Although there are similarities between the two, there are also some big differences as well.

If your goal is to make money online, it’s not necessarily easier with one or the other.

Whether you decide on a blog or a website, you will still need to learn how to get targeted traffic or you won’t make money… period.

I say this because blogs are generally cheaper and easier to setup than websites. And because of this, people often rush to setup a blog and then later discover it was not the best course of action and did not fit their needs.

So be sure you read this entire page so you can choose the best option for your needs.

What Is A Blog?

A blog is a series of content (called “posts”) that are generally arranged by date with the most recent post displaying first. A lot of blogs also have the posts arranged by category for convenient browsing.

They offer comment forms at the end of each post which allow the readers to give the author feedback and interact with other readers.

Blogs (taken from the phrase “web logs”) were originally created for personal journaling. Now people use them in place of a website, or in some cases, they own both types.

When You Should Blog

Blogs are most effective when you write a topic that obligates you to write new content regularly. That’s why many of the news-oriented websites are moving toward blogs.

People who read blogs often use a functionality called RSS, which allows them to subscribe to your blog’s content with an RSS reader.

When they open up their reader, they can see the latest headlines from your blog at a quick glance. That’s why it’s very important you choose a topic where you can provide fresh content on a regular basis. Otherwise, people may discontinue reading your blog if they see you aren’t writing enough new content.

Creating A Blog

In order to create a blog you need to decide on a blogging platform. The two most common blog platforms are WordPress and Blogger.

Both platforms are free and provide user-friendly editors for you to publish your content. No programming or additional software is required.

If you do decide to go with a blog, I’d highly recommend that you register your own domain name and have a self-hosted blog rather than using a free blog hosting platform.

You want the address of your blog to be something like yoursite.com or blog.yoursite.com instead of yourblog.wordpress.com or yourblog.blogspot.com.

What Is A Website?

Similar to a blog, a website is a collection of content called web pages. Unlike a blog, the pages are not typically arranged by date.

With websites, you possess more control over your site’s layout because it’s easier to work directly with the code.

Now, of course, if you take the time to learn CSS, HTML, PHP, etc. you can change the layout of a blog as well. However, it’s not quite as straightforward since blogs are made up of many different files and the coding is much more complicated.

With a website, you can manage your entire design in a software program so editing the overall layout is much easier than managing the layout of a blog.

www.2advanced.com Website

Another difference between websites and blogs is how content is published. With blogs, the publishing functionality is built into the blogging platform so you do not need any additional tools to publish your site online.

For example, to publish your content from a WordPress blog, you would login to the WordPress admin panel and select “Publish”.

To publish content to a website you need an FTP program or web software that has a built-in FTP program.

Note: FTP stands for file transfer protocol and it’s just a simple program that moves your web pages from your computer to your website. FileZilla is a common FTP program and it’s free to download and use.

Don’t let the acronyms scare you. It’s really not all that difficult. In fact, many web hosts now have FTP programs bundled into your account so if you can publish your content right through their control panel area.

Publishing Your Website Using Software

I usually urge people to use web software that has a built in FTP program. For example, I use Dreamweaver to create and manage some of my websites. I use design templates I find online and customized them in the software.

The great thing about Dreamweaver is you can publish your content to the web right from the software so you don’t need to download any additional FTP software or use your web host’s functionality to save files to the Web.

Dreamweaver can be bought on eBay for around $100 (Dreamweaver CS3 is my favorite, and it’s very easy to use). But if your on a budget, there are some good alternatives available to you. Nvu and Kompozer are both free. Of course you won’t get as many of the bells and whistles that you get with Dreamweaver, but they’re still very good options.

CoffeeCup is another great editor and it comes with some nice templates. At $50, it’s priced reasonably considering all it does. It also has a built-in FTP program so you can publish your pages to the web through the software.

No matter what software you choose, rest assured there are lots of free tutorials online that will help you become a pro with it.

Don’t Have Web Software?

You don’t need to use Web software to create a website. You can write your HTML from scratch using a basic text editor like NotePad or BBEdit.

Then you just save your pages to the Web using an FTP program or your web host’s control panel.

If you’re serious about learning how to code from scratch visit w3schools.com. They offer some of the best tutorials on HTML and CSS found on the internet.

“Should I Get Started With A Blog Or A Website?”

There is no right or wrong answer to this question. Which one you start with depends on you. By the way people read blogs, it’s best to create a blog if you have lots of “newsy” and fresh information about a topic, and you are able to produce new content on a regular basis.

Websites tend to have more evergreen information and there is not as much pressure to keep writing new content all the time. The information on a website is much more static and often contains reference information that people want to bookmark and return to read occasionally.

Whatever you decide to do, I recommend starting with one or the other. Do not try to create both because you’ll be overwhelmed with trying to market them. Just do one thing at a time.

Owning Both A Blog And A Website

Although I don’t recommend starting off with both, here’s an example of why you might start with a website and then add a blog at a later time.

Let’s say you have a site about healthy eating for diabetics. It’s 100 pages of assorted tips on what kinds of foods you can eat. A lot of the information is evergreen and it’s a fantastic site for people to bookmark for future reference.

Now let’s suppose you want to start a section on this site where you announce a new recipe every week. Since you will be providing new information on a regular basis, this kind of content is best presented in a blog format because blogs show the most recent content first and organize the information by date and category.

Since blogs are setup to divide the content into categories, you could add categories to make surfing your blog easier (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Desserts etc.) and post the recipes into the appropriate category.

Now that you have your healthy eating for diabetics site with its static, evergreen information and you can use your blog for your latest and greatest recipes. People can subscribe to your blog through RSS and they’ll be notified every time you add a brand new recipe.

Why I Have Both Of Them

I have both a blog and a website, but I created my website first. Once my website began drawing enough traffic, I used that traffic to promote my blog. So my blog is more of an extension to my regular website.

My blog allows me to discuss what’s on my mind regarding the topics of website creation and design, making money, home business etc. So I have branded my blog as sort of an extension of my main website.

Now before you rush off and create your own blog or website, leave us a comment first and share what you decided on and why.

Rate This Article:  Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

What’s Zlio?

Zlio is an online store that you can design and manage yourself. Its fairly simple to use and there are only about three steps until your website is ready.

The products that you can promote on your online store come from the biggest names in online retailing; Amazon, Best Buy, Sony and more. Registration is also free which of course would make anyone wonder why they would give you something for free. Well its actually quite simple which brings me to my next point.

How does Zlio work?

Everytime someone visits your online Zlio store and purchases a product you make between 1% – 20% commission on whatever you sell on your store. So where’s the catch? Every time you sell a product Zlio makes close to the same commission as you. So if you make 5% on a product sold through your online store Zlio also makes about 5%. Put it this way, Zlio is an affiliate for all the products that are sold through their domain. When you register your store through them your store becomes a subdomain and you become a sub affiliate. Your affiliate commissions on Sony products give you about 5% for all purchases. If you sign up directly with Sony then you make 10% which means that Zlio makes about 5% commission. The same with Amazon. Amazon’s affiliate program pays up to 8.5% commission and if purchased through Zlio it pays out 4% which means Zlio makes about 4.5% commission for all purchase made through its site. This is all just an estimate. Zlio also has to pay a percentage of commissions to the person who referred you to Zlio to build an online store.

If you had to pay to sign up with Zlio then it would be a big deal but since its free there’s nothing to worry about.

Now here’s my Zlio review: (In case people are wondering why I only write two articles a week that’s because I spend most of my time reviewing the products and then writing the information. Believe it or not I am not too fond of writing articles.

