Grid Style In Modern Web Design: Showcase and Resources

A Grid is an invisible structure used to guide the placement of elements on your page. Now days using a grid are one of those basic design principles. Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of talk about grid systems and using column grids for website layouts. It’s easier these days to embed a audio/video on the web than it is to set type consistently or align elements to a universal grid.

Most news and editorial designers are working with grid systems someone else designed. No matter what you think about it, how you know about it, you need to understand how to use it. Here, in this Presentation, you’ll find everything you need to know about Grid Based Designs with some excellent resources provided by fallow designers and developers.

For those, who don’t know what is Grid-Style-Based system and what it can do? Then please follow the link below for detailed introduction.

• Introduction to Layout Grids | adobe.net
• Grid Page Layout | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The next generation, representing two decades of excellence. This grid-based system contains everything you need to create high-end design, artistic showcase, portfolios or otherwise very clean and minimal design.

How to Create “Touchable” Web Designs

What are touchable web designs? When most people check out a new website, they sometimes think “yikes, this website looks like crap” or “wow, this is one of the best websites I’ve ever seen!” What is it that makes the great websites look so great? In my experience, when I think of “web 2.0″ and “great web designs” I think of modern web designs that look touchable. In other words, the elements on the page almost look real, as if they have depth and take up space.

The purpose of this post is to explore how this effect can be achieved, outline the major strategies for creating your own touchable web designs, and give examples of some great web designs out there that have mastered these techniques. Let’s get started!

90+ Clean and Minimal Web Designs for Design Inspiration

The web industry nowadays is very productive. During these years there have been many trends followed and every day the designers experiment new techniques creating new tendencies in the art of making website.

Recently is evident the necessity of a direct communication with customers and a website is the first place where a company can make know their cool stuff and services. A well-designed website is important for the growth of a business and often to create a “fresh” and clear image for a company (or a product, or a freelancer) we need the help of the art of simplicity. For these reasons a minimal and super-clean layout can be the perfect solution for an attractive website.

In this post, after a little overview, you’ll see some of the best examples of minimalism in modern web design.

A Web designer always need to improve his design and assembling skills, one can always think that how other designers and developers achieve both beautiful and creative designs. And to improve your design skills all the time you need good sources of inspiration to have a proper vision and to learn from masters who have a profound understanding of design field.

A good web designer always looking for ways to get inspired by new trends as Professionalism is built upon knowledge and experience. The basic point behind this post is to show you that you don’t need to just follow the routine methods for creating minimal design, there are lots of creative work out there to get inspire and break those routine bounds of choosing default design.

Factors Influencing Your Overall Website Design

When most people check out a new website, they sometimes think “yikes, this website looks like total crap” or “wow, this is one of the best website designs I’ve ever seen!” What is it that makes the great websites look so great?

In my experience, Website designing is not a piece of cake. It is something which needs both time and efforts from your part. Plus, there are certain factors that can directly influence your overall website design as well. Although there are many factors, but in this piece of writing, just for your concern, I have decided to disclose the most important and significant ones, and included examples of some great web designs out there that have mastered these factors.

The process has already started, and as a publisher you need to make sure you are adapting your marketing strategy to line up, or get left behind.

Google made the link building algorithm popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It was a revolution in its time because it provided search engines with a method for identifying the most important web pages for a given topic. However, as has been well documented, spammers have assaulted the algorithm with a wide variety of methods for buying links or creating them in other ways that don't work for the algorithms.

Even if you generate all your links in a pure white hat way, through reaching out to site owners and requesting them without compensation, or are doing high quality guest posts, you aren't necessarily generating the best possible signal for search engines. Certainly this type of link building done properly would not be a violation of the Webmaster Guidelines, but from the perspective of the search engines it also doesn't represent a groundswell of opinion raving about your product. It still means something, but it is brute force driven through your efforts, rather than resulting from the enthusiasm of your audience.

I don't believe that search engines will penalize people who link build this way, but I think they will value the link profile that is manually built less than one that obtains unsolicited endorsements from the web.

