dotCommerce: Attention-grabbing ecommerce web design trends are constantly evolving and adapting to new ways of communication like smart phones, tablets and netbooks. Depending on the purpose and requirements, basic design elements like typography, navigation and colour schemes vary from site to site but all of them have functionality in common.
web design
Ecommerce Web Design: Six Hot Trends
Head-turning ecommerce web design is pivotal for the success of your online store as attention-grabbing pages publicise your brand. Just like any other creative sphere, web design is a fickle industry that constantly undergoes changes. With the development of new tools like HTML5 and CSS3, new design trends start to take off. Below there are six popular trends in creative web design that can be incorporated into your own web page.
What to Consider When Designing Your New Website
An active online presence is a necessity for most every company, but that presence must also be complimented with an eye-catching and user-friendly design. When you’ve decided that it’s time to give your website a face-lift, take a step back and answer a few questions before approaching web design firms.
You must first determine why you’ve chosen to redesign your website. Is the design outdated? Is it uninviting? Is it packed with Flash® (that hinders the viewing experience on an iPhone)? Would you like it to be more search engine friendly?
The Net Impact Partner with Adobe Business Catalyst
The Net Impact, a St. Louis based online interactive agency, announces their partnership with Adobe Business Catalyst. Adobe Business Catalyst is a hosted application that enables web designers and Internet marketers to deliver effective online business solutions.
Book to customize the appearance of your Moodle theme
Packt is pleased to announce a new book on Moodle that is aimed at helping users create a Moodle Theme right from the graphic design stage to the finished Moodle Theme. Written by Paul James Gadsdon, this book will offer design examples to administrators, designers or teachers and help them create appropriate themes for different student age groups and styles.
Moodle is a highly extensible virtual learning environment and is used to deliver online teaching and training materials. Theming is one of the main features of Moodle that can be used to customize your online courses and make them look exactly how you want them to.
Users will first learn the concept of Moodle themes and how they work. They will then learn how to create themes for Moodle, the tools that are required for the job, and how to download new themes from various resources on the Internet. Along with the creation of themes, they will also be shown how to choose and change an existing Moodle theme, and test the changes they have made.
Project management: Designer versus Programmer
It’s ShowTime again, the project manager looks grim, the programmer struts in “I’m gonna break ya” … the designer stares him down, the bell rings… smackdown, and its only morning tea break!
If your design studio resembles a scene from wrestlemania, take heart, you’re not alone! There is mortal combat out there between two creative forces butting heads over the creation of an online masterpiece. The Project manager aka “the Ref” is breaking into a sweat over burgeoning budgets, wasted time and a design project that looks light-years from delivery.
The two parties that pay for the showdown, the client and the design studio owner, are stuck in the audience looking on wringing hands, the anxiety levels are rising. The problem is that once the cycle gets going it’s hard to stop, the lateness of delivery looks bad to the client, upcoming projects get pushed back to a later starting date. Clients complain and do your business untold damage as your reputation wavers. Stress levels peak at all levels of your business, even the work experience kid is having a crap time, productivity and staff moral are non-existent, and the boss is sweaty palmed and manic. Profits dry up, no movie night this month for the staff, hey that’s cool, they hate each other anyway.
So why the opposition?
Does your website still work?
South Carolina News: "These days, everybody knows they need a Web site and most companies have one. But they don’t always know how to get the most out of it. In other words they may have a Web site, but it may not work very well."
Site2You CMS: An Online Application for Website Management
Effective and affordable website management is one of the most important objectives of the up-to-date business. Site2You.com provides business owners with a professional website building system for successful website administration. It’s an online website builder which offers a huge collection of premium designed website turnkeys for all types of businesses.
Now it’s so easy to create an advanced website without hiring web designers and developers. Site2You web building application is most usable and user-friendly. All tools and capabilities are positioned they way to be intuitively found by users. Simple drag-and-drop interface and WYSIWYG environment enable to create and maintain websites quickly and efficiently. Featured Site2You e-turnkey is fully editable and can be tailored to the needs of any kind of business activity.
Website builder provides a wide range of widgets that will make the web site more attractive and interactive. Such content elements as dynamic image gallery, in-built video and audio players, blog page template etc, can be added and edited in a couple of clicks. There is even special add-on which allows the user to turn web turnkey into e-commerce store. There is a possibility to set up website meta data in order to make all site pages well indexed by major search engines.
Disambiguity - Why Drupal needs a Design Community Manager
"I’ve been working with the Drupal community on design projects for coming up to 12 months now - a splash in the ocean compared to many in the Drupal community but long enough to get a feel for how things work."
From a post by Leisa Reichelt at disambiguity.com. Be sure to read through all the comments.
Using the Extreme Updates theme for Drupal
If you've visited CMS Report lately, you likely noticed that we're sporting a new look and feel. Over the years, I've used various Drupal themes and many of those themes were made available for free at Drupal.org. For the past couple years, I used RoopleTheme's LiteJazz. LiteJazz spoiled me. The theme was so well designed that I don't recall having to do the usual hacks to the templates or CSS styles to make it a good fit for CMSReport.com. Thanks RoopleTheme!