1. The only way to view available products is to search for the product you want to see. I found this to be annoying.

The website should take you to a directory page with all the products listed under specific categories so that you could see what items are available for each category. Sort of the same way Amazon operates. When I visit Amazon and I want to see what products they are selling in a specific category I usually first go to that category and narrow down to what I am looking for. The only time I use a search feature is when I know exactly what product I am looking for.

In the case of Zlio if I want to view available books I have to search for a specific title or author. This could be annoying especially if someone wants to create a niche store for lets say ‘Car Maintenance’. There’s no way of knowing what Car Maintenance books are availble unless you search for specific authors and titles. Wouldn’t it be much better if the program would tell me what it does have in the database and then I know I could add it.

2. While it has a lot of products it doesn’t offer all the products from specific vendors. For example not all the books available through Amazon are available for your Zlio shop. I found this very frustrating. I wanted to add a book that I think is absolutely incredible and the product choices it provided me with were VHS and DVD versions of the book. Why wouldn’t the book version be available if its available through Amazon? Also, why would they have that product on VHS? Who uses VHS today anyways?

3. Another frustrating component is that you can’t control the amount of products displayed on your home page. I had only three books in my store but for some reason it would only display two books at a time. One would have to click on ‘More Products’ to see the other book I have listed.

4. The site is either extremely slow at times or down from time to time. This could be due to the number of people creating a Zlio store on a daily basis. I would imagine the response from people to any website offering something similar for free would reak havoc on the sites servers and bandwidth. It seems better to use late at night than during the day.

These were the problems that I had the most issues with. Of course it doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t and shouldn’t build a store if the process is free. Obviously the benefits of Zlio far out weigh all the shortcomings.

• You don’t have to pay for a site
• There’s a potential to make some good dough if people buy from your site or you refer people to build a site.
• You make 10% of the commission on the products sold from people’s site that you referred to Zlio.
• You make money on your purchases. For Amazon you make 4% or get 4% of the purchase price for everything you buy. Even if you are helping Zlio make money it doesn’t matter cause it doesn’t cost anything and you even save from it.
• Most importantly, you get experience on how to manage and run an online store. Even if the products you promote are not things you would actually buy and even if no one ever comes to your store to buy anything you still gain from the experience.

While its true that every Zlio store created helps Zlio make money through affiliate commissions through products sold, the money isn’t coming from you and you have a chance to make some money too. However, with so many Zlio stores constantly being created its hard to imagine anyone will ever see your store unless you decide to market it.

But once you do so, people will just create their own store instead of buying from you. Either way you still save money or make some money through referral commissions. But keep in mind that the potential for making some good passive income is really not so great.

Check out my Zlio store, it will give you an idea what a completed website looks like. I named my Zlio site http://makecashnow.zlio.net.

Get your Zlio store today!

About the Author

This article is by Shawn Culver founder of MakeCashNow.biz Home Business and PLR Website. and MakeCashNow ShareMafia Forum.

Rate This Article:  Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

If you know more CSS tutorials that dazzle then please leave a link of it in the comments section and we will try to feature them too. You may also like to subscribe to my RSS Feed to stay updated with the, latest articles and events at MakeCashNow.biz.

1. CSS Tabs and Navigation

1.1 Expandable CSS Tabs Tutorial

Expandable CSS Tab increase their size accoring to the size of the text. In it basically two images are used named start.gif and end.gif. The start.gif image is used to expand the size and the end.gif image stay same.

1.2 Advanced CSS Menu

This tutorial showed you how to design a watercolor effect menu in Photoshop. This tutorial will show you how to slice up the menu design (step by step) and put them together with CSS. Most of you probably know how to code a horizontal or vertical CSS list menu. Now let’s take it to the next level — code an advanced list menu utilizing the CSS position property.

1.3 CSS Based Navigation

The goal of this tutorial is to make a CSS based navigation which brings itself to the front as it is highlighted.

1.4 CSS Fancy Menu

In this article you’ll go through the creation of a custom navigation bar with some cute Javascript effects that will certainly impress your friends. Thanks to the great Mootools library, this beauty is contained in 1.5kb. Not only that, but it’s also cross browser (tested on Internet Explorer 6/7, Firefox and Safari) and accessible!

1.5 Sliding Doors

Here, we’ll cover a new scenario where no tab is highlighted, combine Sliding Doors with a single-image rollover, provide a fix for the clickable region in IE/Win, and suggest an alternate method of targeting tabs. We’ll skip a basic recap of the technique (see Part I for this) in favor of jumping right back in where we left off.

1.6 CSS Vertical Navigation with Teaser

In addition to adding teaser information to the navigation, this technique can be modified to add descriptions to any element of page. You could add teaser descriptions to profile names, question-and-answer type FAQ pages, navigation, or a multitude of other applications.

1.7 Overlapping Tabbed Navigation in CSS

A tutorial showing how overlapping tabbed navigation is possible in CSS and can be cross-browser compatible, accessible and javascript free.

2. CSS Rounded Corner

2.1 Box– Rounded Corners for All

The goal of the exercise was to create rounded-corner boxes with visual flare and the absolute minimal amount of semantically correct markup. Oh yeah, and to make sure they could resize while keeping their backgrounds intact. The important relevant XHTML and CSS for the first box on this page is directly below the box.

2.2 Rounded Corners in CSS

the subject of rounded corners in CSS came up so I showed him my method. There are other ways that I’ve seen it done, but the other methods always require lots of complex HTML and CSS. I figure that lots of nested divs aren’t much better than using a table, so my way doesn’t require much in the way of HTML or CSS. Here’s how I do it.

3. CSS Photo Gallery

3.1 Hoverbox Image Gallery

It uses an anchor link for the effect, because that is the only thing that Internet Explorer allows the :hover psuedo-class to work with. While my example page only has # linked to, this could easily be pointed to a full version of the respective images, or a website if you decide to use it for a design portfolio. For now, it uses photos taken by family and friends.

3.2 Cross Browser Multi-Page Photograph Gallery

Based on the look of Suckerfish HoverLightbox, this one uses my multi-page layout system but includes images instead of text.

Unlike the Suckerfish HoverLightbox this version does not use javascript but is pure CSS and still works in IE.

3.3 Sliding Photograph Galleries

This gallery is my simplest yet. It is just an unordered list of images that are normally compressed vertically (reduction 8:1). When you hover over one of these compressed images it expands to full size. It is based on my sliding menu system and adapted to use images. No thumbnails are required and all the images are ‘pre-loaded’.This method can be used either vertically, as shown, or horizontally.

4. CSS Shadows

4.1 CSS Drop Shadows : Fuzzy Shadows

In this article we’ll learn how to:
Hide a stylesheet from non-IE browsers so it doesn’t affect document validation.
Coerce IE5.5/IE6 into displaying PNG transparency correctly.
Use the above to create fuzzy shadow edges for our Drop Shadow effect.

4.2 CSS Shadows (CSS Shadows Roundup)

In this article, we’ll see yet another technique. Most of the existing techniques use negative margins, while I’ve presented almost one year ago on pro.html.it, the italian portal I write for, a really simple version wich uses relative positioning. Thought I’d share it here, with some variations.

5. Other CSS Tips and Tricks

5.1 IE Double Float Margin Bugs

I’m sure we have all dealt with this one, as this is one of the most common css “hacks” we need to use. If you haven’t seen this bug before, basically, a floated element with a given margin suddenly has doubled the margin in IE 6 and has dropped out of position! Luckily, the fix is super simple.

