Pearson Education is the largest educational company in the world, and they’re building a site to get teens ready for college.  They are looking for Internet savvy teens like you, to test out beta versions of their site and give them your honest feedback about what works for you and what doesn’t.  Their studies are completed entirely online, and there’s no special software to download or install. In return, you’ll get a $10 Amazon.com gift card for every study you successfully complete. Interested students must be in middle or high school and between 13 and 18 years old to participate. In order to qualify, you must also complete one unpaid eligibility survey.  This is a great opportunity for you guys to expand your knowledge and experience of UX design while making a little extra cash and helping improve online education all at the same time!

Here’s a link to the eligibility survey to get started!

When I did my research on InMotion when I was looking for a new web host a few weeks ago, I was not able to find one negative thing about these guys. After going over my options, I took the dive and went for InMotion.  The sign up process was fast and easy, even for a beginner. All of the options are evident and you know exactly what you’re paying for. I have never seen an ordering process this straightforward!

99% of the time, you get a welcome email with account info when you order a hosting account . Most of the time they are the same tedious email, buy with InMotion hosting, I found the welcome email to be very thorough, well organized and jam packed with more information than I know how to do with. To be honest, I see a lot of hosts that just throw you your account information, which can be very non-newbie friendly. Although I knew what I was doing, I feel that here, things seem to be more newbie friendly and easy!

In the few weeks that I have had two of my sites with InMotion, I have experienced superior uptime and am thoroughly enjoying the great features they have to offer. Among them are: Reliable Backups (Weekly or Daily), cPanel, Multiple levels of hosting when your sites grow, money back guarantee and so much more. With hosting starting at $5.95 a month, you really can’t go wrong.

You may have had experiences with shady hosts, feeling uncomfortable about using their servers  - because I know I have. At InMotion, I feel safe. I know my data is secure. I don’t have to worry about downtime or compromised security; instead I have a peace of mind that is unsurpassed.

Illustrations have the power of boosting a website’s design. These Web illustrations are most successful when they match current trends. By utilizing current trend illustrations in your Web design, you will show that your company is forward thinking and current.

Here are 10 new trend illustrations in Web design that your company can incorporate into your current design.

Animals

Whether realistic or whimsical in design, humans are attracted to animals. Many animals have characteristics and traits that humans readily identify. By matching an animal with your company, you’re able to communicate a strong message about your company’s values and traits.

Bright Color

These days, Web illustrators are incorporating bright, bold colors in their designs. Before choosing your colors, take a couple of minutes to research the psychology behind colors and choose those that best match the message that you’re trying to convey.

Characters

Companies have been creating characters to help depict their organization and draw customers in. These characters often can be incorporated into long term branding of the company so clients have a strong emotional connection to that brand every time the character appears in marketing materials.

Clouds

Possibly due to the popularity of Twitter, clouds are starting to sprout up in Web designs. Clouds communicate brightness, airiness and simplicity.

Focus on Footers

Footers contain quite a bit of company information. It’s an important element of your website, so why not incorporate some design elements? Companies are utilizing the space to add illustrations that communicate their brand to website visitors. The footer is often the last element that a person will see, so why not leave them with a lasting impression?

Humor

Everyone loves a good laugh. Utilizing humor in your Web design will help make your site memorable. It will also help increase your traffic because customers will share the site with others to see how it tickles their funny bones.

Landscapes

Landscapes are natural elements that add color and beauty to a website. In a medium where grey, black and white often take center stage, it’s refreshing to have colorful, organic elements brightening up the designs.

Larger Logos

Splash pages have been on the decline in recent years. But companies can continue to have that large graphic impact by increasing the size of their logos. By adding in graphic and illustration elements to the logos, they can transition into art instead of a stale logo. The larger logo will also help communicate more about the overall brand

Simplicity

It’s time to clear out the clutter. It’s hard to process all of the information on the Web when websites are jam-packed with various design elements. White space helps consumers breath and take in the information that you are displaying for them to see.

White

Web illustrators have been utilizing white to brighten up other colors and de-clutter their designs. This trend is best achieved by finding creative and unique ways to utilize white, such as through the cloud trend.

