Started in 1987 as a festival for entertainment and related media industry professionals, since 1994 it grew to include Film and Interactive media.

SXSW has become very popular among web creators and entrepreneurs, boasting the launch of Twitter in 2007, each year web companies use the festival to announce their launch or new products.

Even if you can’t attend the festival, you can live vicariously throw those that are. I’ve collected some unique websites created by those attending the festival, I hope you enjoy.

Made By Many

An awesome twitter mashup from the people at Made By Many, a design agency from London, England.

Twitter

The folks at Twitter invite you stalk them as they attend SXSW.

Tech Cocktail

Track the attendees of the SXSW Techcocktail, as they

The Startup Bus

25 strangers board a bus in San Francisco – and at 60 miles an hour and over 48 hours – they are to conceive, build and launch 6 tech startups in time for a SxSW party in Austin.

SXSW Cliqset

Track all the attendees to SXSW no matter which social media network they are a member off.

WordPress frameworks often give you one or more starter themes that usually just work as is, plus an infrastructure that allows you to quickly customize the design for yourself or a client. The infrastructure includes the necessary HTML, CSS and WordPress-specific PHP code, and a specific usage license terms.

Key features that a website theme designer might want:

• CSS framework – e.g., Blueprint or 960.gs
• Gallery features
• Drop down menus
• Choice of fixed or fluid layout
• Choice of multiple columns
• Variety of templates
• Versatility – busy designers don’t have time to use multiple WP frameworks. If they can please the most clients with the versatility of one framework

Of course, designers are often design for clients, who are publishing some sort of website or blog. A designer will usually build a custom theme that works, but a website publisher will want certain key features:

• Easy to tweak conceptually simple changes without consulting the site designer.
• Search engine optimized.
• Widgetized, for easy addition or change of feature blocks on the site.
• Speed – web pages should not be hampered by use of a WP framework.

If you’re not using a designer, you’ll also want a framework (or theme) that works out of the box. (Too many of the more sophisticated WordPress themes look great in their promo pages but just don’t work out of the box, even for compatible versions of WordPress.)

10 Free WordPress Frameworks

The following WP frameworks and pseudo-frameworks range from the gorgeous to the, well, plain, but all provide strong starting points for WP theme design, saving you time. They’re arranged in alphabetical order for easy reference. Some come with a starter theme or child theme, though a few have communities where others have created additional free/paid child themes. All are free and tend to lack support beyond some documentation or community tutorials. A few have pro versions where the price gets you extra features as well as technical support. WordPress version compatibility is listed when that info was readily available. The snapshots shown here are either of the theme’s home page or either of the main theme or a child theme.

1. Ashford

The Ashford basic framework is probably one of the more fleshed out freebies. It has a ton of features, only a few of which are listed below. For extra features, broader licensing terms and unlimited tech support, you can purchase the Pro version.

Features:

• Appearance – Control colors, background, log and other attributes with theme options.
• Columns – 2.
• CSS – 16 column grid using 960.gs CSS framework.
• Gravatar support.
• Images – Support for auto-thumbnails, Lightbox, content carousel.
• Menus – Multi-level drop-down, with custom link colors.
• Related posts, with thumbnails, is automatic.
• Templates – over a dozen, to suit different page content needs, including TOC (Table of Contents) and FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions).
• Theme options – Minimizes need for code changes.
• Widgetized.
• Wireframe support

Pricing: Free for both personal and commercial use. Pro version available.
Links: Main, Features, Demo.

2. Biblioteca

Biblioteca is an offshoot of Alex Denning’s redesign of WPShout.com’s redesign. He added a number of features and three theme looks that work out of the box, and released it as a pseudo-framework.

Features:

• Appearance – Magazine, Tech and Bloggy choices – set in options page.
• Footer – three columns; enable or disable from options page.
• Images – jQuery slider to feature content; auto-resizing of images on home page.
• Layout – Multiple layouts with different widths for main content area.
• Menus – Drop-down navigation.
• Plug and play – works as is.
• Styles – Lets you create multiple themes styles: Magazine, Tech blog, etc.
• Theme options support.
• Widgetized.