5.2 CSS Cross Browser Transparency

Believe it or not, it is pretty simple to get decent cross browser transparency using css. We can cover, IE, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and old browsers like Netscape Navigator. Chris Coyier recently came to our rescue again demonstrating these techniques.

5.3 Collapsing Tables: An Example

Each of the tables below has a class called “footcollapse” which makes the script add the arrow images in the footer allowing the table to be collapsed and expanded.

5.4 Content Overlay with CSS

When you hover over the container, a new container is displayed over the existing content. The trick here is the use of position:relative to allow the static content to appear over absolutely positioned content.

5.5 CSS Zooming

I’ve recently been working on some concepts for a redesign of a site that uses a text-resizing widget. The audience for the site is primarily seniors, so large text is important. And, before you start shouting that people should use their browser’s built-in support for this, many visitors to the site are unaware of such wonderful tools and really appreciate a solution built into the site.

5.6 CSS On-Hover Image Captions

This is a combination of the image caption and the teaser technique, I nested the caption of our image within a hyperlink. What I want to do, is hide the caption until the user hovers over the image.

Sites Where You Can Find More CSS Tips and Tricks

1. 70 Expert Ideas For Better CSS Coding.
2. 20 Websites To Help You Learn and Master CSS.
3. 50 Extremely Useful And Powerful CSS Tools.
4. Are You Making These 10 CSS Mistakes?.
5. 25 Website Designs To Draw Inspiration From.
6. CSS Layouts: 40+ Tutorials, Tips, Demos and Best Practices.
7. 100 Web Design Template Sources, Tools and Resources.
8. 15 of the Best CSS Zengarden Designs.
9. 26 Best ways to implement AJAX, CSS and Javascript based Tabs.
10. 21 Ways to Streamline Your CSS.

Rate This Article:  Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

Over the last 20 years the open source model has proven that collaborative development is one of the best ways to incorporate the newest ideas and latest concepts into design.

In fact, the open source model, which began with programmers, has been so successful that it is currently being applied in government, media, education and private business. But despite these new applications, the unique combination of the open source model with the universalism of web design remains one of the ideal applications of open source. This pervasiveness of the open source spirit in web design now means that you can use open source software to design both graphics and your CSS and HTML, and you can also use the dozens of reliable open source code resources or thousands of web design templates to base your own designs on. In this article we highlight 100 open source web design templates, resources, and tools.

The Best Directories of Free Open Source Web Design Templates

There are tons of free design template directories on the net, but sorting through all of them can be a very tedious process. Instead, I suggest that you start with these four, which I consider to be the best free open source design template directories online.

1. OSWD: Over 2,000 of the best freebie web design templates. Also allows for search capability by color, contrast, validation, and other categories.

2. OpenWebDesign:A large and active community of individuals who share free web design templates. Includes regular design contests and a sub-category of most popular designs to speed up your search.

3. Open Designs: Headed by a non-profit board, the open design community has almost 600 designs which have been vetted and moderated by the community’s volunteer board. Also includes a relatively active forum where designers can share tips and resources.

4. CSS Tinderbox: CSS Tinderbox prevents you from having to “reinvent the wheel” by providing very basic, yet solid, CSS/XHTML design templates from which you can build off of.

Open Source Web Design Programs

Why pay for software if you can find it free? Usually, the answer is that the free stuff just plain isn’t any good. You won’t find that to be the case with the open source web design software programs in this section, however, which are all the best of the best.

1. Nvu: An open-source web authoring system to rival FrontPage and Dreamweaver. (Linux, Windows, and Mac)
2. Cssed: A CSS editor featuring auto completion, syntax highlighting and validation. (C, C++) (Linux)
3. Quanta Plus: A top-notch HTML editor and web development for the K Desktop Environment.
4. Bluefish: An HTML editor for programmers written using GTK, designed to save the experienced webmaster some keystrokes. (C) (GNU/Linux, Unix)
5. GIMPShop: The open source replacement for Photoshop. (Mac, Linux, and Windows)
6. Inkscape: The vector graphics application which may spell the end for Adobe Illustrator.

Complete Web Design Templates

If you want to get off the ground with your website quickly, then you may want a complete template that requires minimal tweaking. In this section we highlight some of the best complete template resources on the web. These templates include not only the CSS, but also the (X)HTML and in some cases the graphic files to get your site up as fast as possible.

1. TemplateNavigator: The largest catalogue of free website and flash templates, along with quality preview shots.
2. TemplateBox: Over 300 freebie website, logo, banner, and flash templates to complement their collection of paid offerings.
3. Template Monster: A small but very high-quality set of web, flash, and blog templates.
4. Art for the Web: 75 freebie templates. Pretty good place to look if you’re looking for something slightly out of the ordinary.
5. Free CSS Templates: A 206 template strong resource which is frequently updated with new submissions.
6. Effex-Media: Free website templates designed by designers, this massive list is categorized by website type and includes user reviews of many of the templates.
7. DotcomWebDesign: Hundreds of free templates, some of which are really top-notch. However, the categorization is a little arbitrary so be ready to spend some time manually searching.
8. Themebot Design Templates: This site has some design templates, but not very many. There is a good amount of free themes.
9. Groovy Lizard: Personal page templates (commercial use must buy a license)
10. Interspire: Freebie web, Frontpage and Dreamweaver templates
11. Joyful Heart Designs: Personal page templates generally with floral designs.
12. OpenSourceTemplates: Free CSS and xhtml open source website templates and Web 2.0 designs.
13. Ricky’s Web Templates: 50+ freebie templates, graphics, and buttons.
14. Free CSS Templates: A dozen full-featured fully functional CSS based templates.
15. FreekTemplates.com: A collection of business, cars and bikes, and hosting templates.
16. Template Perfection: 200+ freebie templates with quite a few non-english oriented templates.
17. TemplateWorkz: 48 freebie web templates, along with some basic logo and newsletter templates.
18. Zymic: 80 freebie templates (HTML Pages + CSS + Images + PSD Files + Blank Images Files).
19. OpenSourceTemplates: A community-driven CSS and xhtml open source template design showcase.
20. Freelayouts: HTML and Flash templates.
21. FreeCSSTemplates.org: Over 100 freebie CSS templates.
22. Free Layouts: Complete list of hundreds of HTML, flash, and CSS templates.
23. Free Templates Online: Dozens of easily customizable templates categorized by theme.
24. Free Website Templates: A large collection of templates that don’t require a reciprocal link.
25. Six-Shooter Media: Free CSS and xhtml open source templates.
26. Free Flash Template: Web templates and intros with tons of special features.
27. Layouts4Free.com: Free web layouts with search capability.
28. Solucija: Free XHTML / CSS website templates already setup and sorted by commercial use.
29. MasterTemplates: Professionally designed free website layouts along with PowerPoint templates.
30. TemplateWorld: Free, tableless, W3C-compliant web design layouts designed by Template World designers.
31. Painted Pixels: Free web page templates, buttons, and background tiles for non-commercial use.
32. CSSFill: A selection of CSS / XHTML based layouts and templates by Michael Strand.
33. ThemesBase: Templates organized by popular content management, blogging and forum systems.
34. Arcsin Design Templates: 22 Freebie XTML and CSS Templates
35. Snakeye Web Templates: 20 templates with a focus on Dreamweaver and Fireworks.
36. Steve’s Templates: Dozens of templates, free with link back.
37. GordonMac.com: Free CSS templates along with some freebie PHP scripts.
38. Web Design Helper: Full page templates including the graphics and code.
39. Webmaster Resources: 25 free web templates.

