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10 Cool WordPress Plugins You Should Check Out

If you have a WordPress website, you’re obviously aware of the benefits this premier open-source website-building platform brings to the table.

But are you aware of the legion of website and business enhancement tools lying in wait among the thousands of cool WordPress plugins currently on the market; one or more of which could easily take your site or business to the next level?

What’s out there? Quite a bit, obviously.

Which useful WordPress plugins are “must-haves” for me? It could take you a ton of time to find the answer to that one.

That’s what we’re here for.

10 essential WordPress plugins are admittedly a small sample size. But these are 10 of the very best, and we’re guessing that one or more of them could be just what you’ve been looking for.

1. Amelia WordPress Booking Plugin

This game-changing booking plugin fully automates your business’s interaction with existing and potential clients and allows you to focus on key business operations instead of having to constantly interrupt your workflow to manage appointments.

Installing and configuring Amelia can be done with just a few clicks. You don’t have to know anything about coding.
Amelia can manage an unlimited number of appointments for an unlimited number of clients, an unlimited number of employees, and at multiple locations.
Clients can book appointments 24/7 and manage their own appointments as well as their profiles from the front end.
Amelia accepts deposit payments, sends out appointment reminders, and can charge different rates for different appointments.
If you have a global clientele, Amelia takes into account customer time zones as well as manages translated notifications if you have a multilingual site.
Amelia also manages event bookings, whether they are recurring or one-time.

In the unlikely event you encounter a problem with Amelia, the customer support team stands ready to help.

2. wpDataTables

The wpDataTables WordPress plugin allows users to quickly and easily create responsive, interactive, and highly customizable tables and charts from large amounts of data.

Key features include:

The ability to create tables that allow front-end editing, whether they are created manually or are MySQL-based
Advanced filtering capabilities that enable front-end users to filter table data by single or multiple column values
Automatic syncing of created and published Google Sheets
Simple wpDataTables wizards to access the HighCharts, Chart.js, and Google free charts libraries

wpDataTables’ many other features include:

Connection support to MySQL, MS SQL, and PostgreSQL databases
Responsive design from any data source
Creating tables from CSV, JSON, MySQL, and Excel and Google spreadsheet data
Formidable Forms plugin support
Sorting by single or multiple columns
Data color-coding using conditional formatting

More than 50,000 companies and individuals have placed their trust in wpDataTables.

3. Visual Composer Website Builder

Visual Composer is a new, ReactJS-based intuitive drag and drop website builder that enables you to create a website quickly, easily, and hassle-free.

This website-building popular plugin:

Enables business owners to showcase their brand online with its drag and drop editor and professional templates.
Its feature-rich design controls enable designers to achieve pixel-perfect perfection as they bring their projects to life.
Its top-of-the-line marketing content elements give its users the ability to create high-conversion landing pages, integrate with social platforms, and more.
Makes building a beautiful WooCommerce-based online store a piece of cake.
Features a library of 500+ content elements and templates that is downloadable from the cloud
Offers free and premium versions for business owners to start easily and scale their online presence

Your site will be SEO-friendly, fast, and responsive, and the support is terrific. Free and Premium versions (Starting at $49) are available.

4. Slider Revolution

Slider Revolution can do more than create sliders. A lot more.

It can add impressive (read that WOW) effects to an already notable website design.
It can give you new and unusual visual editing capabilities without requiring any coding on your part.
With its collection of hero blocks, sliders, WooCommerce carousels, and more, it brings beauty to any WordPress website.

5. Logic Hop

Logic Hop lets you customize your site’s content for individual customers or customer types.

Logic Hop supports personalizing your site in response to dozens of criteria so you can tailor your content to address a unique audience.
Logic Hop works with Gutenberg, Divi, Elementor, Beaver Builder, and every other page builder.

Any design or content element you can customize in WordPress can be customized in Logic Hop in minutes.

6. Stacks

The Stacks drag and drop native mobile app builder offers a full package of features to help you design your website or mobile app without coding.

