I was taking a look at digital art gallery and found some very good web designs. So I made a list of some of my favourite designs and thought to share it with you. Check out following design and share your thoughts on the same.

1. Planet NexGen – Web Design

2. Tivoli

3. Personal Portfolio

4. Dimensions xtreme 2010 folio

5. Some Web

6. Imago

7. Where the chubs live

8. Finestate

9. New Valentin

10. Eye For Art

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Image Credit:  Scania Group

A problem for many freelancers is the impossibility of advancing in career, while in a web design agency a designer may evolve from entry level to senior or director positions a freelancer is his own manager and nothing more. This mentality, very widespread, isn’t totally valid and web design freelancers must embrace a whole new conception that is more beneficial for them. A freelancer shouldn’t be an individual that works cheaper than a company and quite probably is based on low standards of living countries. The new freelancer is only a stage from a normal evolution and there are few levels which must be passed in order to become a successful person. Here are the stages I imagined. Definitely, these aren’t rigid steps, the entire post is based upon the experience of other great freelancers but each individual is different. Please share with us any opinion, the more ideas; the more useful is the article.

1. Level one – working as a freelancer, not enough projects, try to offer the best

At this stage, the designer starts his career and he is searching for the first clients. Many people quit during the first months because of the few or no clients but there are some that resist no matter how difficult the situation is. The clients hire experienced people, thus the beginners are neglected. It’s unimaginably hard to find a good client from the posture of a new entry freelancer. Once gaining the first project, the situation improves, but, obviously, the projects are still few even the services provided are high quality and the fame as a good freelancer is created step by step.

Image Credit: Ed Callow

2. Level two – almost too  many projects, somehow bored and fully experienced

Reaching this stage supposes one to three years of activity; the respective freelancer is experienced and knows perfectly how to handle any difficult situation faced with bad clients. The experience and the brand created assure him a lot of clients and he usually selects the projects to do. Accomplishing many projects will make any person bored with and sometimes the power of will isn’t at its best just because of the repetitive tasks to do.

3. Level three – too much projects to do, the first thoughts of outsourcing

At this stage the pressure of too many projects is high and the freelancer rejects projects not because he doesn’t like them, he doesn’t have enough time to finish them all. The financial part is decisive and the consequence of the many offers is to raise the prices, only the best paying clients are taken into consideration. Some freelancers don’t want to lose the clientele that was created with so many efforts and sleepless nights and try to find solutions to this so much dreamt issue. One of the best solutions is to hire other freelancers that are available and skilled enough to satisfy the standards.

4. Level four – the outsourcing issues and the morality problem (optional)

The problem of hiring another freelancer when you are a freelancer is pretty difficult and many people are considering it as a moral dilemma. Is it fair to hire another person when you are hired to do it? Is it correct to ask for an amount of money and to hire other but paying him with less money?

These questions won’t ever have an exact answer but the majority is considering these OK, not very moral but correct. It’s quite probable my attitude is more pragmatic, but I am an adept of outsourcing. I see a freelancer as the core of a next agency. A boss shouldn’t be a manager, he can be a designer. The matter of managing consists in driving the organization on the best way and the diplomas or the titles of the manager are totally useless here.

In conclusion my idea is simple, the natural way of growing as freelancer supposes the outsourcing and maybe hiring a team. It is mandatory, not optional. Each human association needs to evolve and working as an individual means that after a time the maximum of potential is reached. From this moment, the progress is almost unnoticeable. On the other hand, by making a team, the possibility of making more clients content is higher and it means a higher profit. This stage is passed instantly by the more adventurous and pragmatic people and this is the reason of considering it optional for them.

5. Level five – the development and each one’s ability to be manager

This level is the final point of the complete transformation from a simple individual, glad of being hired for small jobs, to a manager, now emailed by big clients having very important projects. It’s a nice dream and I intentionally didn’t mention this: every each of these things is possible only by having a strong will & passion and working very hard.

Finally, I share with you my favorite quotation and meditate over it, “don’t wait for miracles, you are the best miracle you’ll ever met”. It’s true and don’t be afraid to want more!

