More and more people like and user Twitter and therefore many siteowners want to place a follow-link on their website. But as simple text links are too uninteresting, we have collected the best icons and graphics on the internet. 

Twitter icon by fast icon

Twitter icon set by smashing magazine

Twitter social icon by design reviver

31 twitter icons by vincentabry

A little bird told me by mattknow

Twitter icons by flockey

Twitter icon by phiredesign

Cute twitter bird icon by wefunction

Free twitter graphics by randa clay design

Twitter birdy icon by Loondesign

Twitter icons by icontexto

It’s twitter time! by productivedreams

Twitter icons with attitude by monkeyworks

Pratika twitter icon by smashing magazine

(MAX)Icone blog by webfruits

Web 2Origami by Iampaddy

High resolution twitter bird icons by the design superhero

Happy twitter birds by webdesign.fm

Cute tweeters icon set by smashing magazine

Glossy twitter icons by AODdesign

Sticky twitter icons by Kuerbisfeld

The leaves fall by smashing magazine

For all who want to make their own one:

Create a twitter style bird mascot by vectortuts

Adobe Illustrator has become one of the leading products for vector design, especially icon design. But when you start to create your first icon, you have to keep one thing in mind – bitmap or vector? (As the guys of firewheeldesign point out, vector icons are less work than those made with Photoshop. On the other hand, scaled vector graphics don’t look very nice in comparison to icons created with Photoshop) All in all it’s a decison between saving time and getting the best possible quality.

To understand the basics of icon design, read the following articles:

7 Principles of Effective Icon Design by PSDTUTS

10 Mistakes in Icon Design by Turbomilk

Now that you are a bit familar with Icon design – try these tutorials:

Vectortuts.com

Create a Detailed Camera with Photo Icon

Create a Vector Film Slate Icon

Make a Handy 3D Vector Calendar Icon

How to Create a Vector Light Bulb Icon with Inkscape

How to Turn Glasses into a Great Geek Icon

Illustrate a Fun Magnify Zoom Icon

SpoonGraphics

Create a Vector RSS Icon with Illustrator

Translucent IM Style Illustrator Icon Tutorial

How to Create a Vector iMac Graphic in Illustrator

N.Design Studio

iTune icon

Glassy Button

Other:

Complicate Orb Icon by Hatching Egg Story

Designing a Sleek Pencil Icon by Design Blurb

Creating A Folder Icon by MagnusFx

Create an envelpe icon with a satin feel by aiVault

Design Float Circle Icon by Qbrushes

You waste your server resources for web applications? Why don’t accept the help of Google. Just a few days ago Google launched its Google App Engine. Being still in beta it allows you to upload your web application on the Google network and use their computational power. With a free account you are already able to use 500MB space, a CPU usage of 200,000,000 megacycles and a maximum of 10GB bandwidth per day. Also you get several other features:

• Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies
• Persistent storage
• Automatic scaling and load balancing
• Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email
• Fully featured local development environment

Great – Where do I have to sign in?

Google App Engine is still in beta. There were 10,000 beta accounts available but after ca. 3 hours they were all gone. Google already announced that more accounts will follow in the near future. So don’t hesitate to subscribe to the waitlist.

Do you want a special RSS icon for your website? Actually most blogs and newssites have RSS feeds. But many have just a standard button. You might want to show that your are more creative then they are. Use one of these free and fresh RSS icons so that you are in contrast of the masses.

RSS icon pack vol.2

RSS feed by Aaron Ovadia

MycirclesRSS

RSS icon by carlnewton

Feedicons²

Acid RSS by cavin

RSS Owl by balpert

RSS icon by datamouse

RSS icon set from smashingmagazine

3D RSS feeds icon

Circle feeds icons

Free RSS feed icons

Alternative RSS icon by mouserunner

RSS reader icon by twinware

NewsFire by barrymieny

Christmas RSS icons

RSS icons from simdes

Vektor RSS buttons

And for everyone how searches for a standard RSS icon:

Feedicons

Yesterday WordPress 2.5 has been released with a couple of new features. Those who want to upgrade WordPress now, can do it here.

