Template solutions: BuyTemplates.net
BuyTemplates.net is a web templates provider with many good options to choose from depending on the course you would like to take in the design of your web site. You can:
a) Buy a ready made 5 page template from $29
b) Buy a ready made template and have it customized to your liking
or
c) Have a template designed from scratch to your specifications for $499
There is also a membership option which for a fee allows you access to all the templates with unlimited downloads. This is great especially if you are a designer and you would like to offer your clients a wide choice of designs to choose from. All the templates are editable in Dreamweaver, Frontpage or your choice of HTML editor. As well as HTML templates, the site also offers Joomla templates.
You can order as many or as few services as you need from buytemplates. From simply a ready made web template to the full package of custom design, hosting and maintenance, buytemplates.net can do it all.
Free Wordpress Theme GrungeBLue
This is a free 3 column wordpress theme, GrungeBlue. It’s based on the Revolution wordpress template by Brian Gardner.
To install, unzip into your wp-content/themes/ directory and select GrungeBlue in “admin -> presentation” section.
The logo image can be edited in an image editor to add the name if your site and logo. It is currently just a blank image in the header.
You can download this theme by clicking here.
Comments, questions suggestion welcome.
Free logo design
While I’ve spent close to ten years now offering free templates and backgrounds, I have talked about free hosting, blogs, themes, phplist templates, something that I have not yet covered is logo design.
Logos and branding are equally (if not more) important then any other aspect of web site design and so today I thought I’d cover the subject finally by introducing a free logo design services web site.
There are quiet a few other sites offering automated free logo design using a script or program, to me what sets this site apart is that it’s actual human designers who are creating the free logos.
You need to register at the site, pick from a good selection of logo templates, specify your personalization requirements (colour and text) and within a couple of days your logo will be emailed to you in .gif format. If you would like the vector .eps or .ai format the cost is $39.99 but unless you plan to use these files you don’t need to buy them.
You don’t really get much better value for money really so if you are looking for free logos for startups (or anyone) head over to freelogoservices.com to order your logo.
Header graphic
Available as a free download is this header graphic. Click on the thumbnail to see a full version or download here in a zip file.
Feel free to use the image in any way you wish, including altering it.
Web Designer Spotlight - VisualScope Studios
VisualScope Web Design Studios is a Seattle based web design and Search Engine Optimization company.
What they offer:
VisualScope studios take care of pretty much the whole process from idea to established web site
- domain name
- hosting
- design (CMS or plain HTML the choice is yours)
- Marketing
Web site search optimization as well as PPC marketing means a better and faster ROI for your business. Getting your name out there as fast as possible, showing up on earlier search results pages all mean more customers and good value for money.
If you would like to do some research on the topic of web design or SEO you can also find a good selection of website design articles at visualScope.
Xara Extreme
With Xara xtreme you can create web pages, vector illustration, edit photos and graphics, even animations. Basically it is software that is very very handy for creating web sites. You won’t need a separate graphics, vector and HTML editor and you certainly won’t need to pay the price for all three.
Xara Xtreme has been created with the beginner in mind so it’s easy to use while still being powerful.
Some extra useful features
- Create seamless panoramas by pressing a button. Simply take a series of photos and Xtreme will automatically figure out the joining points for you and put the images together.
- Create CSS based web pages with mousovers, even popups.
- Give text or photos a cool 3D effect with a click of a button.
Click Here to download the trial version and see for yourself.
Starting a web site for free
I am often asked “How can I start my own web site without any web design knowledge and without any money whatsoever?”
I know it can be hard to get started sometimes and not everyone wants to put money down just to get a simple site to share photos, news etc. So I have set out to find as many resources as I could that help you get started.
Option 1) Free blogs
Probably the most well known of the lot is Google’s Blogger.com. Starting your own site (blog) there is very easy. No mucking around with designs (unless you want to that is) it’s just a matter of a few clicks of your mouse button and away you go.
Thoughts.com Forums - Click on “blogs” in the navbar to open a free blog account.
Vox.com - Free blog provider, photo sharing.
Xanga - Another blog and photo sharing site.
i.ph - This blog provider boasts of very refined privacy settings with many options.
Option 2) Social/business network sites
LiveJournal - Blog provider / social network.
MySpace - I’m guessing Myspace needs no introduction.
BraveJournal - Another blog place that is leaning towards being more social network then just blog provider.
Squidoo - Here you can make a one page site about any topic and you can even get paid for your content. You can make many one page content pages not just one.
Option 3) Free web hosting with site builders or content management systems
FreeWebs - Advertising will be placed on your site but if you just want a simple page this is a good place to start.
Yahoo/Geocities - Lots of ads will be placed on your site so only use for personal sites.
Google page creator - You need to have a Gmail account and be using either Internet Explorer 6.0 or Firefox 1.0, or higher, with JavaScript and cookies enabled. If you don’t have a Gmail account, you can sign up for one here free.
If you know of more good services please let us know in the comments.
Top 5 free photo resources
This is a short list of sites I’ve come up with that offer free photos to download. Do you know of any others? Let us know your favourites in the comments.
1) FreePixels - Over 3000 photos in many categories.
2) Morguefile - One of my personal favourites even though I can never remember the site’s proper spelling.
3) scx.hu - Currently 357973 photos with hundreds of new ones added daily.
4) FreeFoto - Currently 115284 images in 3242 categories.
5) Free Photos Bank - Make sure to read each site’s terms of use.
Web Design Blogs
Other web design blogs. There are many more out there so feel free to add to this list as I’m always looking to add more sites to my feed reader.
Smashing Magazine - A favourite of many designers.
Modern Life - Easy to read, lots of eyecandy, all the things I like in a design site.
KillerSites - KillerSites.com’s blog.
SmileyCat - Web Design blog by Smiley Cat
Vitamin - I particularly like the articles in their design section.
Beauty In Design - Mainly Joomla oriented with tutorials and templates.
esn studio - Web Design, wordpress, SEO and more.
Webmaster Source - Useful resources for webmasters.
Webmaster Plaza - Webmaster info including how to make money online.
Web Design from scratch - A great resource for beginners.
Problogger.net - This site is not about web design as such but is a great resource for beginner to expert bloggers. It’s one of my favourites, very detailed information about just about anything you could think of on the subject of blogging.
Some site changes
This is just a quick post about a few site changes. One is that I have removed the nofollow tags from comments, so leaving a comment means search engine spiders will visit your site also.
The other change is the possible changing of the web design directory from free to paid submissions only. I’m not 100% sure I’ll do this but I am having trouble keeping up with the amount of web sites being submitted. If I do start charging it will probably be a small amount like a $7 one off processing fee. But like I said this is not for certain and is still free at the moment.
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