Pricing: Free.
Links: Main.

3. Buffet

The Buffet framework has features for theme designers, as well as easy-to-use options for end users

Features:

• CSS – Choice of 960.gs and Blueprint CSS frameworks, included.
• jQuery-powered
• Localization support.
• Microformats support – hAtom, hCard, XOXO.
• Theme extensions, built from action and filter functions.
• Theme options support.

Compatibility: WP 2.7+, PHP5
Pricing: Free, Open Source under GPL v3.
Links: Main, WordPress page.

4. Carrington

The Carrington framework offers community support, a variety of crisp looking base themes — including one for mobile web browsers. One look at the showcase of themes other designers have built shows you Carrington’s versatility. You can even add your own Carrington-based theme to the showcase.

Seems incredibly versatile. A look at the showcase of sites using Carrington-based themes backs up this claim.
Features:

• Child theme support. (Carrington was not originally a parent theme; child theme support was added later.)
• Columns – 1, 2 or 3.
• Customization – The Carrington framework uses named templates, to reduce the use of conditional code. Separating PHP code and styling makes customization easier and quicker designers. Customization can be as simple as swapping the templates being used. So different post categories could easily have their own templates. (Of course, you’d have to create custom templates.)
• Gallery – Slideshow gallery support.
• Support for clean, crisp forms, tables, headings, subheadings and more.
• Styles – choice of base themes, including JAM (Just Add Markup), with no CSS style elements — in case you want to start almost from scratch.

Pricing: Free, Open Source under GPL v2.
Links: Main.

5. Hybrid

A glance at the ThemeHybrid site shows a very professional approach for what is essentially a free WP framework that comes with online tutorials. The sample themes are sharp-looking and usuable. The example above is the “Hybrid News” theme.

Features:

• Breadcrumbs.
• Child theme support.
• Hooks – Action, filter, shortcode and contextual hooks.
• Localization – Hybrid has been translated into over 20 languages.
• Plugins – Hybrid-specific plugins.
• Templates – over 15, including one each for Sitemap, Log In, Register functionality,  and another for Twitter-style content (called Quick Post).
• Theme options support.
• Widgetized – 8 areas.

Compatibility: At least 2.5-2.7.
Pricing: Access to Theme Hybrid requires membership, but it’s free. Themes are also free, but for US$25/yr, you get access to help and customization tutorials.
Links: Main, Demo, WordPress page.

6. OnePress Community

The OnePress Community framework is intended for theme design for sites that have a phpBB press forum. The framework integrates with phpBB and has a unified login. (Note: if you’re using BuddyPress instead of phpBB, try out BuddyMatic, which is a port of the Thematic framework — discussed later in this article — and reveals BuddyPress features only if BuddyPress is installed. Otherwise it functions as Thematic, on both WP and WPMU.)

Features:

• Forums – phpBB support.
• Hooks for theme customization.
• Pagination.
• Widgetized, including in the footer. Other widgets include Featured Posts, tabbed content

Compatibility: WP 2.7.
Pricing: Free.
Links: Main.

7. Sandbox

Sandbox is not a WP framework in the same sense as some of the other ones, but it is a good starting point for creating your own themes, each of which can have your GNU GPL license. Sandbox is also a good place to learn WP theme customization, without too many distractions to get in the way of learning.

Features:

• Styles – Customizable with just CSS, but works out of the box. Because it’s a very minimalist theme, it’s easier to add design tweaks without having to rip out what’s already there.
• Microformats: hAtom, hCard. The description of Sandbox says that it was the first to include full support for these two microformats. If you’re building a Semantic Web application with WordPress, you’ll likely want to use micformats.
• XHTML 1.0 validity.
• Widgetized.

Compatibility: WP 2.0.x, 2.6.x+
Pricing: Free.
Links: Main, WordPress page.

