Design strike

35+ free Icon sets for your next web development project

Alex — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:08:29 +0000

One of the most required and important visual aspects of a web design project are the icon sets. If you can manage to create your very own icon sets you are on the right track, but forr all of us who don’t we need to rely on the great work and talent of others. And because of that talent I recommend 35+ free icon sets for your next web development project.

Web designer based icon set

1000 Farm-Fresh Web Icons

178 Amazing Web Design Icons

Lovely Website Icons Pack

Lovely Website Icons Pack 2

PixelMixer icon pack

Quartz Icon Pack

RSS Icon Sets

200+ RSS Icons: “Supra”

RSS Feed Animals

Icon Feed Jeans

RSS At Sea Icons

Social Bookmarking Icon Sets

Webset Icons

Speckyboy Social Bookmarking Icons

Large Icons Social

Free iPhone Social Bookmarking Icon Set 1

iPhone Social Bookmarking Icons Set 2

Social and Web Icons

Thinking Networks Icons

Old Bottle Crowns Icon Set

Stamp Social Bookmarks and RSS Feed Icons

Twitter Icons

Birdies: A Free Twitter Icon Set

Random Developer Icon Sets

Glyphish

40+ Free Vector Stickers

Grunge web design tools, brushes and patterns

Alex — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:14:34 +0000

With more and more websites embrace the often discarded image of grunge by others, here are some nice and nifty tools to help you build that awesome new layout made of grunge. The fact is that the best practices in grunge design are the ones who applies the trend with caution and consideration so the layouts remain smooth and easy to read.

Grunge Textures Packs
Here you can download some of the best grunge texture packs. Clean, dirty, minimal, you can find all in these packs.

Grunge Brushes
Here you can find some of the best grunge photoshop brushes that you can use inside your grunge design.

Grunge Fonts
Stylize your grunge design a step forward with these grunge fonts. All of the fonts are free and downloadable.

Grunge Photoshop Tutorials
Learn how to make a grunge design from scratch. These tutorials include offline and online media creation like posters and logos but also grunge web design layout tutorials.

Grunge website layouts
Here you can find some grunge website layout tutorials.

Design a Grungy Web Layout (Part 1)

Design a Unique Grungy Website Layout

Design a Cartoon Grunge Web site Layout

Complete Grunge Web Layout Tutorial in Photoshop

Rushhour: WordPress Corporate business blog template

Alex — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:20:13 +0000

Today I want to showcase a very nice, clean and good corporate template for business blogs. The theme is on a WordPress platform and it definetly shows the active blog visitor all your nice features have to offer. With a clean blue and white color pack Rushhour is one of the best blog theme additions to have on your corporate business.

Rushhour Features

The main features I want to point out are the very nice content slider on the frontpage the custom category templates that you can use in your testimonials and your portfolio and the three widgets (a 125 ad widget and the 2 tabbed ones).

The theme comes in 2 colors: green and blue. You can set up aditional color options by editing the well commented stylesheet file inside the theme.

Support

As well as I might like a well developed wordpress theme, some of them lack the wigetizing option or the cross browser suport. RH has it all, it is widget ready, it has cross browser support, SEO optimized and gravatar ready.

Other theme options

RH comes packed with the best suport for end user editing. It has a great admin theme option page, a admin ad and banner management section and is code ready for any plugins you use (Twitter for wordpress, WP pagenavi, Easy Contact, Lightbox).

I hope you will buy and download this theme because is a great work and it fits perfectly inside your corporate business.

DOWNLOAD – PREVIEW

Autor comment highlight in WordPress 2.8+

Alex — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 17:22:57 +0000

Author comment highlighting was never been easyer. I tryed Matt`s technique but it didn’t work because I didn’t find the in my comments.php, so I looked for another way of changing the background color of my author comments in WordPress 2.8.4

You see, as from WordPress 2.7 the developers introduced a special author comment list class that is available only to the author comments. So this means that we will have to set up a css color tag on that class just like in Matt`s example.

So head on and open up your style.css and paste this code:

.bypostauthor {
background-color: #dafbd4 !important;
}

How to create a peel ad in a WordPress blog

Alex — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:26:39 +0000

A peel ad is often a great way to advertise a chosen product. It doesn’t matter if it’s your own product or a affiliate product. This type of ad is one of the most successful when it comes to get the users attention. The installation is fairly simple and it can be set up in just 5 min.

