25+ Coming Soon Page with Style!

admin    Inspire     coming soon page, showcase

The first thing to do when starting a new client’s project is placing a splash page also known as “coming soon” or “holding page” and here are a few trends in designing a coming soon page with style.

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10 opensource PHP e-commerce application

admin    Tools     e-Commerce, opensource, php, tool

1.OpenCart

OpenCart is an open source PHP-based online shopping cart system. A robust e-commerce solution for Internet merchants with the ability to create their own online business and participate in e-commerce at a minimal cost.

OpenCart is designed feature rich, easy to use, search engine friendly and with a visually appealing interface.

2.Magento

Magento is a feature-rich eCommerce solution offering complete flexibility and control over the look, content, and functionality of an online store.

Magento Features: read more

Sponsor Flip Wall With jQuery & CSS

admin    CSS     CSS, howto, javascript, jQuery, tutorial

Designing and coding a sponsors page is part of the developer’s life (at least the lucky developer’s life, if it is about a personal site of theirs). It, however, follows different rules than those for the other pages of the site. You have to find a way to fit a lot of information and organize it clearly, so that the emphasis is put on your sponsors, and not on other elements of your design.

We are using PHP, CSS and jQuery with the jQuery Flip plug-in, to do just that. The resulting code can be used to showcase your sponsors, clients or portfolio projects as well.

Step 1 – XHTML read more

45 Web Builders to Create an Insanely Awesome Free Website

admin    Tools     free, site builder, tool

Looking for a place to create a free website?  There are plenty of resources that allow you to create you own website, blog, wiki, or social community without having to know any programming language.  These free website creation sites allow you to easily create a site, customize the design, add content, and use a custom URL.

Take a look at 45 best web builders to create a free website.

Google Sites

Hey its Google and they are letting you create a free site….so do it.  As usual, Google makes it extremely easy to build a free website with cool integration features like Google Docs, Google Calendar, and RSS.

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Best Web Sites For Designers To Find Icons and Icon sets

admin    Tools     free, icons, online service, tool

1. IconFinder

Iconfinder provides high quality icons for webdesigners and developers in an easy and efficient way.

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10 Essential Design Tools for Social Media Pros

admin    Tools     icons, resource, tool

Good design is a critical part of any web or social media presence. Like the clothes you wear to a job interview or a business meeting, a sharp looking social profile or website is the first step toward being taken seriously online.

Whether you’re a professional designer or an armchair artiste, tools abound that you can use to snazz up your web presence, and give it that polish that professionals, potential customers, and online friends have come to expect from a social media maven. We’ve talked to the experts about what they use for inspiration, collaboration, and getting down to the business of design in a social media world. Here are some of the suggestions they offered up.

1. Core Application Alternatives

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5 Essential Wordpress Plugins & Services for Business Blogs

admin    Wordpress     online service, Plugin, Wordpress

Creating a Wordpress blog for your business can be a great way to keep in touch with your customers and increase interest in your product(s). For some people, their blog is their whole business.

Making a successful blog may seem like a daunting task. There are millions of blogs out there and it may seem impossible at first to stand out. The major thing that will help your blog stand out is the content you provide. It needs to be useful for your visitors. But besides that, there are free services and business plugins for Wordpress to help you along the way.

We’ll take a look at five of the essentials for Wordpress business blogs.

Google Webmaster Tools read more

Fonts on the web and a list of web safe fonts

admin    Misc     fonts

Many of you have been asking, “What fonts are safe for me to use on the web?” and “Is there a list of web safe fonts for reference?” Well I am here to help. Web safe fonts are ever important but a lot of web designers I have seen lately are forgoing this important step in their design creation. Some are taking the steps to use a font similar to a web safe font but because it is not in fact web safe they inevitably have to default back to a font that isn’t quite the same. Their web design loses a little of itself and at this point they typically struggle to find a font that is close and web safe. There are plenty of web safe fonts available it just takes some creativity in using them to your advantage. I have a list of web safe fonts available in the article to help everyone out.

Some of you that may have heard of the term web safe before and not quite known it’s meaning, others don’t fully know the reasoning behind it. I am here to clear all of these things up. First off, web safe fonts are those that are nearly universally available on any computer. So that when the end user, regardless of their machine preferences, goes to the web site they get the same experience as anyone else going to the web site. This is what web standards are all about and ensuring that you are using web safe fonts throughout your website is just as important as including a DOCTYPE and HTML tag in the beginning. read more

How To Stop Image Hotlinking through .htaccess

admin    Photos     htaccess, image, tool

You can stop others from hotlinking your site’s files by placing a file called .htaccess in your site root (main) directory. The period before the name means the file is hidden, so you may want to edit your file as htaccess.txt, upload it to your server, then rename the txt file to .htaccess in your directory. Contact your web host on how to access your directories and configure your .htaccess file.

Before writing code in your .htaccess file, there is a online site which provide you create your Hotlink protection of images file.

Htaccess Tools

Use this generator to create a .htaccess file for hotlink protection of your images and pictures. Hotlink protection can save you lots of bandwidth by preventing other sites from displaying your images.
Example: Your site url is www.wparena.com. To stop hotlinking of your images from other sites and display a replacement image called hotlink.gif from our server, place this code in your .htaccess file: read more

22 Useful Online Chart & Graph Generators

admin    Tools     generator, online service, tool

Have you ever encounter situations where you need to create a simple yet good-looking chart, graphs or diagrams and all you have is your browser? Charts are good and effective way to show relationship between entities but sometimes creating one can be pretty challenging especially when your favorite word processing software is not around.

In today’s post, we want to highlight some of the best web services that allow you to create various charts and graphs online on-the-fly. Most of them are easy to use and don’t you even worry about the design. Your output will be as good as what you see in the screen shots below. Full list after jump. read more