8. Simon WP Framework

The Simon framework is extremely bare bones, with not a lot of evident current features and a Blank theme. However, it’s creator, Simon Design, does plan a number of interesting upcoming features. Alternatives include Vanilla, Whiteboard, WordPress Starter, Starkers.

Features:

• Columns – 2.
• CSS – Uses 960.gs CSS grid framework and Blueprint Typography framework.
• Styles – Blank theme.
• Widgets – Featured Posts is an in-built feature.

Compatibility: WP 2.9
Pricing: Free.
Links: Main, WordPress page.

9. Thematic

Thematic is another free framework that offers some great features, including gorgeous tables, callouts, multi-page posts and support for displaying programming code. A look at the showcase of child themes built on the thematic Framework show its versatility. There’s also a customization wiki to get you started.

Features:

• Child themes support, plus free and paid child themes available.
• Columns – 2 or 3.
• Community support.
• Layout – grid-based, so there’s a basis for multi-column themes.
• Multi-author blog options.
• SEO-optimized.
• Widgetized – 13 areas.

Pricing: Free, with paid child themes available.
Links: Main, Demo, WordPress page.

10. WP Framework

The WP framework is self-described on its main page as being “A blank” WP theme framework. Well for a blank framework, it has some of the features you’d expect to see in a complete theme. Unlike some of the other projects the documentation for WP framework is very comprehensive, giving you an easy way to find solutions to any problems you may run into.

Features:

• a WordPress theme framework that you can modify directly
• a starting base for any kind of WordPress theme project
• completely well documented from it’s code base
• extremely flexible, modular, and extensible

Pricing: Free
Links: Main, Demo, WordPress page.

Each site that is showcased in the Most Inspired gallery now shows the 10 most used colors.

The colors are automatically extracted from the screenshot, and are shown in order, starting with the most used color.

The most used color is often the site background, and it’s no suprise that the most popular color is white, the top 10 is:

1. #ffffff
2. #000000
3. #202020
4. #e0e0e0
5. #404040
6. #ffffe0
7. #e0e0c0
8. #c0c0c0
9. #ffe0e0
10. #606060

More new features are in the works! Stay informed subscribe to our RSS Feed or follow us on Twitter.

Some sites will pay you for your writing, whilst others will include links in the article back to your website, which can bring exposure and help with your search engine ranking.

I’ve complied a list of 35 popular web sites that accept submissions of quality content. Get writing…

Most Inspired

Anyone with something interesting and relevant to say is welcome to submit an article, yes that includes you, even if you just getting started or you’ve been at this for years.

Yes you can see your articles right here on Most Inspired. We’re looking for anything web design or development related.

Pagerank: 6, Alexa: 35K
More Information

Smashing Magazine

Smashing Magazine’s primary goal is to deliver quality material for designers and web-developers. Writing takes time; a close examination of recent developments and current tools takes time; and finally preparing the article for our readers takes time. To provide our readers with even more good stories and useful insights we can use your help.

Pagerank: 7, Alexa: 700, Twitter Followers: 130K

More Information

Tutsplus

If you have the skill to write an excellent tutorial for one of our Tuts+ sites then we’d like to hear from you. We pay great rates in USD for each tutorial that is accepted, and you’ll have the honor of being published on the best tutorial blog network around!

Pagerank: 6, Alexa: 1K, Twitter Followers: 40K+ (across many accounts)

More Information

Freelance Switch

We’re looking for contributors both regular and one-off to FreelanceSwitch. So if you have something to say about freelancing, send in your article or article pitch. If it’s published not only will you have the joy of knowing you’ve helped the freelancing community, but we’ll pay you a $60 writers fee too!

Pagerank: 6, Alexa: 8K, Twitter Followers: 20K
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Freelance Folder

If you’re a writer and know a lot about freelancing, working online or owning a small business, you can give great advices on branding, marketing, productivity, dealing with clients (and other related topics), or you can write ‘how-to’ posts, please get in contact with Mason.