Stacks works perfectly with WooCommerce and WordPress
Certificates required for Google Play Store or Apple Appstore are automatically generated
It takes but a single click to generate and upload the Android & iOS Application Package (APK & IPA)
Notifications to customers are easy to generate and send, and Stacks utilizes WooCommerce payment gateways.

7. Heroic Inbox

The Heroic Inbox plugin enables a business to manage all of its emails in shared inboxes right inside WordPress.

Customer data is presented on the sidebar next to your ongoing chat or message.
Key performance metrics are tracked so the team and overall company performance can be assessed.
Zero Inbox status can be quickly achieved and maintained.

8. Tablesome

This powerful WordPress table plugin allows you to quickly create a table and embed it in a post or page.

Tables can be imported from CSV and XLSX files.
Types of tables that can be created include large data tables, product catalogs, comparison tables, sports statistics, and more.
A shortcode builder for table and table element customizing is included

Tablesome is performance-optimized and SEO friendly and works smoothly with any WordPress theme.

9. Ads Pro Plugin – Multi-Purpose WordPress Advertising Manager

Ads Pro is the best ad manager for WordPress you are likely to come across.

Ads Pro features:

An intuitive backend Admin Panel that allows you to manage an unlimited number of ad spaces
A frontend User’s Panel from which you can control access to manage ads
25+ user-friendly and responsive Ad Templates in 8 categories
20 ad display options
3 Billing Models (CPC, CPM, CPD) and 4 Payment Methods (PayPal, Stripe, Bank Transfer, WooCommerce)

10. Static Pages

Static pages/sites do not require any web programming or database design.

The Static Pages plugin allows you to publish any static page on a WordPress website in a matter of seconds.
You can improve sales by adding a beautiful landing page to your existing shop or blog or add a page with a Mailchimp subscribe form.
Or use Static Pages as an easy way to test something quickly and easily.

Have you been searching for a top-of-the-line WordPress plugin that will help you take your business to the next level?

There are 58,000+ useful WordPress plugins for you to choose from. That would be good news, except you could easily be overwhelmed trying to find just the right plugin for your website.

This post features a collection of top plugins for WordPress websites. Chances are good, you’ll find something here that will make your day.

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of BAW media –]

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13 juillet 2021/par Service comm.

Popular Design News of the Week: July 5 2021 – July 11, 2021

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Every day design fans submit incredible industry stories to our sister-site, Webdesigner News. Our colleagues sift through it, selecting the very best stories from the design, UX, tech, and development worlds and posting them live on the site.

The best way to keep up with the most important stories for web professionals is to subscribe to Webdesigner News or check out the site regularly. However, in case you missed a day this week, here’s a handy compilation of the top curated stories from the last seven days. Enjoy!

The 17 Best WordPress Alternatives (Open-Source & Hosted)

Essential CSS Concepts Every Designer Should Know

Kable – The Better Way to Build Subscription Partnerships

35+ CSS Glow Effects (Free Code + Demos)

3 Essential Design Trends, July 2021

The Anatomy of a Web Page: 14 Basic Elements

How To Build Better UI Designs With layout Grids

User Inyerface – A Worst-Practice UI Experiment

10 CSS & JavaScript Snippets for Creating the Parallax Scrolling Effect

5 Ways To Achieve A Human-Centered Web Design

Source

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

11 juillet 2021/par Service comm.

Popular Design News of the Week: June 28 2021 – July 4, 2021

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Embarrassing Coca-Cola Design Fail

Find Inspiration With a Curated List of Simple Buttons

Pandoc Markdown CSS Theme

20 Best New Sites, June 2021

7 Website Navigation Examples That Will Inspire You

Glassmorphism CSS Generator

Bauhaus Movement: Design Principles, Ideas, and Inspiration

UX Strategy: Giving Your Product an Edge

15 CSS Paper Effects

Radix Colors – A Gorgeous, Accessible, Open-Source Color System

Source

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

4 juillet 2021/par Service comm.

9 Amazing Design-Resource Package Sites

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Every designer has their own preferred strategy for collecting resources. Some pluck brushes, fonts, and templates from different “stock photo sites” and public marketplaces. Others collect graphics from swipe files and forums around the web.

