There are many places to find WordPress themes. Below I’ve compiled a list of the best places to find premium WordPress themes. Enjoy!

UpThemes

With their Theme Club, you gain access to their collection of premium WordPress themes and top-notch support. Build amazing websites for your clients (or yourself) and get help when you need it.

Press75

Why choose Press75.com? In short, their themes are unique, clean and efficient with several key customization and content management options. Basically, you get everything you need and absolutely nothing you don’t.

WooThemes

Their themes are all built on a solid code framework which they have fine tuned over time. With a new backend to let you easily control the theme options and multiple theme styles to every theme, it won’t take you long to get up and running.

Themeforest

At ThemeForest you can buy and sell HTML templates as well as themes for popular CMS products like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal with prices ranging from just $5 up to $40. Items are priced on the complexity, quality and use of the file. The site is home to a bustling community of web designers and developers and is the biggest marketplace of its kind.

RocketTheme

Welcome to the new home for the very best in Joomla Templates, Drupal Themes, WordPress Themes, phpBB3 Styles, Extensions, and the very best web development community bar-none!

Thesis Theme

Thesis Theme for WordPress is a premium template system designed to serve as the rock-solid foundation beneath any kind of website. Over 25,793 people rely on the airtight SEO, incredible design flexibility, and lightning-fast loading times that Thesis provides.

MojoThemes

MOJO themes is a marketplace for everyone to BUY or SELL themes and templates. They sell themes for the most commonly used CMS and e-commerce platforms on the web such as WordPress, Tumblr, Joomla, and Magento. Their templates range from basic PSD templates to complex HTML site templates.

Templatic

A place to get out of the box, premium and awesome WordPress themes to fulfill your needs in different areas of blogging and web design. From a simple Blogging theme, to a complete e-commerce integrated WordPress theme, they are releasing themes in diverse range so you can use WordPress as a CMS.

WPRemix

WP Remix 3.0 – the only theme on the net that offers WYSIWYG page template editing.
Over 50 page templates to choose from.

DailyWp.com

Free and premium WordPress themes for blogs, portfolios, news, and more.

StudioPress

StudioPress themes are a perfect solution for small businesses or individuals looking to establish their online presence with a WordPress blog or website.

SoloStream

It doesn’t have to cost a lot to publish your new blog or website, and it doesn’t have to be difficult. With WordPress and Premium WordPress Themes from Solostream, you can get a professional-looking website or blog up and running for less than a hundred bucks.

PremiumPress

Design and develop quality, feature rich Premium WordPress Themes for small, medium and large businesses. Their themes include a shopping cart theme, coupon site theme, classifieds theme, and many others.

Headway Themes

Who says you have to dig deep into HTML to change the layout of your site? Headway’s Visual Editor lets you do anything from create a standard blog page to creating an e-commerce site.

ElegantThemes

From ElegantThemes.com, “I created this website to provide WordPress themes of quality and integrity. I craft my themes with a goal of simplicity and professionalism and strive to inject each design with a dose of modest elegance. I believe that your website is not just a tool, it is an integral part of your identity. My job is to respect each customer by providing attractive and userfriendly templates that will help you achieve your online goals.”

ThemeJam

ThemeJam delivers professional quality themes for WordPress. They take it further and give you additional formats to complete your online presence. Formats include WordPress themes, site templates, and email templates.

Viva Themes

They create quality and professionally designed WordPress themes. They offer themes for your business, blog or personal sites. All of that comes with excellent free support.

Obox Design

Gorgeous design and functionality that you would normally only be able to attain from expensive professional agencies. Obox creates premium themes built for multiple platforms.

WP Zoom

WPZOOM is a small team of two talented web-designers which create Premium Themes for blogging platform – WordPress.

ithemes

iThemes is one of the leaders in producing high-quality premium WordPress themes for photographers, designers, and businesses.

Gabfire Themes

Gabfire Themes was founded in 2008 by Mehmet Ozekinci a 29-year old independent web designer and web project consultant based in Estonia.

Organic Themes

From OrganicThemes.com, “Aloha, Organic Themes is a complete WordPress theme solution company founded in the remote town of Lahaina on the Hawaiian Island of Maui. Lahaina is referred to as the art capital of the Pacific, and we believe our beautiful surroundings and healthy environment translate directly in to the design and development of our premium WordPress themes. At Organic Themes, we work hard to play hard.”

Theme Shift

ThemeShift WordPress themes are professional-looking and extremely well-coded. A lot of handy features let you turn your blogging software into a CMS. Packages include theme updates. You have access to the latest version at any time and get a mail when a new version is published.