Pagerank: 3, Alexa: 11K, Twitter Followers: 10K
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A List Apart

We want to change the way our readers work, whether that means introducing a revolutionary CSS technique with dozens of potential applications, challenging the design community to ditch bad practices, or refuting common wisdom about, say, screen readers.

Pagerank: 8, Alexa: 5K, Twitter Followers: 11K
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Carsonified

Want some amazing publicity? Are you a talented designer, developer or web entrepreneur? We’d love for you to write for Think Vitamin!

Pagerank: 6, Alexa: 14K, Twitter Followers: 11K
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Mashable

Mashable is always on the lookout for experienced writers who are passionate about new media, Web 2.0 and social sites.

Pagerank: 7, Alexa: 375, Twitter Followers: 1.9M
More Information

Abduzeedo

If you like reading Abduzeedo and you are as much as a design junkie as we are, then you’re the one we’re looking for. How about writing a post? We’d love to publish it! And if you are really talented, you might join our team!! Email us to get more information about it!

Pagerank: 4, Alexa: 3K, Twitter Followers: 43K
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Pro Blog Design

If you would like to have a post published on Pro Blog Design, we’d be delighted! All authors will be given full credit for their work, including a link back to their site, and up to $125 per post.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 20K, Twitter Followers: 5K
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Sitepoint

SitePoint strives to be at the forefront of new ideas, emerging challenges, and cutting-edge technology on the Web. We are always looking to partner with writers to bring these messages to the web development community.

Pagerank: 7, Alexa: 900, Twitter Followers: 60K
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sixrevisions

Six Revisions is a website that publishes practical and useful articles for designers and web developers. We seek to present exceptional, noteworthy tips, tutorials, and resources that the modern web professional will appreciate.

Pagerank: 6, Alexa: 3K, Twitter Followers: 16K
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Developer Tutorials

Developer Tutorials strives to provide its users with a regular supply of cutting-edge programming and design guides keeping them up-to-date on new and emerging technologies and techniques. To help fuel this effort we continually seek knowledgeable writers to produce unique, high quality tutorials.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 12K
More Information

My Ink Blog

What Am I Looking For? Quality stuff! I’m looking for original posts from guest authors. Mainly, tutorials/articles/freebies on graphic design theory/application, web design theory/application, CSS, HTML, Javascript.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 24K, Twitter Followers: 4K
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Naldzgraphics

Contributors are always welcome here in Naldz Graphics. Our readers are mostly designers and those who love design. If you want to offer us an article, freebie or tutorial, don’t hesitate to contact us and we will credit you fully.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 14K, Twitter Followers: 55K
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Crazyleaf Design

We are looking for contributors for the blog. Write for us and get paid. The topics we are looking for are : Tutorials, Graphic Design, Web Design, Flash, Photoshop, Vectorial Graphics, Design Inspiration, Programming, Print Design, Design Resources, Photography or just a “Top 10 article” send it and if it gets published you’ll get paid.

Pagerank: 3, Alexa: 12K, Twitter Followers: 1K
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Tutorial9

We’re looking for talented individuals to contribute articles to Tutorial9. If you’re skilled with Photoshop, Photography, or Blogging, we’ll pay you $50 to $300 for your work.

Pagerank: 6, Alexa: 9K, Twitter Followers: 9K
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Reencoded

We are looking for someone with a web design background, lots of experience and extensive skills in design and development industry. We pay per post. Price per post and posts per week are negotiable.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 27K, Twitter Followers: 18K
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Design Reviver

We are always on the look out for talented designers willing to share their work (icons, wordpress themes, photoshop actions) or write design tutorials. By contributing to DesignReviver you’ll be financially rewarded and will gain exposure to a large audience.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 13K, Twitter Followers: 3K
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UX Booth

We love articles that relate usability to both common and uncommon things.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 24K, Twitter Followers: 5K
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The Floating Frog

We’re an established UK Design Blog that’s been running for over 2 years. We’re now looking to recruit some more talented writers onto The Floating Frog team so that we can better cover news from the design industry.

