42 Creative Dark Website Designs for Inspiration

Even though clean and minimal designs are in vogue, dark website designs still continue to have an enigma of their own. Used effectively, a dark website design can help you create a stunning visual impact, offering you more scope for moving away from orthodox design conventions and allowing you to be that little bit more innovative. Edgy, hip, strong and bold — the level of impact and mood that you can create using a dark website design can not br fully quantified with mere words.

Full post: 42 Creative Dark Website Designs for Inspiration 

30 Spectacular Examples of Fish Wallpaper

The easiest option to provide our computer desktop with some uniqueness is to replace our existing wallpaper with a more interesting one that reveals our favorite stuff. A desktop wallpaper is an image we see on the screen of our computer whenever we turn it on. It has the ability to help us in a delighted emotional wellbeing at all times. In today’s post, we are going to bring you several wallpapers which feature beautifully colored fishes from around the world – the fish wallpaper. Fishes that are swimming in deep blue ocean gives a calming feeling to anyone who sees it.

Full post: 30 Spectacular Examples of Fish Wallpaper 

20 of the Best Design Blogs for Freebies

Web and graphic designers are in the fortunate position of having a lot of quality free resources at their disposal. The huge number of blogs and websites in the industry and the massive audience of designers has led to a number of websites and blogs that distribute valuable resources for free.

Full post: 20 of the Best Design Blogs for Freebies 

15 More Responsive CSS Frameworks & Boilerplates Worth Considering

Following on from 15 Responsive CSS Frameworks Worth Considering, which we published last November, today we have 15 more for you to consider. All of the frameworks and boilerplates below have been built with strict compliance to standards and conventions and will, as you would expect from any CSS framework, save your precious time by eliminating the need to write any of the base CSS styles yourself and, more importantly, helping you solve any tricky responsive layout issues you may have.

Full post: 15 More Responsive CSS Frameworks & Boilerplates Worth Considering 

The WPLift Guide to Strengthening Login Security in WordPress

In a previous post on WordPress security best practices, we discussed ‘Security by obscurity’, which means that you should obscure the most commonly known paths to gain control of your website. For example, everyone knows that before WordPress 3.0 the default username was admin, and a lot of website owners didn’t bother to change it or delete it after the installation. This made it easier for hackers to guess username and then they only had to crack the password. Later on, WordPress implemented a new installation process which allowed users to choose a username for the first user. Still thousands of websites that were created before WordPress 3.0 has a user ‘admin’ with all control.

Full post: The WPLift Guide to Strengthening Login Security in WordPress 

Code Snippet: Keep Sidebar Elements in View When Scrolling

Whether it is a list of products you are promoting, published ads or other elements on the sidebar, you will likely want to have these elements in view at all times even when scrolling. By using JQuery, you can make this possible.


Full post: Code Snippet: Keep Sidebar Elements in View When Scrolling 

Let’s Make a Drawing Game with Node.js

By now you have probably heard of node.js. It is an asynchronous web server built ontop of Google’s V8 JavaScript engine (the same one that makes Chrome lighning fast). Using node, you can write scalable web services in JavaScript, that can handle a huge number of simultaneous connections, which makes it perfect as the backend of games, web chats and other real time tasks.

Full post: Let’s Make a Drawing Game with Node.js 

WordPress Filesystem API: the right way to operate with local files

The evolution of WordPress from a blogging platform into a fully-fledged CMS, simultaneously turns it into a solid framework for developers to build outstanding projects and applications upon.

Full post: WordPress Filesystem API: the right way to operate with local files 

30 Awesome Sets of Halftone Brushes

Brushes are among the popular tools in Adobe Photoshop. They are designed to accentuate digital scrapbook pages and other graphical designs. Brushes enable you to incorporate more detail, depth as well as individuality to your digital designs. Thus, they boost the emotional impact of the final layout. In today’s post, we provide you with a collection of brushes which are created mostly from dots of various dimensions – the halftone brushes. These halftone brushes make brilliant background patterns and are also ideal for incorporating an additional layer to other elements.

