This week we’ve seen a lot of new and exciting content on the web. The featured item this week is the following set of brushes:
The instant I saw the preview I fell in love with these brushes, they really are amazing. They work wonders on dark backgrounds, just as shown above.
Here’s some other great brushes, textures and vectors from the week:
A much loved combination in both web and print design these days is the grungy, splattered, vector effect. The real key in creating this effect is in the photoshop brushes used (unless you do everything yourself). I collected this list of excellent brushes from deviantART, and I also used them to create this wallpaper (click to expand):
And, the brushes (info is below images):
Continued from last time:
http://www.digidagi.com
http://www.directorysurge.com
http://www.happydirectory.info
http://www.linkem-up.com
http://www.linkshall.net
http://www.submityourlink.com.ar
http://www.add-link-url.com
http://www.mydirectorylink.com
http://www.sitedirectories.info
http://www.freesitesdirectory.com
http://www.dirscape.info
http://helcomi.com
http://www.dirbest.com
http://www.seoname.com
http://www.freee-web.com
http://www.freeelink.com
http://www.freeedir.com
http://www.fvxi.com
http://www.pagedumper.com
http://www.linkshade.com
http://dir.sociableblog.com
http://linkate.net
http://bedirected.net
http://www.pymulti.com
http://www.linkocafe.com
http://www.kesound.com
http://www.digdirectory.net
http://www.fvxe.com
http://www.theopendirectory.biz
http://www.udump.net
http://www.linkhunting.com
http://www.dir4you.net
http://www.directoryfrenzy.com
http://www.lonelydesigns.com/phpLD
http://www.freewebdirectory.com.ar
http://www.directoryjet.com
http://www.dpdough.net
http://www.omglinks.com
http://www.directorybliss.com
http://www.weblistings.info
http://www.urlmountain.com
http://www.our-links.com/
http://www.amcenglish.com
http://www.mydirectorylink.com
http://www.fgwsh.com
http://loobradoo.com
http://www.gi8.net
http://www.nicksyear.com
http://www.ohxk.com
http://www.un-earthed.co.uk
http://www.directdirectory.co.uk
http://www.goodwebdirectory.com
http://www.final-fantasy.us
http://www.thefreewebsitedirectory.co.uk
http://www.hiredentertainment.com
http://www.gdir.org
http://www.5stardirectory.info
http://www.intelligentobject.com
http://karmania.net
http://www.zinklist.com
http://www.addlinksuggest.com
http://evill.us
http://linkdrip.com
http://www.ferretseek.com
http://www.clixa.com
http://www.directorylist.com.ar
http://www.p6b.net
http://www.mu0.net
http://www.universalinformationexchange.com
http://www.9y6.net
I’ve gathered a list of websites I use almost every day in some form for web development and design, every site serves a purpose, and the collection of sites covers every single required resource in any web project I can think of (well, as long as PHP is the main backend language).
I’ve split the list into four categories so you can jump down to them quickly: Graphics, Photoshop, Tutorials, Inpsiration & General.
Icons, one of the most over-abused things which websites LOVE to list in huge quantities in return for lots of diggs. Here are some real icon resources which have actually helped me:
1. http://www.iconlet.com/ - an archive of literally thousands of icons from many many popular sets online. A great place to find new iconsets when looking for one specific icon via the search.
2. http://www.iconarchive.com/ - although the site is overly cluttered, there’s a surprising number of excellent iconsets hidden within.
3. http://www.iconfinder.net/ - the third and final icon search site, this site tends to display larger icons than the above, possibly more useful in a desktop/large menu environment, yet still a good resource.
4. http://www.dafont.com/top.php - daFont is an excellent site, but more useful than all is the top 100 font list, a wonderful selection of some amazing fonts. However, be sure not to use the “free for personal use” ones on commercial projects, an easy mistake I have made in the past.
5. http://ilovetypography.com/ - it’s all about the sidebar for resources on ilovetypography. An excellent monthly updated list of top-notch fonts to get dug into.
6. http://www.textureking.com/ - a great resource for all kinds of different textures. Perfect for overlays, backgrounds, etc
7. http://www.tenbytwenty.com/ - as stated on their site, Ten by Twenty make splendid little pixel-based products: wordpress themes, icons & fonts.