Pagerank: 3, Alexa: 142K, Twitter Followers: 3K
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Make Use of

We are always looking for more writers to help us turn the site into something bigger and better than ever before – and our next star writer could be YOU.

Pagerank: 7, Alexa: 2K, Twitter Followers: 12K
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1st Webdesigner

You have a great chance to say Your opinion and get listened. It’s great feeling to see people evaluating Your work, You have a great chance to get known with really small effort.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 4K, Twitter Followers: 11K
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The Web Squeeze

The Web Squeeze is always looking for new authors interested in writing articles on web design and development topics as well as tutorials on all aspects of web design.

Pagerank: 3, Alexa: 30K, Twitter Followers: 1K
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Design Instruct

Writing for Design Instruct can be a very fulfilling experience. You will have an opportunity to share your knowledge, display your skills and expertise to a global audience of artists and designers, and engage with the readers in a truly collaborative spirit.

Pagerank: No Rank (site launched just a few weeks ago), Alexa: 107K, Twitter Followers: 1K
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Noupe

You need to have high-quality material, of interest to large segments of the community. That means that designers and Web developers need to be able to use it, learn from it or develop it further. Websites that have some artistic or creative effort put into them have a good chance of getting featured in our magazine.

Pagerank: 4, Alexa: 2K, Twitter Followers:
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Inspired Mag

If you have a creative idea in mind, already have a blog and want to share an inspirational graphic roundup or article with the Inspired Mag readers, you should give us a shout.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 17K, Twitter Followers: 27K
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Webdesign Ledger

We are always looking for web designers with a passion for what they do and a bigger passion for sharing what they know. If you would like to write articles for this site contact us at the address below, and send along some links to your work or writing.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 4K, Twitter Followers: 34K
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Knowtebook

We are a growing community with thousands of readers and of course we’re always looking for quality content to publish on our blog. By publishing on Knowtebook you get known to 40.000 people right a way!

Pagerank: 4, Alexa: 42K
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Instant Shift

If you want to write an article for instantShift about a design related topic then please get in contact with us using the form below.

Pagerank: 6, Alexa: 6K, Twitter Followers: 6K
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Colorburned

We are currently looking for talented artists, designers, and writers to join the Colorburned Team.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 23K, Twitter Followers: 12K
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PV.M Garage

PV.M Garage is a Web Design Blog and we write articles and tutorials about HTML, CSS, Photoshop, WordPress, Drupal, Javascript and jQuery, we collect useful freebies (fonts, textures, brushes) for web and graphic designer.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 24K, Twitter Followers: 3K
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Tripwire Magazine

Do you have something on your mind that you would like to share with a lot of creative designers or skilled developers? Do you want to promote your designs, your skills or your knowledge? tripwire magazine have several thousand readers visiting the site every day and if you contribute you will get great exposure in return.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 11K, Twitter Followers: 4K
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Fuel Your Creativity

When lying in bed at night, do you find yourself dreaming of design? It’s ok, don’t be embarrassed. We won’t tell anyone. That probably just means you have a lot to say on the subject and you’re looking for the perfect way to get your information out there to the world.

Pagerank: 5, Alexa: 27K, Twitter Followers: 10K
More Information

positivespaceblog

Are you a beginning blogger, do you have a product or service you would like to promote by positioning yourself as an expert, or do you just have something to say? If so and your topic relates to design, the technology surrounding design, or design culture then Positive Space might be the right place to publish your article.

Pagerank: 4, Alexa: 166K
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I was surprised that many of the websites did not display the current incumbent a little more prominently. Perhaps the hope was that people would know the incumbent well enough already, perhaps that would true for their own country, but lets not forget the rest of the world.

United States

Incumbent: Barack Obama

The website for President Obama is very big upgrade from that of his predecessor, not a surprise really considering how the president made use of the Internet during his election campaign.