CSS Layouts

If you’re looking for the freedom to create something entirely original but just want some of the basic layout taken care of, this section is for you. The templates below are pure CSS, leaving you a clean slate from which you can add the design, graphics, and text as you see fit.

1. Layout Gala: 40 CSS tri-color layouts to help you pick a format.
2. AndreasVilkund.com: Free Templates by designer Andreas Viklund.
3. CSS Template Directory: A collection of CSS formatted page templates, developed and distributed by different designers.
4. BenMeadowcroft.com: Top-notch web design templates by Ben Meadowcroft, mixed in with a few spoof pages and experimentation.
5. Mollio: A set of basic CSS templates that that also have some sample basic content to speed things along.
6. Real World Style: CSS layouts organized by format type.
7. Little Boxes: CSS template arrangements with quickly accessible code.
8. The Layout Reservoir: Simple, straightforward, and manipulable 2 and 3 column layouts.
9. Protagonist Web Resources: A list of 43 tableless layouts to go along with the other protagonist resources.
10. Glish: CSS Layout Techniques by Eric Costello which have been stripped down to the bare essentials.
11. FU2K: CSS layouts designed for Netscape 4 compatibility.
12. Position is Everything: Tableless design resource with CSS bug workarounds.
13. ThreeColumnLayouts: The ultimate 3 column layout resource list.
14. ssi-developer: Two column CSS template samples with recommendations.
15. MIS Web Design: Fancy Paragraphs with CSS.
16. Ruthsarian Layouts: Freebie-CSS layouts ranging from basic to complex arrangements.
17. A List Apart: CSS: Practical CSS Layout Tips, Tricks and Techniques
18. Code-Sucks.com: Creating 1, 2, 3, and 4 column layouts.
19. Particle Tree: Dynamic resolution dependent layouts.
20. Project Seven: Fluid CSS Layouts
21. MyCelly: A collection of 16 basic layout templates.
22. Ideas: 12 free CSS templates.
23. CSS Library: Dynamic drive’s tableless CSS layouts.
24. IntensiveStation: A collection of all new basic CSS templates.
25. IronMyers: A collection of layouts with full Grade-A browser support for IE6, IE7, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and more.
26. The CSS Playground: Cutting edge CSS demos by Stu Nicholls’
27. WordPress Theme Viewer: Collection of searchable themes organized by columns, colors, rounded corners, and other categories.
28. Fluid 2-Column Template: A fully usable “fluid” template, meaning that the design expands and contracts with the window size.
29. Avinash 2.0: 12 Free CSS Templates

Automated CSS Tools and Generators

This set of resources isn’t for those that want to create something entirely unique. But if you aren’t a strong coder and just want to get the job done, these automated CSS code tools will let you create CSS at the push of a button.

1. CSS Creator: Select the form colors, number of columns, html version, and press a button. Presto, a CSS template for your page.
2. Inknoise: The layout-o-matic: fill out the form and out pops your CSS.
3. Strange Banana: Simply refresh the template generator until you get the style you like, then save the page which has your CSS embedded in the header.
4. Nidahas: A CSS-based form template.
5. Maketemplate: A PHP – HTML – CSS template generator for two column layouts.
6. IBDjohn: CSS template generator for three column layouts.
7. TemplatR: Another easy CSS template generator.
8. PsycHo: Your own psychogenesis, your own web design template.
9. Firdamatic: Tableless 2 or 3 column layout generator.
10. WordPress Theme Generator: Online generator creates custom unique WordPress themes.

Blog Themes and Templates

Designing blogs has become so popular as a subset of web design that we thought they deserved their own separate section. In this section, we highlight some of the best open source weblog template sources.

1. SmashingMagazine: 83 Beautiful WordPress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen
2. Kaushal Sheth: Elegant WordPress themes.
3. ErraticWisdom: Textpattern templates
4. Scribez: 10 Best WordPress Templates.
5. pinkdesign: Free diary / blog templates
6. Textgarden.org: The official site for themes designed for Textpattern.
7. Blogger Templates: A collection of Blogger templates on a wide variety of themes.
8. Blogfashions: A collection of free Movable Type compatible blog templates.
9. FinalSense: High-quality templates for Blogger.
10. WP Themes: WordPress themes all designed by Sadish Bala.
11. Drupal Theme Garden: Showcase of themes available for Drupal 4.7x and Drupal 5.x.
12. Weblog Design: A small number of high-quality weblog templates.

There you have it, 100 web design template sources, tools and resources. Enjoy!!!

Rate This Article:  Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

Web 2.0 websites are typically known for the use of CSS, Folksonomies (social tagging, classification, and indexing), Microformats, REST/XML/JSON-based APIs, rich internet applications such as Ajax, Flex, or Flash, semantically valid XHTML and HTML, RSS/Atom syndication and aggregation, weblog-publishing tools, wiki or forum software, and the extended use of internet privacy and content management. Below is a list of the top 15 websites that have been influential in establishing these methods of functionality on the web.

1. iGoogle
Google has been a rising star for the past decade now, and is officially the largest American corporation not a part of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The original site started out as a simple search engine, eventually becoming a wide network of sites and services that include Gmail, Google Maps, Google Docs, Google Talk, Google Desktop, AdWords, Analytics, Picasa, and Google Earth, among others. As a testament to the company’s popularity, the word “Google” was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary as a verb in 2006, meaning “to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the internet.” Google’s “iGoogle” variant site has shown to be a comparable staple on the 2.0 scene.

2. Flickr
With the advent of modern Web 2.0 content, one of the first forms of media to become the cornerstone of user-generated communities was photos. With the popularity of blogging, people began to not only want to share their experiences in text form, but in photo form as well. Hence, this form of visual expression became a popular aspect of the internet. Flickr introduced the ability to upload and share your photos with the world and receive feedback.

3. Facebook
In the natural order of technological evolution, there is always a “new” website that debuts as an advancement over an existing one. For MySpace, that natural evolution was Facebook. In recent years MySpace has become a breeding ground for social abuse, including stalking, child predation, sexuality, and other forms of depravity, including the overuse of cutesy sparkling animated GIFs. What Facebook offered was a straight-forward, minimalistic, accessible social network that cleaned up where MySpace had made a mess. With it’s heightened privacy protocols and lack of profile clutter, Facebook quickly became a popular utility for social networking.

4. MySpace
Speaking of MySpace… Rising from the popularity of other social networks like Melodramatic, LiveJournal, and Friendster, MySpace rose to prominence as the premier social network of the 21st century. It offered a bevy of new features and functionality that made it unique, including the ability to embed HTML code directly into your profile in order to customize it to your preferences. Eventually adding additional content such as Music, Videos, Personals, Forums, and Games, MySpace soon became a hub of community-generated content and activity. Like I said in number 3, Facebook, of course, was the natural evolution of the social networking craze started by MySpace.

5. YouTube
As a natural progression, the next form of media to find it’s place on the internet was video. Following in the footsteps of Flickr, YouTube offered users the ability to upload videos to the internet and share them with other users. You could even copy and paste the embed code into your website, such as a MySpace profile, which helped to also promote the customization of social networking systems.

6. Blogger
Today, Blogger is a part of the Google network of websites, but that wasn’t always the case. Blogger started out in 1999 as an early self-publishing blog utility, which, at the time, had little commercial application. However, with a brand new tool for creative expression now available to the public, Blogger took off like a rocket. With millions of blogs and a new one created every minute, Blogger is no doubt the trailblazer of the modern blogosphere.

