Sun, 28 Oct 2007 17:59:23 +0000 admin@webdesignerforum.co.uk (Web Design Forum) IP.Blog 60
Web Designer Forums has now created Design Competitions for all members!

These where created to give members the opportunity to showcase their skills and have something to put into their portfolio. Winning entries will go into the "User Submitted Templates" section of the forum so the designs will be put to good use. The winner will get a special forum badge and also be featured in the Winners Forum, Gallery and also appear in the Newsletter!

It's purpose was mainly to bring a little lighthearted competition to the forum where people are given a fake brief and the best design/designs win.

I think it will take a little while for members to come around to it, but at the end of the day it's for fun, there's no money to be made out of it and both members and the forum benefit.

The first competition is a little different from what we planned as it was created in conjunction with another member who wanted a website designed, it's early days yet to judge the success of this. I can assure you that the next competitions will be for the Forum only. Thank you to those who have entered the competitions already.

Remember it's new to us to, so we need to test the waters to make sure we get it right for future competitions.

I hope you will find time to enter.

Link
http://www.webdesignerforum.co.uk/index.php?showforum=99]]> Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:24:30 +0100 I would like to let you know that there have been a couple of new features added to the forum.

1. Social Bookmarking
Every thread on the forum has now the ability to easily be submitted to most of the top social bookmarking services such as Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati etc. I would really encourage submitting topics as it will really help generate interest in the forum and help spread the word

2. Ad Revenue Sharing
To help reward all members I have incorporated Ad Revenue Sharing, this will allow all members to start earning through the Advertisements found on this website when they are clicked. The banners can be found after every first post and also at the bottom of the website.

Click here for more information and how to sign-up.

I'm always looking for ways to improve the forum so if you have any suggestions please let me know

Thank you all for you continual support and also spreading the word about us!

]]> Sat, 18 Aug 2007 12:14:06 +0100
I'll be attending the annual London exhibition, Internet World thursday. I'm attending on behalf of my company, as there are some seminars that could be of a great benefit to them. As they are publishers i'll be looking into how to produce digital magazines on the internet and the best ways to do so. I'll also be looking into techniques of online marketting and also blogging, so it should be an interesting trip.

It's a great opportunity to talk to some of the industry leaders, BBC, Google, Paypal to name a few. So I can't wait to hear what they have to say about their latest developments and what things are planned for the future.

I'll be detailing any interesting findings on the forum

Details: www.internetworld.co.uk]]> Thu, 26 Apr 2007 13:43:54 +0100
Performace has increased and also users won't get any more errors if too many people are online at the same time! So you should be able to zip around the forums without fears of time-out errors etc.

Everything should be running smooth now. I'v pretty much covered everything in testing, though i'm only human so if you run into any problems with the new forums please let me know and i'll get it sorted.

Enjoy ]]> Thu, 22 Mar 2007 13:27:34 +0000

Due to some inspirational works from our very own forum members Olivier & Eskymo, I have finally set aside alot of time to learn Flash & Actionscript 2.0. I'm using a series of Books and online tutorials which I have found very easy to get started and learn the basic from. One book I could certainly recommend is "Flash 8 Actionscript Bible, by Robert Reinherdt & Joey Lott" It's perfect for me as to be honest didn't know anything about Flash Actionscripting and found other books skipped various parts so you went from A to C and missed out B. So this book is perfect i'v covered Variables..IF, For, While statements and am now onto Functions..which I find very interesting. The beauty of it all i'm really enjoying learning it and sometimes can't stop reading it as i'm now starting to understand statements when looking at peoples code! It's great!

Alot of this Flash work is so I can fabricate some of the idea's i'v had that will go into V.3.0 of this forum (Currently on V.1.0) V.2 will be a small re-design mainly colour and forum upgrade to get it to the latest version (ass it has some nice features). So the best is yet to come!

Anyway, back to learning Functions!

Ben ]]> Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:40:44 +0000
There's an interesting article on Nikes Website - if you havn't checked it out it's at: http://www.nike.com/nikeair/europe/index.html?lang=uk

It's very flash intensive but gives a rich user experience.

I must say I enjoyed the read, navigatiting around the magazine wasn't the most intuitive and user friendly design but netherless it's still fine to get around as you click the page numbers (or arrows) on the right hand side to browse the magazine.

You can sign up to the magazine here: http://www.adobemagazine.com/ie/

You can view the First edition here: http://www.adobe.com/uk/special/magazine/adobemag1/

Another Adobe newsletter worth mentioning is "Adobe Edge" published every 6 weeks it covers latest happenings on the web with focuses on Flash and CSS.

Check out the latest issue here: http://www.adobe.com/newsletters/edge/january2007/]]> Tue, 20 Feb 2007 14:00:40 +0000
I would like to announce I have created a new CSS/XHTML valid Template which is now available to download here: http://www.webdesignerforum.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=390

I really recommend looking at the way the design is made and if you get stuck ask for help in the forum - and create your own CSS design. Since I have started coding templates I have learnt so much, it really is a great exercise to improve your skills.

Hope you like it

Ben]]> Fri, 24 Nov 2006 22:19:12 +0000
They won't be highly complex designs but simple layouts that can be built upon and best of all they will be free to use in a non-commercial enviroment, please ask first if you wish to use them commercially.

I'v made this announcement as a motivational tool, as now that i'v announced it, i'm going to have to stick by it, so please stay tuned for more added templates, if any of you would like to contribute please do, as it's free for anyone to upload and showcase their designs.

I'll be adding a non-coded layout section aswell, so you can upload your .png/.psd layouts for people to use and learn from.

]]> Mon, 20 Nov 2006 19:08:20 +0000

A brand new category has been added to the Web Designer Resource Forum - which is "FREE CSS/XHTML Web Templates" section, - It's been created so users can share their templates for free. (All of which being W3C compliant).

This forum will hopefully do the following:

1. Give people new to web building/designing an understanding of the way CSS/XHTML web pages are built, allowing them the freedom to customise the code and design as the full layered .png (Graphics File) is also included.

2. Gives the designer exposure and allows them to showcase their skills.

3. Templates serve the purpose as time-saving products, perhaps a designer doesn't have the time to create a webpage - or needs certain elements from some of the layouts - he/she then can then easily extract what they need from layouts in this new template forum.

Personally I will be adding to this as time goes on, as I just love designing! Plus practice makes perfect so i'm sure in doing so will also improve my skillset.

I hope to see other contributers to this section aswell.

Template Forum Link: www.webdesignerforum.co.uk/index.php?showforum=84

Ben]]> Wed, 25 Oct 2006 13:58:30 +0100
Feeling Re-energised and full of idea's I couldn't wait to get cracking into CSS and finishing some sections on the forum.

First off was getting building the gallery into the forum and customising it. I'm pleased to say it's now live and already has had some great images added to it There will be plenty more sections added to it over the coming weeks and also some really nice functionality added to user profiles where you can link your gallery albums/blogs create a forums friends list etc rather like a mini-myspace So that's something i'm looking forward to implementing.

I then started experimenting with css and trying to build a complete website with as little or no hacks as possible. It's going very well so far. With my new passion for css I decided to write a little tutorial using a ul's and li's to create a seamless horizontal navigation inc rollover effects.

You can find the tutorial here: Click Me

Hope you like ]]> Mon, 16 Oct 2006 14:01:13 +0100