Prior to the emergence of Google, links weren't a ranking factor in a significant search engine. At that time, any unpaid links were implemented solely based on merit, because the publisher had no other reason to link to someone else's page. Even paid ads were based on the advertiser valuing the traffic from the target site enough to be willing to pay for it, since there was no other benefit - so these too went to highly relevant pages as a rule.

Short and simple: links were a better quality signal when the world didn't know that they were a signal. But, those days are gone.

What the Search Engines are Doing

The search engines are constantly in search of additional signals to help provide better data on the best results to return for a given query, and to make it harder for spammers to succeed in ranking lower quality sites (lower quality than others that are available on the web). The increase in the use of social signals by the engines has been a part of that effort.

However, social signals are relatively noisy. As I documented in "Social Signals and SEO: Focus on Authority," the number of people on the major social sites that are actively recommending sites/content is still a relatively small percentage of the population.

That same article also documented how using social media's "wisdom of the crowd" (showing the most liked articles) was something that Bing tried, but then later removed. I believe that this happened because using social media mentions as votes in the same way that links were used did not really work, even in the limited fashion that Bing tried it.

I expect that for many categories of searches search engines will weight sites that show multiple types of signals more than those that show only one. Back in July I wrote about "The Dangers of a One Dimensional Link Building Plan." However, in addition to not doing one type of link building, you should also be careful to not use old-fashioned link building as your only method for promoting the site. Find a way to get the web to generate other signals about what you are doing!

Some Ideas

The first key is to focus on where your audience is (what sites they visit, what videos they watch, whose columns they read, ...). Think like a pre-Internet marketer would when trying to decide how to spend their ad dollars. Ranking signals can be generated by both your potential customers and the publishers of the content on the web that they visit.

Potential customers can create signals by:

1. Talking about you in social media.
2. Visiting your site.
3. Searching on your brand name.
4. Doing a search for products or services like yours and clicking on your search result.
5. Discussing you in comments on blogs or forums.

There are a lot more methods than these few!

Publishers of the content that your audience consumes can generate signals as well, in the form of good old-fashioned links. So what are the ways to encourage the generation these types of signals?

As per my recent columns, you should certainly focus on authority, and seek to become an authority. Even if you aren't yet an authority yourself, you can do things to get your name out there to start getting exposure to authorities and to build visibility with others. Here are a few specific ideas on how you can do that:

1. Start a blog: But only do this if you can produce unique, high quality content on a regular basis. It is a real time commitment. However, don't emphasize volume over quality. Two great articles a month will do far more for you than 4 decent ones a month, or 10 crappy ones
2. Start a social media campaign: Become an active community member. Read the Become an Authority article for more tips on how to do that effectively. Note that it is better to execute extremely well at one social media site than it is to do an OK job in several.
3. Participate in communities: If you can't start a blog or drive a highly active social media campaign, you can still participate in communities. Comment on blogs, forums, videos, or whatever medium your potential customers consume. In other words, as a fallback to Becoming an Authority, work at becoming known. Drive interactions that take place in front of your target audience. Go to conferences and engage in dialogues. Be the person that asks a great question of one of the speakers during the Q&A.
4. Generate press releases: Issue press releases from time to time, but only when there is something worth talking about on the web.
5. Generate news: Do something newsworthy that someone else would be interested in writing about.
6. Advertise on web sites where your target audience goes: Not for the purposes of buying links, but for exposure to your target audience, and to the people that publish content that your audience consumes.
7. Advertise in search engines: More great exposure!
8. Advertise on Facebook: For the same reasons, but only use this one if you can reach your potential customers here

Regardless of where you are in the process of building your own authority, do some things to attract positive attention to your website. Participating in discussions online is a great place to start. Participating in offline discussions that you can use to help drive online interactions is also a great thing to do.

The key is to create great signals in addition to the links that your site attracts.

Summary

The past couple of years have made us all aware of the growing importance of social media, and Google's Panda update made it common knowledge that other types of user behavior could be a factor in search engine rankings. Expect this trend to continue, and possibly even accelerate. What it means for you as a publisher is that you need to do more than old-fashioned link building.

While this type of link building can and should be a part of your marketing mix, doing it in isolation will send unbalanced signals to search engines. You can imagine a search engine thinking to itself: "Gee - if the link profile of this site is so hot, how come no one is talking about it online of searching for it"?