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Do you know how to create a big impact for your marketing campaign? There are actually plenty of fantastic strategies. But if you want to establish an authoritative presence globally without investing in thousands of dollars, the ideal solution is to…

Develop a properly optimized website that is capable of landing you a good spot in search engine result pages (SERPs). At the same time, it must also be appealing to make your target visitors want to stay longer on your site.

Given these aspects, you may be wondering how you can go about with the development and design.

Well, the key is to stand out using the following…

Search engine optimization strategies for an effective Web design:

Before anything else, you have to come up with a layout plan. This way, you already have an idea on the right things to do once you start creating content. While planning, ask yourself these questions:

• Who are going to be my visitors?
• What are their needs?
• What can I do to provide these?
• How can I make them stay longer on my pages?
• Will it be easy for them to communicate with me?

When you have a set of actions prepared mentally or on an excel sheet, you can proceed to the next steps.

1.  Ensure quick page load time

You would not want Google to ditch your website, right? Nor would you like to disappoint your target audience. If this is the case, keep these tips in mind:

• Get rid of JavaScript or CSS style codes.
• Use image CSS sprites (a collection of several pictures in one image) to lessen the amount of server requests, helping you save bandwidth.

2. Consider mobile users

Image By: Christopher Chan

As of late, plenty of individuals are using their smartphones to go online and search for their needs. You can cater to this consumer group by making your webpage compatible to mobile phones, especially that some models cannot detect JavaScript or Flash files.

3. Place links with keywords

You should put these on your site’s main navigation bar, so your prospects will find it easy to browse through the pages. Apart from appealing to potential customers, search engines will rank your content well for relevant terms.

4. Put breadcrumb trails

Generally, they are like anchor texts guiding the readers and showing them a tread of the pages they have visited. It is advisable to integrate these to help your visitors work their way around your site easily. In SEO sense, they make it easier for search engine spiders to crawl your website’s content allowing you to rank in SERPs.

 5. Create a sitemap

It is a webpage that provides the users and search engines with links to all the pages on your site, making navigation and indexing a breeze.

 6. Place interesting content

By that, it means that you have to combine high-quality images with alt tags and short descriptions. You must post fresh and unique topics that are relevant to your niche.

And since we are talking about design here, do not forget to use clear font and ideal color scheme, so your target audience will not find your website distracting.

As you can see, the list is quite short. Other than these strategies, you have to take into account more aspects. If you want to develop your own website, it is best to gain deeper knowledge on this matter before you proceed. Alternatively, you can always seek advice from a professional Web designer or developer.

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Post Types & Custom Post Types
Post types are available in WordPress for publishing your content like Post and page. While in custom, we can create our own content publishing type.

Lets get some more idea and hands on custom post type with the help of some awesome tutorials.

1. Create a WordPress custom post type

2. WordPress Custom Post Types Guide

3. How to display custom post types on your WordPress blog homepage

4. How To Use Custom Post Types To Organize Online Marketing Campaigns

5. Custom post types in WordPress

6. Using Custom Post Types to Create a Killer Portfolio

7. Custom Types – Codex

8. Custom Post Types in WordPress 3.0

9. Create your first WordPress Custom Post Type

How useful is Custom Post Type for you? Share your ideas below!

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1. What is JSP?
2. How does it looks like?
3. Where can we use it?
4. Things required to get started.

1. What is JSP?

JSP is a server side technology like ASP and PHP. This technology allows us to use Java code with static markup language. It is useful for development of web based application independent of server and platform. JSP page is compiled and executed on the server and the resulting HTML or XML page is delivered to the client side. The compiled pages on server uses Java bytecode and this bytecode can be executed by Java Virtual Machine (JVM).

Java bytecode – It is a form of instruction that Java Virtual Machines executes. Having knowledge of java bytecode is same as having knowledge of assembler for C or C++ programmer.

2. How does it look like?

The use of jsp is same as that of php. We can use jsp tags along with the regular HTML tags. See the following example for getting clear idea.

<html>
<head>
    <title>JSP Demo Page</title>
</head>
<body>
    <% out.println("This Line is in JSP tag."); %>
</body>
</html>

As you can see, I have used jsp tag along with html tags. We can use jsp tags wherever we want to show the dynamically generated content.