The never-ending desire for themes, visual content, and graphical components has prompted an influx of “design packages” to appear around the web. These all-in-one bundles, ranging from Envato Elements to Elegant Themes, promise a selection of valuable creative content in exchange for a single fee or monthly subscription.

If you’ve been planning to seek out a few of these high-value subscriptions yourself, you’re in the right place! Today, we’re going to talk about some of the top designer resources available on the market.

1. Envato Elements

Probably the best-known of all the designer resource marketplaces, Envato Elements advertises itself as the unlimited creative subscription. On this website, you’ll be able to access around 54 million creative assets through a single subscription. There are endless resources to unlock here, ranging from templates for your graphics to video templates, audio, and stock photos.

Unlike most marketplaces, Envato gives you peace of mind by promising only the highest quality designs and graphics. Your content comes with quality assurance, and there are many PSD elements on the site, too, including stationery and web design templates, mock-ups, and more. Categories for your creative content include:

Stock photos
Video templates
Music
Sound effects
Graphic templates
Graphic designs
Presentation templates
Fonts
Photos
Web templates
Add-ons
CMS templates
WordPress resources
3D content

Pricing: Pricing starts at only $16.50 per month, and this gives you unlimited access to everything on the site, including millions of digital assets and stock photos. You’ll also be able to use various courses and tutorials on the website too.

2. Elegant Themes

Elegant Themes is an all-in-one creative resource for website themes. The solution offers you access to some of the most popular WordPress themes worldwide.

You’ll also get access to a visual page builder as part of the kit. When you sign up for the Elegant Themes subscription, you get access to all of the resources within, including the Divi page builder and WordPress theme, Extra, Monarch, Bloom, and more. If you’re a site builder or work on building pages for clients, this is a must-have subscription.

Elegant themes are currently the go-to resource for more than 750,000 people. It’s also home to some of the highest-rated themes around. Features include:

Divi WordPress page builder
Endless WordPress themes
Page editing tools
Monarch, Bloom, and Extra
Hundreds of website packs
Lifetime premium support
Unlimited website usage

You can either pay for yearly access with Elegant Themes or pay a one-off price for lifetime access. For most, the lifetime option is likely to be a pretty appealing one. You don’t have to worry about renewing your subscription this way.

3. Template Monster

Template Monster offers the “ONE” web development membership, perfect for creative professionals. The MonsterONE offering is a complete unlimited subscription for all of your creative needs, with access to unlimited downloads, new weekly items, and simple licensing. You also get plenty of support from the Template Monster Team.

A goldmine for anyone who needs to upgrade their selection of video and photo assets, graphic templates, HTML templates, or anything else, Template Monster is packed full of amazing resources for any project. You can also find new products from fresh contributors all the time, so the value of your membership is constantly increasing.

Features include:

HTML templates
Presentation templates
CMS templates
Graphic templates
Video assets
3D models
Audio assets
WordPress themes and plugins

Pricing starts at a tiny $6.90 per month, with a slight discount if you pay yearly. The lowest-cost package gives you access to all of your graphic and design assets, but you won’t get any eCommerce or WordPress themes. However, if you upgrade to the all-in-one package at $14.95 per month, you get a more extensive range of resources.

4. Creative Market

Creative Market is another one of those amazing all-in-one environments for creatives and designers. This marketplace is supplied by thousands of independent artists from around the globe, each offering a host of top-quality designs and resources. You’ll find photos, graphics, templates, fonts, web themes, and countless other tools on the Creative Market.

If you’re looking for sheer size, it’s hard to find another company that competes with the Creative Market package. There are literally millions of ready-to-use products available, including Instagram templates, textures, and procreate brushes.

You’ll have access to 3D content for your immersive website designs and a host of purchasing products. Although there’s no “subscription model” per-se for this marketplace, you can invest in a credit plan that allows you to set how much you spend on your assets each month.