Full post: 30 Awesome Sets of Halftone Brushes 

A Collection of Free Headphone Icon

If most software creators and game developers utilized the same or standard icon then without a doubt, computers are uninteresting. The great thing is, this is not the scenario because a lot of us work tirelessly for uniqueness and ingenuity. In today’s post, we are going to provide you with a collection of headphone icon which you can download for free to personalize the look of your desktop and make it more interesting. A headphone icon is a graphic which is helpful for music-themed design projects.These icons can also be used as a replacement icon for your music applications and headphone icon on your taskbar.

Full post: A Collection of Free Headphone Icon 

40 Workstations for Your Inspiration

Most designers spend an incredible amount of time in their office on the computer. Because of this, it’s important to have a work area that is comfortable, enjoyable, and encourages creativity. The space doesn’t have to be large or extravagant, but it does need to allow you to do your best work for long periods of time.

Full post: 40 Workstations for Your Inspiration 

Practical Tips For Using LESS

Not that long ago we had a look at The Basics of LESS and, while this is a solid reference for beginners, there is a lot more you can do with LESS! The goal of this tutorial is to expand on the knowledge from the previous article and give you some practical tips on how to utilize all the great things about LESS.

Full post: Practical Tips For Using LESS 

Essential WordPress Plugins for Book Authors Building a Platform

If you are an author with a book to sell, then it doesn’t really matter if you’re a self-published Kindle Store cowboy or a long-established writer aligned with a century old publishing house – you’re probably going to need a website to help you build a platform in order market yourself and your work.

Full post: Essential WordPress Plugins for Book Authors Building a Platform 

Multiple Area Charts with D3.js

The D3.js website describes itself as “a JavaScript library for manipulating documents based on data.” It is but one of many in the ever growing list of visual data JavaScript libraries. D3 was created by Mike Bostock who was the lead developer on Protovis, which D3.js builds on.

Full post: Multiple Area Charts with D3.js 

Top 10 Typography Tools for Web Designers

Typography happens to be the key factor for web designing these days. It can be quite challenging and fascinating to work with typography. A plethora of tools have come up to let you build your own fonts and insert them into your designs, with ease. In this post, I`m going to introduce you some great typography tools, which will be very useful and quite time saving.

Full post: Top 10 Typography Tools for Web Designers 

10 Responsive Navigation Solutions and Tutorials

As responsive design rapidly increases in popularity, we felt we would take a look at some of the varied solutions and techniques that are being adopted for managing the navigation/menu on smaller screened devices.

Full post: 10 Responsive Navigation Solutions and Tutorials 

How to Use Google Alerts to Provide You with Blog Content

In an earlier article I wrote about the importance of blog planning to help make sure you are producing quality blog articles on a consistent basis. That article received a lot of quality comments, as well as, provoked some interesting social media discussions. That’s exactly what you want to happen with all of the articles that you produce.

Full post: How to Use Google Alerts to Provide You with Blog Content 

30+ Exceptional About Page Designs for Inspiration

Here's a collection of creative examples of About Us pages. An About Page should have informative information about you or your team and should be fun and easy to read. These About Us pages are all exceptionally designed and some even have a quirkiness about them.

Full post: 30+ Exceptional About Page Designs for Inspiration 

33 Minimalist Single Page Website/Portfolio Layouts

The movement of freelance design portfolios on the web has never seen more activity. Photographers and web designers alike are sporting flashy portfolio layouts focused on minimalism. Many of these designs are also one-page websites where all the content is located together on a single page.

Full post:  33 Minimalist Single Page Website/Portfolio Layouts

Full Screen Mode for Images & Videos in Web Apps

BigScreen is a simple library for using the JavaScript Full Screen API. BigScreen makes it easy to use full screen on your site or in your app.

