Thoughts on programming, web development and design.

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Category: Design

3 Resources for Web Developers

When you are developing a website on a budget, you have to spend your money wisely. For a current project, I found these three websites that helped me complete my project with a limited budget.

  1. Morguefile.com is a public image archive for creatives. They offer free photos that you can use in your projects or for inspiration. You can find different types of photos that will fit your projects. These pictures don’t require that you attribute the photo in your design.
  2. Background LabsBackground Labs provides a wide variety of backgrounds, patterns and textures for customizing your projects. You can search the archive by color, type or tag. If you don’t find something that fits your project, you can use Background Labs to inspire you. I was inspired by the colors in one of backgrounds and used it to develop a personal website.
  3. Openclipart.org has free clip art that you can use in your projects. The clip art is public domain unless specified. The clip art is attractive and professional. Your projects will look professional if you decide to use their clip art.

How to create your own YouTube Background

Want to customize your YouTube channel? YouTube lets you change the colors and upload a background picture. To customize your channel, you can create a background in Photoshop and upload it to your YouTube account. Watch the video tutorial to learn how to customize your YouTube channel.

Wireframing Website Guides

Touch Interface

A website wireframe helps you to define and document the layout and relationship between web pages. Wireframes are the first and most important step in the design process. Six Revisions’ Ultimate Guide to Website Wireframing explains why you should use wireframes, how to create one and different tools for creating wireframes. If you want examples on developing wireframes, Web Designer Depot’s Using Wireframes to streamline Your Development Process shows you different examples that you can learn from and explains the benefits of wireframing.

Need to create a wireframe in Photoshop or Fireworks?

You can follow these tutorials to master creating a wireframe in Photoshop and Fireworks:

*Image: Pixomar / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Begin and End With a Sitemap

Web BrowserPlanning a website? You’ll need a sitemap or a list of web pages. You can start with a few pages or create 2,000 pages. It depends on how big you want your website to be.

Start with the Basics

Every website should have the following pages:

  • Home The home page is the first page of your website. This page introduces people to your company and your products or services.
  • About Us The About Us page allows you to share your company’s history, your employees and and any other information that you wish to share.
  • Contact Us The Contact Us page lets you tell people how to contact you and may include a simple email form.

Depending on your goals, you may need to add additional pages for products, services, news and updates or social media.

Build Your Sitemap

What tools can you use to build a sitemap?

Post Website Launch Sitemap

Once you have finished building your website, you’ll want to add a XML sitemap. An XML file that sits on your website and helps search engines to crawl your website more easily. You can use an XML Sitemap Generator or make it by hand. Google has a list of generators.

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