Archive for September, 2011

25 Catching Websites with Parallax Scrolling

Parallax effect may not sound like something familiar to you, but believe us – you know what it is and you know it very well. The good old video games where games had moving background and static foreground (or on the contrary) were the first to have used parallax. Nowadays static websites can boast with some cool effects that add dynamics and enliven website navigation with original solutions like parallax. There are many different ways of how you can use this effect on your website. For example the classical static background with horizontally of vertically moving foreground, the in-depth pseudo 3D effects, dancing elements of the menu – there are no limits for your imagination. Here is a collection of 25 websites with parallax scrolling and if you want to surprise your visitors with interesting browsing experience this is a right place to look for good examples. Please don’t forget that parallax effect is a very unusual effect, and you shouldn’t apply it everywhere you want. So use it wisely, because visitors might be distracted with the non-standard navigation ( this may even cause some troubles with conversion rates etc). The perfect area to use parallax is web design studio website and personal web blogs where there can never be too much of creativity!

BenTheBodyguard

25 Catching Websites with Parallax Scrolling

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Unfold

25 Catching Websites with Parallax Scrolling

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Iutopi

25 Catching Websites with Parallax Scrolling
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20 Extended Package Website Templates – Toplist Showcase

We bring you the best templates for your site, so that you could have a bunch of free time to do other stuff than designing templates! Extended Package Website Templates that were recently added to our category list are the solution you might be highly interested in. Take a look!

The most important thing about the template of this category is that they include a whole set of extra useful elements in addition to what you normally receive within the download package. Among other things, the extended package templates contain scripts that are optimized for each particular template (including the jQuery scripts for sliders, galleries and so on); bonus pages as well as other awesome functionalities – all in a bundle. The Extended Package design category embraces JS animated full site templates, CSS full site Flash CS3 designs, Flash animated website templates and more. Of course the HTML versions of these templates are done in pure HTML5/CSS3. And you know what else is awesome about them? They’re all priced at around $65 – that’s just about the price of average TemplateMonster template, so we don’t charge any additional fees for the awesome features included in these templates.

You don’t have to worry about complete website template design because it is all ready for you right here. All Extended Package template designs are up top to serve you and you can use them as a basis for fast website development! With each purchase you get advanced editing options:

  • pages:
  • under construction page;
  • intro page;
  • 404 page;
  • layouts:
  • full-width;
  • two columns;
  • three columns;
  • four colums;
  • multi column 1;
  • multi column 2;
  • typography:
  • H1-H6 headings;
  • image aligned left & right;
  • dropcap;
  • table styling;
  • other elements styling;
  • button links;
  • styling lists;
  • box styles;
  • interactive elements:
  • intro page;
  • coin slider;
  • kwicks slider;
  • functional slider;
  • simple gallery;
  • advanced gallery;
  • miscellaneous:
  • tootips;
  • tabs;
  • SlideDown elements;
  • accordion;
  • absolute position SlideDown;
  • Twitter.

To view how it all works please see a live demo of any of the Extended Package website templates and click on the ‘Advanced editing’ button on the right.

20 Extended Package Website Templates   Toplist Showcase

With around 100 templates and growing, finding the web design that best suits your style couldn’t be easier. Feel free to search our Extended Package Templates category and choose from these solid website templates design that will help you with your website. Now go ahead and browse the list we’ve compiled for you. You may as well check out the continuation of our picks for other best 20 Extended Package Templates.

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Pal Consult Co. CSS Full Site Flash CS3 Template

20 Extended Package Website Templates   Toplist Showcase

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5 Free Email Marketing Plugins for Your WordPress Blog

There is a common opinion that email marketing is mostly used by big companies that can afford it. This results in a wrongful opinion that if you are running a small blog it will be quite difficult for you to use this marketing technique. But in reality technology these days allows you to integrate virtually anything you want into your WordPress blog, and WordPress developers demonstrate the amazing flexibility of this CMS platform. Here are most popular newsletter plugins that will help you to easily manage email marketing campaigns without any problems. Actually it wasn’t that easy to find really powerful and reliable pieces of software, but these 5 plugins that we’ve chosen really do work and really are worth being used for email marketing on your WordPress blog. Having installed any of these WordPress newsletter plugins you’ll receive a great tool with a bunch of useful features allowing you to manage every step of your email marketing campaign starting from the process of the subscription to the moments of creating different mailing lists etc. We strongly recommend you to try at least two or three of these email marketing plugins for WordPress because each of these has its own interesting features that might be useful for you.