NattyWP

From NattyWP.com – “We are developing professional wordpress themes and provide efficient support of our templates. Join the club and choose the membership that suits your needs. We are proud to invite you to the best wordpress themes club and provide you with the full access to all our themes, as well as tutorials, support and the community forum. Join us now!”

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BuySellAds.com was founded in February/March 2008 and helps online advertisers and website publishers buy and sell ads better. Below Todd shares his insights and experience in rapidly growing BuySellAds.

For those readers who are preparing to launch or have recently launched their app/web-based service, can you share what you guys did early on to attract those initial customers for BuySellAds?

The first thing was having an app/product that solved a common problem. Since we were initially solving this problem for ourselves, telling our story was very easy, natural, and resonated well with the initial users we approached. With BSA we were lucky in that it was very obvious who could benefit from using the app. We weren’t competing with other ad networks, we were competing with the individual website owners who were currently doing by hand what BSA was built to do. It was very grass-roots, sending legitimate personal emails and letting our passion for the business show through with fast and accurate support.

What do you attribute to BuySellAds’ success? How have you grown so quickly?

Two things. First, we were making website owners (mostly freelancers) more efficient – people who tend to always be busy, and for whom time is real money. Second, our intentions have always been very genuine and transparent from the start, and we have been extremely consistent for over 2 years now. Consistently delivering for your users is key. It’s a great way to build loyalty and the only true way to win business month after month.

How are you currently marketing BuySellAds? Can you elaborate on what has and has not worked well for you?

We still have a very grass-roots approach. Our best marketing comes from our users who recommend us, write blog posts, and tweet about us. After that it is our support. Providing great support has really strengthened relationships with our users. Any company who doesn’t provide awesome support these days is crazy, it’s the easiest thing to get right. All you have to do is care.

What role do you think design and usability has played in the success of BuySellAds? Has it given you an edge over the competition?

Since the majority of our users are web designers and developers (or looking to market to them) I think that design has played somewhat of a role. I say somewhat because the early versions of BSA weren’t pixel perfect (the current version isn’t either). However, when it comes to usability, I think it’s played a larger role than design. It is so incredibly easy for someone to buy an ad through us, people get addicted. It’s fun. You can get your ad live on some serious websites in only a few minutes. The design and usability of our site is always something that we will work hard to improve. It is a personal passion of mine, and I value this aspect of our business highly.

What are the key metrics for your business that you review regularly?

Well, to be honest, we have been growing so quickly that I do not look at all that I should. The metrics that tend to put me in a good mood or a bad mood are our total cancellations, total new purchases, total recurring purchases on a daily basis and on a month to date basis. These three stats hold the pulse of the business and allow me to make basic decisions on where to focus our time from week to week. Beyond that, we tend to dive into publisher specific earnings and advertiser specific results while trying to make recommendations and sell more ads.

Looking back, what are the top three things you wish you would have done differently since launching BuySellAds?

I wish that I would have quit my full-time job sooner and focused 100% on BSA before Jan. 1st 2009. I wish that I would have started delegating sooner – I am a control freak and teaching other people how to do parts of my job is a hard thing for me, because I enjoy every aspect so much. Lastly, I wish that I had not spoken with venture capitalist. While I greatly appreciate meeting those that I did and was fortunate to hear their valuable advice, I was never fully committed to raising money and it ended up being a huge time commitment.

What tips would you give someone who is launching an app for the first time?

This is almost a bit cliché these days, but it’s true: get it out there, launch, constantly iterate and improve.

Thanks for sharing your experience with our readers Todd!
Be sure to visit their website at http://www.buysellads.com

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When planning a design for a website, we think about the target audience, however there’s typically more than one audience we’re communicating to. Many websites, particularly the homepage, must cater to a number of different visitors who have arrived for various reasons. Visitors can include potential customers, current customers, investors, media, prospective employees, and potential or current partners.

It’s likely that most of the visitors you’d like to target will be potential customers, however you can’t neglect other visitors and the information they are searching for as well. So how can you effectively communicate to all of these visitors who are visiting your website for different reasons without having a negative impact on conversions. This is where targeted landing pages can help.

While a homepage must address various audiences, a landing page can speak directly to a target market. You should have the goal of using targeted landing pages for each channel such as paid search and display advertising, or for a specific promotion such as a sale or new feature release for your app for example.

