t watched Simon Sinek TED talk “How great leaders inspire action” presenting “the golden circle” and “start with why” theory, make sure to check it out and come up with your own vision.

Personal branding is no way rocket science but it takes years to develop and maintain. Hopefully my experiences and experiments I’ve shared with you in this article will help you in developing your own personal brand that leads to professional opportunities, meaningful connections and industry recognition.

I am curious to hear your thoughts on personal branding. What are your strategies in engaging more people, how do you network and promote your work?

Reviews & Ratings

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3. I am happy using their service. Appreciable work!

4. WebDesignerVIP is the best hosting provider I have ever used till now. They always know how to fulfill my expectations with prompt and polite way. Highly recommended!

5. My web developer suggested me to transfer my hosting to WebDesignerVIP and now I think it was a great decision. Very affordable prices, amazing customer services. A beautiful experience overall.

Key Elements Of An Effective Website

Does Your Website Have What It Takes?

If you have an existing site, or plan to develop one in the near future, it’s important to understand the characteristics that can make or break the effectiveness of your online investment. An unattractive or poorly built site will do more to hurt your business than to help it. In this article, we look at the five general components involved in making a website successful.

Key Elements Of An Effective Website

1. Appearance
2. Content
3. Functionality
4. Website Usability
5. Search Engine Optimization

The most effective website will reflect best practices across all of these elements.

How To Streamline Creative Dialogue

In the beginning of my professional career, I often struggled with status meetings. They regularly turned into back-and-forth conversation with a client who was making weird design suggestions. I often left these meetings feeling very confused, uncertain and demotivated after weeks of passionate effort.
How To Streamline Creative Dialogue

It took me a while to figure out what was happening and how I could improve my workflow. With this article, I want to share my learnings after years of streamlining creative dialogue.
Read more…
Designing For The Elderly: Ways Older People Use Digital Technology Differently

By Ollie Campbell
February 5th, 2015
User ExperienceUser InteractionUser Research
21 Comments

If you work in the tech industry, it’s easy to forget that older people exist. Most tech workers are really young, so it’s easy to see why most technology is designed for young people. But consider this: By 2030, around 19% of people in the US will be over 65. Doesn’t sound like a lot? Well it happens to be about the same number of people in the US who own an iPhone today. Which of these two groups do you think Silicon Valley spends more time thinking about?
Designing For The Elderly: Ways Older People Use Digital Technology Differently

This seems unfortunate when you consider all of the things technology has to offer older people. A great example is Speaking Exchange, an initiative that connects retirees in the US with kids who are learning English in Brazil.
Read more…
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Product Design Unification Case Study: Mobile Web Framework

By Yury Vetrov
February 4th, 2015
Case StudiesProcessProduct Strategy
11 Comments

Big companies are always trying to simplify the support and development of their large product portfolios. Mail.Ru Group (one of the two largest Internet companies in Russia, with more than 100 million monthly users), has about 40 products — even more if you add mobile and tablet websites and apps, promo websites, etc. My team deals with almost half of them — that’s about 100 ongoing projects at different stages. Our goal is to update these products and unify them around several guidelines.
Product Design Unification Case Study: Mobile Web Framework

This article will discuss the transformation of our design process from the classic Prototype → Design Mockup → HTML → Implement approach for every screen to a modern and more efficient framework-based approach.
Read more…
Redefining Lazy Loading With Lazy Load XT

By Denis Ryabov & Ugur Kaner
February 3rd, 2015
jQueryPerformanceTechniques
12 Comments

Lazy loading is a common software design pattern that defers the initialization of objects until they are needed. Lazy loading images started to become popular on the web back in 2007, when Mika Tuupola drew inspiration from the YUI ImageLoader utility and released a jQuery plugin. Since then, it’s become a popular technique to optimize page loading and the user experience. In this article I will discuss why we should and shouldn’t use Lazy Load, and how to implement it.
Redefining Lazy Loading With Lazy Load XT

Images make up over 60% of an average page’s size, according to HTTP Archive. Images on a web page would be rendered once they are available. Without lazy loading, this could lead to a lot of data traffic that is not immediately necessary (such as images outside of the viewport) and longer waiting times. The problem? Visitors are not patient at all. By lazy loading, images outside of the viewport are loaded only when they would be visible to the user, thus saving valuable data and time.
Read more…
The Mystery Is Resolved: Northern Lights, Windmills And The Game Of The Century

By Vitaly Friedman
February 2nd, 2015
MysteryRiddles
14 Comments

So you find yourself somewhere in a little tourist station in Northern Sweden — with a few adventurous tourists, 86 surprisingly happy inhabitants, and a remarkably good Internet connection. There is nothing but breathtaking nature around you, with blueish mountains and bright red skyline blurring endless horizon — and Northern Lights dancing in the sky right above you. What do you do? Obviously, you come up with an idea for those sneaky ‘lil Smashing Mystery riddles.
The Mystery Is Resolved: Northern Lights, Windmills And The Game Of The Century

In our previous riddles, we turned our little challenges into quests for creative solutions quickly. However, as we try to level up every new Mystery to keep it quite difficult to solve, with a new riddle this time we decided to turn it into an exercise of patience and stubbornness — beyond problem solving, of course.
Read more…
Desktop Wallpaper Calendars: February 2015

By The Smashing Editorial
January 31st, 2015
Wallpapers
50 Comments

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork, and as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one—desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd.