Search engines will continue to strive to understand how people evaluate the value of a particular website. Their goal is to get as close to that human evaluation as possible.

The process has already started. As a publisher you need to make sure you adapt your marketing strategy to line up. Otherwise, you'll get left behind.

Bing is finally the No. 2 search engine in the U.S., according to the latest figures from comScore. Bing which launched in June 2009 with an 8.4 percent search engine market share, now accounts for 15.1 percent of searches.

As Yahoo dropped to third, Google continued to lead all search engines in December with 65.9 percent market share.

The search engine rankings for December 2011, according to comScore, were:

• Google rose to 65.9 percent (up from 65.4 percent in November). 
• Bing rose to 15.1 percent (up from 15 percent in November). 
• Yahoo dropped to 14.5 percent (down from 15.1 percent). 
• Ask remained at 2.9 percent. 
• AOL remained at 1.6 percent

More than 18.2 billion explicit core searches were conducted in December. This is up 2 percent from November. Google lead the way with 12 billion of the total searches; Bing ended up with 2.7 billion, followed close by Yahoo with 2.6 billion. Ask Network with 531 million searches, followed by AOL with 287 million.

In December, 68.1 percent of searches carried organic search results from Google, while Bing powered around 26.5 percent of searches.

Oracle has planned a huge swathe of security updates for Tuesday this week, with 78 vulnerabilities among the hundreds of its products slated to be patched.

Oracle said in a security update that vulnerabilities will be addressed in the Oracle Database Server, Fusion Middleware, E-Business suite, Supply Chain, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards, Virtualization, Sun and MySQL products.

Enterprises will be keen to test and install the patches as soon as possible, as some of the vulnerabilities could allow cyber attackers to infiltrate corporate databases and steal valuable data.

The firm admitted that, until patched, the vulnerabilities in the Oracle Database Server may enable attackers to remotely access the database without the need for a username and password.

 It added that these fixes are only applicable to installations that involve the Oracle Database Server itself, rather than client-only installations.

There are also five vulnerabilities in Oracle Fusion Middleware that could allow unauthenticated database access, and one in Oracle's JD Edwards platform.

However, it is MySQL that has the largest number of security flaws to be addressed by the patch, with 27. Oracle said that one of these can be exploited over a network without the need for a username or password.

Oracle recommended that the updates be applied as quickly as possible.

"Some of the vulnerabilities addressed in this Critical Patch Update affect multiple products," it said.

"Due to the threat posed by a successful attack, Oracle strongly recommends that customers apply Critical Patch Update fixes as soon as possible."

Readmore: http://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/2137695/oracle-plans-huge-securityupdate#ixzz1jcXFjlwx
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Website Development 2012 - Your Competition is online are you ?

We would like to thank 2011, what a year! Getting ready for 2012 is now in our scope with dedicated web design and Joomla development services.

In - Source the Out - Source

We would like to invite media agencies to make use of our high quality design and development services, if you would like to make contact to discuss how we can integrate our services click here

Web Development Services

As the internet is forever booming some tips if you are planning your website development. The importance of a solid designed web presence is critical as your web page will serve as a window into your business.

Tips and Considerations

• The cheapest quote is not necessary the best quote
• Work in conjunction with your developer so that he can understand how to implement your ideas and vision.
• Provide all images and content to ensure that your web page development is completed fast
• Research a marketing strategy for your web page after all it is a marketing platform.
• Choose the platform you will use carefully (Joomla, WordPress or HTML)
• We have the experience and skill to deliver a effective website for your business that is not only easy to navigate but will perform in the search engines. We provide web page development for small and medium business, we also specialize with innovative designs and performance SEO

This will get you started for more in depth information contact us by using our contact page or visit our 2012 web design services page

Social Signals to Dominate SEO in 2012
  
Predictions on the end of the world have been heard a hundred times and more throughout history and there is one for this year too; but it all has all come to null and so are the so called predictions about the death of the Search Engine Optimization. SEO is here to stay, probably till the end of the world (hope it is not on 21st December 2012, when the Mayan calendar ends). SEO continues to grow all the more important in 2012 adding social ranking factors to it thereby evolving into what could be called Social Media Optimizing and will do so as long as business's with websites realize the need to get visible in the top search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. SEO and Social Media Promotion as a marketing investment would be vitally necessary for website promotion for better standing in the SERP, as such investments should turn profitable within a short period while its returns can be long lasting. But ahead of optimizing for search engines, businesses have to set the website basics right to further promotion. Here are a number of straightforward and simple steps for priming for SEO.

