10 great websites for designers

These sites are great for days when you are feeling uncreative or have hit the metaphorical wall and need a little extra inspiration to get you going.  They are also great places to go when you need to add that little extra something to your project.

Hope these help you with your next project.

1. Deviant Art
2. Logo inspiration: Logo Pond
3. Find great color schemes at: Kuler
4. Real life inspiration: MocoLoco
5. Find  icons: Iconfinder
6. Colour Lovers
7. Font Sets: Dafont
8. Stock Photos: iStockphoto
9. Photoshop tutorials:PSDtuts
10. Illustrator tutorials: Vectortuts

Hope you like them and let us know if you have any other sites you think should be on the list.

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The 10 Simplest Website Tweaks for Designers to Get More Clients

Are you a graphic, industrial or web designer? Do you want your website to look good? Do you ignore, hate or forget SEO and usability? Well, I can help.

Designers often do not implement the simplest website tweaks and do not employ the easiest marketing methods that can drastically improve your performance in Google and bring you more clients.

Here are the 10 simplest website tweaks for designers, 2 of them actually off site.

1. Change your page title from your name or portfolio to what/where/who or in other words [offer city - name], example: “Graphic Design Atlanta – John Doe”, use descriptive titles for each page
2. Use CSS or image replacement like sIFR, Flir and typeface.js for navigation, headlines and links instead of pure Flash or images
3. Rename your navigation links from works, portfolio etc. to web design, print design, logo design etc. Use your name instead of about me
4. Do not display solely one image per page, nobody clicks 10 times. Make lists of 10 images per page and create a page for each image. Forget thumbs, clients who can’t afford broadband probably can’t afford design too.
5. Display your content right away, don’t make me think or click (no “enter” pages, navigation only homepages), every links costs you visitors
6. Display contact information right away and every page, a form is best, a phone number, email and IM at least
7. Display your name and/or URL on your images so that when they get redistributed the still advertise for you, best example Glennz
8. Join a community like Behance to share your work and to to spread the word
9. Submit your well designed site to CSS galleries (or mixed ones if you’re into Flash)
10. Start a blog and link out to all your friends and people you admire for their work

Stop ignoring SEO and usability both of which are two sides of the same coin. Design is not about fancy graphics it’s about findable and usable interfaces.

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99 ways to get your web site noticed

This is a list of tried and true ways to improve your web site presence.