7. WordPress
Wordpress, another self-publishing blog utility, is to the open source market what Blogger was to online hosted applications. Feeding off of the popularity of the blogosphere as perpetuated by services like Blogger, LiveJournal and Moveable Type, WordPress was introduced as a standalone package of files that could be installed onto a server by the FTP savvy and configured as a personal blog and website. With a recent rise of DIY-web designers and bloggers, this seemed like the next logical step for internet users who are becoming more adept at content management. With it’s simplicity, usability, and Web 2.0 functionality, WordPress hit Legendary status in no time.

8. Wikipedia
Nothing exemplifies “user-generated content” more than Wikipedia. As the encyclopedia anyone can edit, Wikipedia is a vast collection of information submitted, edited, and validated by the user.  As quite possibly the world’s largest collaborative effort, the site boasts more than 900,000 unique visits per day and is one of the most frequently referenced sites on the internet.

9. Yahoo!
Yahoo was one of the earlier frontrunners in the search engine game. They established themselves as a mighty force on the internet before Google had become the powerhouse it is today. However, credit is due to Yahoo as they pioneered the universal internet hub format that is commonly seen on sites such as MSN and iGoogle.

10. Digg
With so many blogs and news sites and online videos and other resources, wouldn’t it be nice if there was one place where we could have access to all of the content on the internet at once? Well, there is, and that place is Digg. So many websites offer up some form of content online, and with the widespread use of RSS feeds, it is easier than ever to create an automated hub to provide access to these sites. Users are able to submit links to the site for other users to view, and depending on the popularity of the link, it will either become accessible to even more users or disappear into obscurity. User-generated content has never been easier to share.

11. iLike
Without a doubt, the music-sharing revolution of the 21st century was initiated by the debut of the original Napster. It introduced users to the internet music trade and showed the world just how integral the internet is, and can be, to the music industry. Napster was obviously shut down, but it’s spirit lives on in the form of sites like iLike. iLike is a social networking site centered around music that epitomizes the idea of user-generated/maintained/organized content. Users can sample and download songs from upcoming as well as already established artists. iLike stands apart from the rest of the music sites because of its unique Web 2.0 functionality. Not only is it a standalone website, but it also has a Facebook app, an iTunes plugin, and other site/app addons that allow users to constantly stay connected with the world through music.

12. Amazon
The internet opened many doors, but none as profitable as online stores. Amazon represents an entire niche of websites in the genre of eCommerce. Internet sales have skyrocketed since the advent of online purchases, and have even become comparable to live sales in stores. Amazon is an arena of user-generated content and accessibility that gives people the ability to buy just about anything they want from one of the biggest commercial markets in the world.

13. eBay
Started out in 1995, eBay was Web 2.0 before the term “Web 2.0″ even existed. EBay introduced online auctions to the internet in a way that nobody had ever seen, and it caught on like wildfire. Today, the site boasts nearly 170 million users and is currently the premier auction site in the world. Since eBay also owns PayPal and Skype, you can consider this a triple threat.

14. Twitter
Twitter is a social network that takes the focus away from bulky profiles and side-features and provides an emphasized use of the communication qualities of modern networks. As a tool for trading “comments,” Twitter allows you to maintain flowing conversations and stay in touch with friends and random users.

15. Creative Commons
With the rise of user-generated content on the internet, it’s only natural that users would want to protect that content so as to prevent intellectual theft. Creative Commons provides just that. With many Web 2.0 elements in itself, CC allows users to claim “some rights reserved” for their projects and content. In an environment where legal copyrights often do not apply, it is refreshing to have an element of “Web 2.0 Protection” on the internet.

Rate This Article:  Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

As a designer, I recognize how difficult it can be to compose and style your own website or blog, especially if you don’t have any design skills or are just starting out. I was a beginner once, and it was definitely a learning experience to style and develop my own blogs.

One of the most valuable aspects of the internet is the instant availability of all kinds of helpful tools and information. Among these resources are the golden nuggets known as online  generators. If you need to create a quick and easy element for your website or template, these utilities offer automated functions for creating just what you’re looking for.

Be it images, text, layouts, or CSS, these generators have just the fix you need.

Web 2.0 Design

1. Web 2.0 Badge Generator
Badges are fun little accents to add to a Web 2.0 oriented site. Quite often, they are used to denote a “Beta” mode, but they can be used for much more. This generator allows you to select a badge style and customize the color, text, and size.


2. Web 2.0 Buttons
In just four steps, this generator offers you a variety of options for specifying the shape, color, text, and inclusive icons for a custom Web 2.0 button. It offers more than 50 fonts and a hefty variety of icons (or the option to upload your own).


3. Stripe Generator
As Web 2.0 has evolved into its own style of design, there are many elements that have emerged to represent it. Reflections, cutesy icons… and stripes. This utility offers up a variety of settings for creating and customizing a striped pattern that is just right for you.

4. Web 2.0 Text Generator 1
If you want to Web 2.0-ify your site and create a custom text logo in the slick, glossy 2.0 style, just input your text into this generator and create your custom logo. You have the options to add a reflection and even add in a “Beta” tag, for those sites in testing.


5. Web 2.0 Text Generator 2
Here’s another generator for creating custom Web 2.0 text logos. This one offers up a variety of options for adjusting your colors, text, and reflection. It even offers up the inclusion of little Web 2.0 icons, and allows you to generate the image in a DPI range of 72-1200 in gif, jpg, or png formats.

Image Generators

6. Tabs Generator
Here’s a useful generator for creating custom tabs for a tabbed menu. You simply adjust the sliders and select various options for your tabs and then download your customized selection.


7. Ribbon Generator 1
Similarly to the Web 2.0 badges, ribbons offer the same functionality in a different format. Ribbons display in the corner of the page, so it doesn’t interfere with the site content. You can slip in a text message to display a “Beta” tag, or even just a random quote or site description.


8. Ribbon Generator 2
heres another ribbon generator. This one has a couple of additional customization features, but generally offers the same functionality.


9. Favicon Generator
Have you ever seen the little icon that appears beside the address bar when visiting a particular website? That is a favicon, or ‘favorite icon,’ used to represent a website for bookmarking purposes. It can be difficult to create yourself, especially if you’re not able to save images in icon format. This generator solves that problem by converting any image you upload into icon format and giving it the proper filename of ‘favicon.ico.’ Just upload it to your root directory and bam, your site has its own favicon.


10. Online Button Generator 1
This generator features plenty of options for creating a simple, custom CSS button for your site. You simply specify what features you would like (font size, color, width, border, etc) and the generator does the rest. Simple and easy for the coding impaired.


11. Online Button Generator 2
This is a more advanced button generator that offers the customization and creation of button in various styles, such as rounded, square, tabs, and web 2.0, among others.


12. Loader Generator 1
Do you have a site with dynamic content that displays a loader while content is loading? Want to change your spinner, but don’t have the design skills to produce your own? Then download a custom one here. Select the style you like, specify your color preferences, generate the spinner and download the final product.


13. Loader Generator 2
Here’s another generator that offers up a selection of loadbars and spinners to choose from. Same deal, customize your options, generate, and download.


14. Gradient Generator 1
This is a fairly complex online generator used for creating a gradient image. There are a multitude of settings that you can adjust to get your gradient just right. It takes some playing around with, but for those without access to image editing programs, this is an easy way to produce a gradient.


15. Gradient Generator 2
This is a much more simplified gradient generator that offers fewer options and is easier to use. If you don’t want the complexity of the previous Gradient Maker, then this may be the better option.