The popular blogging platform needed six months for this major upgrade. But what changes with the new version? The most important update regards the all-new dashboard. It isn’t a static site anymore but consists of several customizable widgets and only provides you with the most important links. Therefore it is very easy to fit the dashboard according to your needs.

The developers of WordPress spend this version a completely new and fresh color scheme, changed the menu order and recoded the media gallery. Now it is possible to easily upload and manage images as well as videos and other files. Further remarkable new features are editing protection for multi-admin blogs and an built-in plugin update function. The whole list of changes can be read at the WordPress Blog. All in all WordPress 2.5 is a recommendable update, I am sure everyone will love.

Do you want to make the big money online? – Of course! One step forward is the selection of good advertisement. The Internet offers several methods…

Banner ads

They belong to the most common advertisements in the Internet. They are graphic elements with a message that are included in the regular site. Regularly ads are payed according to views or clicks. The big problem with banners is that many users ignore them because of the masses and their eternal presence. So it is very important where to place a banner and how to construct it. Usual solutions are:

• Skyscraper: Very high banners usually at the sides of a website which are even visible in parts when you scroll down.
• Content ads: Advertisements, which are integrated into the content of a website. Sometimes they are also included close to the menu bars and other interaction fields. For this reason some users see an advertisement not knowing that it is one.
• Video ads: Similar to normal banners except they aren’t static.

Pop-up and Pop-under advertisements

This method is very eye-catching because the ads open in an extra window and aren’t ‘just’ a part of a website. This means that every visitor has to deal with them. So the advertiser can be sure that everyone will see his advertising. But that’s why such obtrusive ads are unpopular. Many Internet users have a pop-up blocker to get rid of this annoying advertisements. Because of that you should think about placing such an advertisement on your website. A pop-up or pop-under gives you the most money but it also gives your visitors a bad feeling of your site.

Layer ads

They are equal to pop-ups but don’t open in a new window and instead of that they lay over the website-content in a JavaScript generated window. These windows frequently have a hidden close button so that the visitors have to analyze the ad before they can reach the websites’ content. Advertisements of this kind are often blocked and disliked just as pop-ups.

Web sponsoring

Another variant of Internet advertising is web sponsoring. Web sponsoring means a sponsor invests some money into a website and as counter-performance the sponsor will be presented on the website with a logo or something equal.

AdSense

This service from Google makes advertising very simple. It provides you with plain text-ads through a javascript that needs to be integrated in your website. But if you haven’t the right keywords on your site you very often earn just a few cents per click.

ContentLink, IntelliTXT and LinkWords

This type of advertising constitutes a new trend. More and more big websites have those hyperlinks within continuous texts. You get a little JavaScript snippet to integrate in your website and the it automatically highlights interesting words and generates money for every click.

Interstitial ads

These are websites which are displayed before you can enter the requested page.

Also see my post about making a good banner.

Do you have a banner for your website or blog? If not, create one right now! In order to do this, I summed up a few basic tips.

1. Be professional: A banner is your virtual business card. People are getting their first impressions of your website based on your banner ad, so you must to be sure that it presents you in the best possible manner. This means you should be very careful with using correct spelling and grammar. Also, choose font sizes, styles and colors that maximize your banners readability. If you don’t do so some people might get a bad feeling of your site.

2. Ask for an action: What do you want people to do when they see your banner? Most probably you want them to visit your website. Write something like “click here” or “enter now” on it. On the Internet you can see many examples of this strategy.

3. Keep it simple: Most people are looking at a banner for less than a second. You must be sure that the message of your graphic can be easily understood. Organize your banner/advertising clear and concise to increase the possibility that the viewer gets your message. It’s very important to use just a few plain words because you can provide the user with more information on your website.

4. Raise attention or emotion: Use words like free, secret or other to raise the user’s attention. Make the viewer curious in your website. Maybe use a pun or contrast.

5. We want benefits, not features: What’s the difference between a feature and a benefit? A feature is the service you offer your visitors. A benefit is the effect on your visitors. What seems to be most appealing to you? – “We are specialized in finding deductions” (feature) or “Pay less tax” (benefit)? It is only important to say how your service improves your visitors life and not how you do that.