Define a “Conversion”

Before you can start work on a landing page you’ll need to define a conversion for the page. When we think of a conversion we immediately think of someone purchasing a product or service via our website, however a conversion can be defined in a number of ways. For example, you may want a visitor to sign up for your email newsletter, sign up for an e-course, complete a form for a trial account or complete a contact form to request a quote. You should never have more than one conversion goal for a single landing page. So think about the goal of your landing page and this goal should serve as the foundation for all design decisions during the optimization process.

Creating a Consistent Experience for the Visitor

While the landing page is critical to the conversion, the experience for a user begins before they arrive to your landing page. Take a step back and look at the design and copy for the ads you’ll be using. Your ad should be consistent with the landing page and have a similar look and feel and messaging. If it’s a banner ad that you’re using be sure to use a similar color scheme for the banner ad and landing page, same imagery, and same fonts. It sounds simple and straightforward, however you’d be surprised at the number of people who do not create consistent messaging and feel across their ads and landing pages.

As you design your landing pages and ads, think about creating a consistent look and feel across the two. It will help in your branding efforts, have an immediate impact on the visitor’s experience, and increase conversions.

Give Visitors a Sense of Security

Whether your goal is to convert a visitor into a paying customer or simply to get a visitor to sign-up for your email newsletter, you must give them a sense of security. A couple of ways this can be accomplished is with icons and copy. For instance, landing page tests have proven that an icon of a “lock” near a link to purchase will help conversions. Security graphics and “site seals” from services like HackerSafe and VeriSign have also shown to have a positive impact on conversions. Testimonials from customers can have a major impact on conversions. Start collecting testimonials, if you aren’t already, and post these near the call-to-action. It can have an immediate impact on your conversion rate.

In terms of your email newsletter or e-course it’s always helpful to add a line that ensures the visitor their email address or information will never be shared with third parties. It’s also a best practice to let visitors know how often they can expect to receive emails from you as well. If you can provide these visual queues for your visitors it will provide an additional level of confidence and increase the chances that they will take the desired action.

Resist the Temptation to Give a Visitor Multiple Paths

Once a visitor has clicked an ad and arrives to your landing page you want them to take a specific action whether it’s signing up for your newsletter or signing up for a trial of your software. You’ve worked to create a consistent look and feel, along with a consistent message. The visitor is now on your page and engaged with your content. What you have communicated via your ad has interested the user and they’re taking a closer look. They are one step closer to taking the desired action. Once on your landing page you will lead them through the page via a headline, imagery, copy, and a call-to-action and hopefully they will convert. As you’re taking them down this path do not present other options that can distract them and take them away from the desired action you’d like for them to take. For instance, if your goal is for the visitor to sign up for a trial of your software, don’t include another form on the page where they can sign up for your email newsletter. Have a single action you want them to take and everything on the page should be focused on leading the visitor to that action.

What should you test?

Your landing page is made up of several primary elements that contribute to a conversion. These consist of a headline, imagery, body copy, and call-to-action. We know visitors have a very short attention span and will make a choice to stay or leave your landing page in a matter of seconds – literally. When a visitor lands on your page they will immediately read your headline and see the imagery and if those capture the attention of the visitor they will see the call-to-action and perhaps read the copy. When testing your landing pages you can have the greatest impact on conversions by testing various headlines and imagery, followed by call-to-action. That’s not to say you shouldn’t test the copy on the page, but the other three can have the greatest and most immediate impact.

In terms of copy, keep it short and to the point. Bullet points work great to clearly and concisely communicate to visitors, however you should lead into the bullet points with a few short sentences. While you’re testing various elements on your page, try testing the order of the bullet points. That has also been proven to affect conversions.

When testing headlines be sure that your ads share the same, or similar, headlines as your landing page. This will help create that consistent experience we mentioned earlier and help conversions. The same is true with imagery. Keep imagery consistent across any banners and your landing page.

In conclusion, you’re leading the visitor to a conversion. It starts by drawing their attention via an ad, whether it’s text-based or a banner ad, the visitor clicks and is then lead to your landing page. There must be consistency from the ad to the landing page to fulfill the visitor’s expectations after clicking the ad. Once on your landing page there should be a single action you’d like for them to take. Be clear and concise in how you communicate, keeping the copy short and to the point. You will then lead the visitor, via the headline and imagery, into the condensed copy and to your call-to-action. Be sure to provide the visual queues mentioned earlier to give them confidence in purchasing and/or sharing their information with you.

As you’re designing your landing pages remember that you only have seconds to grab the attention of a visitor, so you must include a headline that immediately tells the visitor that they’re in the right place. It should be consistent with what was included within the ad and it should clearly and concisely tell them what you do. Your copy should be short and to the point and bullet points allow you to capture the key aspects that you believe are most important to a visitor and allow the content to be digested quickly.