1. Newsletter

Newsletter plugin offers the widest range of options so far and is considered to be the most popular software in the field of email marketing tools for WordPress. Newsletter offers full set of tools including subscription widget, comfortable plugin interface with huge list of custom settings for the newsletter and subscribers. Also you can track down your marketing results via statistics tool available with this plugin.

Price: Free

5 Free Email Marketing Plugins for Your WordPress Blog

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2. Newsletter Plugin

The following WordPress newsletter plugin offers a flexible system of creating and storing database of email subscribers on your website. You can easily create custom types of emails by using 15 custom fields, textboxes/radioboxes fields and many other useful options. This plugins is compatible with external newsletter software. It means that subscribers list can be automatically synchronized with any third party service.

Price: Free

5 Free Email Marketing Plugins for Your WordPress Blog

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Introduction to Defensive Web Design

The Bliss Of Defensive Design

When we say “defensive” we generally mean something protective. Defensive design is also known as contingency design and deals with potential errors and difficulties that users may encounter while working with websites or software interfaces. The main goal is minimizing the chances of the audience drain because of stupid minor mistakes we see on websites every day. This is all about improving help sections, search and contact forms, error messages and other crisis points. Everything that makes your website joyful but not stressful!

After analyzing the users behavior on your website you may often notice that people are using some website options not the way you thought they were supposed to. Besides, they can mistype their personal info which will put them in a middle of dead end – and they will eventually abandon your website. And it’s not necessarily their fault. Defensive design is the younger brother of user-friendliness. It is aimed at eliminating dead ends in case of errors and making users enjoy staying on your web page. Sounds pretty simple, huh?

 Introduction to Defensive Web Design

Humans make errors, systems have glitches, servers can be down, connections can be slow – you should consider all this when developing a project. If done correctly, it all can be minimized and accommodated. In healthcare it’s important to locate the disease before it causes you problems. Allowing to check on errors, defensive design is virtually the same story. It improves your traffic quality and boosts your site attendance.

Take Care of Slow Connections

Many users would rather load sites from their mobile devices and smart phones than from desktops. A great amount of people use wireless connections that are normally faster but are not always reliable. So you should think about the possible slow connections and the ways to work with them.

You may easily resolve this issue by optimizing the images, navigation and content and other graphical elements on the websites that normally have high quality graphics. Try to eliminate Flash or other specific content that requires plug-ins. The best option would be creating the cut down version of the site. It is not so money- and time-consuming as you might think. Still it helps to lure more people with mobile devices to your internet pages. Using multi-purpose code, less images and texts will be perfect for low-speed connection.

The problem lays often is designers themselves who want to implement all features imaginable into the layouts they create: special options, players, flash animations and other slow-loading elements. Be careful and think about the consequences of using extra widgets.

You may easily find mobile website templates on the net which even speed up the task even more.

Use Inline And Contextual Help

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Free Website Template with Slideshow for Cooking Site

Designers all over the world like inspirational things that can push their creativity up and help bring their cool ideas into reality. Today we’d like to present you such a creative freebie – Free Website Template with Slideshow for Cooking Site that is ideal for starting your own cooking project.

We know that what you get for free can never be too good, and that’s why we go on producing high-quality goodies for your design needs. In our collection of free stuff you can always find the items you are looking for to create the attractive professional online project. So, this time you are welcome to try this free website template with catchy background image and effective slideshow on the front page. It is worked out according to the latest trends of web design, and you can clearly see it from this free template live demo. Enhance your creativity and create your own cool designs with our free stuff!

Free Website Template with Slideshow for Cooking Site:

Free Website Template with Slideshow for Cooking Site

As you remember, you can get this free website template in two ways: with PSD source files included and without them. If you need only HTML source files, download them from this post using the link below. To get the full package with PSD source files included visit the TemplateMonster Free Website Template with Slideshow for Cooking Site download page and type an email address that you want the free template package to be delivered to (make sure to uncheck the newsletter subscription checkbox in case you’re already subscribed). Feel free to use this template for your business, but you are not allowed to resell it as a template.

Download Free Website Template with Slideshow for Cooking Site with PSD files (80,5MB)
Download Free Website Template with Slideshow for Cooking Site without PSD (1,78MB)

IMPORTANT NOTICE: TemplateMonster does not provide support services on free templates – including this one. We only provide support for the products that are being purchased from TemplateMonster. Our free templates are produced according to the latest web standards and we’ve been trying to make the process of working with them as easy as possible, so for people with minimum web development experience it should be easy to work with them. However, if you don’t have any experience, we recommend you to refer to the tutorials or community forums on how to work with platforms that each respective template is made with, or to hire someone to do the job for you.

