Free templates, graphics, web design articles and more.

Top 10 Shopify eCommerce templates of 2011

suz — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 03:52:44 +0000

If you are wanting to open an online store it is hard to beat Shopify. Shopify was designed to make the task of starting an internet store easy (and much cheaper then hiring a designer) with their online shop builder and many pre-designed e-commerce templates. Not only does it take care of the shop’s design but they also provide analytics, the ability to create special promotions, and they also offer tools to accept incoming payments and to track your orders. In this post I will showcase a few of my favourite free and premium Shopify themes.

Internet marketing firms to design your website?

suz — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 06:42:28 +0000

There is not much point in spending thousands of dollars on developing a web site if it gives you nothing in return. If customers can’t find your web site then you may as well not even have one. Marketing your web site is obviously an important part of your online presence but it is a lot easier to market a site that is built right in the first place. Good internet marketing firms have done a great deal of research into how to optimize web sites and build them right. So it can makes sense to get them to build you one in the first place (or even redesign your old one if it is no longer serving it’s purpose). But how do you find the best firm to get the job done, how do you tell which one will give you the best results for your money? Just like with many other things in life one of the best ways is to seek other people’s recommendations; be it from friends, asking around at networking events or other similar existing online sites. Online forums and communities can be very helpful as well.

Always get a web design quote along with the internet marketing quote from the firm. Ask lots of questions about what you will get and what the work process is (it helps if you know a little about the basics of web design and promotion yourself but is not totally necessary). Lastly their portfolio should give you a pretty good idea of their past work, achievements, how well they know their field of work and what and how much you can expect from them. Although it can seem a little daunting to wade through the sea of available internet marketing firms that are in existence on the web it will pay off in the long run to do your research and find the one that is the right fit for your company and future web site.

Web Host Spotlight – Sherweb

suz — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 22:12:22 +0000

If you need to keep your office and your home better connected without much IT knowledge or installing of lots of software you might be looking to use Sharepoint. SharePoint is a web based set of applications built on Microsoft’s trusted platform which links with other Windows applications such as Microsoft Office. You can use SharePoint for many things like file and photo sharing, wikis, blogs, intranet and most importantly SharePoint makes it easy for you to communicate with other members of your team, no matter where they are located.

There are quiet a few places offering sharepoint hosting and Sherweb is one such place that is worth a look at for you hosting needs. SherWeb is a Canadian Web and Exchange hosting company and a Microsoft Gold Partner. Sherweb prides itself on great customer support and affordable plans. Established in 1998 they are a top North American hosting business in the field of cloud computing hosted services.

Brochure Design Contest at ColorFXweb

suz — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 02:43:01 +0000

ColorFXweb is having a brochure design competition, the winner of which will win $250 worth of brochure printing. As an added benefit artists will be able to showcase their work and attract visitors to their sites from a blog that’s frequented by print brokers and buyers from all over the world. To enter, create a great brochure, or enter one that you have already designed by Tuesday the 14th of September 2011. For full details please see this page.

TeamworkPM update

suz — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 00:50:48 +0000

I have written about the online project management tool Teamwork before in a previous post and I just wanted to let everyone know about some new and exciting additions to the app’s web site.

The popular Project Management software is now available as an Android app as well as an iPhone app, making it more mobile for even more users. You can now access your tasks, find out about the latest activities on your projects or join in the conversation all while being on the road.

The other major addition to the site is the new Dropbox integration feature. Dropbox is a free file synchronization, backup and hosting service that lets you bring your photos, docs, and videos anywhere and share them easily with anyone.

DropBox is now integrated with TamworkPM on the Business 2, Corporate and Enterprise plans. When you link a Dropbox account with your Teamwork account you can reference your Dropbox files through Teamwork so that they appear within the files tab of your projects. You can find step by step instructions on how to set this up on their web site.

Special Offer: Free Photos from Depositphotos

suz — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:44:53 +0000

Depositphotos is a large royalty free stock images provider featuring over 4 and a half million photos and vector illustrations. They have recently completely overhauled their web site design with many new improvements. These include easier searches for images with more relevant results as well as better navigation and an improved layout. The site is now also available in many other languages and you can even subscribe via a handy new pay by SMS option. You can search or browse for images by category and sort search results into vectors or photos. All images are available in a variety of sizes and file formats.