If you are the lazy type just like me, go ahead and download this plugin, it does the same thing. If you would like to find out how to code your peel ad here is how to do it:

Download the source files

In order for the ad to work you will need the peel files, that you need to upload to your web server. The best place to upload the peel file is wp-content/themes/your_current_theme/.

Edit the javascript file

Now we need to edit the peel.js javascript file. Open it in your favourite text editor and change the following files:

1. jaaspeel.ad_url – URL you intend to point the ad.
2. jaaspeel.small_path – Path to small.swf
3. jaaspeel.small_image – Path to small.jpg
4. jaaspeel.big_path – Path to large.swf
5. jaaspeel.big_image – Path to large.jpg

Here you have a actual example of how it can be done.

jaaspeel.ad_url = escape('http://www.designstrike.net'); 
jaaspeel.small_path = 'http://www.designstrike.net/wp-content/themes/simplified/peel/small.swf'; 
jaaspeel.small_image = escape('http://www.designstrike.net/wp-content/themes/simplified/peel/small.jpg'); 
jaaspeel.big_path = 'http://www.designstrike.net/wp-content/themes/simplified/peel/large.swf'; 
jaaspeel.big_image = escape('http://www.designstrike.net/wp-content/themes/simplified/peel/large.jpg');

What files you need to edit

The small image file is the image that the users sees when no hover is applied. You can change this according to your background.

The large image file is the actual ad image that the user sees when it hovers the ad and the peel is released. This can be edited accordingly.

Upload

Upload the entire peel folder inside your theme file. Be shure to specify the paths correctly.

Code insertion inside your theme

Ok, we need to add a little javascript call in your head section of the theme. To do this navigate to your header.php file and insert the following code before the ending head tag.

And there you go, instant peel ads without the help of any plugin.

How to make a author box in WordPress

Alex — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:22:17 +0000

This simple technique will allow your article authors to display a bio and a Twitter link at the end of every article they write. The process is fully automatic, and the authors only need to fill in the required fields on their registration.

This is a simple and effective way to give authors that link love that they deserve for writing on your blog. The tutorial include some simple steps and code to set up. The tutorial is about setting up a author description and bio along with a Twitter link, and finally showing them inside a author box in WordPress.

Let`s get to work

Open up your functions.php and paste in the following code. This code will make a Twitter field that authors need to fill inside the user edit screen of WordPress.


    Twitter
 
    
        

        Please enter your Twitter misname.

And this is the actual result

Keep in mind that if you want to display something else besides the Tiwtter link, the only thing you need to do is to copy the Twitter code and change every twitter instance inside the code into something unique.

Now we need to save the links

To allow wordpress to save your Twitter link you need to pop this code inside the functions.php file just below the Twitter code we inserted before.

add_action( 'personal_options_update', 'my_save_extra_profile_fields' );
add_action( 'edit_user_profile_update', 'my_save_extra_profile_fields' );
 
function my_save_extra_profile_fields( $user_id ) {
 
    if ( !current_user_can( 'edit_user', $user_id ) )
        return false;
 
    /* Copy and paste this line for additional fields. Make sure to change 'twitter' to the field ID. */
    update_usermeta( $user_id, 'twitter', $_POST['twitter'] );
}

Now, we need to set up the actual author box we will display at the end of every post that author writes. Here is how you can achieve this:

Paste in the following code inside the functions.php file.

function my_author_box() { ?>
    
         echo get_avatar( get_the_author_meta( 'user_email' ), '96' ); ?>
 
        Written by  the_author_posts_link(); ?>
 
        
             the_author_meta( 'description' ); ?>
        
 
         if ( get_the_author_meta( 'twitter' ) ) { ?>
            
                 the_author_meta( 'twitter' ); ?>" title="Follow  the_author_meta( 'display_name' ); ?> on Twitter">Follow  the_author_meta( 'display_name' ); ?> on Twitter
            
         } // End check for twitter ?>
    

}

Next, let`s add the code inside our single.php file for our author box to show. So open up your single.php and paste the following code just before the comments code:

 my_author_box(); ?>

And that is the whole thing. Furthermore you can stylize the author box by adding some extra CSS code inside your style.css. This is my actual code and you can customize it to fit your own needs.