Desktop Wallpaper Calendars: February 2015

This creativity mission has been going on for almost seven years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month. This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for February 2015. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!
Read more…
Prototyping iOS And Android Apps With Sketch (With A Freebie!)

By Joshua Mauldin
January 30th, 2015
PrototypingTechniquesTools
18 Comments

After the untimely (and still kind of sad) demise of Fireworks, I found myself looking for other ways to design apps and websites. I also had the desire to produce something more interactive for when I talk about my work with stakeholders. It turned out that Sketch, when paired with some other neat tools, would be a big part of this workflow.
Prototyping iOS And Android Apps With Sketch (With A Freebie!)

In this article, I’ll talk you through why you should prototype and how you can do it with Sketch and prototyping tools such as Flinto and InVision. You’ll also get a nicely documented freebie Sketch file to help you.
Read more…
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Top 10 iPad Apps for Graphic Designers and Creatives

Top 10 iPad Apps for Graphic Designers and Creatives

The number of technologies available today can blow one’s mind! The iPad, as one of the biggest Apple creations, has been a game changer for Web Designer in more than one way. This small device is a valuable tool for designers, allowing them to get work done on the go.

With the help of drawing apps, the iPad can become a great tool for digital painting. Let’s face the truth, finger painting is not just child’s play anymore! These top 10 iPad apps for drawing I put together today will be useful for graphic designers, illustrators, artists and other creatives. They would give you an ability to sketch, paint, prototype, and annotate photos. You may use stylus or just your fingers to play around with all these iPad apps. So, let the fun begin!

Paper by FiftyThree

This app is the best solution for fast and easy sketching. Its simple interface with no menu bars and buttons make it even better. Turn your iPad into journals with pages to thumb through for easy viewing.

Top 10 iPad Apps for Graphic Designers and Creatives

Adobe Ideas

This app will replace your pen and paper with digital canvas and a number of customizable brushes. Express yourself with flexible vector format wherever you go.

Top 10 iPad Apps for Graphic Designers and Creatives

SketchBook Pro for iPad

It’s one of the most popular iPad apps for painting. It contains various pens, pencils, markers, and airbrushes to choose from. The app is fast and easy, enabling you to work with layers, transparency options, annotations, and advanced blend modes.

Top 10 iPad Apps for Graphic Designers and Creatives

Adobe Photoshop Touch

With Adobe Photoshop Touch you can apply professional effects, work with a lot of layers and blending modes, combine images. It works with iCloud Photo Stream and high-resolution images.

Top 10 iPad Apps for Graphic Designers and Creatives

Tayasui Sketches

This app is perfect for anything a creative mind can just imagine. With this app you can do sketches, watercolor paintings, and illustrations.

Top 10 iPad Apps for Graphic Designers and Creatives

Inspire Pro

Deliver beautiful sketching and drawing to your iPad with this cool app. The app will be useful for both amauther and pro artists. It has 60 high-quality brushes to choose from, divided into 6 sets: oil paint, airbrushes, basic shapes, graphite pencils, wax crayons and markers.

Top 10 iPad Apps for Graphic Designers and Creatives

Auryn Ink

Create a simulation of watercolor painting easy and intuitively with Auryn Ink. It has limited set of features comparing to the other apps listed here.

Top 10 iPad Apps for Graphic Designers and Creatives

ArtRage

ArtRage is packed with options. It has different paper options, plus a wide array of brushes, pencils, crayons, rollers, and pastels.

Top 10 iPad Apps for Graphic Designers and Creatives

Inkist

This app features a stylish and simple interface. It has sensitivity to stylus pressure and a wide number of customizable brushes.

Top 10 iPad Apps for Graphic Designers and Creatives

Zen Brush

With 64 paper templates and 3 ink shades available, you can enjoy ink painting with this app. It was made for easy and fast sketches.

Top 10 iPad Apps for Graphic Designers and Creatives

20 Amazing Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

20 Amazing Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

pes of fonts existing today, handwritten fonts are one of the most useful and multipurpose. Depending on the task you have, you may use handwritten fonts almost everywhere. Finding the right match for a particular project you have is always a difficult time-consuming deal, so we decided to help you out with this.

 

Here I put together 20 amazing handwritten fontsto use in your future designs. All these fonts are completely free to download so go nuts!

Pacifico

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Recorda Script

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Where stars shine the brightest

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

FFAD Matro

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Dilem

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

billy typeface

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Wolf in the City

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Chomp

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Hey Pretty Girl

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Impregnable

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Love & Trust

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Mathlete

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Redressed

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Note This

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Yellowtail

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Before Breakfast

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

VersionType

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Donuts

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Mari & David

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

Novito NOVA

20 Best Free Handwritten Fonts for Your Designs

About the Author

Nancy Young is a passionate writer and blogger. She writes tons of inspirational articles on photography, despite the fact that she is an economist by education. She is a part of PhotoDoto Team. Get a new eBook about landscape photography for free – one useful gift just for visiting!