Today, I'm using the Extreme Updates. The free theme is designed by Template World and ported to Drupal by 3rdWorld. In my opinion, the Extreme Updates theme has a few flaws in its design that I'm needing to fix. You'll have to be patient with me because I'm not much of a designer. Luckily, the theme utilizes the impressive Genesis package, a start theme for Drupal 6. This is the very first time I've used a Genesis theme but I'm just as impressed with Genesis as I was when I first used Zen, another starter theme for Drupal.
This time around when considering a new theme, I also did something I've never done before. I considered spending money for a theme. In the past, CMSReport.com has never generated the revenue I needed to justify hiring a Drupal service company to design a theme for my site. However, something interesting has happened in the Drupal community, a number of design companies have started to design and sell themes geared toward the smaller Drupal sites like mine.
The availability of quality themes by such companies as community favorite TopNotchThemes shows just how much the Drupal ecosystem has matured over the years. Doesn't it seem just like yesterday when the biggest complaint about Drupal was that there were no good themes available? The future for Drupal theme development looks very bright. My understanding is that there are a number of changes in Drupal 7 that will make the web designers very happy. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised to see in 2010 the quantity of available Drupal themes reach toward the same numbers that we've seen for Wordpress and Joomla!.
Changing to a new theme also marks the beginning of my desire to move CMSReport.com into some new directions. I want this site to have a more professional and community feel to it. I'm personally tired of reading mostly my own posts here and I think it's time to get a lot more author's involved. These changes will be progressive over the coming months, but won't be settled until the arrival of Drupal 7. As has been since Drupal 4.6, I've always geared the features in my sites to allow for a quick upgrade to the latest version of Drupal. Similar to the past, you just might see this site running a beta or release candiate of Drupal 7 by the end of the year.
Tamworth Regional Council Bolsters Online Services With Elcom
Regional council using Elcom’s enterprise content management and web design platform to improve online service delivery and simplify access to information
Sydney, Australia (June 22, 2009) – Tamworth Regional Council (www.tamworth.nsw.gov.au) is rebuilding its website with the help of Sydney-based enterprise content management company Elcom in an effort to improve its service delivery and offer better information resources to its customers.
Using Elcom’s CommunityManager.NET development environment, the new website will allow for certain services – such as rate payments – to be made available online in the future. It will also simplify the process of publishing and retrieving information, allowing multiple personnel that aren’t familiar with web publishing or HTML to publish content that adheres to the design and formatting guidelines set out by the Council’s internet committee.
“Our website has grown organically over the years, to the point where finding specific information can be difficult,” says Mark Crompton, Finance and IT Manager, Tamworth Regional Council. “Coupled with the fact that the systems running our website have reached the end of their lifecycle, we had a ‘perfect storm’ of reasons to completely rebuild our web presence.
“At the same time, we wanted to create a platform that will serve the Council well into the future, and allow us to innovate with new online services as the need arises,” says Crompton. “As a regional council covering more than 9,600 square kilometres and a population in excess of 53,000, making it easier for customers that live hundreds of kilometres away from regional centres to access information and basic services online can make a major difference to their lives.”
CMS Report looking for a Drupal 6 theme
It has been a couple years since I changed the look and feel here at CMSReport.com. While my current theme, LiteJazz from RoopleTheme, has served me well the past couple years, it's time for a change.
As of today, I'm looking for a Drupal 6 theme that is appropriate for a site that serves as both a blog and news site. This theme can be free, reasonably priced, or bartered for some link acknowledgement back to the designer. This theme can be your theme or someone elses theme, free or available at a price, available at drupal.org or at a commercial site. I just want to find a good theme for CMSReport.com.
If you have a great suggestion for a Drupal 6 theme, please leave your suggestion as a comment below or through our contact page.
Later this summer, I plan to demo some of the top themes here at CMS Report before deciding on a theme. I think this would be good way to help promote some of the better themes available for Drupal. It may also be a good way for you to promote your own design work too.
What Designers Need to Know About CMS
DMXReady: "It is clear that Content Management Systems or CMS is the wave of the future. It is almost inevitable that a system be devised that allows non-tech users to update their own content.
Unfortunately, many web designers are suspicious of CMS, and see it as a threat to their livelihood. Although CMS may change the way we design websites, it will never replace us. Here are three reasons why..."
Stuff Beginners Need To Know
SitePoint: "For example, determining what technology is the best fit, what Content Management System to use, where to host the site, how to ensure cross-browser compatibility and how to ensure the site ranks well in search engines are all important. For the uninitiated, these hurdles can become very overwhelming, very quickly.
Generating themes for Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla via Artisteer
Artisteer: "We are happy to announce that Artisteer 2.0 has arrived!
The new version of our Automated Web Designer adds support for the most popular open source content management systems: Joomla and Drupal, in addition to previously supported Wordpress themes and generic web templates."
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