16. Tartan Maker
If you’re Scottish, a lumberjack, or just plain like tartan patterning then this is the generator for you. It allows you to design and implement a tartan style background for your website. You have complete control over the angle, colors, and size of the bands in the patterning.

CSS Generators

17. CSS Generator
Here’s a basic custom CSS generator. Pretty straight forward, just input your custom values and the generator spits out the markup for download.


18. CSS Navigation
Here’s a generator that offers help in creating a custom CSS menu for your site. Just enter in the link and the url that it is to lead to, order them, specify color, size, etc, and there you have it. The output is a pretty simple vertical column navigation menu.


19. CSS Menu Maker
This is more of a hand-holding generator as they offer up a selection of free templates to choose from prior to your customization. Once you’ve selected a template, you have the options of inputting custom values into the generator. What you end up with is a free custom menu for your site.


20. Multi-level CSS Menu Generator (Suckerfish)
This is a pretty nifty app for generating a custom CSS menu with a mouseover dropdown using the Suckerfish code.

Layout Utilities

21. Javascript Popup Window Generator
Here’s a shortcut for creating popup windows. It’s really quite simple as long as you’re fluent with Javascript, but if not, then this one is a must have. Just answer a list of questions to customize the functionality and Voila! Instant popup windows.
22. WordPress Theme Generator
Here’s a utility that makes blog styling so much easier. For anyone that is familiar with WordPress, you know how much of an endeavor it can be to customize the layout and design of the blog. You can download a premade template, but who wants to be unoriginal? Check out this generator and design the blog of your dreams.


23. Email Form Generator
If you run a site that gets a lot of traffic and you want to have a way for users to easily contact you, then a contact form makes sense. Creating one, however, is much easier said than done. This contact form generator picks up the slack and does the work for you. Just specify what input fields you’d like to appear on the form, or use a premade template, and drop the generated code into your site.


24. Color Scheme Generator
Have trouble deciding on colors for your site? Didn’t take that Color Theory course back in freshman year? No problem, this color scheme generator has got you covered. Just select your preferred scheme style and your favorite color, and the generator will match the corresponding colors that match your choice.


25. Rounded Corners
If you like the look of rounded corners and want to apply it to your site without messing around in Photoshop or toiling to get the code right, then just use this generator. Input your numbers, like corner radius, colors, borders, margins, etc. Generate the code and simply copy and paste into your site.

Rate This Article:  Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

The thing about CSS is that it is capable of much more than just stylistic design. It has a degree of utile functionality as well, and I’m going to point out some tutorials that make use of some of the more practical applications of CSS when designing your site’s menus.

1. Mac Style Dock Menu Navigation Bar in CSS
For those of you Mac fanatics out there who love the smooth, animated functionality of the OSX Dock, then this is the menu for you! This tutorial makes use of a quick and easy jquery script to beautify the effect.

2. Hoverbox Menu
Similarly to the fisheye expansion effect of the Mac Dock, this menu creates an onHover blowup of the image link.

3. Position Property CSS Menu
This menu makes use of the CSS position property in order to create a rollover effect. Rather than replacing the image, it simply changes the position of the existing image, which has the rollover built in.

4. Flickr-like Horizontal Menu
Like the look and feel of the Flickr navigation menu? Well, so do we! This tutorial augments the CSS with a bit of Javascript to emulate the Flickr functionality.

5. Apple Style Rollover Menu
Here’s another one for the Mac fanatics. Like the look of the menu on the Apple website? Well, this tutorial shows you how to recreate it.

6. CSS Rollover Menu
More rollovers! This time around we are shown how to make a vertical menu with rollovers for both background color AND images. Another simple tutorial, but still very good to know.

7. Digg-like Navigation Bar
Like Flickr, Digg is another website that has a very appealing navigation design. This tutorial shows how to recreate the menu using only custom images and CSS.

8. Digg-like Vertical Dropdown Menu
Here’s another Digg recreation. This time around, we’re using a little bit of Javascript to create a handy drop down menu.

9. Tabbed Search Bar
We’ll take a break from the standard navigation menu to take a look at a search bar tutorial. In this, we see how to make custom tabs that will affect the functionality of our search. Pretty handy stuff.

10. Vertical Pop-out Menu
Pop out and fly away menus are very useful for creating an easily accessible navigation tool for websites with multiple pages. It reduces clutter on a nav menu, and creates a fun and appealing little interface to boot.

11. Horizontal Dropdown Menu
Here’s a tutorial for the ever-handy drop down menu. Mouse over, drop down. Doesn’t get much easier than that.

12. Tabbed Menu
This tutorial shows how to give the appearance of tabbed pages. The tab of the active page will give the appearance of being on top of the others. Works well with Ajax and iFrames to organize dynamic content.

13. Graphic Rollover Menu (no preload)
This is always fun. This one shows how to create a menu out of a single image, and then have each menu item rollover independently.

14. Menu with Hovering Tooltips
These aren’t your daddy’s tooltips. These are embedded rollovers that display tooltip-like information upon rollover. Can be customized to display anything you want.

15. Gettyimages Search Menu (with Scriptaculous)
This tutorial recreates the useful search options menu of Getty Images. The interface is beautified a bit with the use of Scriptaculous.

16. Nested Flyover Menu
Like I mentioned earlier, fly over menus are pretty handy. Especially when you have a fly over within a fly over. Nested menus save a ton of space.

17. CSS Menu with a dash of jQuery
This is another simple mouseover drop down menu, but this time it’s kicked up a notch with a jquery script for transition effects.

18. Suckerfish Dropdown Menu
This one is the end all of mouseover drop down menus. Suckerfish is an easily applied and customizable bit of code.

19. Nested Directional Menu
And finally, rounding out our list of CSS menu tutorials, is our final nested flyover. This one, however, includes details on how to change its direction. Tired of the standard left-to-right format? Then change it to right-to-left!

Rate This Article:  Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

Adobe Illustrator

If you know more Adobe Illustrator tutorials that dazzle then please leave a link of it in the comments section and we will try to feature them too. You may also like to subscribe to my RSS Feed to stay updated with the, latest articles and events at makecashnow.biz.

1. 3D Effects

1.1 3D Rings in Illustrator

Illustrator CS2’s 3D Effect is a powerful tool for creating three-dimensional objects – but it doesn’t give you a true 3D environment that lets your objects interact with each other. So what do you do if you want a vase with rings floating around it or intersecting wedding bands? With some careful grouping and layer arrangements, you can coax Illustrator into simulating a real 3D world.

1.2 Spin the Bottle with 3D Revolve

In this tutorial, you’ll see some of the ins and outs of the 3D Revolve Effect by rendering a three dimensional wine bottle with a label. This Effect allows you to revolve an outline profile of the right side of an object around a center axis to create a 3D object. Considering how simple the feature is to use, the results are really quite remarkable.

1.3 Adobe Illustrator in 3D

Let’s tap into some of the 3D features of Adobe Illustrator. Though Illustrator doesn’t offer a 3D environment like a true 3D application, it does give you the ability to create 3D objects that can be modified within a 3D space. Texture mapping and light sources similar to those found in the high-end 3D applications are also available.

1.4 3D Pill

With this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a 3D pill to cure your design headaches!

2. Basic Tutorials

2.1 Fancy Stars

Fancy stars aren’t just for Christmas! Learn all about blending options in this short but sweet tutorial, and try out some different shapes to get some cool variations on the same theme.

2.2 Folder Icon

You’ll learn how to make a folder icon with this tutorial.

2.3 Glassy Button

You have probably already seen this tutorial somewhere before or know how to make glassy button with Photoshop. But I’m going to show you here is done with Illustrator in 3 simple steps.