If you keep these best practices in mind while designing your landing pages this will help dramatically increase conversions. Remember, landing pages are something that you should be testing often. Design the first as a control and constantly challenge it. Once you find one that beats the control, start the process again.

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There’s a lot that goes into making your app or web-based service successful, however I want to take a closer look at some key takeaways from successful apps that you can apply to your business. So what makes some of the most well-known apps successful and what can we learn from them?

A Great Team:

We consider this to be the most obvious and it serves as the solid foundation that everything else is built upon. You have to have the right people on your team and they have to be comfortable filling various roles early on. The responsibilities for the initial founders will be plenty and they will be doing things they aren’t very good at, but that’s ok. They should focus on the one thing they do well and understand that they can hire someone else in the near future to handle those areas where they aren’t very strong. In the beginning, “getting stuff done” is most important and will make or break your start-up. The initial team is critical and it’s this group who will help pave the way for the future of the company. Choose your team wisely – especially during the early stages. As your team grows and you establish core values be sure that anyone you add to the team shares these values and will stand behind them.

Execution:

It’s all in the execution and when a passionate founder meets their idea there’s little that can stand in the way of success. Someone else could have had the idea for Flickr, Twitter, or Facebook and there have been competitors but it was a matter of execution that has lead them to where they are today. A “great idea” is just that – an “idea”. It’s tough to get others to help you and impossible to make a positive impact in the world unless you take action. Stop over-analyzing your ideas and asking “what if?” and begin taking action. As you build your business, be aggressive, always have a bias towards action and don’t be afraid to make mistakes.

Know Your Metrics & Track them Closely:

Start-ups may not always have their numbers together initially and completely understand what they should be tracking and how to properly track it, but if you can get started with the most important numbers it makes things a lot easier as you grow. So what are the critical numbers for your app or web-based service? Here are a few key metrics to think about and begin monitoring if you aren’t already:

Basic website metrics:

1. Number of unique visitors to your website
2. Number of pageviews
3. Bounce rate (shows % of visitors who enter and exit on a single page)
4. Drill down into “Traffic Sources” to see how many visitors are finding your website across these various sources.
5. Primary keywords visitors are searching for to find your site across the major search engines (if you’re running paid search campaigns be sure to view this by “paid” and “non-paid”). This will provide insight into search volume and opportunities for additional optimization for certain keywords and keywords you can bid more aggressively for your paid search campaigns.

For your website metrics we recommend using a free service such as Google Analytics. It’s simple to set up and once you’re comfortable using it you can begin customizing it for your needs and use it for advanced tracking as well. There’s also a great iPhone app for Google Analytics (Analytics App – http://analyticsapp.com). There are also a number of real-time analytics services including ChartBeat, VisiStat, and Clicky.

Revenue and Conversion Metrics:

1. Total revenue per month (across all marketing channels)
2. Additional (new) revenue month-over-month across all marketing channels
3. Number of trials each month (if applicable)
4. Number of paying accounts each month
5. Visitor to trial conversion rate (if applicable)
6. Visitor to paid conversion rate
7. Trial to paid conversion rate
8. Average revenue per user or Average rate per user – if you’re selling a subscription-based service. If you are not selling a subscription-based service then you’d want to track your Average Order Value (AOV).
9. Cost-per-acquisition (dollars invested divided by number of paying customers)
10. Cost-per-acquisition (for trials) – dollars invested divided by number of trials

For the metrics above be sure to look at these from a high-level (across all marketing channels), but also break these out by marketing channel to monitor their effectiveness and which are profitable. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but these are the primary metrics you should be tracking on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

Viral Component:

Take a look at Farmville. How were they able to grow to over 80 million active users in such a short amount of time? They have a viral component. You know those annoying Farmville messages you see within your news feed in Facebook from others who are playing? That’s how they’ve grown so quickly by sending those updates via Facebook and attracting other players. It’s the same with Gowalla and Foursquare. This isn’t a recent trend. The same tactic helped Hotmail dominate the free email space. Every email sent had a link back to Hotmail within the footer. Do you have a viral component? If not, how can you incorporate one within your app.

A Focus on Design & Usability:

Have you noticed that some of the most successful apps are also the best designed? It’s not a coincidence. Design and usability alone will not guarantee success but it certainly contributes to the success of some of the most popular apps. Invest time and money in the design of your app. This will give you one of the greatest returns, and advantages, right out of the gate.