1. If you’re launching a new site, or new content, write an introduction and submit it to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit and Netscape. See 23 Top Social Bookmarking sites for more great places to submit your content.
2. Create a Yahoo Group in your niche.
3. Create a MySpace account and use it to publicize your site.
4. Bookmark your site on Del.icio.us and if you’re really keen, add a Del.icio.us button to your homepage.
5. Create a Technorati account and “claim” your blog.
6. Submit your site to free, search engine friendly directories. An excellent list can be found at Info Vilesilencer.
7. Conduct a survey. This is an excellent way to generate offline publicity.
8. Place a free ad for your company on Gumtree.
9. Syndicate your sites content by using an RSS feeds.
10. Submit your RSS feeds to aggregator sites like FeedBurner, Squidoo, Feedboy, Jordomedia, FeedBomb, FeedCat, rssmad, Feeddirectory and Feedfury.
11. Write an article related to your site and submit it to article sites.
12. Sign up to StumbleUpon and get your friends to Stumble your site.
13. Create a custom 404 page so that even if someone encounters an error on your site, they are re-directed somewhere nice.
14. Set up a 301 redirect to take traffic from your non-www address to your www address. See here for more info.
15. Add a link to your site in the signature of any forums posts.
16. Tell your friends about your site. It’s free advertising.
17. Spell cheek your stile. Nothing appears more amateur than a site with typos or spelling mistakes.
18. Test your site and make sure it appears correctly in all major browsers.
19. Buy enough hosting. No one likes a slow site.
20. Don’t worry about Page Rank.
21. Offer something for free. Free is good. People tell their friends about free stuff.
22. Tell your neighbors, you never know what contacts they might have.
23. Offer your users as many ways as possible to contact you. MSN, Skype, Yahoo etc all complement email, phone and a real address.
24. Advertise your site on Craigslist. It’s free, relevant and localized.
25. Do NOT use frames.
26. Submit your site to DMOZ.org and forget it.
27. Create an XML site map of your site and submit it to Goggle.
28. Get a custom t-shirt made with your web site url on it, and wear it often.
29. Ask a large breasted lady to wear one too.
30. Sign up with an affiliate program to sell your product, or if you’re a publisher, make some cash!
31. On your Contact Page ask people if they mind receiving your newsletter.
32. Send out a newsletter!
33. Go to a free seminar for Web site owners. You might learn something.
34. Find quality and relevant blogs and leave a comment (with a link back to your site of course).
35. Don’t pay people to submit your site to search engines. It’s a waste of money.
36. YouTube and Google Video are excellent portals on which to launch a viral campaign.
37. Giving away an ebook is an excellent way to generate traffic to your site.
38. Sponsor a WordPress theme or a phpListDirectory template.
39. If you sell products that are advertised on television by the manufacturer, add “As Seen on TV” to your site!
40. Avoid proprietary technologies like Java and Active X.
41. Put downloadable content on your site, but make sure it’s not manufacturer specific – so mp3 rather than wma.
42. Learn about CSS. It’s the new HTML.
43. Contribute to related subject areas on Wikipedia.
44. Ask bloggers and other Web site owners to review your site and/or products.
45. Have user friendly page names – most tools comes with some way to avoid www.yourdomain.com/pgInfoPages.cfm?cx=50799399822B393B
46. If you must have a Flash homepage, make sure you have a “Skip Intro” link.
47. Tell your local rag about your site. These newspapers are desperate for stories.
48. Become a leading authority on your chosen subject.
49. Donate money to a charity and most will place a link on their site back to you.
50. Abide by the W3C standards – it will help your site in the long term.
51. Your local community sports teams offer cheap, but highly effective sponsorship opportunities.
52. Publicize your site on related forums – but don’t spam!
53. Ask bloggers to write about your site or product – in return for a link of course.
54. Offer a competition related to something in the news – so football around the time of the World Cup etc.
55. Add a “Tell a Friend” function to your site so people can easily recommend you to their mates.
56. Have a Site map on your site to allow users to navigate around quickly and to aid the search engines.
57. Have a nice keyword rich title at the top of each of your pages. Users and search engines both like descriptive titles.
58. Include a Feedburner button on your site so people can easily subscribe to your feed.
59. If you use PPC then create a landing page for each of your AdWords – it’ll boost your conversations no end.
60. Appear on Dragons Den.
61. Create a Press section on your site where can you store all your press releases, logos and banners.
62. Add a link to your site from within your eBay profile.
63. Ask your friends to give you honest feedback on your site.
64. Gain exposure by submitting photos and pictures to Flikr.
65. Share your banners on banner exchange sites.
66. Make sure it’s easy for your users to subscribe to your RSS feed.
67. Create a “lens” for your site on Squidoo
68. Ask friends, colleagues and associates to “Add to Favorites” your blog on Technorati.
69. You can add a Bulletin to your MySpace account promoting your site that all your MySpace Friends will see.
70. Respond to your customers emails promptly. No one likes to wait 3 or 4 days for an acknowledgement of their contact with you.
71. Get a professional Copywriter to give your site a once over. If you are on a tight budget, limit it to just the homepage.
72. Make a list, Top 10′s work well. Update it regularly to give your visitors a reason to return.
73. What did you learn today? Tell other people and they might learn something too.
74. Do you have really hot content on your site that geeks would love? If so Slashdot will bring you a mass of traffic.
75. Deep link directories are an excellent way to promote inner pages of your site.
76. Meta tags might carry less weight than previously, but you should still have them on every page.
77. Ask your Gran for feedback on your site. Never ignore the silver surfers.
78. Include a “Add to your Technorati favorites button” on your site.
79. Google Analytics is free and will tell you all you need to know about who’s visiting your site.
80. Search engines will find you. Don’t pay money for your site to be submitted.
81. Don’t be afraid to link to other sites, especially if they are relevant and to highly respected sites.
82. Keep It Simple Stupid: use CSS to control layout, style and colors and use HTML text rather than graphics to represent text.
83. Validate your HTML and CSS. It’ll help ensure your site displays well in all browsers.
84. Small page sizes and optimized graphics will give your site a snappy feel and won’t require users to wait around for it to load.
85. If you plan to submit your site to lots of directories or article sites, create an email especially for this. Delete it when you’re finished to avoid spam.
86. Link baiting means, to write killer content that people will want to link to. Like a 101 Tips to Improve Your Web Presence list!
87. If your chosen field is technology related then write a white paper. That’s a posh name for an article.
88. Google receives roughly 50% of all search requests, Yahoo 25% and MSN just 10%. That’s a good rule of thumb as to how much emphasis to put on each.
89. Make sure you have a robots.txt file in the root of your Web site. You can use this to control search engines, but if nothing else it’ll reduce the number of 404 errors in your Weblogs.
90. Free online games, a forum or chat rooms will give your users a reason to come back to your site.
91. Ebooks with re-seller rights make an excellent free gift for your site.
92. Upload your product feed to Froogle. It’s FREE!
93. This is an excellent list of Top 25 Social Bookmarking Sites
94. Search out unanswered questions on Yahoo! Answers and add your site as the source.
95. PageRank is vanity, ranking is sanity.
96. Yahoo are catching up with Google with an excellent set of webmaster tools called Site Explorer.
97. Don’t buy traffic. It’s un-targeted and won’t convert.
98. Pay Per Click advertising gets you fast results – and if it’s handled well can be very profitable.
99. Upload a favicon.gif file so that your users have a nice icon when they bookmark your site.