1. Keyword specific Domain Name

 Choosing a domain name that's relevant to or even contains the search engine keywords that your site targets can prove extra beneficial as keyword search queries can lead to your site in no time. As a keyword domain name usually tells the search engine bots what your site is about without much probing, search engines return the favor by displaying in bold the keywords used in search queries to reach your domain prompting easy clicks from the users. Bear in mind that your domain name will be the actual link that points to your web site on a search engine result page for a keyword query that you are targeting and so stay close to your keyword even if you don’t find the exact phrase. Here are two suggestions for creating an optimized domain name

    * Limit length to within 63 characters and anything above is considered long for an effective domain name.
    * Create a domain name with a key phrase relevant to your targeted content or use a Web 2.0 style name (IE Flickr) if the real word is already taken.

2. Keyword Research and Optimal Onsite Distribution

There is often found reluctance among site owners about conducting Keyword Research for Search Engine Optimization campaigns as most are under the misconception that they already know which terms a customer would use to find the site. But you could be fatally wrong and so would not only be putting valuable advertising dollars at risk, but also would be throwing away the time and energy you put into getting your site to rank for those terms. Unless a keyword search is conducted using a Keyword Tool, businesses would be facing the chance of losing out valuable opportunities to competition and ranking on the search pages. Missing out on keyword research would result in lack of traffic or less qualified traffic that won’t convert. For businesses targeting a locality, Keyword research needs to be conducted nationally at first, and then localized later by adding the city or town, state, and neighborhood for the chosen keyword to derive the best results in the local searches as searches are getting more and more personalized. Targeting wrong keywords, could the result in ending up invisible to customers, resulting in lost dollars and meaningless rankings.
  
Google Keyword tool offers website administrators the best research options for choosing which keywords to target as keyword research provides business owners to find out how frequently a set of keywords and a number of other related phrases are typed into the search engines and how much competition there is for each keyword or phrase. By creating a mix of both broad and targeted keywords, you can stay competitive, and I suggest that you come up all the keywords that cover the services you offer. While the broad terms are necessary to describe your website the targeted Keywords strengthen the theme created within the broader phrase frame, thereby making it easier to rank for and help bring the expected traffic. It is not only the content on the page that should be considered for keyword strategy, but wise use of it in all related elements of the website would help easy crawling by the search engine bots. Keywords should also be made use of in

    * URL
    * Title Tag
    * Meta Description Tags
    * Headings
    * Alt text
    * Anchor Text/

Navigational Links should employ the keywords for optimization of your webpage ahead of any off page SEO activity. In simple terms, this is a process of ensuring that your website is ready to be promoted to receive the kind of traffic that you are expecting.

3. URL Optimization for Better Rating

Running over 20,000 experiments in 2010-11 Google came up with more than a few hundred modifications that best served the purpose of improving search results for users. Coming out with a 125 page guideline for Google's human URL raters, URLs of landing pages were evaluated and rated after clear comprehension of the user query based on task language and location, while making sense of its dominant interpretation based on user’s intent for a “Do-Know-Go” classifications. This scale of rating is what applies now, and will do so with a few more additions to the algorithms in 2012.

Here are a few important scoring factors for URL ratings:

    * User intent and page utility
    * Location
    * Language
    * Query interpretation
    * Specificity of the query and landing page
    * Timeliness of the informational need of the query to evaluate whether recent content is necessary

As it has become mandatory to include targeted keywords in each page's URL, instead of having randomly generated page URLs or numbered URLs webmasters need to make it easy for search engine algorithms which have been tuned to index dynamic URL’s at a slower rate than static URLs. On a search engine page, a user is more likely to click on a link that has a recognizable URL string, which has the title of an article in the URL rather than a URL that is made up of symbols followed by some numbers and such. Search engines bots get confused if keywords in the URLs are missing just like users might. Static URLs are quite easy to optimize while dynamic URLs need to be re-written. Here are a few classy pointers for an optimized URL:
Do not create in excess of 3 subdirectories for any URL.