Openness and Ability to Build Apps/Plug-ins:

Facebook crushed MySpace for a number of reasons but one of the primary reasons is because Facebook allows developers to build apps and plug-ins which extends the capabilities of Facebook and allows it’s users to get more functionality from the service. The beauty of this model is that it allows each user to extend functionality without adding new features “across the board” and making simple apps cumbersome and bloated. Each user can customize it based on their preference and needs. How can you “open” your app or service and allow others to build apps and plug-ins? Release an API? Build a developer community around these plug-ins? If others are building swarms of apps based on your technology, you know you’re on the right track. Open it up and allow others to build add-ons or plug-ins but keep your core service simple. You don’t want to build a bloated app that tries to be everything to everyone, but by allowing others to extend functionality for their needs, you’ll see some creative implementations come out of this while keeping your core service simple. In addition this will help in building a loyal following for your app and build your brand.

Constraints (or “focusing on a niche”):

Constraints are great. Facebook began by only targeting students (remember when you had to have a .edu email address to sign up?), Twitter only allows 140 characters, 37signals preaches fewer features instead of more features, and the job hunting website, TheLadders.com, is growing quickly focusing solely on jobs that pay $100k or higher. An important lesson that successful apps/services have taught us is that you shouldn’t try to be everything to everyone. Target a smaller audience. Try to do more with less. As your app grows within your niche you can then make a decision as to whether you’d like to extend functionality across the board or, as mentioned in the point above, you can allow other developers to build apps and plug-ins and extend the capabilities on your behalf. Regardless, keep it simple and remember that constraints are good.

Giving it 100% & Creating Your Own “Lucky” Breaks:

Luck isn’t something that falls from the sky and into your lap and you’re instantly successful. Luck happens because you put forth the effort and hard work to create opportunities and if you keep putting yourself in position you’re going to win. Many of the most popular apps were founded by people who have started a number of ventures. Some were also successful, but others you’ve never heard of. They didn’t quit and continued to dedicate themselves to their passion and give it 100%. Take that first step, make a lot of mistakes, learn from those mistakes and keep pushing forward, you’ll have a lot of “luck” along the way.

Be Sure to “Zag”:

Everyday someone is launching a new app and chances are they are entering a crowded market. With access to open source tools it’s easier than ever to get up and running and with the barrier to entry so low many markets are crowded with solutions that are competing for the same users. However, this is good news! Competition is great! It proves that there’s a market willing to pay for a software solution that serves the same market as you’re targeting.

The challenge is differentiating your app from the competition. There are a number of ways you can differentiate your app and it should be clear to users how you differ from the competition. Design can be an excellent differentiator and we provide detail on this later in the book, but think about companies like Apple or a web-based company like 37signals, design has definitely set them apart from the competition and helped them grow rapidly. In terms of your app, think about how you can improve the design and usability. Are there improvements you can make to increase the visual appeal of your website? Is there some process within your app that you could improve and making it easier for users? When we think about comparing one app to another many of us think about features, and while features are critical, there’s more to making your app stand out among the competition than adding more bells and whistles.

Look at the competition and what you are likely to find is a number of competitors chasing one another and adding another feature to “one-up” a competitor. Take a different approach. Look at what they’re doing, let them chase each other, and take a radically different approach. Marty Neumeier, author of Zag, said it best “When everybody zigs, zag.”

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Here are some of the best social share icons I’ve found. Share your content in style with these social share icons for your blog. Enjoy!

Social Media Bookmark Icons

1. Download the icons from Nouveller.com




2. Subscribe to Nouveller.com’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Vintage Postage Stamps Social Media Icons

1. Download the icons from Tutorial9.net




2. Subscribe to Tutorial9′s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Function Social Media Icons

1. Download the icons from Function




2. Subscribe to WeFunction.com’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Wooden Badges – Social Icon Pack

1. Download the icons from Tutorial9.net




2. Subscribe to Tutorial9′s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

27 Circular Social Media Icons

1. Download the icons from BlogPerfume.com




2. Subscribe to BlogPerfume’s RSS Feed

Social Media Iconset by Komodo Media

1. Download the icons from Komodo Media




2. Subscribe to Komodo Media’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Free Hand Drawn Doodle Icon Set for Bloggers – Spoon Graphics

1. Download the icons from Spoon Graphics




2. Subscribe to Spoon Graphics’ RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

154 Matte Black Social Media Icons

1. Download the icons from WebTreats




2. Subscribe to WebTreats’ RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Social Media Icon Set: Chrome

1. Download the icons from Chris Wallace.com




2. Subscribe to Chris Wallace’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Free Social Media Icon Set from Noupe – Designed by IconShock