Features include:

Millions of creative products
Huge selection of independent designers
Brushes, textures, templates
Fonts and web content available
Huge selection of stock photos
Convenient credit plan

The individual purchasing plan is likely to appeal more to people just beginning to test Creative Market for the first time. However, if you want a subscription experience, we’d recommend using the credit plan to estimate how many credits you’ll need each month.

5. Adobe Stock

All web designers know Adobe. The chances are that no matter what kind of creative work you do, you’ve developed a few skills with an Adobe product, from Photoshop to Lightroom. Adobe Stock is also one of the leading platforms for images on any topic.

Although Adobe Stock doesn’t compete with other marketplaces in terms of versatility, it still stands out as one of the main resources for designers. There are hundreds of millions of stock images, videos, editorial content, and vectors. You can also access a premium collection of custom content and 3D resources too. The great thing about Adobe stock is that you can easily create your own libraries and download content into your Adobe software. Resources include:

Stock photos
Premium images
3D content
Vectors and brushes
Stock video footage
Royalty-free templates
Vector art and illustrations
Stock music and audio
Integration with Adobe software

Adobe Stock is a little pricier than some of the other marketplaces available today, but it’s still pretty impressive. You’ll pay around $29.99 per month for 10 assets per month, or you can access a full annual plan at $199.99 per month. The amount you pay will depend on the quality of the resources that you want to download.

6. Motion Elements

If Elegant Themes is the go-to resource for designers searching for WordPress themes and web design solutions, Motion Elements is the top choice for “motion” content. Here, you’ll find videos, SFX content, images, music, 3D solutions, and so much more.

Though it’s located in Asia, Motion Elements is available worldwide. The marketplace offers a monthly subscription plan wherever you can download unlimited products to suit your needs. There are tons of resources to choose from here, including After Effects elements, tools for Lottie, Premiere Pro, FCPX motion, DaVinci Resolve, and more.

Features include:

After Effects elements
Premier Pro resources
FCPX Motion
DaVinci Resolve
Video and audio content
Stock images
SFX resources
3D content

Pricing starts at $16.50 per month for an unlimited annual plan. This means that you can download as much as you like without having to pay any more. There is a small discount if you pay for a full year of access in one go.

7. Creative Tim

Simple but effective, Creative Tim is an amazing resource for front-end and back-end content bundles. You get fully coded UI tools here that can help you create various mobile and web apps and a huge selection of dashboards and templates. If you’re the kind of designer who likes working on top of things like Bootstrap, React, Angular, Laravel, Node.js, and more, then Creative Tim has you covered.

This is one of the more technical creative resource packages that we’ve looked at so far, but it has a lot of value to offer. That’s probably why there are already more than 1.5 million people using the service. You can search through administration dashboards, UI kits, premium templates, free content, and design systems. Of course, everything is easy to access too. Features include:

Frontend design technologies for endless platforms
Soft design, light design, paper design, and more
Bootstrap content
Resources and third-party tools
Complete design and web kits
UI kits and templates
Admin and dashboard templates

There’s a free version of Creative Tim available for beginners if you want to keep your costs low, but it’s generally much better to sign up for the premium subscription. You can also purchase kits and templates on a one-off basis if you prefer to start small. However, the best prices generally come from buying the bundles from Creative Tim’s subscription side.

8. Storyblocks

Similar in style to Motion Elements, Storyblocks is a creative design resource for any designer getting involved with the video world. This website is home to some of the best free-to-use videos around, with simple licensing available at a click. Aside from high-quality videos and templates, you also get audio and sound effects as part of your subscription and images or illustrations.

The unlimited access pass gives you all the resources you might want, from 4K and HD footage to music and sound effects, After Effects templates, and photos, vectors, or illustrations. You can also export a host of your own video projects with access to the Maker video editor, which allows you to make various changes to your custom video content. Features include:

HD and 4K video footage
After Effects Templates
Sound Effects and Music
Photos, Illustrations, and Vectors
Unlimited video exports
Video editor access
Licensing support

The standard all-access plan from Storyblocks starts at a very affordable £39 per month for all of the content you might want. In addition, everything you get here is unlimited, so you don’t have to worry about running out of credits. There’s also an enterprise option available if you want to share access to resources with your team.

