Design, Inspiration, web
12 sites to visit for fresh design inspiration
So, you sit down to design a website, poster or whatever. Cup of coffee to your left, mouse in your right hand. You fire up Illustrator, and then right in front of you is a white vastness. You struggle to fill it with anything, but it doesn’t look right. Your initial scribbles aren’t transferring well to the screen. Dejected, your mind starts to fill with doubt. But fear not, for all you need is inspiration, and the internet is full of it.
With the amount of different galleries and showcases for design inspiration on the web growing by the day, we have decided to share our 10 favourite places with you.
Code, SEO
Black Hat - Spamdexing
So, there are certain things that you can do yourself in order to get a better SEO rank, but as with everything, there are ways of cheating your way success. Beware though, try any of these methods and subsequently get caught, you run the risk of being booted off Google. BMW Germany is possibly the most famous example for this, as it was caught using ‘black hat’ methods.
Fact > Black Hat methods do work in the short term.
Fact > Sites caught employing Black Hat techniques will be booted off Search Engine Listings.
Fact > Sites caught employing Black Hat techniques will be booted off Search Engine Listings.
So what techniques shouldn’t you do?
Code, SEO
SEO for noobies
In order to gain maximum exposure on a search engine, a website has to be optimized properly. Search engines look for a number of different things in establishing how well it sees a site ranking. In order for a website to successfully function, it requires stringent attention to detail on these areas
Which search engine should I optimize for?
Well, at a rough estimate Google accounts for 1 out of every 2 searches on the internet. Yahoo is next at 25% with MSN (now Live) accounting for 10%. The remainder of the market is fought out by the thousands of other search engines on the internet. So, it makes good sense to aim your site primarily at ranking higly in Google’s organic listings.
‘Well it’s all about your page rank, isn’t it?”
Anyone involved in web circles will no doubt have heard this when talking about search engine optimization. The Google Page Rank is a great indicator of the strength of a page, but it shouldn’t be relied upon as the sole judge of page health. For those that don’t know, Page Rank is defined as the degree of importance or value that Google has for a specific web page. A site assigned a page rank of 0 is generally an unimportant or new page, wheras a page rank of 9 (there is no page ranked 10) is a page of great value or importance. A site that’s well maintained and spidered regularly will gain a better page rank over time, but by applying a few tips and tweaks you can rapidly gain an increase in your page rank.
View your current page rank with this tool from Live PageRank »
KEY TIP
A site with a page rank of about 2 can often outperform a site with a page rank of about 6 on certain keyword searches. Page Rank can be tampered with and artificially inflated by a variety of methods, so Google doesn’t just use its Page Rank algorithm to list sites. Friendly URLS, good backlinks, good indexing, a web standards compliant site and most importantly GOOD, RELEVANT, KEYWORD-RICH content will often lift sites of lower Page Rank above those with a higher page rank.
A site with a page rank of about 2 can often outperform a site with a page rank of about 6 on certain keyword searches. Page Rank can be tampered with and artificially inflated by a variety of methods, so Google doesn’t just use its Page Rank algorithm to list sites. Friendly URLS, good backlinks, good indexing, a web standards compliant site and most importantly GOOD, RELEVANT, KEYWORD-RICH content will often lift sites of lower Page Rank above those with a higher page rank.
Code, Dirty News, web
The logic of Safari on Windows
Now, lets set something straight from the beginning of this article. We love Apple. However, we can also acknowledge when they are wrong. For instance, Apple can’t make a mouse to save their lives. Look at the mighty mouse - utter crap. As soon as a shiny new iMac turned up at Dirty Mansions, mighty mouse got the boot and a Microsoft (no less) mouse got installed.
Apple’s decision to release a PC version of iTunes was shrewd. Its decision to release Safari on Windows is a gamble. It is going to attempt to build on its brand loyalty, but has it exposed its carefully contrived brand to criticism? Pompous Mac users love to trot out the ‘we don’t get viruses’ line, but now Safari is on a PC, this shield of invincibility is about to be tarnished. Granted, the difference in OS plus the fact that Safari can’t ‘get a virus’ but any doubt over security could have the ability to transcend platforms and cast shadows over Apple’s previously untarnished OS. but in less than 24 hours the windows version of Safari had bugs and security flaws “popping up like hotcakes”. A hasty 3.01 update was posted for download within days, and now we’re on 3.0.2!
Dirty Mouse // Food for Designers’ Dirty Mice
Dirty Mouse is an inspirational design blog, updated several times a day. Dirty Mouse aims to provide designers' mice with enough visual food from the worlds of graphic design, web design, illustration, photography, interior and product design in order to get their creative juices flowing.