1. Download the icons from Noupe.com




2. Subscribe to Noupe’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Social Media Icons – Large Icons Social

1. Download the icons from SixRevisions.com




2. Subscribe to SixRevision’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Glossy Social Media Icons

1. Download the icons from webtoolkit4.me




2. Subscribe to webtoolkit4.me’s RSS Feed

Woven Fabric Social Media Icon Set

1. Download the icons from WebDesignerDepot.com




2. Subscribe to WebDesignerDepot’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Social Bookmarking Icons

1. Download the icons from vikiworks.com




2. Follow on Twitter

Vector Social Media Icon Set

1. Download the icons from ndesign studio




2. Subscribe to ndesign studio’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Social Media Icons – Post-It Note Style

1. Download the icons from brianyerkes.com




2. Subscribe to brianyerkes.com’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Mini Social Networking Icon Set

1. Download the icons from chethStudios.com




2. Subscribe to chethStudios.com’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Handy Icons – Vector Icons From WebDesignerDepot

1. Download the icons from WebDesignerDepot.com




2. Subscribe to WebDesignerDepot’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Grunge Peeling Stickers Social Media Icons

1. Download the icons from Tutorial9.net




2. Subscribe to Tutorial9′s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Social Media Icons from Paul Robert Lloyd

1. Download the icons from PaulRobertLloyd.com




2. Subscribe to Paul Robert Lloyd’s RSS Feed

6 Social Icons from DesignReviver

1. Download the icons from DesignReviver




2. Subscribe to DesignReviver’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Handycons – Janko at Warp Speed

1. Download the icons from JankoatWarpSpeed.com




2. Subscribe to JankoatWarpSpeed’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Polaroid Icon Set

1. Download the icons from webtoolkit4.me




2. Subscribe to webtoolkit4.me’s RSS Feed

Free Social Bookmarking Icons from logorunner

1. Download the icons from logorunner




2. Subscribe to logorunner’s RSS Feed




3. Follow on Twitter

Additional Sources for Social Media Share Icons:

WebDesignLedger – The Best Social Media Icons All in One Place
thedesigncubicle – 600+ Free Design, Twitter and Social Media Icons
SpeckyBoy – 30 Amazingly Creative Social Bookmarks Icons Sets
Hongkiat – 100+ Remarkably Beautiful Twitter Icons and Button

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I’ve been doing some research lately on various graphing packages that are available and thought I’d share a few of the top choices I’ve found. Depending on your needs there are options for PHP, .NET, Adobe Flex, Adobe Air, ColdFusion, Java, Perl, or Ruby on Rails. Here are of some the best I’ve found:

FusionCharts

FusionCharts is one of the best I’ve found. These charts can be integrated with ASP, ASP.NET, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion, Ruby on Rails, Python or HTML pages. They also work with Adobe Flex. FusionCharts is built by InfoSoft Global and also provide FusionWidgets (gauges, funnels, and Gantt charts) and FusionMaps.

.netCharting

.netCharting provides some of the best looking charts I’ve seen, however as the name implies they are limited to .NET. The charting components contain various elements including gauges, maps, funnels, and financial charts, to name a few.

Emprise Javascript Charts

Emprise Javascript Charts aren’t as visually appealing, in my opinion, as FusionCharts or the .NET charts however they seem to be a solid option if you’re looking for javascript charts. They feature Ajax driven data (supports XML formatted data) and loads data on the fly.

amCharts

amCharts provides Flash based charts, charts for Flex, and .net charts as well. amCharts can extract data from CSV or XML files and read dynamic data generated by PHP, .NET, Ruby on Rails, Java, Perl, or ColdFusion.

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Here are our top picks for finding design related content and great places to share yours. If you’re just starting your design related blog or have been writing for a while and looking for great places to post your content and grow readership for your blog, definitely check out these options.

DesignNewz

Tripwire Magazine

Web Design News

Design Bump

DesignMoo

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Here’s a roundup of our top ten favorite design-related posts for the past week. Enjoy!

Waterscape Photography: Beautiful Waterscapes and Tricks of the Trade

Nature provides us with a never-ending supply of inspiration, look no further than the coast for an array of majestic scenery. This article focuses on the point where land and sea meet, with 24 stunning waterscapes, essential tools of the trade.

Systematizing the Graphic Design Process

Unlike other forms of art, graphic design is not just about taking paper and pen and letting the work flow. Graphic designers have to help viewers get the message and help sell a service or product. Creating a design for a client with little or no strategy just doesn’t work. Unlike traditional art, graphic design has to convey a very narrow message.