9. Motion Array

Motion Array is an all-in-one video creation platform for those with an eye for visual content. This fantastic resource center is packed full of valuable tools, from Da Vinci Resolve templates to Adobe Premier Pro Content. As part of your subscription payment, you’ll get endless presets, audio effects, plugins, video footage, tutorials, and more.

Though a little more expensive than some of the other premier subscription services on the market, Motion Array does offer a lot of content that you can’t get anywhere else. There’s an unlimited marketplace constantly updating with access to royalty-free footage, stock photos, music, and sound effects. You also get plugins built for Premiere Pro. Features include:

Adobe Exchange elements
Final Cut Pro and DaVinci resolve templates
Royalty-free music and sound effects
Stock footage and video
Photos and images
Time-saving integrations with your favorite apps
Portfolio site builder
Stock media requests

There’s a free subscription option for Motion Array, which you won’t find from most alternatives. This only gives you access to some basic stock photos and assets, but it’s a nice way to start. When you are ready to upgrade, you can pay $29.99 per month for the full stock media library, as well as requests for custom media assets and exclusive plugins.

Start Stocking Up on Designer Resources

As a designer or creative professional, keeping a constant stack of resources available is crucial to your ongoing productivity. Fortunately, there are tons of premium marketplaces out there today, making it easier to access everything you need.

Whether you’re looking for full UI kits and templates, or you want some free-to-use images and videos for the website content you’re creating, there’s something for everyone. With most monthly subscription services available at a highly affordable price, you could even sign up for multiple sites at once.

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9 juin 2021/par Service comm.

Start Using a Smart DAM and Image Optimization Stack

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Asset management and website performance optimization are two of those unavoidable headaches faced by every website owner.

A digital asset management (DAM) platform can provide centralized asset repositories with intuitive dashboards to help you manage assets. On the other hand, an image CDN can help you get rid of that messy responsive syntax and provide dynamic asset optimization with huge performance boosts.

The problem is that website performance has become such a competitive factor that DAMs with other priorities tend to fall short. On the other hand, specialized image CDNs don’t solve the problems associated with image management, particularly within organizations.

With that in mind, I propose solving these problems for good by putting together image management and optimization stack using ImageEngine and Cloudinary. Instead of being a comparison between these two tools, this article describes the benefits of using them to complement each other.

Features and Asset Management Capabilities

As a DAM, Cloudinary provides you with a visual interface to store, manage, and edit your image and video assets. In that way, it’s not much different from any other professional image managing software such as Adobe Bridge, except that it’s an online, browser-based service.

Using the Media Library, you can upload, delete, and organize images in folders, for example. The visual image editor allows you to make advanced transformations and image touch-ups and see the results instantaneously using tools like sliders, dropdowns, etc. You can even chain transformations together for multi-layered effects.

Cloudinary also allows you to manipulate images and videos this way using their URL-based API.

Cloudinary has additional auxiliary features that make asset management easier (especially in organizations), such as backups, role-based multi-user admin, and feature extensions via third-party integrations and add-ons.

This is something most image CDNs don’t provide. Instead, they allow you to access and transform images using URL manipulation. Transformations are usually made using string-based parameters or directives. A serverless, headless DAM, if you will.

However, the advantage of using a dedicated image CDN like ImageEngine, is that it can usually provide enhanced asset optimization. ImageEngine, for example, is an intelligent image CDN that uses WURFL device detection to finely read the context an image is accessed from (device model, PPI, OS, browser, resolution, etc.) and then chooses the optimal image for that configuration.

This frees up website owners from having to do any additional optimization. This business logic is also built-in to all of their global PoP servers, and ImageEngine specifically delivers cache-hit ratios close to 100%. The following performance section will illustrate the difference this can make in practice.