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Design Tips & Tricks

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Design Tips & Tricks

Infographics are a good way to turn some boring data into an informative attractive graphic which is easier for a reader to digest. With the rise of the visual web, the number of infographics on various topics increases day by day. I handpicked 20 infographics related to web design that feature useful tips and tricks, trends, and other interesting information you ought to know.

Here you’ll find infographics about time management, creating a perfect landing page, do’s and don’ts of website, mixing different typefaces, usability, latest design and visual trends, responsive design, choosing ideal hosting and much more. Click on the images to see each infographic in the full size.

Waste Time at Work Infographic

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

The History of Web Design

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

24 Hours In The World Of Web Content

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

How To Make A Great Landing Page For Your Business Website

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

How to Start a Web Design Project

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

Website Dos and Don’ts

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

The Creation Process for Websites

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

The Art Of Mixing Typefaces Google Fonts Edition

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

10 Ways to Design a Landing Page that Sells

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

26 Things To Note Before You Develop A Website

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

What makes someone leave a website?

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

The Ultimate How-To Guide to Responsive Email Design

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

What Type Of Hosting To Choose

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

Anatomy of the Perfect Banner Ad

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

Shutterstock’s Global Design Trends 2014

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

The Psychology of Color for Web Designers

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

How To Keep Your Creativity Flowing

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

Infographic: 2014 visual trends

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

10 Tips For Effective Visual Communication

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

Keeping it Simple with Responsive Web Design

20 Useful Infographics Featuring Web Deisgn Tips & Tricks

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How to make your code easily maintainable with living style guides

featured11@wdd2x

Style guides of yesteryear are typically thought of as design-oriented documents focusing on branding and color usage. But with the advent of insanely large codebases for websites like Facebook or Google’s vast array of products, style guides have since evolved.

These days, living style guides contain always up to date documentation of the current code base and its use cases. With these documents we can write much more maintainable and reusable code while seeing instantly how optimized our code base is.

What’s in a living style guide?

Living style guides are similar to the older counterparts; they contain logo and branding information, color usage, as well as a general outline of code usage. The code outline section is where you can easily find duplicate or closely similar code and combine it to optimize your codebase, or view components already in use. Most guides either showcase a “log” style approach where every code instance is documented, or only the intentionally modular code is documented.

Not only do these guides focus on HTML and CSS, but also other languages that can be modularized for performance like JavaScript and PHP. A few solid examples of living style guides can be found at Github, Mozilla, and MailChimp. As you can see from those examples, it’s common to have either a page or sub-site to display use-cases side by side with the code for each component. This makes it easy to go and grab them when you need them, and for unfamiliar designers or developers to see how components work in an interactive fashion.

Starting your own living style guide

Beginning your own living style guide documentation from scratch may seem daunting, especially for larger projects. But typically there is a return on the investment of time required to get it done. Larger projects benefit immensely from a living documentation of site styles and code structure. Smaller projects have a less noticeable, but sometimes still worthwhile, return on your time investment. In either case, if you’re working on a project that may someday be handed off to another designer or developer it’ll make their day to see such documentation.

Start with the foundation

Components you use frequently are the best use-case for a living style guide, buttons come to mind immediately. A short list of things you may want to consider documenting are layout options (possibly outlining a grid system), typography, color usage, buttons and link styles, form styling, notifications or alerts, and list styling. Just about anything that may benefit from being reusable could be added essentially. When outlining, remember to keep things flexible. Never style an alert or button specific to one page or use-case, unless absolutely necessary. Instead, add modifier classes to build on the basic foundation for things like color, typography, or aesthetic changes. This way, you can always count on the .button class to designate a consistent width, height, and text size while allowing the modifier classes to change things particular to each use-case.

The goals of maintainable code

The purpose of maintainable code is to make things reusable and future-proof. Components such as notification bars, buttons, headers, and footers, are great examples of reusable code – Things you may use multiple times across the site, or on the same page. If you’re breaking old or already written code down to make it more maintainable after the fact, it’s actually pretty simple. Start by stripping away the CSS down to the basics. You should be left with a component class defining structural things like height, width, and position. While additional modifier classes can be used to change aesthetic things like color or typography. Additionally, if your project is using a body ID or class for each page, you can style unique use-cases on a per-page basis this way. Be sure not to resort to this practice too much though, as it can easily add weight to your style guide.

The KISS Principle is a design principle well suited for the modular development process as well. Writing simple, maintainable code is usually easiest by keeping your components simple. When it comes to simplicity, If it’s possible to make things more efficient and/or use less code while achieving the same result, our components should be written to do so. The end goals of a maintainable code structure is to have something reusable, small, and vastly more efficient than a non-maintainable counterpart.