6. Test it: Design several ads and think about different slogans. Then run them for a short time and compare the traffic you get by the different ads. Use the most successful one and be sure your banners are always up-to-date!

7. Other important things to know: Be sure that your banner isn’t bigger then 20kb that it loads quickly. Also use the common formats as you can see at the bottom of this post.

If you don’t know where to place your banner, take a look at Google’s “AdSense Ad-Locations Heatmap”

• Ads closer to the center of the page tend to perform better
• Ads above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold
• Ads placed at the end of articles tend to do well, even though they’re below the fold
• Ads placed near site navigation or by images or other rich content tend to do well, too

Standard Internet Ad Sizes:
Ad Size Ad Type
468 x 60 Full banner
392 x 72 Full Banner/ Vertical Navigation Bar
234 x 60 Half Banner
125 x 125 Square Button
120 x 90 Button #1
120 x 60 Button #2
120 x 240 Vertical Banner
728 x 90 Leader board
160 x 600 Wide Skyscraper
120 x 600 Skyscraper
300 x 600 Half Page Ad

Easter is coming and as the holiday approaches, it’s time to get into the right Easter spirit. Out there you find a lot of bad wallpapers and icons for Easter. That’s why I carried together a few high-quality and well-made works.

Wallpaper

Happy Easter! 1280×1024

Easter Eggs 1152×864

Happy Easter! 1024×768

Easter bunny 1600×1200

Icons

Oslo Easter, a iconset of 12 icons

Easter icons, 4 beautiful icons

I have rounded up 10 CSS resources, codes and files that support you making more attractive CSS designs. There are a few very good coded and designed menus in this list… and a lot of other great stuff that maybe give you an inspiration for your own CSS Layout.

Exploding-boy – Free tab menus for you

aplus – Design your own advanced CSS menu

Mycelly – Nice and free CSS templates

CSS Tinderbox – Valid CSS layouts

Dynamicdrive- Comprehensive collection of menus, layouts and more

Mitchbryson – 71 CSS gallery sites

CSSvault – A shine site for inspirations

Smileycat- Always useful: hover effects in lists

Pullquotes – A great CSS code for remarkable quotes

Ryanfait – A CSS footer that is easily to use

With Adobe Photoshop people can create everything. From Logos to complex virtual worlds; nothing is impossible!

I collected more than 30 websites that offer over hundreds of great Photoshop tutorials for everyone, no matter you are a total beginner or a designer professional.

PSDTuts – Spoonfed Photoshop Tutorials

Photoshopstar – Tutorials and Resources

blogwatts – Several nice Tutorials

upupmedia – Photoshop Tutorials

tutorialized – Where everything is a Tutorial

Photoshopsupport – Photoshop Tutorials

good-tutorials – 22,737 Tutorials listed

planetphotoshop – Photoshop Tutorials, Tips and News

pixel2life – Learning made Simple

pslover – 11,209 Adobe Photoshop Tutorials

Photoshoptutorials.us – Listing Only Quality Tutorials

tutorialguide – Best Photoshop Tutorials

Photoshopcafe – Photoshop Tutorials, Tips…

lightroomkillertips – Adobe Lightroom killer tips

pagecurve – Adobe Photoshop Tutorials

eyesontutorials – Design and Art

visualdesigncore – Adobe Photoshop Tutorials

depiction – Webmaster Resources

PSTut – Easy to Follow

eyesondesign – Create stunning Photoshop effects

photoshop.0tutor – Adobe Photoshop Tutorials

adobetutorialz – The graphics Community

n-sane – Photoshop Tutorials for the Masses

entheosweb – Free Resources

photoshoptutorials.ws – Photoshop Tutorials

photoshoplab – Tutorials, Tips, Tricks,News and Reviews

iris design – Tutorials for Photoshop

pscloud – Tutorials from Heaven

talk-mania – Forum for Photoshop Tutorials

yourphotoshopguide – Your personal guide

empiredezign – Adobe Photoshop Tutorials

pegaweb – Web design & Photoshop Tutorials