Check out the key differences between ImageEngine and Cloudinary. And, for a deeper insight, see the comparison with other similar CDNs, like imgix and Cloudflare

Performance

Just to cover our bases and prove that this is an effective asset management and optimization stack, I’m also going to affirm it using a Lighthouse performance audit. Here is a quick summary of the results:

For this test, I built a web page with a tonne of images with overly large file sizes. In this first Lighthouse audit, I didn’t apply any optimization to the images. Here’s the result:

As you can see, we had some major problems when it came to the loading time of our assets. Overall, the page took more than 10 seconds to load. One of Google’s crucial user-centric performance metrics, LCP, scored a miserable 7.5s. Lighthouse suggested that some of the main problems encountered were the asset file size, inefficient cache policies, using non-optimal image formats, and improperly sized images.

Both Cloudinary and ImageEngine are supposed to address all of these factors with their auto image optimization. In the next audit, I used the same page and content but served my images via Cloudinary:

As you can see, there is improvement in most factors. FCP is now in the green, and both the Speed index and LCP times have almost halved. Even TTI and CLS improved slightly. That being said, it’s still nowhere near optimal, and we’re still falling short of the all-important 3-second loading time ceiling.

So, finally, let’s do another Lighthouse audit – this time using ImageEngine on top of Cloudinary. Here are the results:

With ImageEngine, I finally scored in the green with 95. All the metrics that have to do with the sheer speed at which image content loads improved. The Speed Index and LCP, which is the most important, improved dramatically. CLS scored worse, but this typically varies from test to test.

You can find another and more extensive breakdown of the performance and pricing comparison here.

Transformations, Bandwidth Utilization, and Cost

Cloudinary’s pricing plans work on a credit-based system. Starting with the free account, you get 25 credits/month. Each credit can be used for 1,000 transformations, 1 GB of storage, or 1 GB of net viewing bandwidth. The other two packages cost $99 for 225 credits and $249 for 600 credits, respectively.

You should plan to generate a minimum of 5 transformations per image. In effect, that limits you to around 200 images with the free plan, excluding whatever manual transformations you make.

ImageEngine’s Basic plan costs $49 and provides you with 100 GB of Smart Bytes. Smart Bytes are based on optimized image content and translate to roughly 400-500 GB of raw images.

So, with Cloudinary, you have to compromise between bandwidth and storage usage as well as the number of transformations you can make. Transformations for Cloudinary are counted as they are dynamically generated on-demand.

However, if you use ImageEngine for optimization, you can switch off Cloudinary’s auto-optimization. When a new image variant is needed, it will be generated and delivered via ImageEngine. Considering variant count isn’t limited by ImageEngine, this will drastically cut down on the number of credits you’ll need to spend on transformations.

Effectively, that means you could use the bulk of your Cloudinary credits purely for storage and specific transformations. For example, advanced cropping, applying effects, or color adjustments. These are, after all, the main functions of a DAM.

With this setup, ImageEngine’s Basic plan and Cloudinary’s free plan should be adequate for most websites, saving around $50 a month.

How to Implement Cloudinary with ImageEngine

Signing up for Both Services

As it will house all of your image assets, the logical place to start would be to sign up with Cloudinary.

Create a (free) account, and make sure to take note of your “cloud name” during the setup wizard. This will be the name of your designated storage location on the Cloudinary platform and is usually a garbled string like di2zgnxh0 by default. However, you can change this to something more meaningful.

Once you’ve signed up, you can start uploading your image assets and creating different versions/transformations of them. Setting up Cloudinary integration on a CMS, like WordPress, is usually straightforward. Just indicate the CMS you’ll be using, copy the API key, install the plugin, and activate it.

Next, sign up for a free trial with ImageEngine. There will also be a short setup wizard during which you will:

Provide ImageEngine with the website where your images will be delivered.
Supply your image origin (in this case, your Cloudinary web folder). For now, you can only add the Cloudinary, e.g., res.cloudinary.com.
Get your ImageEngine image-serving domain, e.g., {randomstring}.cdn.imgeng.in

When in your ImageEngine dashboard, you’ll see this domain listed under “Engines” as well as an entry for Cloudinary under “Origins.” Edit the latter and under “Advanced,” add your Cloudinary folder to the “PATH” field.