Full post: Full Screen Mode for Images & Videos in Web Apps 

How To Design An Architect Template

Today, we are going to create together a whole website dedicated to professional architects. But, even you have already knowledge about graphics (Photoshop) and some originality, you can easy use this graphic for any type of other websites.

Full post: How To Design An Architect Template 

10 Ways Freelance Web Developers can Stand Out From the Crowd

With so many web development agencies and other freelancers around, it can be hard to differentiate yourself. But making yourself (and your work) stand out from the crowd is a huge bonus when you're looking for new clients. Aside from doing great work, there are a few things you can do to give yourself a leg-up against the competition.

Full post: 10 Ways Freelance Web Developers can Stand Out From the Crowd 

25 Abstract and Beautiful IPhone Wallpapers

The IPhone is becoming an increasingly popular accessory in our lives, and so of course we want an attractive wallpaper for it! I’ve compiled 25 abstract and beautiful wallpapers to improve your screens.

Full post: 25 Abstract and Beautiful IPhone Wallpapers 

50 Brilliant iPad Mobile App User Interface Designs

The iPad tablet device has grown wildly in a few short years and is certainly here to stay. Mobile app developers are constantly pushing for the next big idea to rack up popular listings in the iOS App Store. The best way to accomplish this is combining powerful programming techniques with simple intuitive user interfaces.

Full post: 50 Brilliant iPad Mobile App User Interface Designs 

Showing Big Background Video with BigVideo.js

BigVideo.js is a jQuery plugin for big background video and images. This plugin makes it easy to add fit-to-fill background video to websites. It can play silent ambient background video (or series of videos). Or use it as a player to show video playlist.

Full post: Showing Big Background Video with BigVideo.js 

Towards A Retina Web

With the recent announcement and release of the Retina Macbook Pro, Apple has brought double-density screens to all of the product categories in its current lineup, significantly paving the way for the next wave of display standards. While the fourth-generation iPhone gave us a taste of the “non-Retina” Web in 2010, we had to wait for the third-generation iPad to fully realize how fuzzy and outdated our Web graphics and content images are.

Full post: Towards A Retina Web 

Auto-Cropping Images To Any Sizes Online With Cropp.me

Need to crop plenty of images? There are plenty of photo-editing tools available for free on the Web, your desktop and on your smartphone but what if you’re not on your computer or no Photoshop installed? It’s going to be a carpal-tunnel-inducing nightmare to go at it one at a time, especially when each image have different cropping requirements.

Full post: Auto-Cropping Images To Any Sizes Online With Cropp.me 

A New Collection of Brick Texture

Textures provide a form as well as creative depth to web, print and graphic design projects. By using an appropriate technique, textures applied in various designs will look real and almost touchable. Since we have already provided you with a list of brick textures in the past, we will bring to this time a brand new collection of brick texture which is very helpful for graphic artists and web designers out there. A brick texture is perfect to apply in websites, 3D texture modeling and in your manipulation as they produce a photo realistic result.

Full post: A New Collection of Brick Texture 

60 New and Free Photoshop Brush Packs For Designers

Are you waiting for a fresh collection of Photoshop brush packs? If yes, then no need to wait for longer as we are presenting a fresh collection of Photoshop brush packs for you that you can download for free. Photoshop brushes are the most favorite and most wanted tool for every designer because they allow them to create stunning designs with some great effects.

Full post: 60 New and Free Photoshop Brush Packs For Designers 

Adobe Illustrator is now a widely used software in the field of design. Web and graphic designers use this tool to design all sorts of things from art logos to technical illustrations. It makes a way for designers to create and modify their artworks on a computer rather than working with pen and paper. The pliability of this program as well as the power to greatly resize a graphic without the need to lose the quality or sharpness of that graphic make it a mind blowing tool for graphic artists. In today’s post, we are going to showcase several tutorials for novice and intermediate users of Adobe Illustrator out there. These Adobe Illustator tutorials are great for discovering the tools used in Illustrator and will also help you learn how to master the essential techniques in Adobe Illustrator.