Fresh Portion of CSS3 Tutorials from 2011

There can never be too much of CSS3 goodies! Due to the flexibility of CSS3 and its absolutely unbeaten effectiveness, this technology continues to conquer new spheres of web development. Frankly speaking you can build almost anything for your website just by using CSS3 alone or by combining it with HTMl5 and jQuery. It has become a good tradition of our blog to share some awesome CSS3 tutorials with you guys. Today is the day when the new portion of these delicious tutorials arrives. We’ve collected the most interesting CSS3 tutorials from 2011 and these sources cover various ranges of topics. This splendid collection of CSS3 tutorials of 2011 will help you easily complete such significant tasks as creating spectacular animations, brilliant navigation menus and many more. It looks like CSS3 developers are planning to make their sweet child an ultimate soldier, but we totally don’t mind that. Quite a contrary – we would love to see more great things that you can do with the help of CSS3.

1. Creating a PHP and CSS3 Powered About Page

Fresh Portion of CSS3 Tutorials from 2011

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2. Google Plus Style Animations with Jquery and CSS3

Fresh Portion of CSS3 Tutorials from 2011

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‘Roy G. Biv’ Color Scale Website Designs Showcase

Roy G. Biv Color Scale Website Designs ShowcaseWhat are you thinking about when looking at the rainbow? Does it trigger a varied and colorful world in your mind? Well, rainbows are beautiful, no doubt about that, so many creative processes tend to include rainbow colors and so many web designers abundantly use them everywhere. No wonder, we often seek out the brightest as a natural reflex to the visual color stimulus. Today therefore we are going to be covering the color-wheel website designs.

The showcase will include the primary colors (red, blue, and yellow) and secondary ones (orange, green, and purple), which on the spectrum are half way between the three primary colors and are made by combining two of them. Since we are on the topic of rainbow colors, we can now start our color-wheel review and cover these different color-based websites.

But first, we know that there are seven colors of the rainbow. Many of us have resorted to using some little tricks to jog our memory concerning the order of these basic seven colors. Remember the phrase that we were taught as a child in order to recall of the rainbow colors? ‘Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain’ – this mnemonic is for sure the most popular way of learning the colors of the spectrum. Yet did you know there are some alternatives to this phrase, for example

  • ‘Run off You Girls – Boys in View!’ or
  • ‘Roll out Your Guinness, Boys, in Vats.’

Which was the one you were remembering, huh?

Now memory tricks aside, we’re back with our showcase. Today’s digital world needs some bold pieces of color on the web, don’t you agree? Well, for this reason we’ve gone on a massive search and compiled a collection of about 50 designs (including TemplateMonster’s templates) that use certain rainbow colors heavily in their layouts. With that being done, they just make a good use of color branding and turn their graphics from a flat and lifeless to an engaging piece of work. Have a browse and let us know what are your favorite designs and why you tend to like certain rainbow colors.

That’s gonna be a BIG color journey!

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Intensityintencities.ca

Roy G. Biv Color Scale Website Designs Showcase

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Toyny.com

Roy G. Biv Color Scale Website Designs Showcase

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Agathagroup.com.co

Roy G. Biv Color Scale Website Designs Showcase

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Netliferesearch.com

Roy G. Biv Color Scale Website Designs Showcase

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Established1986.com

Roy G. Biv Color Scale Website Designs Showcase

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Wilsonminer.com

Roy G. Biv Color Scale Website Designs Showcase

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Better Facebook Fan Page Design Guide

Today we’ll touch upon the key aspects of making a successful Facebook fan page. It’s all about an air of transparency, openness and direct communication. So it should in no way look like an advertising platform. All website owners, without exception, are interested in increasing their web presence and conversion, which is attainable due to the new and devoted customers they get from Facebook pages.

Depending on the results you need to obtain from your target audience, you may choose one of three major ways of fan page presentations. You will find Reveal tabs, Facebook stores and Facebook info sites among Facebook fan pages.

Reveal Tab

Reveal tab looks like a welcome page with an appeal to “like” and a minimum of additional info. The hidden content is shown up only after you “like” the page. The main goal of such a page is converting the maximum amount of visitors into “likes”. If you find it efficient for your goals, create a welcome page with an appealing custom graphic calling for the “like” action and some intriguing information about why the visitor actually need to click the “like” button. Reveal Page should deliver marketing message. The welcome page like this is aimed at generating more ‘likes’. As soon as someone ‘likes’ the page he/she is being redirected to a “thank you” page. This page may list optional modules for enhanced functionality.