Read full article here!

10 Landscape DeviantArt Wallpapers

We all love beautiful landscapes. We look forward for good workplaces with that window where you can see the sunset, we search for a house with the greatest view… So while you’re working try to relax your eyes by watching at one of this pleasant Landscape Wallpapers I selected from DeviantART.

1. The Hills II

2. Conquer the World

3. LevelTrip

4. Eclipse VIII

5. This Chosen Tree

6. Amanecer

7. Desert WallpaperPack

8. The golden era

9. Twillight wallpaper

10. Lakeside v3

Optimize your website :5 Tricks In Choosing The Right Keyword

In internet marketing, traffic is the most important thing webmasters must remember in order for them to be successful with the websites they build. Without traffic, you cannot generate any clicks on your ads, acquire sales for your products, attain e-mail subscribers or any other thing that you would like to accomplish with your websites help. It shall always be the amount of traffic and a continuance of a stable flow of traffic that decides the success of your website. Driving traffic to your website does not necessarily mean you have to spend a dime. There are a lot of free methods you can use to drive traffic to your website.
The Five Free Methods
The five methods listed here are really excellent and proven to achieve the closest results you wish and can always be applied directly. Unlike purchasing your own advertising, these methods are free but of course, they require the most of your attention and hard work.
1. Make sure your website is optimized for search engines as far as possible. Any traffic you achieve from search engines is always free. To have your website optimized, ensure that the website contains articles with a lot of keywords. When you write articles for your website, about 400-900 words, you can generate a lot of visits more often. Be sure to include catchy titles to entice visitors to read them. However, this may not likely generate the traffic you have always wanted, this could be your first step in making your website successful. In addition, you could always submit all your articles to article directories and contact publishers if they wish to use your articles on either their mailing list or website. Have your articles contain heavy keywords so that they may also appear on top of most search engine results.
2. Join link exchange programs. Nowadays, there are a lot of webmasters who invite other webmasters to take part in link exchange programs. When someone’s website is linked to yours, you’ll have the chance of being visited by people who visit those websites. To do this, you can look out for websites that are similarly related to yours and allow the owners of these websites to exchange links. Make use of an anchor text for the link as it will aid your search engine rankings.
3. Allow joint ventures. Joint ventures could be very powerful if done in the right way. Give your partners some really good reasons why they should promote your site. By providing them with the right promotional tools such as e-mails, signatures, articles, etc., he/she would no doubt accept your request. To ensure that your website gets better results, look for website owners that have the capability of sending a lot of traffic to you.
4. Join online groups, forums, etc. that could help you with promoting your website. For example, you may post your sites URL in your signature file for the users to see. So you can be a known member by the discussion groups you join, simply participate in discussions that interest you and contribute your knowledge and expertise to the rest of the members.
5. Get a free blog. Blogging is another free method that generates traffic to your website. Post some high-quality information regularly and don’t forget to ping all your posts as it can help in driving traffic to your website.

