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How to create a social networking or dating site

suz — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 03:48:23 +0000

Social networking is huge and is only getting bigger. Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and now Google+ as well as dating sites like PlentyOfFish are very successful – users spend hours of their time on them on a daily basis. As well as these social networking giants of the internet there are thousands of smaller, specialized networking sites connecting people with similar interests together.

There may not be much point in taking on and competing with the bigger networking giants like FB – but starting a smaller, specialized social network, dating site or niche networking site can still be worthwhile. So how do you go about doing this? There are many ways and many tools online to help. Sites like Socialgo allow you to create a social network with a few clicks. This is great for the beginner and those who don’t already have their own web hosting. They do have a free option but if you want your own domain name and extra features it does cost $25/month. This is a reasonable price if you are not already paying for hosting elsewhere but if you do already run other websites then you might want to look at the option of installing a php dating script or community site script on your own server.

Using your own hosted community software gives you some extra freedom and there is also no chance of the provider network shutting down and taking your dating site with it.

One such script is the free dating software provided by Boonex. Their open source script is not just dating software, you can use it to create other types of social networks as well. If you want to customize your site but you are no designer, their marketplace of ready made social networking templates and dating templates should help (see below for some examples of templates on offer).

A Comparison of Joomla vs. Drupal

suz — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 07:49:00 +0000

The world of CMS (Content Management System) is very competitive and the top two contenders are famous Joomla and powerful Drupal. Of course we cannot ignore WordPress, but for now, we will let the two giants fight and see who wins.

Let’s start with a brief introduction of both.

Joomla

Say hello to the award winning CMS that lets you develop websites and many online applications. It has many useful features like user friendliness and extensibility. With a number of powerful features, Joomla is the most famous website development software that you can find. Plus it is open source so it is freely available.

Drupal

And on this side we have Drupal, the CMS that allows administrators to manage and display content, and change its appearance along with handling of routine tasks. Drupal is also an open source framework, which makes it a strong competitor for Joomla. Many modules and themes are available for free as well, thus making it a good choice for CMS.

And now, let the battles begin…

Content management

Drupal: It is very sophisticated and permits limitless grouping levels along with categorizations and tagging. You can generate many different types of content, each having different attributes.

Joomla: It is quite weak. There are just three stages for content management: Section, Category, and Content. There is no cross categorization. For flexibility, you have to use content construction kit.

WYSIWYG

Drupal: This might be the biggest complaint regarding Drupal. It does not have a default editor.

Joomla: It has TinyMCE by default.

Templates and Themes

Drupal: It has a few commercial developers. Plus its ‘off the shelf’ options are not very strong. Most of the designs are made to order.

Joomla: The biggest positive factor of Joomla might be the extensive selection it has of commercial and free designs.

Community Features

Drupal: It offers the capacity to increase user profiles effortlessly, plus the Organic Groups allow strong community building.

Joomla: By default there are no such features, but there are powerful extensions. While Community Builder is a free application, Jomsocial is commercial.

User permissions

Drupal: This is a big strength of Drupal as you can make limitless user levels and can customize them with fine details.

Joomla: This is where you wouldn’t like Joomla. It has only three user levels. You will get Public, Registered, and Special user levels. If you want more, you need to install a bulky extension.

Shopping cart

Drupal: The only genuine option is Ubercart. It is a fully featured and powerful platform for ecommerce, but it might be overwhelming for smaller stores.

Joomla: It has one chief shopping cart, that is, Virtuemart. But there are a number of bugs, and it is not user friendly either.

SEO

Drupal: The different kind of URLs can be easily accommodated and improved with the help of an addon: Pathauto. Typically, the code is well-optimized and lightweight.

Joomla: It is reasonable but does not have the ability to actually control metadata or URLs. There are many SEO extensions that you would require if you want to optimize a Joomla site.

Conclusion

For now, it seems that Drupal takes the cake. But there are lots of comparisons that can be done, and the right CMS would depend upon your needs. Take a look over these main differences and see which measures up best for your project.

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Author bio:

Emily Cartman is a serial blogger and a web enthusiast who loves design and technology. She’s into writing because she loves it. She also loves to play on Wii and PSP. Emily works for website builder Wix.com, a free online platform for the easy creation of customized Flash websites.
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How to create mini sites

suz — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 01:44:00 +0000

You may have heard about creating mini sites in the past and how people build them to make some extra income from affiliate programs or advertising. Sounds like a plan, but how do you go about quickly creating web sites without spending hours struggling with design or coding?

For absolute newbies often free blog sites are recommended where you simply create an account, choose a theme and start typing in your content. Such sites (eg blogger, wordpress.com) are great for beginners but can lack some flexibility which is sometimes needed to get the most out of a web site if you are looking to make some money.

In order to start a web site which is completely in your control with as much flexibility as needed, finding your own web hosting is the next step. You can create mini sites by downloading some free templates, editing them and uploading them.

These HTML/CSS web sites do have their advantages but if your site needs to be updated often a CMS is a must. The number one most recommended CMS is WordPress at the moment. Due to its popularity there are thousands of themes available for download and WordPress makes it quiet easy to create mini sites without having to take a lot of time learning about web design. There are sites specializing in wordpress hosting but most web hosts will allow you to install WordPress yourself manually or through a control panel in your hosting account.

WordPress doesn’t necessarily need to be used as a blog, it can be used as a content management system to create pages as well. There are many plugins to extend its functionality and having it hosted on your own web hosting means you can make changes to anything – edit categories, edit themes, individual pages, add plugins etc as often as needed.