United Kingdom

Incumbent: Gordon Brown

Australia

Incumbent: Kevin Rudd

Canada

Incumbent: Stephen Harper

Ireland

Incumbent: Mary McAleese

France

Incumbent: François Fillon

Germany

Incumbent: Angela Merkel

Spain

Incumbent: José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

Italy

Incumbent: Silvio Berlusconi

Portugal

Incumbent: José Sócrates

Poland

Incumbent: Donald Tusk

New Zealand

Incumbent: John Key

Netherlands

Incumbent: Jan Peter Balkenende

Mexico

Incumbent: Felipe Calderón

Israel

Incumbent: Benjamin Netanyahu

Greece

Incumbent: George Papandreou

Denmark

Incumbent: Lars Løkke Rasmussen

People’s Republic of China

Incumbent: Wen Jiabao

Austria

Incumbent: Werner Faymann

Argentina

Incumbent: Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Japan

Incumbent: Yukio Hatoyama

India

Incumbent: Manmohan Singh

Pakistan

Incumbent: Yousaf Raza Gillani

South Africa

Incumbent: Jacob Zuma

The television, movie and the music industries do a great job of giving credit to everyone who worked on the project. Plenty of time at the end of a movie or television show is dedicated to rolling credits for anyone involved in their production. Music CD inlays provide a similar roll call of people involved in the creation of what you’ve just listened too.

Sites like the Internet Movie Database have been furthering the access to such information, making those credits available online for everyone to browse or search. Until recently there was nothing comparable for people involved in web design and development.

The three sites below are aimed at getting you credit for your work.

I Worked On

IWorkedOn.com is a bold and ambitious effort aimed at compiling the most comprehensive database of projects and the people who contributed to them worldwide.

Launched just a few weeks ago, I Worked On, allows anyone to join and add all the projects they have worked on. You can list your roles on each project — be it a developer, designer, writer or anything else — as well as what skills you employed on that project.

iworkedon.com

Disclaimer: I had the idea for I Worked On 2 years ago, but never quite got it released to the public, but with the help of a couple of friends the site is now available for all.

Who Built It

Sick of getting no credit for the cool sites you make? whobuilt.it lets you claim the sites you build!

whobuilt.it requires that you upload a specially named file to the website you’re claiming you built for verification, which isn’t possible in all cases, but this extra step ensure that people really did build the sites they are claiming.

whobuilt.it

Who Made that Website

Adding your sites to WMTW is free. However, you are required to verify that you played a role in the sites creation by adding a verification code to the source code on the homepage of your sites.

Similar to whobuilt.it, you’re required to add a verification to the sites you worked on, and roles are limited to designer and/or developer.

whomadethatwebsite.com

Sign up for one of them, or sign up for all of them, but do sign up and get the credit for your hard work.

Below you’ll find my selection of 15 great designs that use blue as the main color.

climaxmedia.com

climaxmedia.com

theyettobenamedpodcast.com

theyettobenamedpodcast.com

accolado.com

accolado.com

thehousemedia.com

thehousemedia.com

indiaphpexpert.com

indiaphpexpert.com

yhaggle.com

yhaggle.com

agenciapublicidadebrasilia.com.br

agenciapublicidadebrasilia.com.br

steffanhaeberle.com

steffanhaeberle.com

stephburningham.com

stephburningham.com

jonandkatie.co.uk

jonandkatie.co.uk

hostourcoast.com

hostourcoast.com

illusionist.co.uk

illusionist.co.uk

texelate.co.uk

texelate.co.uk

johnmccain.com

johnmccain.com

blog.jonleverrier.com

blog.jonleverrier.com

With unemployment currently sky high, competition for jobs is tougher than ever. Anywhere from 10 to 10,000 people can apply for the most hotly contested places. Your resume is the greatest marketing tool you’ve got at your disposal. If you’re going to stand out from the crowd and get that all-important interview, you need to make sure that your resume’s saying the right things about you.