Naming conventions in CSS

When it comes to working with a maintainable code structure, naming conventions become very important. Writing descriptive CSS classes will go a long way to ensure maintaining your code base will be an easy task. There is no limit on CSS class lengths, so use this to your advantage. Make sure to stick to a clear naming convention though, as mixing dashes vs underscores or camel case vs all lowercase names can easily get confusing. It’s usually a great idea to make your component classes very descriptive, while making the modifier classes less so. Below is an example of a button, a unique use-case rule, and modifier classes.

<a href=“www.webdesignerdepot.com” class=“button red roundedWebdesigner Depot</a

/* This is a component class, it should only contain basic structural rules */
.button {
display: block;
width: 250px;
height: 48px;
line-height: 48px;}

/* This unique use-case outlines a button used on the homepage */
.homepage-cta-button {
display: block
margin: 0 auto 50px;
width: 180px;
height: 60px;
line-height: 60px;}

/* Below are modifier classes, these are added in addition to the component class to add color or other aesthetic changes */
.red {background: #C54F48}
.rounded {border-radius: 5px;}

Automated solutions

Automated style guide generators have started popping up left and right to help the push for style guides. Style Prototype is a SASS generator built by Ram Richard and Mason Wendell of Team SASS. It’s one of the better options out there at the moment, with similar generators like Hologram, Kalei, StyleDocco, and KSS also proving useful.

Automated vs hand-crafted

As always, there are pros and cons to using either method here. Automated solutions are quick and can be used after the fact, but they’re also sometimes strict. Hand-crafted style guides leave you knowing the ins and outs of everything, but take more time. Personally, the hand-crafted approach is best for me in most cases as it’s the most flexible in terms of working with other developers. But it’s certainly worth the time to try out some of the automated solutions, just to get an idea of how they work and what they say about your code.

Reviewing your code

Websites are never finished. We modify things, transition to new styles and trends, and in the end we can end up with a lot of code from past revisions. It’s important to take a moment and look back at the “end” of each revision to make sure things are as clean as they can be. At this point, I also like to throw each component (and modifier classes) in a Codepen to test browser support and make notes accordingly. This could save tons of time later if you’re designing a page with support constraints. While reviewing, also be sure to keep an eye out for components that may conflict with each other in odd ways or cause box-model problems.

Conclusion

In conclusion, style guides should result in code that is very manipulative and flexible, yet still easy to maintain and read. Considering how much time we must invest to reach such a result, living style guides have a much more quantifiable affect on larger projects than smaller ones. Complex or large projects benefit so much from all the optimization and performance increases that it’s well worth the time spent to reach said results. Creating a living style guide for a small website or project may not prove worthy of the time investment though.

In conclusion, we should all strive to write clean, maintainable code that focuses on future-proofing. Living style guides tend to encourage such a workflow and aide in making developers and viewers alike much happier.

Everything you need to know about WordPress

Website Design

WordPress 4.0 is now available, and millions of sites worldwide are in the process of upgrading. Despite the fact that WordPress themselves have talked down the significance of the .0 version number, WordPress 4.0 may be the most significant update in years.

There have been changes to the UI, enhancements to the writing experience, and some intriguing additions that hint at what’s to come in the future.

Announced in April, the 4.0 beta version was released on July 10th. Three further beta versions followed over the next month, fixing some of the bugs that inevitably creep in when you’re making this many revisions. Finally, the first release candidate crept out at the end of August, exactly on schedule, and the final release was packaged and pushed out at the end of last week.

WordPress maintains a fairly punishing release schedule, pushing out a new version every few months. Which means they’ve plenty of experience of estimating timescales and hitting deadlines. However, you have to think that the precision of scheduling in this case is a strong indicator of a smooth development cycle with few surprises along the way.

Writing experience

The first thing you’ll notice when you fire up WordPress 4.0 is the vastly improved writing experience.

Actually writing in WordPress isn’t that common, most people write in their chosen format and then export to WordPress, but the improvements that have been made might tempt a few users back. The dashboard now has a sticky header and footer, so you don’t need to scroll up or down to reach formatting options or check your word count. It’s a small thing, but it really helps the overall experience. Whether or not it’s enough to tempt me away from markdown, I’m not sure, but it’s certainly a welcome addition and anyone who uses WordPress like it’s a word processor will enjoy the performance boost.

Media management

Users who share a lot of media will be happy too, with the brand new media embedding feature.

Up until now YouTube videos, Tweets, and so forth, would be embedded as code and then the post would have to be previewed in order to check the results. Now, simply embed in theEdit Post panel and the media you’re embedding will appear right there.

media

Media management is also substantially improved in WordPress 4.0. Browse the Media Library and you’ll see an improved grid of endlessly scrolling thumbnails. You can also click a thumbnail to view a detailed shot and move through the uploaded media one item at a time. If you’ve uploaded a video, you can also watch it here, right in the dashboard.

Global installation

In my opinion, the most significant addition, is the option to select a language for installation. Up until now, the installation steps have only been available in US-English.

This isn’t something that everyone will notice — especially not those who are updating an existing site — however the addition of numerous other languages lowers the barrier of entry for non-English speakers. That means WordPress’ userbase will increase globally, and that’s hugely significant for anyone who makes a living out of WordPress.