8 Best Free WordPress Themes You Haven’t Seen

When it comes to blogging and online content management systems, one name is spoken more often than any other: WordPress. This amazingly user-friendly, endlessly-customizable framework is an open source project that has revolutionized the online community since its creation in 2003. Cropping up on hundreds of thousands of sites across the interweb with eager users and community created plugins to enhance performance, this programming powerhouse shows no signs of slowing down.

With so many sites on the bandwagon, designers and developers have answered the call by bringing a multitude of WordPress-ready themes to keep sites looking fresh and new. Given the popularity of the product, these themes make waves when they land in the cyber sea and finding examples that have not been widely used can be difficult and a little bit intimidating. However, after scouring the vast recesses of the web, we have found a few gems that you may not have seen before. Here are some of the standouts we happened to uncover.

Perfectom Theme

Features

• Optimized for all browsers
• XHTML/CSS valid
• Fixed width
• 2 columns

This theme offers a clean, very sleek setup for your website. It seems like it would be ideally suited for a fashion blog of some kind. Very crisp, overall.

CSS Gallery Theme

Features

• Built in tagging
• Google ads and a sidebar block with 125 x 125 banner ads
• Valid XHTML 1.0 transitional and valid CSS

Technically this theme was built as a base for a CSS/website gallery, and wonderfully so, however, personally I think the design also lends itself to being used greatly as a portfolio or as a general showcase gallery.

Langit Theme

Features

• Clean and simple
• 3 columns
• Sidebar widget ready
• XHTML + CSS valid
• Tested in Firefox, Internet Explorer 6, Opera, and Safari
• Compatible with WordPress 2.5 and below
• Logo PSD and font are included in the package

This is simply a wonderful theme for anyone looking to organize an in-depth blog or manage content that requires multiple category listings and also needs a lot of features. This theme meets both of those stipulations with grace and ease.

Linoluna Theme

Features

• Lean and simple CSS
• Grid Layout
• Tabbed Navigation
• Slideshow animated featured articles on front page

An extremely deep magazine theme suited magnificently for multi-author blogs. Among its many accessible features is a fantastic statistics calculator in each post which includes total comments, total views, author name, category, date, and an email address, not to mention the print function.

Monochrome Gallery Theme

Features

• Custom admin panel
• Easily customize theme
• Four widgetized areas
• More homepage content
• Author Archives
• Two page templates
• No editing themes files
• Blueprint CSS
• Valid XHTML and CSS

Monochrome Gallery is a free widgetized theme for WordPress packaged with an author archives page, AJAX slideshow, categorized posts with thumbnails on the homepage, and a CSS framework to aid in customization. Need I say more?

Small Magazine Theme

Features

• Unique and fresh design
• Widgetized Sidebar
• 125×125 ad spots
• 250×250 adsense spot
• Easily customizable using CSS
• Custom 404 Error page
• Fixed width
• Right Sidebar
• Built in Flickr support
• Styled Pagination
• Built in Gravatar
• Valid CSS & HTML

Here we have a fully loaded magazine theme packed with features. Completely ready to launch your online publication style site with a built in photo gallery and featured articles sections. If it’s a magazine theme you need, look no further.

Arthemia Theme

Features

• Drop Down Menus
• Automatic image resizing for thumbnails
• Gravatar Support
• 3 column with enhanced footer

On the other hand, when you need the perfect balance between a magazine type setup and blog, then this is your theme. You get the magazine headers and featured articles, with an ordered post section below a featured category break.

Isolated Theme

Features

• Two-column
• Widget-ready
• Rounded-corners

Yet another fine example of a content based theme. Meaning it is simple and clean while still offering a variety of features. Though none of that detracts from letting the content shine through.

Click here to know all other free wordpress theme