14 jQuery Plugins for Enhanced Content Viewing

Whether you need to display content within a limited amount of space or you just want to make a section of your website more engaging, jQuery is an excellent solution. With jQuery you can easily create accordion style content boxes, image galleries, and content sliders. Here are 14 excellent jQuery plugins for adding this type of functionality to your site.

35 Creative Twitter User Profile Designs

One of the most important aspects of attracting followers on Twitter, in addition to quality tweets, is your Twitter page profile design; it has to be creative and attractive to show that you take tweeting seriously. This collection of Twitter user profile designs follows up on an earlier showcase that we published called 50 Beautiful & Unique Twitter Profile Designs. In this collection, you’ll find some of the great Twitter user profile designs out there.

The Mystery Of The CSS Float Property

Years ago, when developers first started to make the transition to HTML layouts without tables, one CSS property that suddenly took on a very important role was the float property. The reason that the float property became so common was that, by default, block-level elements will not line up beside one another in a column-based format. Since columns are necessary in virtually every CSS layout, this property started to get used — and even overused — prolifically.

Solution For Very Long Dropdown Menus

I like to be confident with post titles, but the reality in this case is a *possible* solution for very long dropdowns. The problem with long dropdowns is that the dropdown itself can go below the “fold” of the website. That is, below the visible area of the browser window. So in order to access those menu items down below, you need to scroll your browser window. For those of us with scroll wheels of some kind on our mice (mouses?), it’s not a big deal. For those without, those lower menu items are totally inaccessible, because to use the browser scrollbar means mousing off the menu (and probably having it close).

20 Handy Photoshop Tips For a Faster Workflow

We all use Photoshop on a daily basis, but I bet there’s at least one tip in this post that will give you the old ‘Why didn’t I know of this before’ moment! It’s tips like these that make the most common of tasks quicker and easier than ever to help speed up your Photoshop workflow.

Top 10 Site Search Options

Part of having a user-friendly site involves making it possible for visitors to quickly find what they are looking for. A site-wide search is one of the best ways to accomplish this. In this post we’ll look at 10 of the leading options for helping visitors to find the content that they want. Of course, most CMSs come with a standard search functionality, but this may not always be the best options (as is the case with WordPress’ default search).

Daily Inspiration #335

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

200+ Truly Useful Free Halloween Icons for Everyone

It’s only a week before we celebrate Halloween. As for our second collection of useful resources for the Halloween season, We compiled 200+ Truly Useful Free Halloween Icons for Everyone. These icons can be downloaded right into your desktop for FREE! Each set includes several icons that you can get for personal use. The following sets of icon were made by several of our creative graphics designers on the web to share their talents and uplift Halloween spirit.

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Here I’ve included a number of resources for usability best practices, inspiration, and design patterns for the web. There are many excellent sites and blogs on user experience and usability. If there are any that you read regularly and not included below, please share within the comments. Enjoy!

UXBooth

The UX Booth is a blog by and for the User Experience Community. Together, we’re writing articles and sharing resources on usability, user experience, and interaction design.

1. http://www.uxbooth.com

UX Magazine

UX Magazine was created to deliver a central place to discuss the critical disciplines that all enhance user experience. Extraordinary user experiences should be the goal of every interaction you deliver to your users at any level. All too often, businesses (large and small) get it horribly wrong. It’s painful to watch and even worse when it happens to you.

1. http://www.uxmag.com

Jakob Nielsen/UseIt.com

Jakob Nielsen’s website that contains a number of great reports on user experience and usability.

1. http://www.useit.com

Luke Wroblewski’s Functioning Form

Functioning Form is a blog about interface design by Luke Wroblewski. That is to say, it is where art and technology emerge as experience, where message and medium meld, and where interactions are useful, usable, and enjoyable. Luke is an internationally recognized Web thought leader who has designed or contributed to software used by more than 600 million people. He is currently Senior Director of Product Ideation & Design at Yahoo! Inc. where he leads the design of the world’s most accessed Web page (Yahoo.com) and many other popular products including My Yahoo! and Yahoo! Buzz.

1. http://www.lukew.com/ff/

Fuel Your Interface

You interface designers have your work cut out for you. Bigger and better and uber creative websites are cropping up everywhere these days. It always seems as if one form is niftier than the rest, or the typography on one site puts others to shame. How can you even begin to keep up? Why, Fuel Your Interface, of course!