Plugin discovery

One of the most appealing revisions in WordPress 4.0 is the brand new way of browsing plugins, it’s the first major update in this area in five years.

The old way of browsing plugins in the dashboard meant that unless you knew the name of the plugin you were looking for, you were very unlikely to find anything worth installing. The latest version maintains the old search option, but there are a number of additions designed to help you find lesser known solutions.

Plugins can now be filtered by Featured, Popular, Newest, and Favourites. In addition, reviews can now be read right in the dashboard.

The consequence of all this is likely to be an increased diversity in the plugins being used across the community. The emphasis is no longer on the established plugin developers. If you’re new to developing plugins, or even if you’ve unsuccessful building a following up until now, you have a much better chance of picking up new users.

plugins

Customizer

The final area that’s worth mentioning is the Theme Customizer, or — because WordPress are keen on making this change — simply Customizer. (The name change has taken place because it isn’t necessarily used to customize themes.)

Whilst little has happened to this area in this release there has been major work in prepping it for improvements in future releases, and the name change is just one aspect that hints at the direction WordPress is heading. WordPress’ development team have stated that we can expect changes and enhancements to how we access Customizer in the next, and upcoming releases. For now, the work that has been carried out on Customizer is designed to prep the feature for those changes.

One thing that has been made public in the 4.0 version of Customizer is the newly introduced grouping for Customizer elements, that allows theme and plugin developers to improve the UI of their products by grouping related elements together. It’s all done with thePanels API, and widget areas have already been grouped together into a Widget panel in this way. Panels are used to group sections together in the same way that sections group controls together.

The idea is greater control, and simpler, easier to understand UIs for any themes or plugins that use the Customizer. Fortunately, the Panels API works almost identically to the pre-existing Section API, which means those of us that are already making use of the Customizer have a relatively low learning curve to update our themes. In addition there are now far more input types supported in Customizer, and all Customizer controls can be contextual, based on the current preview.

Customizer’s API will make building truly customizable WP themes possible for the first time.

Conclusion

WordPress 4.0 is a rare beast in that it offers something for everyone: content authors get a better writing experience; and developers get a more advanced UI, and a greater chance for their products to be discovered and utilized by the substantial WordPress community.

What’s most exciting in WP 4.0 is that WordPress is being prepped for major upgrades in future. The team is focussed on expanding the userbase, improving the experience, and further embracing the community. 4.0 is a release that anyone that works with WordPress can get excited about.

Offers and Pricing

Here are our top Web Design Experts

 

WebDesignerExpert.com

 

make it easy to create a beautiful, customized online store. They’ll ensure your shop is a perfect reflection of your brand – whether that involves a few small tweaks to its look and feel, or a huge design overhaul.

 

Ready to take your store to the next level? Hire a Web Designer Expert today!

 

WebDesignerExpert.com
Our web design team combine alluring graphics with robust usability to create effective and appealing websites that communicate clearly with the end-user.

Expert provides professional website design services to clients across the world .

 

Graphic Design Experts

Expert has a team of talented and creative print and graphic designers who think outside the square to give you enticing and appealing printed material.

We can ensure your collateral remains consistent with your current corporate identity, or if you dont have one, we offer logo and brand design services.

 

Development Experts
Content Management Systems (CMS)

A feature rich and intuitive content management system that’s top of its class and developed by Expert; MoST is website maintenance made easy www.getmost.info.

 

Online Surveys

Expert has developed a smart and intuitive survey tool survey CREATE, which allows users to create, post, track and analyse surveys online – all in house with no requirement of HTML knowledge. Contact Expert for more information on surveyCREATE.

 

Custom Development

Clever applications are what can turn a website from being static into something fully functional. Of course we have our own feature rich applications, but occasionally our clients want web applications specific to their needs.

 

Feel Free to Contact Us for:

Website Design Offer, Logo Design, Custom Development, Web Hosting, Grphic Design, Domain Check and Register , Strategy & Marketing  Or any other web related solutions

Bootstrap Tutorials For Web Designers

The 10 Most Useful Bootstrap Tutorials For Web Designers (2014)

When i first got into web development, the one thing that always used to stump me was just how much information was out there in the way of tutorials. There seemed to be an endless choice of places to learn. But with all these options, there was a tradeoff. The paradox of choice. Because i had so many places that i ‘could’ learn, and because my time was limited, i had a lot of trouble deciding where i ‘should’ learn.

This post is the one i wish i had when i first started to learn about the uber useful html/css framework twitter bootstrap. Had i had a list like this, i reckon i could’ve cut down my learning time dramatically and got to where i wanted to go much faster.

So here it is, the 10 most useful Bootstrap Tutorials For Web Designers (2014) – enjoy!

11 Reasons to Use Twitter Bootstrap – SitePoint

Why it’s useful:

Before you really dig in to any new technology, it’s always helpful to gain an insight into WHY you should learn it in the first place and what the possible benefits could be, some that you may not even have realised. This article does a very good job of breaking down the key benefits that bootstrap has to offer. It also taught me a few things that i wasn’t aware of! And i’ve been using Bootstrap for a while now!