Full post: A Collection of Adobe Illustrator Tutorials Released in June and July 2012 

How to: Customizing and Theming jQuery UI Datepicker

jQuery UI is simply awesome and due to the ease of use, it is popular and widely used in almost any website that need interactive features.

Full post: How to: Customizing and Theming jQuery UI Datepicker 

How to Get The Most Out of Your .htaccess File

If you’ve been a web designer for any length of time, chances are you’ve run across the mysterious “.htacess” file at one point or another. Others may ask, what’s an “ht” and why do I need access to it? Whether a beginner or pro, though, knowing what the htaccess file does and can do for you, can enhance a site’s performance, security and more.

Full post: How to Get The Most Out of Your .htaccess File

20 New Photoshop Text Effects

Photoshop’s text tools can create awesome and mind-blowing effects — well, that’s as obvious as “Sun rises in the East”. Whether you’re designing a logo, a banner or just some title text, Photoshop comes with the required tools to help you inject creativity and awesomeness in your text effects. Apart from looking good and funky, such text effects can go a long way in leaving the right impression on your potential clients.

Full post: 20 New Photoshop Text Effects 

25 Interesting Infographics For Your Inspiration

We’re suckers for infographics because they are a fun way to feature information. It’s like reading a comic book where the pictures tell the story. Many attribute the success of infographics to its use of colour and graphics, but sometimes it is the information it carries that closes the deal.

Full post: 25 Interesting Infographics For Your Inspiration 

How to Create a Lighter Illustration from Scratch in Photoshop

Hey PSDFANs, we’ve got another great tutorial for you today!

In the following tutorial your will learn how to create a lighter illustration from scratch in Photoshop.

Full post: How to Create a Lighter Illustration from Scratch in Photoshop 

18 Open Source WordPress Theme Frameworks

WordPress theme frameworks are starter themes with basic design and a lot of features ( few of them had integrated theme options panel ) that will help you in your theme coding process, seriously reducing your development time.

Full post: 18 Open Source WordPress Theme Frameworks 

30 Colorful Web Designs

Color attracts the attention of the eyes, and each color has a set of meanings associated with it. Blue is refreshing, and reminds people of water, while red is aggressive and associated with passion.

Full post: 30 Colorful Web Designs 

XML Driven jQuery Tabbed News & Content Slider: tNews

tNews is not just a news slider it’s a versatile content slider as well. Powered with jQuery and XML it provides a fully functional news slider with content management via XML file. It helps organize large number of news in categories and displays them in a nice looking tabbed interface, with each tab as a separate news category with navigation functionality. It also retains the position of each slide under each tab.

Full post: XML Driven jQuery Tabbed News & Content Slider: tNews 

Java MySQL JSON Display Records using Jquery.

This is the continuation of my previous Java tutorial Insert Records into MySQL database using Jquery, now I want to explain how to convert records data into JSON data format and display JSON data feed using Jquery. It's simple just follow few steps with Eclipse IDE, hope you understand the Model View Controller pattern Thanks!

Full post: Java MySQL JSON Display Records using Jquery. 

How to Analyze Your WordPress Installation’s Performance

Installing WordPress is really easy. Optimization is what takes time. Not everyone who owns or maintains a WordPress website on their own is a programmer. Many WordPress users do not even know HTML. You may buy hosting from the best hosting provider but there are few things that need to be checked for maximum performance. This tutorial is not about optimization or setting up caching plugins. Those topics have been covered in the past. Today we will learn about plugins that could help us analyze the performance of a WordPress website to understand the problem areas and see their impact on the website.

Full post: How to Analyze Your WordPress Installation’s Performance 

Faster HTML/CSS Workflow with Chrome Developer Tools

In this tutorial I’ll be looking at Chrome developer tools, specifically how they can help speed up your HTML/CSS workflow. I’ll also look briefly at some other dev tools that are available.