1. http://www.deviantart.com/#catpath… - deviantART’s photoshop brushes collection is the best in the world, that link goes to the most popular of all time, there’s some amazing stuff there.
2. http://www.deviantart.com/#catpath… - another deviantART link, this time to their all time popular photoshop .psd files, more excellent work to use and play with in there too.
3. http://www.psbrushes.net/ - a relatively small collection in relation to deviantART, but this means that generally, the brushes are of higher quality.
4. http://myphotoshopbrushes.com/ - a site dedicated to photoshop resources including brushes, patterns, shapes, tutorials.
5. http://www.brusheezy.com/ - one of the larger sites dedicated to photoshop brushes and patterns, some excellent stuff is to be found here.
1. http://psdtuts.com/ - excellent site you most likely already know. Instead of many mid-quality photoshop tutorials, the site contains less (although there’s quite a lot now) amazing quality tutorials from many well known photoshop - genii.
2. http://nettuts.com/ - from the same people as PSDTUTS (above) comes NETTUTS, an excellent tutorial site with more code and website related tutorials.
3. http://webdesignfromscratch.com/ - some excellent tutorials on everything you need to know to create a website from scratch. Including many under-talked-about topics such as wire-frames, information architecture and marketing/SEO.
4. http://tutorialdog.com/ - more quality tutorials accross a range of subjects: photoshop, javascript, max osx, html & css
5. http://w3schools.com/ - apparently some people hate this site, but I’ve found it extremely useful as a very quick little markup reference, especially when learning a new language (javascript for me).
1. http://cssmess.com/ - my own gallery tops the list, but seriously I believe we show the most inspiring sites on the web (as well as the messy ones too)
2. http://cssmania.com/ - probably the most updated gallery, but recently the sites have lowered significantly in quality, most new sites get put on it, which is a shame really.
3. http://bestwebgallery.com/ - one of my favorite css galleries, the sites are always very inspiring and of great quality.
4. http://webcreme.com/ - the last gallery, with again, some excellent quality sites.
1. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ - a site I constantly read for their long, well writen articles relating to design and design on the web.
2. http://designreviver.com/ - one of the better roundup sites, with some quality tutorials too.
3. http://www.webdesignerwall.com/ - amazing tutorials, excelletn design analysis, a must read.
4. http://www.sxc.hu/ - an awesome and more importantly, free, stock photo website
This is just a giant collection of Tutorials on learning different web based programming languages. Just going to get my plugs in at the top of the post. Resource Pile is run by Kerplunc so feel free to check them out. If you want shared hosting I recommend checking out Web Hosting Search, or our hosts: Fanatical Host for shared hosting and for Virtual Private servers you should check out SuperBytes. If you plan on learning any of these languages and want to try out your skills in a live server environment then check out the two hosting sites above. It really depends what language you want to learn to choose between the two. Hope you enjoy the post!
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Web directories. Some people swear by them, others find them pointless. I sit right in the middle. While they don’t normally bring many extra visitors to a website, they do provide precious backlinks, free backlinks, many times without the need for a return link. It’s these backlinks that can help SEO wise, increasing search rankings as the clever algorithms of Google, Yahoo & etc discover your site is linked to more than others. A good, simple solution for any new websites. Unfortunately it’s very time-consuming to submit manually, but there are automators, and there are manual services too (or services that claim to be so). So, here’s the list:
http://www.directory.ldmstudio.com
http://www.webdirectory4all.com
http://www.webodirectory.com
http://www.directoryjp.com
http://www.free-advertise.net
http://www.anaximanderdirectory.com
http://eastdevon.eu
http://www.alldirectlinks.com
http://www.abigdir.com
http://www.seowebindex.com
http://linkbook.pcgraphicsolutions.com
http://www.opendirectorys.com
http://directory.webacclaim.com
http://www.optimizedirectory.com
http://www.thelivinglink.net
http://www.ewebindex.com
http://www.5lbs.com/
http://www.dndirectory.net/dir/
http://www.toplinesearch.com
http://www.sapujagat.com
http://www.marketseo.com
http://www.ddirectory.co.uk
http://www.ipsarion.com
http://www.mymaxlinks.info
http://www.cherwell.eu
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