2.4 Soccer Practice Cone

With this tutorial you’ll get some practice using the Revolve effect and learn how to make a soccer practice cone!

2.5 Spirograph Effect

Remember the Spirograph? Relive your childhood memories with this simple yet stunning effect. Learn the “Ctrl+d” shortcut to save tons of time with repetitive tasks and try out some different brushes to get some cool variations on the same idea.

2.6 Web 2.0 Badge

Learn how to make a Web 2.0 badge to give away on your website with this tutorial.

3. Drawing Effects

3.1 The Anatomy of a Vector Illustration

The pattern of vector illustrations is best viewed or represented as a hierarchy or “tree”. The illustration itself would be at the top and its various parts would descend below it.

3.2 Creative Arabic Calligraphy in Adobe Illustrator

This tutorial will guide you on how to draw creative Arabic fonts in Adobe Illustrator, this type of calligraphy is called “Free Calligraphy” as it is not “restricted” to a strictly set of rules on how the letters should be drawn and connected as with other forms of Arabic Calligraphy.

3.3 Create a Blissful Vector Scene

Follow this Adobe Illustrator tutorial through the process of creating your own simple vector scene form scratch.

3.4 Make a Stylized Christmas Tree in Illustrator

In this tutorial, I will show you how you can quickly make a stylized Christmas tree in Illustrator, you can decorate it as the way you like & maybe you can use it as a Christmas card to send it to your friends & beloved!

3.5 Halloween Pumpkin

Let’s have some fun. Learn how to draw a realistic Halloween pumpkin in Illustrator so you can attach to your ecard or email.

3.6 Skull Tattoo

In this tutorial you will learn about the Pen Tool, pathfinders, and transforming objects while making a fairly basic but cool looking skull tattoo. Once that’s done, all that’s left to do is add it to a photo of your arm to make sure it looks good, and then go to the tattoo artist to get it done for real. Simple!

4. Logo Design

4.1 Creating Stylish Business Logo with Techie Background

This tutorial will show you how to create a stylish business logo with techie background in Adobe Illustrator.

4.2 Create a Logo in Illustrator 8.0

This tutorial will show you how to create type on the top and bottom of the same circle and how to slice the circle.

4.3 Logo Design in Adobe Illustrator

In this tutorial you will learn to illustrate some of the process of logo design using Adobe Illustrator. However, this is not so much a tutorial on the use of Adobe Illustrator as it is a way to show you one method of the “process” of refining an image to a corporate identity (logo) or stylized illustration. The basic process here could be applied to any application.

4.4 Xbox 360 Logo

This tutorial shows you, how to make Xbox logo using Adobe Illustrator.

4.5 Zune Logo

This tutorial shows you, how to make Zune logo using Adobe Illustrator.

5. Photo Effects

5.1 Adobe Bridge Icon

This tutorial will show you how to replicate the Adobe Bridge icon in Illustrator CS2 using the same techniques as the Photoshop Splash Page Tutorial.

5.2 3D Objects and Transparencies to Make a Vector Cola Bottle Design

In this tutorial, we’ll be taking those skills up a notch and discussing how Illustrator deals with transparency in 3D objects. In just a few steps you’ll have created a plastic cola bottle, which is ideally suited for those of you involved in product marketing.

5.3 Envelope Distort

In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Illustrator CS Envelope Distort tool to make a trendy fashion ad.

6. Text Effects

6.1 Old School Type – Line Gradients

The process for creating the base logo is not included in this tutorial. Instead, we are going to take the base logo and add that cool “line gradient” effect that you see inside the actual letters. This gives the text an old-school or vintage feel to it. This look is prevalent in wood engraving and sign lettering. You can do this effect with any typeface or font because the principle is the same.

6.2 Stylish Wave Text Effect

This tutorial shows you how to make a stylish wave text effect using Adobe Illustrator.

6.3 Creating an Environmentally Friendly Green Type Treatment

In the following Illustrator tutorial, you will learn how to create a Green type treatment. It works great for logos and other design elements.

6.4 Create a Swirly Type Treatment

In this Illustrator tutorial you will learn how to create a swirly type treatment. With a free font, some brushes, and gradients you can easily create this type treatment. Moreover, you can apply these techniques to other type treatments, logos, and illustrations as well.

6.5 Vibrant 3D Pixel Type Treatment

In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a fun 3D pixel font type treatment. Using a free font, gradients, and Illustrator 3D filter, you will easily create a type treatment that you can apply to many other fonts.

7. Creative Graphics Design

7.1 Super Cool Abstract Vectors in Illustrator and Photoshop

This tutorial will show you how to design a Cool Abstract Vectors in Illustrator and Photoshop.

7.2 Cool Vector Flower

This tutorial will show you how to design a Cool Vector Flower.

7.3 Fine Line Design

This tutorial will show you how to design a Fine Line Design.

7.4 Flare Tool Fun – Illustrator Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to have fun with the Flare Tool.

7.5 Font Flowers

This is an easy and fun trick you can use in Illustrator to create flowers out of letters. You can use any fonts and any colors. The following examples are made from the letters in my name SYDNEY.

7.6 Create a Glowing Abstract Light Vector Graphic

In the following tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a glowing light abstract vector graphic. The great thing about this tutorial is it doesn’t use any raster effects. The final illustration is all vector! In this tutorial, you’ll utilize blends, different blend modes, and gradient meshes. Moreover, these techniques are real easy to apply to other illustrations.

7.7 Make a Fairy-Tale Inspired Magical Hand Shaped Vine

In this tutorial, you’ll see the intermediate to advanced Adobe Illustrator artist how to make a fairy-tale inspired magical vine that is shaped like a hand. You should have a basic understanding of Adobe Illustrator tools before you begin this tutorial.

7.8 Stylish Vector Flower

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to make Stylish Vector Flower using Adobe Illustrator.

7.9 Swirly curls in Adobe Illustrator

This tutorial shows you how to make swirly curls in Adobe Illustrator.

7.10 Create A Water Texture

It is starting to warm up oustide, so it is only fitting I start with wading water, like in a pool. It is a relatively quick and easy technique using Illustrator’s Effects, Simplify, Offset Path and some bright colors.

8. Other Tutorials

8.1 Turn a Boring Bar Graph into a 3D Masterpiece

In this tutorial, you’ll learn to plot an accurate bar graph using Adobe Illustrator’s Graph Tool. We’ll also render the graph to give it additional visual appeal. Successful completion of this tutorial requires an intermediate knowledge of Illustrators tools.

8.2 Create a Vector Film Slate Icon

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a vector film slate icon. The tutorial uses some basic shapes, some gradients, and even a blend. Moreover, you can easily customize this tutorial with your own logo or typography.

8.3 How to Create a Vector iMac Graphic in Illustrator

Follow this Adobe Illustrator walk through to create a vector based reproduction of the popular Apple iMac computer. Using simple shapes and tools that can then be put into practice to create further icon style images.

8.4 Keyboard Shortcuts For The Pen

Usually, when first learning the software, the novice will go to the tool palette to switch back and forth between the pen and other tools. This is very time consuming and there are provisions in the software to switch tools without having to select them from the tool palette.

8.5 Tasty Tentacles Brush

The simple brush we are going to make can be used for many basic shapes: tentacles, flames, tribal tattoos, trees… ummm… spooky monster tongues?

8.6 Creating a Quick and Easy Glass Bowl in Illustrator

With just a circle, a few ovals and the Inner Glow effect, you can create a quick and very useful glass bowl image in Illustrator. And once you master this technique, it can be easily adapted for many different uses.