Better Facebook Fan Page Design Guide

Simple design, clear marketing message and instructions. Besides, you will get a coupon for a FREE taco right after you click the “like” button. A reveal tab like this will quickly gain popularity and lure more fans!

Here are several other examples of nice, eye-catching reveal tabs:

Better Facebook Fan Page Design Guide

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Better Facebook Fan Page Design Guide

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Better Facebook Fan Page Design Guide

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Better Facebook Fan Page Design Guide

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Better Facebook Fan Page Design Guide

Therefore, we’d like to mark out a few tips about a reveal tab usage:

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Joomla 1.7 Templates – Top 20 Fresh Ones from TemplateMonster

Let the whole world know about you by seeing your own personal Joomla website. Now is the great news. Since Joomla templates is one of TemplateMonster’s most popular product types, now the number of versatile Joomla 1.7 Templates is also out for the latest version of Joomla. Our Joomla 1.7 templates are designed to give you maximum control over the appearance of your site, plus having them you can take full advantage of the updated Joomla core features.

With every Joomla 1.7 Template that you buy from TemplateMonster you also get one year of free unlimited hosting and a free domain registration from JustHost. What’s even more, we offer a good archive of free tutorials and help info, plus you’ll get 24/7 free support via Live chat, phone support or tickets system. Make sure even if you’re still new to Joomla, you’ll manage to create a really nice website for your company. In case there’ll be some problems in setting up the template contact our support team, and they’ll be glad to help. TemplateMonster will support you till your issue is completely resolved.

There’s also much questioning on how to convert a website or any other template into a fully working Joomla 1.7 template. Those who are interested in easily updating to Joomla 1.7 are welcome to read the following instructions and step by step tutorials:

When you modify the template, you’ll probably want to add some extensions to make the design elements better relate to your project’s focus. Check out the directory of Joomla 1.7 extensions, right now there are about 2000 add-ons and modules serving to the Joomla community.

If you need to find Joomla designs for other major Joomla releases, we invite you to see the full assortment of our Joomla Templates. TemplateMonster offers all versions of Joomla (1.5, 1.6, and 1.7) as well as Joomla templates made with various technologies (such as Flash or jQuery, for example). With different subcategories and an enhanced search options, we made it easy for you to find a suitable design for your Joomla based website. So, come and get them! And look through the Joomla 1.7 Templates listed below – depending on the category they were designed for, each of them was built to express your individuality.

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Pure Web

Joomla 1.7 Templates   Top 20 Fresh Ones from TemplateMonster

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Semioli

Joomla 1.7 Templates   Top 20 Fresh Ones from TemplateMonster

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Free Full JS Website Template. Photography

And here comes the next freebie of the month with the changing background image feature. This time-saving solution is worked out for your photography projects where you can easily share your creative output. So, let’s see the list of features that make this Free Full JS Website Template for Photography website perfect for starting your online business.

As we have already mentioned, this theme features 3 changing backgrounds – a nice opportunity to put the most effective photos from your portfolio in the focus of attention. Black and white color palette plays a role of the soft background and helps put accents on your works and doesn’t overshadow them. Well-done gallery is another point that speaks for the professional execution of this free website template. The next feature that can be interesting for you is the animation that is done in JavaScript. Now, when you know everything about this theme, try its free template live demo and feel free to start your own successful photography project!

Free Full JS Website Template for Photography website:

Free Full JS Website Template. Photography

Feel free to get this free website template in two ways: with PSD source files included and without them. Follow the link below and download HTML source files. To download this theme with PSD source files, visit the Free Full JS Website Template for Photography website download page at TemplateMonster and type an email address that you want the free template package to be delivered to (don’t forget to uncheck the newsletter subscription checkbox in case you’re already subscribed, otherwise you may not be able to download the zip file). Feel free to use this template for your business, but you cannot resell it as a template.

Download Free Full JS Website Template for Photography website with PSD files (88,7 MB)
Download Free Full JS Website Template for Photography website without PSD (5,68 MB)

IMPORTANT NOTICE: TemplateMonster does not provide support services on free templates – including this one. We only provide support for the products that are being purchased from TemplateMonster. Our free templates are produced according to the latest web standards and we’ve been trying to make the process of working with them as easy as possible, so for people with minimum web development experience it should be easy to work with them. However, if you don’t have any experience, we recommend you to refer to the tutorials or community forums on how to work with platforms that each respective template is made with, or to hire someone to do the job for you.