Freelancefolder

15 Incredible WordPress Theme Customizations

Posted December 18, 2008 in Web Design 39 Rockin' Comments »

Given the quality of WordPress, it’s no surprise that it’s become the platform of choice for many web professionals.

Due to its incredible popularity, though, the majority of WordPress sites look very similar. It can be hard to find a site without the same-old header, footer, and sidebar that is seen on the majority of themes.

But those sites do exist. If you look hard enough, you can find the incredibly talented designers that take WordPress to an entirely different level. By combining an eye for design, technical know-how, and a sense of “outside-of-the-box” thinking, these designers create customizations that make you wonder how you lived without Wordpress as your CMS.

Check out the sites below for 15 of these impressive theme customizations, and see what can happen when you take the standard function of WordPress and step it up a notch.

The Alamo Basement

[Click here to read more →]

25 Tutorials for Advanced Freelance Web Designers

Posted December 3, 2008 in Tools/Resources, Web Design 36 Rockin' Comments »

In the world of web design, a good tutorial can literally be a godsend. But it’s often hard to find a suitable tut, and sometimes it seems like we’re just stuck reading the same stuff over and over again.
 
When it comes to advanced design, finding the right stuff can be even harder. Advanced effects require a much more in-depth tutorial, and often writers aren’t willing to go into the detail needed.
 
To help the situation, we’ve tracked down some of the best articles written by the web’s top designers. Here are 25 tutorials for advanced web designers:

Advanced Web Design Tutorials

Trendy Geometric Lines

Learn how to create the popular geometric line effects used in web and print design.

 
[Click here to read more →]

10 SEO Techniques All Top Web Sites Should Use

Posted November 5, 2008 in Tools/Resources, Web Design 78 Rockin' Comments »

We recently discussed the 15 Key Elements All Top Web Sites Should Have. This post focused on elements relating to design, content and development. This time, we’ll move onto the important issue of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

SEO is such a hot topic these days. How do you get your web site within the first page or two of the search engines? How do you increase your Google page rank?

There are companies who dedicate themselves full time to doing SEO at a pretty penny. Something a lot of people can’t necessarily afford to pay for or spend the time on.

However, there are some simple things you can do when building your site that will help increase your chances of having good results. In no particular order, below are 10 of these items…

[Click here to read more →]

Interview With Designer Extraordinaire — Liam McKay of Function

Posted November 4, 2008 in Interviews, Web Design 13 Rockin' Comments »

Hey everyone! Today we have an interview with Liam McKay of Function - Web Design and Development. I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with Liam on multiple occasions both via his design blog and also via Twitter and I’m very happy Liam accepted the invitation for this interview! Hope you like it!

Jon: Hi Liam! First I’d like to thank you for taking the time for this interview. Can you tell us a little about yourself, what you do and where you’re from?
[Click here to read more →]

15 Key Elements All Top Web Sites Should Have

Posted October 28, 2008 in Tools/Resources, Web Design 161 Rockin' Comments »

There are a lot of details to consider when designing and developing a web site. In reality, it can seem like an endless list — but if you look carefully you’ll see that there are certain elements that are more important than others, elements that are used consistently among the most successful sites.

Once you’ve completed the Planning Stage of your website, the rest of the elements fall into broad categories ranging from User Interface Design to Content Creation to actual Development. Of course, there are also the issues surrounding Search Engine Optimization (SEO) — but we’ll save that for another day…

With that in mind, here are the 15 elements that should always be included on any top web site.

[Click here to read more →]

16 Tutorial And Resource Sites For Web-Design And Web-Dev Addicts

Posted September 10, 2008 in Programming, Tools/Resources, Web Design 13 Rockin' Comments »

In order to stay at the top of their game, designers need to always work on sharpening their skills and learn new techniques and tricks. Fortunately for us there are tons of tutorial and resource sites out there to help us do just that! So I thought I’d make a list of my favorite ones. I know you probably already know many of these sites, but they’re my faves!

Of course, feel free to add to the list! Which ones are your faves?

[Click here to read more →]