Depositphotos is having a special offer at the moment, offering web site owners the chance to download five free photos and illustrations per day in return for spreading the word about depositphotos. You can do this by writing a review or article about them on your web site, linking to them, holding competitions etc. You do need to have a well written web site and have some readership to be able to qualify for this offer. Even if you do not run a web site you can still take up the free photo downloads offer for a trial period of seven days (as opposed to longer periods of time if you promote them from your site).

Download royalty free photos from StockFresh

suz — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:24:41 +0000

If you are creating a web site or are the owner of a web site, chances are you will need some stock photos or images at some point. You probably already know about the popular older stock photo sites that are out there but there are newer less well known sites out there too offering quality downloads that you may not be aware of.

One such site is StockFresh. Created by the same group of people as StockXpert and stock.xchng, (you can follow them on twitter or Facebook) StockFresh currently has over one million files online available for immediate download from expert photographers and vectors from illustrators. Launched about a year ago with only about 100,000 files the site has seen massive growth and the new images continue to be added to the site on a daily basis.

Photos are reasonably priced and the site has flexible credit and subscription offers starting from just a few cents.

If you are an artist or a photographer you can also sell your images on StockFresh and earn up to 62.5% per each download which is amongst the highest in the industry (so you can be assured your money is going to the right place – the artists) and there is even an affiliate program available.

Below are just a few examples of the images you will find at StockFresh.

If you are looking to buy photos StockFresh is definitely worth a visit.

Two free backgrounds with swirling lights

suz — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 05:05:25 +0000

There are two new backgrounds for you to download. Both are abstracts with a swirling light effect.
You can download them both in the one Zip file in JPG format. You can use them as a web page background, twitter background, desktop or any other type of background you like. If you do use it please consider spreading the word about this web site. You could Tweet about this page, write about it on Facebook or add a link to your site.

Click on the small pictures to open them up to full size and to save them on your computer.

The backgrounds in jpg format are free to use any way you wish but please don’t distribute them. The Photoshop PSD files are available for $5.50 for the two. Click the Paypal buy it now button to purchase the PSDs.

New wordpress theme for Smartphones

suz — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:09:03 +0000

More and more people look up information and make purchases on the go. Because of this it is getting increasingly important to create websites that are readable on small handheld devices. If your site runs on WordPress this can be a fairly easy task. A new wordpress plugin and theme called Handheld has just been released by ElegantThemes which works with your existing theme. This means your web site does not need to be redesigned, PC users will still see the same design which they are used to but mobile users will see a design which fits their device. Purchase this theme and you will also get access to all the other great wordpress themes the site offers which is great value.

Average screen resolution and designing web sites to fit them

suz — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 02:51:11 +0000

As a designer or an owner of a website it is important to take into consideration the most prevalent screen resolutions, and especially those which your target audience is using. The days of the 640×480 screen resolution is long gone and today with the widespread use of widescreen monitors and laptops it has become important for owners and designers alike to update their existing websites to suit prevailing trends.
According to W3Schools 55% – 75% of people today are using monitors with screen resolutions of 1440 x 900 pixels. This means that if you are designing a website at a lower resolution your target audience may end up having to scroll from side to side in order to properly get a look at your page, which is not good for most businesses that rely on people staying on their website.

Designing Web Pages with Fixed Width
As the name implies ‘Fixed Width’ web pages do not automatically adjust to a user’s screen or browser, so if the design is too wide your visitor will have to scroll from one side to another. In order to get a Fixed Width page right you need to know the lowest most commonly used resolution of your intended audience. Once you know what the prevailing resolution is you will also have to find out how much space you get in each browser. Using a resource like anybrowser.com should help you get an idea of browser space. However, if you are not sure who your target audience is then you are better off not designing a Fixed Width page but rather a fluid page as described below.

Liquid Width Page
A flexible liquid type design will automatically align itself according to the resolution being used and the browser it is being displayed in. All page elements will try to accommodate themselves according to the user’s screen. When designing a flexible page you’ll need to use a certain percentage of width for the containers around the page i.e. a table or a div.
The first thing you need to do is to decide upon the maximum width you are designing for, so for instance if you use a design which takes up around 60% of the space on a screen then you need to keep in mind that everything which includes the elements should add up to a total of 60% of space on the screen.
The one mistake that many designers make is that they use pictures which are too wide. So for instance if you are going to use 60% width then all your images and header should fit within that width or you’ll see the horizontal scroll bar appearing.