    * Use keywords in your URLs and categorize the Keywords in the URLs for subdirectories.
    * For easy indexing of URLs by search engines, avoid session IDs and including too many parameters that would confuse the search engine spiders.
    * Excessively hyphenated or misspelling of URLs could become spammy.
    * Rewrite dynamic URLs into ‘clean’ or static URLs wherever possible

4. Keep Content Original & The Language Flowing Original Content

                                                                      

 If content is king and the link is the queen it should all convert into currency for any business. The internet is where people flock to find content or shop and today the average customer is far more empowered than ever. Offer the right tools to inform a customers about the buying decision and they would be glad to help themselves to them.  As consumer endlessly seek solutions to problems it becomes the job of the marketer to communicate with the customers and deliver solutions. Your content resources, press releases, web pages, articles, white papers, blogs, or whatever you have as content should compel your customer to action even if it takes the shape of a comment, share, tweet, register, enrollment, or maybe even something as simple as come back to visit the site again. If the content on your website lack the power of persuasion to engage the audience and establish trust, then it sure needs some reconsideration. There was a time when over stuffing keywords into a page would lead searchers to the page and even improve a site's ranking, but that's not the case anymore. Artificial inflation of Keyword frequency, scrapped, rehashed and rephrased content faces the same fate and so also content that sounds forced.

The Panda updates have erased and nullified such practices, and devalued content that it considers to be thin, scrapped, duplicated and AdCluttered. Google's Caffeine demands you to develop original content for your site and to naturally weave the keywords into your content so as to stay within a keyword density of 15% or you would charged for spamming by the search engine bots. The Google Caffeine algorithm update ranks and indexes content for time based content and establishing who the original source of a story is, so it would do you good to publish with a time line as the emphasizes is on freshness and relevance with the most current, relevant website content rising to the top of the SERPs. Maintain a fresh supply of unique articles with more relevant information using time stamps when posting new website content and unique articles. This can help the readers while also making a difference to your rankings. Google’s main focus is on improving the user experience on Google and so, neither Google nor any other search engine can do it right if it gets the relevance of search results wrong.
5.  Socially Provoked Search Rating and Social Media Promotion
Social Media Promotion

From the time that Google and Bing confirmed the fact that Twitter and Facebook have an impact on rankings, Social Media Promotion has been exploding. The introduction of Google+ and dedicated Business Pages on Google+, added more SMM value to the mix. The year 2011 witnessed the search engines growing smarter about social media and including social media signals and related metrics in their site ranking algorithms as the social networks have become the prime space for sharing and discovering. As this is the case on which site value will be built upon in the coming years, site administrators will be compelled to setup Facebook, Google+, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts to promote and link to articles and other useful content on the main site.

A lot of SEO’s developed packages that offered website owners with ‘buy re-tweets’ and ‘buy Google +1 votes’ services and so, link farming has reborn in another form making some linkages less reliable. Sooner than later we can expect another Panda update to define quality over quantity of these links. On the other hand, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter have increased their market share in the social networking circles. As gaining good old fashioned organic links is definitely not going away as a ranking factor, services like Social Media Marketing & Branding, creation and maintenance of Social Media Blogs are here to stay while you can expect Google to hit spammy social links and +1 vote banks with a new set of algorithms.

You can as well get your Google+ promotion, Facebook Business page setup or twitter marketed by outsourcing the job to SMM service providers, so that you can have your site link and more relevant results for your company show up when a potential client is searching for you.
6. PageSpeed as a Ranking Factor
Page Speed

Google algorithm update of 2011 has made PageSpeed an on-page ranking factor as delays of under a half-second can impact business metrics, while it cautions web site owners not to sacrifice relevance in the name of faster web pages. More page loading time results in less user engagement. Google gauges PageSpeed based on how a page responds to Googlebot and load time as measured by the Google Toolbar. Here are a few factors that should be looked into to increase your page speed