Screen Shot 2014-07-03 at 21.38.22


Getting started with Bootstrap 3 – Extreme CSS

Why it’s useful:

Once you’ve made the commitment to learning Bootstrap, this tutorial serves as the perfect starting point. I like it personally because it is low on assumption and very beginner friendly. Unlike a lot of programmer oriented tutorials out there, this is great for a ‘not so code savvy web designer’ to get their feet wet with.


Build A Responsive Bootstrap 3 Site (Tutorial Series) – Youtube

Why it’s useful:

I find that the best way to take in new tech, is to read, see it demonstrated and then read again. For me this has been the most effective way to make the new information sink in. Watching a video tutorial really increases the reference points that you have for a topic very quickly, and for that purpose this particular tutorial is the best one i’ve found (for free) online.


Why it’s useful:

Bootstrap 3, unlike previous versions has embraced a mobile first approach to its functionality – which means that responsiveness is no longer a ‘should’ but a must. This is the perfect tutorial to help you get your head around the responsive, mobile first approach to web design that Bootstrap 3 takes. It is also pretty well written and very easy to follow. Helped me brush on my responsive/mobile first understanding.


A Comprehensive Introduction to LESS – SitePoint

Why it’s useful:

Less extends CSS and adds a lot of programmatic power to it by allowing you to create more modular styles. Using it (once you get a hang of it) can speed up your development workflow quite dramatically in a short period of time. This tut really does what it says on the tin in that regard. It breaks down the key concepts in a simple format, that makes sure you don’t get lost trying to reimagine how css should be written, like i did initially :).


Twitter Bootstrap 3 – JavaScript Components – SitePoint

Why it’s useful:

Twitter Bootstrap is essentially a combination of 3 things – HTML, CSS and JS. What rarely gets talked about in beginner tutorials for bootstrap online is the JS side of the equation. Despite the fact that this is probably the most powerful part of the entire framework! :) – this tutorial provided by Sitepoint breaks it all down and outlines the key javascript components that are essential to almost any bootstrap project.


Bootstrap 3 Less Workflow Tutorial – Hello Erik

Why it’s useful:

Once you’ve gotten a handle on LESS – as mentioned above, its primary benefit is that it offers a fairly dramatic productivity boost. But before you can really get into that groove, you’ll need to get a hang of a good workflow for it. This tutorial provides that in a very very comprehensive but simple way.


Up and Running with Bootstrap 3 – Lynda

Why it’s useful:

It’s not free, which is why i recommeded it towards the end but this is how i personally first got my feet wet with twitter bootstrap. So had to add it into the mix! It is honestly the best paid or free bootstrap primer/tutorial online, hands down. Very clear, succint and just plain perfect for a noob. Like i was before i watched it. ;)


Bootstrap 3 Grid Introduction – helloerik

Why it’s useful:

As a web designer, you’re probably fairly familiar with the Grid system. What makes Bootstrap as useful as it is is that it has implemented this concept in a programmatic way that almost anyone can understand. It does take a while to learn the syntax but coming from a design background, once you do that, you’ll fall in love with the Bootstrap way of displaying page layout. And this tutorial is the shortest way to get to that level of understanding.


What’s New in Bootstrap 3 – SitePoint

Why it’s useful:

I thought it’d be best to save this one for last. As it only really becomes helpful once you start to really dig in to Bootstrap. Seeing where it’s been and what its doing now will give you a broader view of where it might be going in the future and how and what you should stay on top of, should you want to keep up with it. This article gives a full breakdown of the new features in Bootstrap 3!

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Content Management

The Content Management System (CMS) is a ServiceNow application that primarily enables users to create a custom interface for the ServiceNow platform and ServiceNow applications. The CMS application is powerful and flexible, so customers have used it for a wide variety of projects from creating entire websites to integrating with other products. The Content Management application is active by default.

A CMS typically requires a systems administrator or a web developer to set up and add features, but non-technical users can use the application as a website maintenance tool to make changes to a website. For more information, see CMS Planning.

Timing is important when considering the addition of content management. Successful deployments of the content management system usually take place after phase one processes (for example, Incident, Problem, Change, Catalog, and Knowledge) are in place. This is especially true if the team has limited website design experience. Waiting until phase two of deployment gives administrators time to work in ServiceNow and to understand how the organization uses the system and what business needs it meets.

Also consider the maturity level of data in the ServiceNow system. Depending on the ITIL processes used, content management will only be useful and effective once the data within ServiceNow is established. Ensure that hierarchies, tasks, and workflows are well defined. For example, before creating a catalog front end, confirm that the service catalog has been in place for some time, has been used, and contains data. The same is true for a knowledge management front end, particularly when high ratings or view counts define article placement on the page.

Following are several CMS project ideas:

  • Design a company-wide service catalog that offers a collection of services.
  • Present a customized UI for a knowledge base.
  • Create customized login pages or search pages, as well as personalized views of lists, tables, charts, or graphs.
  • Design a complete website.
  • Integrate ServiceNow with other company applications.
  • Build a tailored self-service portal for end users that is in compliance with a corporate style guide.

