Writing your first piece of css code can seem really weird if you’re used to working with tables, or just haven’t written code before. In this article I want to talk about 10 different ways you can write proper and clean css code as well as streamline the process and ensure you’re getting the job done as quickly and efficiently as possible. (more…)
It seems like only yesterday I was designing my first website. The year was 1997 and apparently I had an affinity to blue lightning bolts and animated gifs of my initials. When the project was complete, I had created the most beautiful design I’d ever seen. At least that’s what I believed at the time. Looking back at that design now is quite embarrassing. I’m sure most of us have been there, but what about popular websites today? Do you ever wonder how they looked in the early days?
In this article, we’re going to travel back in time and see how some of the most popular websites today looked in their beginning, and how their design has evolved through the years. (more…)
Out of the box, WordPress is an amazing product and comes loaded with tons of features. However, one area that might be lacking is text formatting. There’s not really any tools built in to do things like dynamic image replacement, code highlighting, and other styling to improve the look of your text. Luckily there is a community of talented developers that have created plugins to fill this need. I’ve listed here 10 of the most useful text enhancing WordPress plugins. (more…)
As this year comes to a close, we can look back and see that 2009 was a big year for typography. We saw more web designs with a focus on type, and there were some pretty amazing fonts released. Here are some of the best free fonts from this past year. A few of the fonts below were released at the end of 2008, but since they didn’t see much action until this year, I included them in the list. (more…)
It’s no secret that here at Web Design Ledger, we love WordPress. It’s what powers this website as well as inspires the content we publish on a regular basis. We’ve discussed WordPress numerous times before on the site and today we’re going to cover some of the things you can do to become a better WordPress developer.
I am going to cover a little bit from across the board as to what we can do to become WordPress developers. Some items take only a minute or two to complete while others might take a bit more initial effort. I promise though that through it all, we’ll get our development skills to a much higher level. The list does not go in order of importance, but I would say that all 10 of the tips could each be #1. (more…)
Sometimes you just need to add a hint of grunge to your designs, rather than a big dirty mess and that’s where these subtle grunge textures come in. I created them in Photoshop by combining several different textures in separate layers to get the final effect that you see. I hope you guys can find some awesome uses for the textures, I had a blast making them. Enjoy! (more…)
With a new year on the horizon, it’s time to pack away the old, worn web designs and prepare for the brave, new face of tomorrow. Although trends don’t start and stop on January 1st, there is a definite shift from what we craved at the beginning of the year to what we are seeking tutorials for at the end of the year. Most of the time, this shift is subtle. It’s a perfection or re-interpretation of a currently hot trend. Trends help us evolve as designers. As we master the skills of design aesthetic, we continue to push forward to what’s next or what needs to be fully discovered. (more…)
If you’re the type of Web Designer that doesn’t like to get your hands dirty with XHTML and CSS, SiteGrinder 2 could become your best friend. It’s a plugin for Photoshop that can turn a design into a fully functional website. This means you will no longer need to outsource the programming of your designs. (more…)
In past articles, we’ve shown you beautiful logos for inspiration and tutorials on designing logos. Since we believe you can’t have too much design inspiration, here is another set of awesome logo designs to spark your creativity. (more…)
Over the past couple of years WordPress has grown into much more than just a blogging platform. People are now using it as a CMS (Content Management System) to power many different types of websites. Using WordPress more as a standard CMS often requires some creative thinking when building themes and setting up the structure of categories and content. In this article we present to you 12 very useful plugins that will give your WordPress install extended CMS functionality. (more…)