    * Image resizing & Optimization
    * Minifying Java Script, CSS & HTML
    * Removing Query Strings from Static Resources
    * Combining Images to CSS Sprites
    * Serving resources from a consistent URL
    * Optimizing order of styles and scripts

7. Link building through Directory Submission
Link building

Leading into 2012, like the previous years, link building through directory submission is still going to be the SEO trump card for the foreseeable future would hold true for all search engine algorithms to consider link popularity for PageRank until the Semantic Web arrives, or maybe when HTTP gets replaced by a new protocol. The Panda update has made Directory Submission even more valuable and productive for generating back links than ever before as now, only those directories which have a high PageRank are in business while all other around have been buried. As directory submissions require your website title, URL, description and the key words that you are connected to, make no mistake of shunning it but get your website submitted in some of the top directories on the net and be the first to enjoy the benefits of the back links they generate as BackLinks become the backbone of search phrases that you would like pointing to your website. In short, the greater the number of targeted permanent links that are pointing to your website from high ranked web sources, the more will you see search engines directing traffic to your website and so, in a short time you can expect to rank high for that specific keyword or a set of keywords. Get a free link advantage by submitting your site to DMOZ and also to a few other top ranked niche directories for a negligible cost and sit back to enjoy your BackLinks multiply. One major advantage of directory submission is that you can expect to generate three kinds of traffic from the directories where you are listed.

    * Click-Through Traffic - Your web site information is made available to users who access the directory page and there is a good chance that they will visit.
    *  Indexing - Directories will index the pages of your website once they link to it so that it can bring you immediate traffic.
    *  Higher PageRank - Directories will increase the flow of traffic through the volume of links and references to your web site and the search engine would award a better PageRank.

Make best use of links to your site from any professional associations you are a member of, which will also help build your credibility both with potential customers and the search engines. Once you have set your house in order, the next step is to launch a low-budget quick promotion campaign that will fetch you decent results which will inspire you to go for more specified marketing campaigns.
Category : SEO News

Tags : SEO 2012, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Promotion, Directory Submission, URL Rating, Ranking


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About the author:

Hi … I am Ranki, a Journo by profession now enjoying a free fall into the future of SEO. Writing is a flow of my being, an extension of the self that is unstoppable, even if it isn’t embraced, embalmed and mummified by recognition, I can’t help it. I am here to enjoy the ride, since I have no fixed date with destiny. I am a SEO Strategist and Author at Submitinme. I fill up spaces on pages with the feeling that I am shouting from the roof tops for the SEO crowd to hear and see the latest in the field. There could be more or less of me, if you care to findout. more info...

We are excited to announce that in 2012 we are offering more frequent WordPress training classes in DC and Virginia. 2011 proved to be a great year for teaching novice web content editors and web masters on how to use WordPress more effectively. We are now offering WordPress training on-site at your facility or in classroom settings in Alexandria VA. What our DC WordPress Training classes can teach you:
Generating Content or Blog Post with WordPress

• Getting To Know the WordPress Dashboard
• Creating Content: Posts vs. Pages
• How to Write a Post in WordPress
• Add Images and Create a Photo Gallery
• Add Video to a Post
• Edit and Manage Existing WordPress Posts
• How to Write a Page in WordPress
• Edit and Manage Existing WordPress Pages
• Create a Collection of Links in WordPress
• WordPress Categories Explained
• How to Use WordPress Tags
• Categories vs. Tags (when to use each)
• How to Use the WordPress Media Library
• Managing WordPress Comments

Customize Your WordPress Site

• Change Your WordPress Theme
• Create A Custom WordPress Menu
• Using WordPress Plugins
• How to Use WordPress Widgets

Getting to know WordPress Settings

• General Settings
• Writing Settings
• Reading Settings
• Discussion Settings
• Media Settings
• Privacy Settings
• Permalink Settings

WordPress Installation and Upgrades

• Installing WordPress
• Upgrading WordPress
• WordPress Importing and Exporting Tools

How to Use WordPress Administration

• Managing WordPress Users
• WordPress User Roles Explained

If you are looking for WordPress training classes in DC or Virginia contact us today to learn more by email us at training@webdevelopmentgroup.com