How to create your own emoticons

suz — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:43:24 +0000

Creating a custom set of emoticons does not have to be difficult. You will need a bit of graphical knowledge and an image editing program such as GIMP in order to begin. To make things easy for you, you can use an emoticon template (see link at the bottom of this article), or you can create your own.

If you want to create your own base, typical emoticons are designed in 32 x 32 square .png files so their background is transparent. This transparency is how the circular look of the emoticon is established, since the corners of the image are not displayed. Only .gif and .png image formats support transparency, so remember to save your work in these formats regularly.

Setting the palette color for transparency usually is not necessary if you are starting on a transparent background, but if you are not, you will need a bright color that is not associated with any color you will be using in the actual emoticon. The hex colors #33FF00 and #FF00FF are recommended for your background colors because lime green and hot pink are very rarely used.

In order to set one of these colors as your palette transparency, you will need to follow these steps:

Click: Adjust > Palette > Palette Transparency > Background Color

In the box, input the hexadecimal color code you’ve decided to use as your background. This will set everything in the image that uses this code as transparent.

After setting up your transparency, all that is left is to draw your base you want to use for your icon set. The typical emoticon base is yellow with highlights to give the set some depth, but feel free to be creative with your set. Creating green or black, or even themed emoticons is entirely possible.

To get started quickly, download Invision Power Board’s emoticon development kit.

10 free social networking icons

suz — Thu, 13 May 2010 00:09:51 +0000

Liverpool web design team Tropica is offering the above set of 10 social media icons to download for free. So if you are looking for any one (or more) of Twitter, Technorati, Last.Fm, Digg, Reddit, Myspace, Mixx, Facebook, Delicious or an RSS feed icon, head over to Tropicaweb.co.uk to download.

Happy New Year

suz — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:53:58 +0000

Happy new year to all! I want to say thanks to Blog & Web and BloggerBlog Templates for converting the Squick Design to a blogger template. Also a big thank you to Smashing Magazine and Steven Snell from Vendalay Website Design for featuring this site.
Wishing everyone a happy and safe New Year and a great 2009!

Halloween graphics roundup

suz — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 05:26:59 +0000

Avatrs.nnm.ru has a great collection of Halloween icons and images.

Halloween web templates at TemplateKingdom

Halloween tombstone set by SeiyaStock

Free vectors at Freevectors.net

Pumpkin patch by Solitairmiles: Some beautiful photo manipulation for Halloween

More
*Halloweenjoys.com has Myspace, Friendster and other social networking profile Halloween layouts.
*Smashing Magazines‘s roundup of Halloween wallpapers, icons and Art
*Halloween vector set by DragonArtz
*Download some free Halloween templates at afreewebtemplate.com

Colour palettes by topic

suz — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 04:59:23 +0000

For this article I have decided to do a little research and find some popular colour palettes being used across web sites of various topics. Some of the sites I looked at are the most popular in their field while others are just personal favorites. Basically these are not exactly scientific findings, instead simply some colour combinations that I enjoyed and found effective for their topics. So without further ado, here’s my list.

Subject	Palette
Art & Illustration
Education
Technology
Photography
Business
Interior/home design
News
Celebrity/gossip
Food
Travel
Web design

Thanks to Colourlovers for the help with the palette generation. Hover your mouse over each colour palette strip to see which web site the palette comes from.

Web templates

suz — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 01:36:27 +0000

Every day I get emails asking for help and explanations of terms and processes in web design. This is why I have decided to create a series of articles aimed at beginners. This article is the first in the series.

Web templates – why use them

Web templates are ideal to use when building a professional looking website in a small amount of time and on a lower budget then when hiring someone to do a custom design. With templates you simply need to do edit the ready made page rather then having to start from scratch. Web templates can be used to set up any type of website and are often used by a wide audience ranging from web designers to people building their first site. Web templates offer webmasters a great opportunity to minimize development time and get new sites on the web sooner rather than later. The good news is that there is a huge range of templates available, both free and premium which can be downloaded or purchased on the internet. So whether you’re looking for some classical flare, or an ultra-modern design, chances are you will find what you are looking for.

What to look for in a template

The first thing you will probably look for in a template is whether it suits your content and the subject matter of your web site. CSS based XHTML compliant designs are the standard these days and this is something to check before downloading the design also. Templates should be editable in any web editor such as Dreamweaver, Expression web or the software of your choice. Simplicity is always a big help especially if you are new to web design.

Buying Options

There are both free and premium website templates available. Premium templates are either purchased individually or as part of a membership system, depending on the site offering them. Membership systems are great if you are a web designer and have lots of clients to design for. Individual downloads are better suited to people creating their own web sites.

Why pay for a template?

To many people free templates are perfectly suitable and there is certainly no reason not to use them. Premium templates however do usually offer a couple of advantages which are that the companies selling them usually have a dedicated customer service set up to help with questions and problems, and the other advantage is that the templates themselves are less widely used by other people then a free template might be.

So these are the options to consider when choosing the template for your next web site. I hope this article has been useful, if you still have questions about templates please leave them in the comments below and I will do my best to answer them.

Design Inspiration of the week – nemstudio

suz — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:45:38 +0000

This week’s design inspiration comes from blog.nemstudio.com. As well as the beautiful header, the right hand side bar also has a fantastic design with careful attention to detail. I love the downlights!