3. Where can we use it?

JSP can be used anywhere where dynamic nature is required for your application or website. If you want to show data from database, jsp is the best choice. It is secured technology since every jsp page is compiled into the bytecode on the server and no human being can read it. You can separate design view and business logic of your application to make it more defensive. As jsp requires JVM for execution and JVM is available for all platforms so it becomes platform independent too. It can be used for creating Web Sites, Web Services, Online Shops, Content Management Systems and much more.

4. Things required to get started!

For getting started with jsp you will require following tools/application.
a. Java Runtime Environment (JRE) depending upon your OS.
b. Apache Tomcat Server
c. Any text editing software you love.

For today, this will be enough. In next post we will setup environment for running jsp and write first jsp page.

If you like this article and want to continue learning more about jsp then please give your feedback and comments.

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Conclusion

2011 has seen the rise of the fully integrated shopping experience, including mobile, social and in store digital environments, to better connect users with the brand itself. Mobile channels will continue to be crucial to content engagement, allowing customers to jump the in store queues and compare products instantly with competitors.

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Pros:

1. Free Trial Subscription – You can enjoy free subscription for 7 days and download 5 images per day. This means you can enjoy 35 images absolutely free.
2. Pay per Credit – You can pay for the images depending upon its size. Depositphotos follow credit base currency. So can buy an image in exchange of credits.
3. Various Subscription Plans – There are various subscription plans available ranging from 3 days to 12 months.
4. Loads of images – Lots of images are available to choose your favorite one.

Cons:

I searched for keyword ‘color’ on Depositphotos.com and Shutterstock.com and got following result.

Depositphotos.com

Shutterstock.com

Noticed any difference?

Conclusion:

Depositphotos.com is a good place where loads of Royalty free images and vectors are available to choose a best one for yourself at descent price.

Rating:

3.5/5

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• No Related Posts

Some Tips for Readable Designs

In his study on Color Combinations and Readability, Dr. Richard H. Hall of Missouri S & T indicates that darker text on lighter backgrounds rates higher for readability than do other contrast combinations. Though black text on a white background is traditionally accepted amongst web designers as the ideal for readability, his studies indicate that other high contrast color combinations, such as dark blue on light blue, might work just as well from a readability standpoint. The W3C has published an algorithm that may help web designers determine if the color contrast between text and background is sufficient from a readability standpoint.

Font choice can also have a huge impact on readability. A good monospace font, like Courier, is more easy to read than any highly ligatured fantasy font. Serif fonts, like Times New Roman or Verdana, are also popular choices for readability. All of the aforementioned fonts are commonly available on client machines regardless of OS.

Most modern web browsers will allow users to adjust the text size to a more comfortable level. To take advantage of this feature, web designers should set font-size using relative measures of ems (em) or percentages (%). Absolute measures, such as the commonly used pixel (px), may prevent visitors from resizing text. Your audience may abandon you if you do not make it easier for visitors to resize any small text on your pages to a more comfortable level than it is for them to just hit the back button on their browser and go to another, more user friendly website.

Besides these text-based points, readability is also influenced by the images on a site. Just think of a generic MySpace page with the blinking text, animated graphics and autoplaying music. Though these bells and whistles might have been considered exciting and flashy in the late 90s, most web designers now know better than to use them. However, the reasons that these are terrible design choices still apply. Excessive clutter, whether it’s several images or discrete blocks of text, directly affect the readability of a site. A websurfer’s eye scans rather than actively reads, and any interruptions to this activity may cause them to write you off. Use negative space to your advantage, and you will get a much more professional look and less that of the flashy used-car-salesman of the internet.

The Importance of Readability in Website Design

Perhaps even above beautiful graphics and good placement, readability is one of the most important factors in website design. If you fail to account for readability in your web design, preferring instead exciting fonts or flashy images, you have failed to take into account true aesthetics. If you pay attention to color choice, fonts and clean layouts, you will be that much closer to creating truly beautiful websites.

top image credits: Mike Rohde

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