Daniela blogs for CreditDonkey, a free tool that allows you to easily compare credit card offers. She’s also looking for suggestions on how to redesign CreditDonkey – email her at daniela.baker@creditdonkey.com

First off, let me explain the different types of hosting solutions available.

Shared hosting is the most common type of hosting that you will see, mainly because it’s cheap.  It means that tons of websites are hosted on the same server, which isn’t a good thing.  If one website uses up too many resources, it can bring down the entire server – with your website in the sinking boat.

Another option is dedicated hosting.  This means that you’re basically “renting” your own server.  So, you don’t have to worry about anyone else using up your resources since you will not be sharing the space with anyone else.  This is also an ideal choice if you want to have full control over your server and the software installed on it.

Lastly, there’s VPS hosting.  VPS stands for Virtual Private Server.  A VPS means that you share the same hardware (server) as others, but you get your own partition (piece) of the server with your own operating system.  It offers a lot of the same benefits as a dedicated server does, except you physically don’t have the server to yourself.  This is like the next step up from shared hosting.

So, what are the different features offered with each?  Here’s a basic breakdown.

Email Servers

Dedicated and VPS hosting give you access to your own email server for your domain, thus bringing beefed up security and more functionality.

Platform Control

For those of you who don’t know, platform control refers to operating systems – in this case, it means that with dedicated and VPS hosting, you can choose what kind of software goes on your server.

Performance and Security

Shared servers are best for smaller websites that do not need many features or strict security.

Dedicated and VPS hosting allow for a lot of server set up and customization options with the added benefit of increased performance.  With these hosting plans, you have full reign over most aspects of the server.  These are best if you need your websites to perform well with a great deal of security features.

I remember those days fondly, and even now I contemplate getting back into it. It seems as if that scene has come and left, although I’ll never know for sure. Enough reminiscing, I’m here to talk about ‘affies’. Affies is a term us kids used to refer to our online friends or link exchanges. Its just a cute word that stood for affiliates. At the time, my definition of the word affiliate was just so – a person’s site who I linked to and linked me back. A link exchange.

As I grew up and transitioned into the real online world, older people were using the term affiliates in a much different way. To them, ‘affiliate‘ was a company who’s prodcuts they marketed on their websites. That’s a whole different ball game! Link exchanges and selling products for profit. Actually, affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online, and teens and adults alike can benefit.

To give you a better explanation, here’s a definition from Wikipedia.

Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts. Examples include rewards sites, where users are rewarded with cash or gifts, for the completion of an offer, and the referral of others to the site. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as ‘retailer’ or ‘brand’), the network, the publisher (also known as ‘the affiliate’), and the customer. The market has grown in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third party vendors.

I’m going to show all of you how to get into affiliate marketing to make extra money online! Hey, you might even be doing it without knowing

So, if you use the term ‘affie’ or ‘affiliate’ on your site, will you change it after knowing the real definition?

Free Hosts

Free hosts generally have a lot of limitations. They aren’t in it to help you, they are in it to make money. (I do realize that there are good people out there who do like to help others and offer free hosting, sometimes they are few and far between.) The people I am talking about are the larger, impersonal ones. Like 000webhost. Features are very limited. No free host can really offer you the support and services that a real paid host can offer. At the end of the day, your site is in their hands. All that hard work can be gone in an instant. Why free hosting is a bad idea:

Not professional

Very limited features

No domain

Bad support

Would you like me to think of more?

Paid Hosts

There are many great and affordable web hosts out there, that can take your site to the next level without hurting your budget. Paid hosts really can make a huge difference in a hosting experience. If you have never had an experience with a paid web host, you really should try.  Now, there are many different features that may confuse you when purchase hosting, but I will cover that in the next post.  Features of most paid hosts:

Good Uptime

Freedom with your site

Installers (Fantisico!)

Other cPanel Resources (Stats, Email)

Add-on Domains

Option to Upgrade

Friendly and prompt service

Payment discounts

Money back guarantee (sometimes)

Alas, hosting can be expensive, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be. In my experience, I have been hosted by these two companies; A Small Orange and Jolly Works Hosting. JollyWorks has a hosting plan for only $1 a month. I actually used to be hosted on this plan, and I have no real complaints. Good customer service, good prices, good uptime. I don’t remember why I switched, but I did. And that was to A Small Orange (Coupon Codes). In the time I have been with them, I have had relatively no downtime and excellent customer service. I pay $5 a month for about 6 or 7 websites. (Add-on domains) To me, you really can’t go wrong here! If you are considering buying web hosting for the first time, go with one of these two companies!

