Review posts

A few years ago, it was tough to create a professional-looking website without designing and coding something from scratch. There were free templates and website builders, sure, but the results from most were less than professional. Not exactly how you want to represent yourself or your work to the world.

That’s all changed in more recent years. Now, if...

There are a number of options out there for WordPress e-commerce plugins, including both free and paid options. The user experience with many of these plugins though, can be somewhat lacking.

That’s where the MarketPress ecommerce plugin comes in. It was designed specifically because the developers felt that the UX of WP-ecommerce was pretty awful, so they set out to build something better.

What they ended up with was one of the best...

Good enterprise search services are a huge boon to productivity in large companies with a lot of data to manage and access. Google Mini or Search Appliance often come to mind when thinking about these kinds of solutions, but they’re not the only players in the industry.

SearchBlox can index and search through more than thirty different types of files. This includes documents, images, videos, email archives, RSS feeds, websites, databases, and any content that contains metadata. All you have to do to start indexing is set your folder paths or root URLs—SearchBlox does the rest.

Whether you need a website search engine,...

A lot of us can never get enough WordPress themes.

It’s not like we get a merit badge for having a couple hundred of them residing on our harddrive, “just in case”. That being said, it’s not like you can ever really having too many high-quality WordPress themes, either. After all, if you’ve got them on hand, you won’t have to go searching all over the web for the right theme when you need it.

Luckily for you, ThemeShock has put together a great bundle of 33 free, responsive WordPress themes. The best part is that...

Since the dawn of the mobile web, the design and development landscape has changed drastically. Today, no one working in the field can argue with the lasting impact that this market will have on the future of the industry. This is an interesting shift to have watched develop, and many of us are eager to see where it is going.

The Mobile Book, brand new from the Smashing Magazine team, looks at the growing and expansive mobile market from every possible angle.

With...

When creating website designs, it’s almost impossible to leave out icons. They help visualize pieces of copy and are absolutely necessary in a detailed and consistent website. Icons create a heightened user-experience and are typically included in all websites.

What I dislike most about icons is the time it takes to make them.

Yes, there are iconsets already out there. I could search the world wide web for the right icon but I always feel like there’s something wrong with them.

We’re all sold on WordPress, it’s a great solution for anybody who needs to easily manage their site’s content in a user interface that even the least tech-savvy staff members are comfortable with.

But WordPress comes with a price: customizing a WordPress site to do what you need it to, simply isn’t as easy as customizing a plain old HTML file. Sure, you can poke around in the CSS a bit, but what happens...

We’ve all been in the situation: sat opposite a client, having delivered your best ‘gimme a job’ pitch. You’ve walked them through your folio, you’ve explained your client centered approach, you’ve even hinted at the strategies you think will effectively position them in their market.

But they still don’t look convinced. The client takes a long sip of water and then says, “That all sounds really swell, but...

If you’re looking to set up a website there are a multitude of options. With no budget or time restrictions the choice is clear: design a bespoke site from the ground up. However, in the real world that’s often not a possibility. Sometimes we need to turn to an off-the-peg solution.

Striking.ly is...

[This is a sponsored review for MachForm, the opinions expressed in the article are the author's only]

Creating forms isn’t the most complicated thing a web designer or developer can do.

But creating attractive, properly-functioning forms quickly and easily can be a challenge. Especially for those designers who aren’t crazy about coding.

So rather than spend valuable time creating, styling, and testing forms from scratch, why not use an app like MachForm to do the heavy lifting...

[Editor's note: This is a sponsored post for MyPriceApp]

How often do designers, especially new ones, have issues figuring out how much to charge for their services?

Charge too much, and you end up with no clients.

Charge too little, and you may end up with either too many clients who are only interested in cheap work, or clients who doubt your ability because you’ve underpriced.

Either way,...