HR managers spend much of their days trawling through resumes. It’s a laborious, often boring process and few managers spend more than a minute or so reading through each one. You need to get inside the mind of your potential employer- find out what makes them tick and be the answer to their business problems. You’ve got 60 seconds to shine. Follow the 10 tips below for resume success.

1. Include a Personal Profile

Image: beelerspace

Don’t make employers search through your resume for the vital information. Present it to them right at the top in a Personal Profile section. Make sure this profile includes a snapshot of your career history to date, your greatest abilities, why you’re the ideal candidate for the job and what specific skills you’re going to bring to the role. Don’t forget to back up everything you say in this short section with evidence further down.

2. Use Keywords

Image: deanmeyers

To make your resume searchable in job databases and get it picked up by scanning software, it’s essential that you include certain keywords, which can be found in the advertisements for the jobs you’re applying for. Including keywords not only gets your resume seen, it aligns your skills and experience more closely to specific job requirements.

3. Scrap the Clichés

Image: nics_events

HR managers read tons of resumes on a daily basis. It’s hardly an exhilarating task. Using clichés only makes the reader of your resume more bored, more quickly, accelerating the speed of its journey to the bin. Avoid overusing words and phrases like “excellent written communication skills”, “team player” and “experienced”. These things mean nothing without explanation.

4. Keep Your resume Current

Image: joelanman

If your resume’s not up-to-date, it’s going straight on the reject pile- it’s as simple as that. Set aside one day a month for updating your resume, adding information about any new responsibilities and accomplishments. If you don’t update it regularly, you might forget to add elements that will really impress next time your resume’s called for.

5. List Your Experience by Skills Category

Image: sunshinecity

Most people start their working lives at the bottom of the ladder, achieving greater things as they progress along their career path. By listing your skills and achievements in chronological order, chances are you’ll be drawing attention first to the least impressive of your professional accomplishments. Instead, list them by skills category, the most impressive first, with employers and dates under each if necessary.

6. Focus on the Here and Now

Image: ssh

Focus your resume’s careers section on positions you’ve held during the last ten years (max!) Anything before this is old news so far as many employers are concerned. If you need to add information from your distant past, include it in a brief “Early Careers” section. Furthermore, don’t include any jobs in unrelated fields or leave gaps in your career history. This will only leave HR managers asking questions, and as you’re not going to be there to answer them, your resume will more than likely end up as recycled paper!

7. Include All Relevant Experience

Image: usarmyafrica

Most people are, by definition, average. If you want to stand out, you’re going to have to offer more than the average candidate will. If you’re unable to prove your extraordinariness with professional experience alone, don’t be afraid to include volunteer work, leadership roles outside of the workplace and community projects you’ve been involved in. It all counts.

8. Take a Targeted Approach

Image: tuchodi

Sending out a generic resume to every employer on your professional radar is the most common route to failure. HR managers are not stupid, they read resumes all day, they can tell in an instant if the CV in front of them has been sent out to 10, 20 or even 100 potential employers. You must take a targeted approach. Carefully select a batch of, say, five jobs to apply for and explicitly tailor your resume closely to each individual role.

9. Be Concise

Image: Anemone Nemorosa

Chances are, you’ve heard this tip before, but it’s so vitally important, I’m going to repeat it again. As fascinating as it might be, no HR manager wants to read your life story, so keep your resume brief: generally speaking, no longer than two pages. Choose the facts that are most interesting, important and closely linked to the vacancy in question. Avoid long sentences and leave some white space around text.

10. Dare to Be Different

Image: SOCIALisBETTER

If you’re applying for a job as an accountant, for instance, it’s probably best to keep your resume as traditional as possible. If you’re applying for a role in an organization which values creativity, however, feel free to let your inventiveness shine through. The key is subtlety. By all means incorporate an element of individuality into your resume design, but beware of gimmicks like colored paper and silly fonts. A straightforward font like Arial prints well and looks good in PDF format.