That’s it, you should now be able to store and manage images via Cloudinary and serve them via the ImageEngine CDN.

Dynamically Loading Specific Image Variants

Let’s take a look at a use case for loading different transformations of individual images on your site. This example will showcase how you can use Cloudinary’s advanced image editing tools to transform images while still reaping the optimization rewards of using ImageEngine as your image CDN.

A popular practice today is to use rounded images for team, client, or profile portraits. Using Cloudinary, you can load this transformation using the following URL:

https://res.cloudinary.com/myimages/image/upload/w_400,h_400,c_crop,g_face,r_max/w_200/profile.jpg

This will resize the image to 400 by 400px, focus on the face, and apply the maximum amount of radial cropping around it – to a width of 200px.

The same image can then be accessed via your ImageEngine delivery engine simply by swapping out the domain:

https://images.myimageengine.com.imgeng.in/image/upload/w_400,h_400,c_crop,g_face,r_max/w_200/profile.jpg

NOTE: I added my Cloudinary folder designation (“myimages”) as the path to my image origin. With that config, I don’t need to include it every time I use the image URL.

For example, you can set up the origin like this:

And, then under advanced:

If I specifically wanted to load the profile picture in WebP format (for transparency support, for example), I could add the ImageEngine directive f_webp:

https://images.myimageengine.com.imgeng.in/image/upload/w_400,h_400,c_crop,g_face,r_max/w_200/?imgeng=/f_webp/profile.jpg

ImageEngine and Cloudinary – The Wrap Up

Both ImageEngine and Cloudinary are superb platforms that can make managing image and video assets easier and improve your website maintenance. However, both services have their specialty in which they outperform each other.

For ImageEngine, it’s delivering blisteringly fast image loading times in next-gen formats and with a minimal loss of visual quality.

For Cloudinary, it’s providing a visual interface to organize, store, and edit your image and video assets.

As a further incentive, letting each of these services handle what they’re best at can lead to lowering your long-term operating costs.

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of ImageEngine –]

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26 mai 2021/par Service comm.

20 Best New Websites, May 2021

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This month we have several examples of brutalism used to good effect as a foil to showcase products and/or work. By contrast, at the other end of the scale, we have brands who have chosen to go more of an immersive experience route, using full-screen images, sound, animation, and even VR.

Both are valid approaches, depending on the content. The former tends to work better as a backdrop for artwork, photography, and artisanal craft goods — acting as a virtual gallery space — while the latter is better for consumer goods and experiences, particularly food, drink, and accommodation.

There is, of course, a whole range in between these extremes, and we’ve got that covered too. Enjoy!

Grainne Morton

A simple layout, soft pastel colors, and clear navigation provide an excellent backdrop for Grainne Morton’s handmade jewelry creations.

Gage Hotel

Good photography and a heritage-inspired color scheme give the Gage Hotel’s site a luxury feel.

Tejidos Roca

Tejidos Roca is a fabric manufacturer, and the design of their site uses a circle motif to bring rolls of fabric to mind.

La Passation Synerghetic 2021

Synerghetic is part of the Junior Enterprises Europe scheme – a network of businesses run by students. This year they are not holding the usual handover ceremony, so Synerghetic created this rather fun little digital celebration instead.

Redwood Empire

For Earth Month, Redwood Empire Whiskey has created a microsite promoting a competition styled to match their bottle labels.

Gabriel Cuallado

This site focusing on Spanish photographer Gabriel Cullado’s life and work features some great transitions and good use of horizontal scrolling.

Ombia Studio

In Ombia Studio’s site, atmospheric photographs stand out in a minimal layout. There is a sense of almost gallery curation here.

Headup

Headup uses a pleasing color scheme and geometric graphics to create a welcoming but businesslike approach.

the Figo

Spherical curves and line animations create interest in this site for boutique hotel, the Figo.

Boon Market

Boon Market is about promoting a toxin-free and waste-free lifestyle, and their site reflects this with its use of simple type and soft colors.