Now, not every paid host out there is as glamorous as I have told you above. The ones I have mentioned here really are great. Before you purchase ANY kind of web hosting, research! Look at reviews! Don’t invest until you know everything. Ask someone who is hosted by a certain company what they think of it. Just promise to do your research!

Descriptive and Formatted Post Titles

Post Titles are the most important thing in a blog post. It’s the very first thing that a reader sees and with your title, you need to draw in your readers to make them want to stay and read your post. You need to make that person click on your title! If not, then no one will ever get to your blog. For example, which headline wold you be more atttacted to? This, ‘how to get readers‘ or ‘15 Sure-Fire Ways to Attract Readers‘? Check out these articles on writing better headlines:

9 Proven Headline Formulas That Sell Like Crazy

65 Exciting Words to Spice up Your Blog Headlines

Why Some People Almost Always Write Great Post Titles

Images and Post Formatting

When reading an article, the impending doom starts to set in once I see long paragraph after long paragraph without breaks. The text may be interesting and informative, but there are definitely ’sighs’ along the way. Some people don’t even take another glance if they see lots of text. Try breaking it up with images here and there. Other than images, frequent like breaks and formatting really do help. I’m talking about headings, bolded words, italics, that sort of thing.

Use Your Voice

When you write, make sure to keep a piece of you in your writing. Blogging is not like essay writing in the least. As a freedom from such tedious tasks, blogging helps you release your voice. Write as if you were speaking. That doesn’t mean use slang and obnoxious things, but things should be kept casual. Here, no one is checking for big words and transition words or theses.

5 ways to set your unique blogging voice apart
5 Ways to Build Your Blog’s Voice

Keep Your Readers In Mind

When writing, keep your reader in mind. Who are you writing to? Kids? Teens? Adults? Your writing should be appropriate. When writing with adults in mind for instance, don’t use simple talk. Or, think about what they would like to see. Who is your audience? You need to revolve your blog design and posts around them. After all, its your readers that can make or break your blog. You need to keep them coming back, keep them interested. Give them a reason to stay.

The Art of Writing Damn Good Blogs

Grammar and Spelling

Although the blogosphere is your oyster, its bad practice to publish a post with grammar and spelling errors. Yes, I have done it before too, but I have learned that it’s best to get posts proofread. That way, someone else can catch errors that I have overlooked. Most browsers and blog platforms have spell check, use it! If you have mistakes in your writing, people can see you as inexperienced and unprofessional. Now, I know that some bloggers first language is not English, so people reading their writing would be able to nitpick at grammatical errors. In this case, its crucial to have someone else proofread your work. This is in the best interest of your readers. You want to make it as clear as possible. If they have a hard time reading, then they won’t want to come back, or may look at you harshly.

5 Tips for Blogging in English

That’s all for now! I hope that you were able to learn something, I know I did! Does anyone else want to add to this list? Are there any methods that you are using in your blog posts?

Next, the placement of a person’s name with their status changed. Before it was like so:

Nicole Dominguez is writing a post for SoDevious.Net

And now it’s

Nicole Dominguez
Is writing a post for SoDevious.Net

I have noticed that this change is only for news feeds and not walls, which is good but it won’t save our burning retinas. Also, the ‘activity’ buttons have gotten painted with a fresh coat of not-so-facebook-blue. (A lighter tint of the blue than it used to be) I hope that these visuals help you see the clear problem.

There has been another big change. When viewing a friend’s profile, there is a link under their photo that directs you to the ‘friendship’ between the both of you. It’s quite interesting actually. It shows any mutual friends, pictures that both of you are tagged in, wall posts and mutual likes. The coolest part is that ‘friendships’ are available for any of your friends, including between each other.

So, we have:

Tiny Font

Feed Changes

Color Changes

Addition of Friendships

Facebook has addressed the text problems in a recent tweet.

…Sigh. Oh Facebook, why?