Social Media Marketing

SMM – Social Media Marketing

They like your business, time to build a relationship!

What is Social Media Marketing?

Having a great search engine friendly website is no more an option if you want to expand your business opportunities. Social Brand names like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, and google plus are social media giants that need your attention in order to gain more business. Social media, alongside brilliant online marketing campaign, can be leveraged to product intelligent results for the businesses. Social Media Marketing is an amalgamation of all strategies and tactics employed to increase business visibility at various social media websites in order to gain loyal customer base.

You already have accounts at Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and other websites. What next?

So you got an account at Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, youtube, StumbleUpon, and Digg etc.? Great! What next? Have you managed your accounts to gain loyal list of followers that are following your tweets and status updates, and buying your products & services? Big companies like Levi’s, Dell, HP and Skittles have all used the power of social media marketing campaigns, and its time you do the same.

What do stats say?

An estimated February survey of social media websites shows that 35% of facebook users are aged in between 18 and 25 years. An estimated 53.5 billion minutes are spent on facebook per month, which is the highest ever recorded in the history. Yahoo comes next with 17.2 billion minutes per month. With the immense power of social media networking websites, it is no wonder to quickly grab the slice of market share by creating high quality landing pages and business profiles on facebook, LinkedIn, and Yahoo, etc.

If Facebook were to be a country, it would be the 2nd largest in the world, having immense power on social media marketing strategies. In 2010, finally after a long Super Bowling advertisement series run for a span of 23 years, Pepsi withdrew its investment, and injected in the Social Media campaigns like Twitter Marketing Facebook Marketing and Blogging.

Blog Management and creation of Landbook pages:

Web Designer VIP website designing team would create engaging and visually appealing facebook landing pages, twitter backgrounds and many LinkedIn profiles, etc. in order to capture the attention of your targeted audience. We craft social media marketing strategies based upon your company goals, objectives, and exact requirements.

Starting and maintaining a company blog is the best possible way to reach out new customers, users, and clients and develop a loyal following. Web Designer VIP design, manage and SEO optimize the blog for you so that you get known in the online world.

Do you know that businesses having blogs get roughly 50% more traffic than non-blog oriented businesses? Those businesses that continuously update their blogs get more traffic and more targeted customers ending up buying their products and services.

A visually engaging and interestingly written blog post is the best answer to get highly targeted and relevant traffic to your website. It should not be similar to that of a press release, but in a very informal way of having conversations with the clients. We teach companies to write engaging blog posts to capture the targeted audience.

Social bookmarking

Writing is not enough. Spread your message and for this purpose, we use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, google plus, Digg, and StumbleUpon, status updates to inform your followers about your blog/site updates. We don’t guarantee that every message would be read by all of your followers, but most of your interested followers would definitely be interested in knowing more about your company and its products.

Analyzing every campaign

It is best to analyze the after effects of a social media marketing campaign to track down the results. We answer questions like:

  1. What was the ROI?
  2. How many targeted leads and customers captured?
  3. How many fans responded to status updates?
  4. How much traffic has been generated?

By answering these questions, we readjust the strategy to fit according to your needs and requirements.

Contact us now for a free social media marketing quote!

Internet Marketing & SEM

Marketing Solutions

Advertise your business online using the power of SEM, Search Engine Marketing. SEM, as abbreviated for the term, is the process of advertising your website on top of search engine rankings for highly competitive keywords and gaining instant results. Unlike SEO, every click costs and the stiffer the competition, the higher the cost per click!

Why hire Web Designer VIP to handle your SEM needs?

SEM is a great way to gain targeted traffic in minutes. Unfortunately, many internet marketers fail to deploy a proper marketing strategy & plan and end up draining thousands of dollars of their clients on clicks not worth the money. This is what we avoid. We make sure that every click yields maximum ROI for your business.

Internet marketers employed by Web Designer VIP work diligently in a skillful manner to maximize your ROI on every click. We write high quality advertisement copies for maximum conversions.

The combination of SEO and SEM yield out greater, laser focused results in Google AdWords, MSN Ad Center, and Yahoo Search Marketing. Our expert team does all of the following for you:

  1. Free setup and installation
  2. Keyword Research
  3. Landing Page Optimization
  4. Competition analysis
  5. Website Analysis
  6. Google Analytics Integration
  7. Bidding & reporting
  8. Budget Management
  9. Compete & achieve instant top rankings
  10. Maximum ROI management – Cost effective and efficient

We strategically define your marketing plan and implement it so that your message is reached out to the highest number of targeted audience.

Search Engine Optimization

SEO-Search Engine Optimization

Potential customers on your hand! – Get a no obligation FREE website analysis today!

Dear Entrepreneur/Online Business Owner

Does your business have striking online presence? Want to be visible in search engines to gain targeted leads?

What is SEO?

SEO, (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of optimizing and tweaking websites to comply with search engine results for faster indexing and improved visibility. In short, it is the art and science of legally ranking a website by optimizing all aspects of content and link building. You could have a greatly built website, but in the world of fierce competition, you need to optimize it to get targeted traffic. One needs to consistently struggle to achieve and maintain top rankings in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing in order to attain loyal customers.