1. http://www.fuelyourinterface.com/

UX Passion

UXPassion is a blog by Vibor Cipan who works with Microsoft Croatia. Vibor is passionate about application and web usability, interaction design, information architecture, SEO and blogging and sees all these elements as a part of broader “UX”, in the future UXPassion.com will bring you tutorials and articles targeting before mentioned topics.

1. http://www.uxpassion.com

Boxes and Arrows

Boxes and Arrows is devoted to the practice, innovation, and discussion of design; including graphic design, interaction design, information architecture and the design of business. Since 2001, it’s been a peer-written journal promoting contributors who want to provoke thinking, push limits, and teach a few things along the way.

1. http://boxesandarrows.com

Inspiration and Design Patterns

Yahoo Design Pattern Library

Yahoo’s Design Pattern Library is provides detailed explanations and best practices for various web design patterns.

1. http://developer.yahoo.com/ypatterns/

PatternTap

PatternTap is brought to you by the team at SquaredEye and provides inspirational snippets of everything from 404 pages to best practices for breadcrumbs.

1. http://patterntap.com

UI Patterns

UI-Patterns.com is the work of Anders Toxboe – a Danish web developer seeking to categorize what has before seemed like ad hoc approaches to developing web applications.

1. http://ui-patterns.com

Welie.com

Welie.com is a site by Martijn van Welie. Martijn is a Senior Consultant Interaction Design at Philips Design.

1. http://www.welie.com

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There were a number of great posts this week from 15 Common Mistakes in E-Commerce Design to setting up Automatic Thumbnails Without Using Custom Field. Here’s a list of our favorites. Enjoy!

15 Common Mistakes in E-Commerce Design
Selling online can open up huge new markets for many businesses. When your store can be open 24/7 and you can reach a global market without the costs of mailings and call centers, it can be a huge boon to your business. But there are plenty of things to consider when designing an ecommerce site. It’s not as simple as throwing up some shopping cart software and plopping products into a database.

Start-up Metrics that Matter
Dave McClure gave a killer talk at FOWA London that gave some great advice for web start-ups. If that’s you, make sure not to miss this talk. You can also view the slides or download the audio. Enjoy!

Interview with Wendell Fernandes: User Interface and Icon Designer
Wendell was one of several designers who brought us the new Monster.com. In addition to Monster.com, Wendell has also worked with clients like Dell, and DivX so it was really interesting to hear what he had to say.

Design a Vintage Radio Icon in Photoshop
In this Photoshop Tutorial, you’ll learn how to design an old vintage radio using simple shapes, gradients, patterns and textures.

Become a WordPress Theme Developer Who Rocks in Four Steps (and 50+ Readings)
The steps are clear and in this post you can find some useful tutorials and excellent readings to really become a star as WordPress Themes Designer.

So Your Client Says They Want to Get on Twitter…
Twitter. They talk about it on the local news, they talk about it on ESPN… it’s mainstream. It’s almost a household name like YouTube, Facebook, or Johnson and Johnson. Businesses know that other businesses are using it, and they feel like they are potentially missing the boat on something big. Because it’s web related, they turn to us, their web designers, for guidance. What do we say? “Sure, no problem”

Identity Design Process for a Personal Rebranding
Mike Tittel, an independent photographer approached me looking to take his personal brand identity to the next level. Mike Tittel Photography, an adventure sports/active lifestyle photography company based out of Salt Lake City, Utah, decided that if he wanted to move from his “basic Verdana [all type] logo” that he needed to work with a professional — something unfamiliar to him and his previous marketing efforts.

Interview with Steven Snell from Vandelay Design & DesignM.ag
I first connected with Steven back when I used to run Freelance Folder almost 2 years ago (Steven wrote some great articles there) and we’ve been in contact ever since. Here’s the interview I did with Steven recently, I hope you like it! Make sure you stop by in the comment section and feel free to ask Steven questions!

A Case of the Creative Munchies & How to Feed Them
Ask just about any creative professional and they will most likely tell you they have suffered from a creative block. It’s just a normal part of working in a career where your passions and talents meet….

How To: Start Selling Downloads from Your WordPress Blog in 5 Minutes
Selling downloads that are instantly delivered to the customer after they purchase is an easy way to earn some passive income. There’s no inventory to manage, no shipping calculations, and instant, automatic delivery means more happy customers and less support headaches.

Automatic WordPress Thumbnail Without Custom Field
Let’s say you want to show thumbnails in your blog’s front page. A lot of blogs do that now and it’s a good way of making the page look more alive. The only problem though is that using custom fields can be complicated and time-wasting. This post will show you how to make your theme generate thumbnails automatically, based on your post’s first image.

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