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10 WordPress Plugins to Monetize Your Blog

With the increase in people blogging, and especially the increase of blogs becoming authoritative sources of information, people now want to know how to make money blogging. Before trying to make money from your blog, it’s important to first start gaining a following. Once you’ve got a strong following, you can begin finding ways to bring in a profit.  Below I’ve listed 10 WordPress plugins that can help you make money from your blog.  Read More →

25 Places to Find Awesome Stock Photos — Free and Cheap!

Whether you’re designing an artistic website or searching for images to post on your blog, sites that carry not only free but awesome stock photos may very well come in handy. Utilizing the correct set of photos for any project is key, especially if you’re designing an ad for a client, you should always put in your best effort as well as the best images you can find fit for the job. Many of the designers I’ve come across like to download most of their images from 2-3 of the largest... 

Web Monitors Uncover Top 100 Blogs and Platforms

Pingdom, a service that monitors Web sites and servers on the Internet, looked at the top 100 blogs on Technorati to find out which blogging platform is used most often. Pingdom distinguishes between blogs that are self-hosted and blogging-service hosted. The top two self-hosted platforms are Wordpress (27 percent) and Moveable Type (12 percent). The top two platforms that sit on a service are Typepad (16 percent) and Blogsmith (14 percent). When hosted and self-hosted are combined, the top two blogging... 

Cross This Line and You’re Dead and Other Writing Tips

My first writing job was for a small small publishing company that published magazines for consumer electronics and major appliance retailers. Writing for trade magazines is not as glamorous as writing for consumer magazines but the pay is a heck of a lot better. It was one of those places where the writers did the work of two times as many people. We pounded copy like crazed monkeys including nights and Saturdays when deadlines were on top of us. I wrote my ass off and I learned a lot, thanks to... 

CSS Frameworks To Consider

CSS frameworks may seem like overkill, but more and more support has been given to this ever improving science. Aimed at improving website turnaround time, frameworks aid designers in the build process. This tutorial will show you why CSS frameworks are worth using, along with some possible solutions you can try for yourself — all for free, and easy too.  Read More →

Kuler It Up!

As I’ve been going through this blog, I noticed that there isn’t anything on Adobe’s color theme creator Kuler. Kuler is a free online repository of nothing but color palettes and themes created by developers and users for a wide variety of applications based on rules of color theory. It has an established community sharing color palettes and you can create a theme for anything online or out in the real world.  Read More →

Fluid, Fixed and Elastic Web Design, Explained

When using CSS to style a website there are three primary layout types available to web designers. This tutorial aims to arm you with the information you need to know to help make a more informed decision when choosing how to design your website projects. The Options The three primary layout styles for determining the width of websites — Fluid, Fixed and Elastic. All have their own merits. There are also drawbacks to these design patterns, so it’s important to know the best situation in... 

Using Symbols in Illustrator

Symbols can potentially save you a lot of time. Illustrator comes with hundreds of symbols, and there are hundreds more available on the Internet. Before we discuss how to incorporate symbols into our illustrations, let’s define a symbol. A symbol is an art object that can be used over and over. Each time a symbol is used within an Illustration, it is referred to as an instance of that symbol. An instance of a symbol can be added one-by-one, or can be sprayed onto an illustration via the Symbol... 

Photoshop: Make Everyday Photos Look More Professional

Just about every household has some sort of digital camera laying around. This makes it super simple to take snapshots of everyday events. Using this tutorial, you can make almost any photo look professional — or at least better than amateur. With this simple photo retouching process, you’ll be able  to put a professional polish on any photo you take.  Read More →

Follow Through on Your Web Design Media with Search Engine Optimization

You don’t have to be an athlete to appreciate a pro golfer’s drive off a tee, a designated baseball hitter’s swing or an Olympic gymnast’s agility on the high bar. Whether it’s distance, power or grace, it all comes from properly following through. Web designers also need to follow through textually on their designs–whether they’re simple photographs or sophisticated Flash animations. It’s those final steps in the design process that ensure your design... 

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