What do Stats say?

  1. Did you know that 90% of traffic is shared by the top 10 websites on first page of the search engine results?
  2. Did you know that more than 80% of the customers/targeted leads, do not turn to page 2 for their results?
  3. Did you know that more than 75% of small to mid-sized businesses are also using the combined power of social media marketing. Where do you stand?

With the stats speaking for themselves, it is now time to fine tune your websites.

Why hire SEO experts like Web Designer VIP?

Successful organizations never undermine the principles of search engine optimization, and we are no exception to that. How, when and why search engines make quick updates to the search engine algorithms, is something that even the experts don’t know of. It is therefore vital, to get the site continuously optimized to climb higher rankings so that it can better cater to the needs of your targeted visitors.

We are a team of dedicates white hat ethical SEO experts backed with proven track record of success and industry experience. We work on the following for your website:

  • Competition Analysis
  • Keyword analysis
  • Content Analysis
  • Back Links analysis
  • Pages indexed in Google, Yahoo, and Bing

SEO is easier said than done. How come that many websites seem to gain high quality targeted visitors, whereas many other seem to be lost in the crowd? Sadly speaking, it really isn’t an accident!

Increase your online rankings visibly by hiring Web Designer VIP. Using search engines to find targeted information is till date, the most popular method of website promotion. Search is still the biggest game in town! More than downloading songs, and chatting online, people spend time searching for relevant information.

Some of the most salient features of our SEO experts are:

  • No Obligation FREE website analysis
  • Affordable SEO consultancy
  • Onpage optimization of your website with proper keyword placement
  • Offpage optimization for high PR targeted backlinks
  • Abreast with the latest Google Panda Update changes
  • Strategically studying your competition to develop strategies and website marketing plans
  • Understanding your site structure for better analysis
  • Keywords Analysis
  • Manual search engine submissions

Web Designer VIP SEO services classified by regions:

SEO Saudi Arabia (SEO Riyadh, SEO Dammam, SEO Jeddah) and other gulf countries: SEO Kuwait, SEO Bahrain, SEO Qatar, SEO UAE (SEO Abu Dhabi, SEO Dubai), and SEO Oman.

Using the immense power of social media marketing and web 2.0 properties, we create backlinks and useful discussions about your company and products, using sites like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Del.icio.us, and LinkedIn, etc.

Website Design & Development

Importance of first impressions, you need SE friendly website!

First impression is the last impression. Web Designer VIP helps you to create and retain that attention-grabbing first impression by crafting compelling websites, which helps in developing your professional online identity. Is your website strong enough to grab hold of your readers’ attention within the first 3 to 5 seconds of their first visit?

With an aesthetically tasteful website, your products and services are more likely to be used than your competitors.

Web Designer VIP – Concentrating on the finer aspects of your website

We concentrate on the finer details and aspects of the websites, like where to put the content and how to design your corporate identity as to reflect your online business. We are a result-oriented company that designs and develops websites using the latest technologies like:

MySQL Database designing
E-commerce Shopping cart designing, programming and integration
PHP application development
PERL website development
Custom Website Application Development

  • Java & JavaScript
  • ActionScript
  • AJAX
  • Kentico
  • Joomla
  • Magento
  • WordPress & Blogger site developments
  • CMS Solutions
  • HTML/DHTML/XML/WML/WAP
  • Internet Server API (ISAPI)
  • .NET
  • ASP development solution

Why hire Web Designer VIP for web development?

Our highly integrated team of professionals uses the latest and most reliable technologies for making your dream website come true. The website development process is a combination of logo design, website design and graphic design to create a compelling website for higher rankings. Whether you want a simple static website or a complex e-commerce solution like Amazon, we have the right set of tools and expertise you need to get moving.

A professionally looking website is an amalgamation of creativity and programming. As a result, we have injected the best of our expertise in creating elegant websites with farsighted approach. Every website development order is customized according to our clientele needs. Our compelling website designs and integrated customized website development solutions have enabled our customers in meeting their goals and objectives, whilst retaining their original message conveyed using their websites.

Rich Internet Applications Development

As an expert website designing and development firm, we pay special attention to important areas of your website, such as:

  1. User interface – We make sure that the user interface is clean, crisp and clear of any errors and faults. The customer does not have to waste his/her time on your website and can easily navigate through the links looking for the products & services he is interested in.
  2. HTML integration with programming languages – We integrate various programming languages used to construct your website.
  3. Browser compatibility – We ensure that your websites are run on all major browsers of the world, including Google Chrome, MS Internet Explorer, Opera, and Mozilla FireFox.

Compliance with all W3C Compliance standards

We are up-to-dated with all W3C standards and keep ourselves abreast to the changings taking place. Everything from Javascript to Flash, CSS, programming languages, and the entire website design are all W3C Compliant. The W3C compliance is an assurance of search engine friendly website that gets boosted in rankings.

Get a free quote now by sending us in your custom website development requirements.