Furthermore, don’t be afraid to save a couple of lines at the end of your resume for hobbies. Employers want to know that you’re a real, rounded person after all. Include something physical, cerebral, social and altruistic.

About the Author

Tom designs and writes for UK based provider of Epson printer inks, toner and paper. You can read more of his writing on their blog, CreativeCloud.

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After the jump you’ll find a list of the common reasons that a website might be or appear to be down.

IT’S THE SERVER

• Hardware Failure

  

  Like any computer a server can experience hardware problems, and when it does it makes your website unavailable.

  Even if just one component of the server stops working, it can make the entire server unavailable. Network cards, hard drives, video cards, and motherboards can all malfunction, taking your website offline.

  Unfortunately the only thing you can do in this case, is wait for hosting provider to fix the problem. Good hosts will often have spare components in hand in the case something goes wrong, they malfunctioning component can be replaced quickly.

  If you do have the content of the website (all the files and related assets and data), you maybe be able to get the website setup in a new location, if this is taking a long time. So it’s always a good idea to have a recent backup of all your web related content, in case of problems.

• Software Crash

  

  Software powers your website, from web servers, to database servers and mail servers and application servers, the software that powers your website can crash, and when it does, your website becomes unavailable.

  In many cases your hosting company will be monitoring the key software applications on the server and restart them automatically. If you’re self hosting, you’ll need to make sure your server is setup to do this, or you’ll need to connect to the server and restart the software manually.

• Quota Exceeded

  Your web hosting plan will include a hard drive space, and bandwidth quota. If you exceed either of this, you website may be taken offline by your web host. In some cases your website may continue to serve your website, and charge your for the overages.

  Most web hosts have different plan levels that will give more hard drive space and bandwidth at much more affordable rates than paying overages each month. Other web hosts claim to offer unlimited plans, and while this can sound too good to be true, it usually is!

  If your website is down due to hard drive space usage, you may be able make room by removing older log files, or unused files you have stored on your server.

• Permissions Issues

  Servers are often shared between many users. To protect users, permissions are setup to allow you to save your files in specific locations. This prevents users from having access to other users files.

  In some cases these permissions can become messed up! In such cases the files you uploaded become unavailable, and cannot be served thru the web server. You may be able to log in to the server (via FTP or SSH) and fix the permission problem, or you may have to contact your hosting provider to fix the permissions problem.

IT’S THE NAME

DNS: Domain Name System

Every computer that connect to the internet does so with an IP address. This allows network traffic to be routed to each computers location. These numbers can be hard to remember. Imagine having to type http://72.14.204.147 each time you wanted to go to Google. These number can also change if you move to a new web host.

To alleviate these problems names can be assigned to these IP addresses, and DNS converts those names to the underlying IP address.

If DNS is unavailable you will be unable to convert the name you entered to the corresponding IP address, so unless you happen to know the IP address of the site you’re trying to reach, you’d be out of luck accessing it.

In other cases the DNS records can become messed up, and the name can be translated to the wrong IP address, so you may end up being taken to another website, or a machine that is not accessible.

If you find that the DNS service provided by your ISP is unreliable there are a number of public DNS services, such as OpenDNS or Google DNS that you can use.

If you’re web host provided DNS is causing problems, there you also have some options. Most domain name registrars can now provide DNS service, or independent companies such as easyDNS can manage your DNS for a small fee.

IT’S THE NETWORK

Network issues are a very common reason that a website cannot be accessed.

The problems may be localized to your location or be a larger issue closer to your web host.

If you think of a network as a highway, and an accident the cause of congestion, depending on where you are starting your journey and your destination, you may be not be affected at all by the accident, or be stuck in traffic for hours.

Similarly, depending on where your website is hosted and the location of the network outage, your website might not be affected, or be totally unreachable.

Web services such as downforeveryoneorjustme.com can help you determine how serious a problem you have.

Most computers provide network tools, such as traceroute that can also help you determine where a network problem is affecting your ability to connect to your website.

What other reasons have you find that your website has been unavailable, and how did you resolve the problem?