8.7 Complicate Orb Icon

This will be the last tutorial of creating Icon from me. This tutorial will teach you doing more complicate button icon or Orb effect Icon using Illustrator.

8.8 Business Coupon Design – Illustrator Tutorial

Make a basic coupon for an electronics company. An easy task with Illustrator. This tutorial is intended for beginners and teaches a lot of basic skills.

8.9 How to Make Festive Vector Gift Boxes

Get ready for the holiday season with this festive gift box tutorial. Successful completion of this tutorial requires a solid understanding of Adobe Illustrator’s tools as this advanced tutorial moves at a quick pace. We’ll be working with Illustrators 3D tools, Brushes, Gradients, and Blurs to create these holiday presents.

8.10 Fireworks for New Year

Here is a quick tutorial to help you create a 2009 Happy New Year card. You will learn how to create realistic vector fireworks in this tutorial. The final fireworks look simple yet elegant, perfect for sending to your clients.

8.11 How to Design a Media Player with Vector Tools

In this tutorial, we’ll be using basic Illustrator tools to create a Media Player design. This is an excellent tutorial for beginners to Illustrator, as it’s mostly creating and manipulating basic shapes to arrive at a polished final result.

8.12 How to Make Realistic Skate Wheels in Illustrator

Using Illustrator’s 3D Revolve tool, we will create a set of realistic skateboard wheels and map our own artwork on the wheel. We will cover advanced techniques, such as using the revolve tool, preparing the artwork, mapping it to the 3D surfaces, and some cool tricks for adding the finishing touches.

8.13 Create a Pulsing Poster with a Vinyl Record and Grunge Type

In this tutorial, we’ll explain how to create a vinyl record with blends and opacity masks. We’ll also create some funky pulsing elements, grunge typography, and put it together into a unique poster design.

8.14 Realistic Curtain

This lesson assumes that you already have a basic understanding on how the gradient mesh works. Therefore, we will move on to create a realistic curtain using the gradient mesh.

8.15 Design Gift Boxes Using Illustrator’s 3D Tools

Quickly make wrapped and unwrapped gift boxes using Illustrator’s built-in 3D Extrude & Bevel effect. Learn how to make a fully editable 3D ribbon and masked 3D typography. Also, we’ll be creating sparkles using Symbol Tools.

8.16 How to Make a Delicious Vector Orange in 9 Decisive Steps

Learn how to create a semi-realistic vector orange with simple shapes, tools, and multiple effects. This tutorial is possible for a beginner to complete, though is aimed at an intermediate Illustrator user.

8.17 How to Create Your Own Vector Cartoon Character

This awesome tutorial shows you how to easily create your own cartoon character using Adobe Illustrator.

8.18 Monster Character

This awesome tutorial shows you how to easily create your own cartoon monster using Adobe Illustrator.

8.19 Trendy Geometric Lines Design

This awesome tutorial shows you how to easily create trendy geometric line design using Adobe Illustrator.

8.20 Fun Film Design

With a little experimentation and imagination, you can use tools in not-so-obvious ways to create really interesting and seemingly complex effects. In this tutorial, we’ll use a number of basic shapes and a photo to create a simple filmstrip. Then we’ll map that art to a 3D shape that we’ll create and manipulate entirely in Adobe Illustrator.

8.21 Trendy Circles

This awesome tutorial shows you how to easily create trendy geometric circles using Adobe Illustrator.

Rate This Article:  Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

In the 20th century, people got inspired to write their own articles and diaries online. This phenomenon is now been referred to as blogging.Currently, there are news blogs, tech blogs, sex blogs, commentary blogs, drug blogs and other teenage blogs. The news and documentary blogs are sites that consist of links and posted arguments and ideas.

You can create your own blog by using blog hosting websites or through the use of blogging software. Creating blog pages is also much easier than a conventional website. It has features that can let a person create a website blog even if he or she has little or no knowledge about html or other formats used to create a website.

You can easily post a topic in blogs and can also be easily updated. Here is what a blog typically consist of.The title or headline of the post, the body or the main content of the post, a message box for the comments of the readers, a link or URL of the article, and the date of when the post was published in the blog.

You can also add categories for subjects that the post discusses, and a link to other websites that refer to the post.You can also create a blog in a journal format where you can keep all your personal everyday activities in the internet. You can restrict on who can and who cannot read your blogs by creating a sign in page where it will require a user name and password from the reader.

A blog can also be used to make extra money online by adding some affiliate program or an Adsense program in your blogging web page.You can create and maintain your own blog by using different systems. There are many software available in the market that enables you to create, maintain and even delete your own blogs.

Technical specialties and skills, not necessary. Publishing freedom, an advantage. All that is needed is for you to have a witty mind, a desire to share ideas and part of your story, and a bit of knowledge to toggle into the internet. Grammatical errors are welcome. No editors and publishing companies to please. Journalism without rules or guidelines to follow and what is best is that readers could post a comment or be inspired to write one too.

Maintaining your blog is also important to keep readers loyal and interested in reading your blogs. There are blogging software that has features that lets you easily update and maintain your blogging website.

A friend of mine is a blogger. She would entertain herself by posting blogs on her web page. She told me that blogging is an advantage for her to speak up to the world of the things that is keeping her shut. And I quote, I am an internet junkie. I am not a big fan of journalism or any kind of writing.But it all changed when the blogging fever entered internet society. I appreciated it more when I felt everything that’s written are real and not just a compulsory decoy to deliver information. Right then, I became a part of a bigger picture.

Comments, A comments box should be included in your blog software.This keeps the readers happy because it allows them to participate in the topic. This is where they post comments and suggestions regarding your article.Web based.This is very obvious. You are making a blog to let others read about it in the internet.You want your blogging software to instantly make your blogs and updates available online.

Finally, list your blog to popular blog directories. Some of these directories can charge you a listing fee while some offers it free. It is fine to pay for it since it will largely benefit your blog.These steps can guide you through your blog making. It is hoped that this article provided significant ideas and information about blogging. With this technology, you can now have the power to tell your stories and express yourself.

Rate This Article: Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a tried method that increases a web site’s rank in the search results. But unknown to many, the technique is not determined by a good web site. Instead, a web site’s ranking is dependent on the proper SEO techniques.

The design and development of a web site entails a great deal of hard work and brainstorming. The content, design, coding and optimization strategies go a long way in making a web site receive plenty of hits. These tasks are an integral part of the web page design process.

A good web site can give an organization an edge over its competition. This is because a web site is the most important strategic arm of an organization. It is a profit-generating mechanism from a business perspective.

A capable web site engineer must comply with a checklist of requirements and abide by certain operating procedures. These consist of background information, page layout and design, browser compatibility, navigation, color and graphics, multimedia, content presentation, functionality, accessibility and a lot more. One must likewise consider usage principles that include equitable use, flexibility in use and ease of use.

In picking a good web design, here are some advices to follow. Know that the term accessibility does not refer to the quality of the content but how it is presented. The idea is not to alter or simplify what’s there but to make it reachable to more users.

In principle, graphic design is a visual aspect. When thinking about the look and feel of web applications, one must remember that appearance is second only to accessibility. But an accessible web site shouldn’t be messy at all. Use web-tracking software package to get traffic data. Get to know how many users abandon a page after one impression – most likely an instance where usability can be improved. It’s best to champion the cause for accessibility if the statistics reveal a worthy debate.

Rate This Article: Note: There is a rating embedded within this post, please visit this post to rate it.