.author-profile    {
padding:10px;
background-color:#c5ecfb;
border: 1px solid #0c529b;
}
 
.author-profile img    {
float:left;
margin-right: 15px;
}
 
.author-name {
font-size:1.9em;
font-family:Georgia,"Times New Roman",Times,serif;
margin-bottom:2px;
}
 
.author-description {
color:#333333;
font-family:Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;
font-size:13px;
margin-top:5px;
}
 
.twitter a {
font-size:1.4em;
color:#005ec1;
text-decoration:underline;
font-weight:bold;
}

And this is the actual result:

Best 5 wordpress hosting providers

Alex — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 19:03:35 +0000

To be succesfull with a WordPress blog, you need a fast quality webhost provider that supports those vital components that will make your WordPress blog secure, faster, seo effective and easy to surf.

In this blog post we will present the 5 best hosting providers that you can choose for your WordPress blog hosting solution. Choosing a good webhost is essential for every website, this is because your blog needs speed performance, SEO performance and those small features that include bandwidth, email accounts and MySql databases.

Blue Host

The best WordPress hosting solution, with unlimited hosting space, unlimited bandwidth usage every month, unlimited domains hosted on a single account, a free web domain if you choose to host with Blue Host, 2500 email adresses, 50 MySQL databases, free control panel, free Fantastico, free SimpleScripts, 99,9% uptime guarantee and has the best support.

SiteGround

A exceptional WordPress hosting solution, with unlimited webspace, unlimited bandwidth, a free domain, 99,9% server uptime, Cpanel and Fantastico, unlimited emails, unlimited FTP accounts, blog optimized servers, WordPress installation support, WordPress themes, WordPress tutorials and more.

DreamHost

Providing a WordPress auto-install and upgrade, 1TB of space storage, 10 TB bandwidth, free domain, unlimited databases and 3000 email accounts. With great support this host is highly reccomended. You also receive up to 75$ in AdWords credit.

MediaTemple

A simple host that supports high traffic blogs. It doesn’t matter if you hit first page on digg and you get 10k+ hits, MediaTemplate will provide the best uptime and bandwidth solutions. This is the perfect choice for your blog empire with a lot of hits per day.

GoDaddy.com

Unlimited disk space, unlimited transfer, unlimited MySQL databases, unlimited websites, and 1,000 email accounts. With a easy WordPress auto-install and upgrade, Godaddy is the perfect solution for a WordPress host.

A free Photoshop WordPress theme

Alex — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 19:25:55 +0000

Today I decided to give something new to our readers. A simple, clean and free Photoshop WordPress PSD that you can code a actual WordPress theme. With a light grey color palette, a featured post slider and some great tahoma tipograpy, GodLike is trully a theme you can use.

If you want it coded into a actual WP theme, please say so with a comment. Only the people who comment will be able to download it, so spread the word and give some love to this great theme.

GodLike Wordpress theme PSD Download

15+ Internet Explorer comics

Alex — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:04:16 +0000

As much as I stated that IE6 must die, the previous article made me think about it. So I have come up with 15+ Internet Explorer comics to bury IE once and for all. So go ahead and get firefox, with better stability, speed and better toys to play.

Image Credit

IE voodoo doll

The Internet

IE6 support

Browser conflict

Explorer terrorist

Firefox vs IE

Firefox vs IE 2

Wrestling

A little chrome

IE vs Mozilla

Matrix browsers

Only the strong survive

Problems with web browsers

Saving the Internet

IE love

IE spammer

IE sticking needles in eyes

How to debug for IE6 with multiple IE instances

Alex — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 21:19:08 +0000

Often when I find myself developing a new “something” for anyone, I have serious problems in IE, especially in IE6. As much as I would want IE6 to die in excruciating pain, I still have to develop and provide support for it.

Here is how you can have multiple instances of IE installed on the same machine, without the lack of productivity from IE8.

How can I get that darn thing?
IE6 was released in 2001, a long long time ago, so if you are probably a developer you upgraded to IE8. There is a little tool out there that can install multiple instances of Internet Explorer on the same machine. This means that you will have IE6 and IE7 and IE8 on the same computer.

Download Multiple IE installer

Do you want to run it inside vista?
Here is a post that details the current progress in making Internet Explorer 6 run native under Windows Vista.