Full post: Faster HTML/CSS Workflow with Chrome Developer Tools 

8 New Free Fonts for Your Designs

Since here at WDL we believe that having a lot of fonts in our libraries is never enough, we decided to gather some new beautiful and useful free fonts to show you. Today we have eight different styles to add personality to your designs, so check them out.

Full post: 8 New Free Fonts for Your Designs 

Weekly Design News – Resources, Tutorials and Freebies (N.147)

This is our weekly column were we share our favorite design related articles, resources and cool tidbits from the past week. Enjoy :)

Full post: Weekly Design News – Resources, Tutorials and Freebies (N.147) 

A Round-up of Yummy Chocolate Website Designs

Chocolates are most loved by people of all ages. It is sweet and could even relieve stress for some. Aside from its being delicious, it can also offer various health benefits to those eating it. Chocolates come in different sizes, designs and it can also be combined with nuts, fruits and others. Well, the more you think of it, the more you crave for it! If you are a chocolate lover, you will surely like to see the chocolate websites that we will feature now. This will give you options on what chocolates you want to buy and you will also get to see how creative the designers of these websites are.

Full post: A Round-up of Yummy Chocolate Website Designs 

Adobe Illustrator Tutorial: Create a Set of Sleek Web Ribbons

In the following Adobe Illustrator tutorial you will learn how to create a set of sleek web ribbons. We’ll start with two simple shapes and some basic masking techniques. Next, using a simple rectangle and some simple vector shape building techniques we’ll create the overall ribbon shape. Once we have the starting shapes we’ll continue with the smaller parts. Using some Pathfinder options, several Warp and Gaussian Blur effects plus some basic blending techniques we’ll add the final touches.

Full post: Adobe Illustrator Tutorial: Create a Set of Sleek Web Ribbons 

jQuery plugins for awesome web typography

Typography is a very important part of a website design. But it is also often neglected. In this article, I have compiled the most awesome jQuery plugin to take total control of your site typography.

Full post: jQuery plugins for awesome web typography 

Business Cards Showcase #2

This article is part of our Business Cards Showcase series. We are showcasing at regular intervals beautiful and inspirational business card designs. Paper, plastic, metal, wood cards, if its awesome, it’s here.

Full post: Business Cards Showcase #2 

45 Fresh And Useful Adobe Illustrator Tutorials

Here, we are presenting a fresh round up of some useful and detailed Adobe Illustrator tutorials for you. Adobe Illustrator is a wonderful and very powerful tool that has been extensively used in the designing industry. Learning the designing tool inside out is very important for the professional growth and improving the productivity. Therefore, design community regularly share fresh and new tutorials that will help designers improve their skills.

Full post: 45 Fresh And Useful Adobe Illustrator Tutorials 

How to Include and Require Files and Templates in WordPress

When it comes to PHP, a lot of developers love the language, a lot of the developers hate the language, and a lot of developers generally just use it to get their work done.

Full post: How to Include and Require Files and Templates in WordPress 

35 Beautiful Progress Bar Designs

As Internet broadband connections get faster, our internal waiting clocks run on shorter and shorter minutes. But there are times when we still have to be patient, and a nice toolbar design may do wonders to let us know how long we have to wait. One of the key take-aways from the showcase below, is that for best practice web design, attention to detail, especially the smallest of details can make a significant difference to the overall user experience and this can help you create a stand-out experience users will share and recommend.

Full post: 35 Beautiful Progress Bar Designs 

40 Collections of Free Dog Wallpaper

It is usually entertaining to install a desktop wallpaper on our computer. Desktop wallpapers provide the users the necessary enthusiasm for work. They help us to feel more at ease in our activity as they lessen the symptoms of fatigue and pressure at work. Therefore, it would better to have some lively backgrounds on our screen. In today’s post, we are going to showcase some freely downloadable dog wallpaper for dog lovers out there. A dog is a cute and adorable animal which can improve our moods when we see them that is why their pictures are perfect as a wallpaper on our desktop.

Full post: 40 Collections of Free Dog Wallpaper