1. DoIt.Im

2. WebDever

3. Launch List

4. Phunk’N Creative

5. Marko Cvetkovic

6. Spaceship Collaborative

7. The House Media

8. Danny Diablo

9. Thomas Bishop

10. TapBots

11. MartyB

12. Foxtie

13. Swipely

14. HTMLCSSJunkie

15. Acosmin

16. Aran Down

17. Meta Lab Design

18. Giuliano Liker

19. Ballpark

20. Alex Swanson

21. Andrew Greig

22. Fluid Tumblr Theme

23. The Design Cubicle

24. StickyBits

25. Texts From Last Night

26. Grooveshark

27. Big Audio Ads

28. Poolga

29. iFixbyx

30. Flipicz

Are there any websites that we are missing? Let us know below!

Have you ever wondered why some websites looks so neatly organized and styled? Maybe the information is very well distributed…but what make those websites special?

Well, actually there is a secret!

Most of them use something called “grids“. So what’s a grid?

In Web Design, a grid is composed of just a CSS file; and it’s purpose is to provide a framework for specially sized content containers for text, images, or whatever else that would go on your site.

The most famous, and perhaps best grid system is the 960 Grid System created by Nathan Smith.

But before you start with your own, I will explain the grid and how to use it.

What really defines this grid system is the width: 960 pixels wide.

This width is great because 960 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 20, 24, 30, 32, 40, 48, 60, 64, 80, 96, 120, 160, 192, 240, 320 and 480. This makes it a highly flexible base number to work with.

Let me clarify that there are two versions of this grid to work with; the 12 Column grid and the 16 Column.

I personally like the 12 Column grid, but you can use whichever you suites your needs.

How to Do It

To make things more easy, its best to start with a new design.

The next step is to download the grid’s css: 960 Grid System CSS File

Create a new HTML file that looks something like this:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Your Title Here</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="960.css" type="text/css" />
</head>

<body>
<div class="content">
the content will be here
</div>
</body>

</html>


As you can see, we added this line in the section to call the 960.css file:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="960.css" type="text/css" />


It depends on where you have the file, but if it’s at the same folder than the index.html file you can leave it as such.

And then, we need to start adding the content to our file.

There are set blocks (divs) of different sizes:

grid_1, grid_2, grid_3, grid_4, grid_5, grid_6, grid_7, grid_8, grid_9, grid_10, grid_11, grid_12

Each number indicates the relative size of the block. Because we are using a 12 Column Grid, we have 12 different sizes to use.

Now, we can add the divs as follows:

<div class="grid_1"></div>

The class, “grid_1″ is defined as 60px wide in the css file.

Those divs are styled as blocks so you can put one next to another and they will float to the left and distribute themselves correctly.

We have to be sure that we add blocks which size adds up to 960px, or 12.

For example this one:

<div class="grid_4"></div>
<div class="grid_4"></div>
<div class="grid_4"></div>

(Each “grid_4″ is 300px wide, so 300 times 4 is 12)

Or this one

<div class="grid_4"></div>
<div class="grid_2"></div>
<div class="grid_6"></div>

(4 + 2 + 6 = 12)

Maybe even this one:

<div class="grid_2"></div>
<div class="grid_2"></div>
<div class="grid_4"></div>
<div class="grid_4"></div>

(2 + 2 + 4 + 4)

Or finally this one:

<div class="grid_6"></div>
<div class="grid_6"></div>

All of the sizes add up to 12, so that we make sure that the screen is filled.

After every row we add (blocks which size sums 12) we need to add one div more to tell the browser to clear the blocks below.

<div class="clear"></div>


Then our code would be like this:

<div class="grid_6"></div>
<div class="grid_6"></div>

<div class="clear"></div>


<div class="grid_2"></div>
<div class="grid_2"></div>
<div class="grid_4"></div>
<div class="grid_4"></div>

<div class="clear"></div>


In the next part of this series, we will see how we can use grids inside grids and how we can fill in spaces without having to add divs with the specified size. Grids prove to be very useful tools when designing excellent websites.

Examples

I leave you here some websites designed with 960 Grid System… enjoy!

Gantry Framework

Onehub

TabBots

You can find more examples here.

See you next time!