Unspoken Agreement

Unspoken Agreement’s website has a quietly confident feel, with clean lines and some pleasing type.

hnst

Another brutalist-inspired design here, but the use of bright red makes it fresh in hnst’s take on the style.

InteriorLAB

Part minimalist, part glossy magazine, InteriorLAB have succeeded in making the simple feel luxurious.

Bowmore Experience

Bowmore has opted for immersive video and visually beautiful images to present their limited-edition Timeless whisky range.

Oly Sheet

There is a slightly old-school start-up feel to Oly Sheet’s website, but it is still appealing with fresh, spring colors and well-organized content.

Aalto University

Aalto University has provided a pretty in-depth tour of its campus here. The navigation is clear, and the information is presented in ideal-sized chunks — enough detail, but not too much at once.

Wisr

Wisr features a Heath Robinson style machine that ‘runs’ as the user scrolls down the page. It provides a bit of interest (no pun intended) to the not very exciting subject of personal loans.

Rudl und Schwarm

Bright colors, cute, but not too cutesy, illustration, some nice scrolling, and transition effects are used really well on Rudl und Schwarm. And it’s got bees; bees are good.

Dr. Maul

This site for Dr. T. Maul manages to take orthodontistry past the usual image of uncomfortable wiring, elastic bands, and ‘train tracks and make it seem just a little more glamorous.

My Drink

There is a slightly vintage feel to this site for My Drink with its cocktail illustration. The blue text on grey is soothing without being bland.

Bonus Site: Imperial Style Guide

And finally not new, but a bonus in honor of May 4th, the Imperial style guide. Well, the Web would get boring if it was serious all the time.

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24 mai 2021/par Service comm.

6 Ways Parallax Still Works in 2021

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Parallax is a term that is applied loosely and frequently in the world of web design. As a trend, it has been popular and unpopular in equal measures for some time. However, it’s still one of the most valuable tools for animation in the digital world.

Parallax creates an illusion of depth when scrolling, a timeless effect that still has lots of value in the web design world.

Sure, parallax has its issues, from problems with usability, to concerns with mobile responsivity — but it’s also an interesting way to make a website stand out when done correctly.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways that parallax scrolling still works in 2021…

1. Parallax Tells A Story

Let’s start simple.

One of the most effective ways to use parallax scrolling in the modern age is to tell a story. Today’s consumers want to have an emotional connection with the brands they buy from – now more than ever. Five years ago, studies showed that around 80% of customers want brands to tell stories, and that trend remains consistent to this day.

In the age of digital consumerism, where people can’t get to know a company in person through face-to-face interactions with its salespeople, companies need new ways to connect with their clients. Telling brand-driven stories is a way to highlight that your company is more than just a faceless entity – it’s something with real soul.

Let’s look at the “Recap After Use” website, a portfolio belonging to the innovative Louie Sellers. This website showcases Louie’s skills with attention-grabbing visuals, including a parallax animation that makes it looks like Louie is drawing the page as you scroll through it.

This is the kind of exceptional animation that makes parallax scrolling more compelling. The animation isn’t there to make a visual difference to the page – it tells you something more about the person behind the website and what they can do.

2. Parallax Increases Website Visit Times

If a website effectively tells a story with parallax animation, you can also bet that’s going to keep customers or readers on a page for longer. Reducing bounce rate by increasing engagement is one of the main goals of any web designer. (Bounce rates, of course, refer to the percentage of site visitors that hit the back button after just seeing the first page of your website.)

While some people argue that parallax websites can hurt your SEO rankings if they slow down your site, there’s also the argument that the lack of a visually engaging page can harm SEO. Bounce rates drag down your ranking and make it harder to get audience attention.

A parallax animation that tells a story and engages your audience through carefully delivered information is a great way to keep people around – even just for a little longer than usual. For instance, if you check out Alex Dram’s portfolio page here, you’ll see several shapes coming together during the parallax scrolling animation.

The shapes merge to tell a story about the visual experiences that Alex can create for customers. It’s a way to draw the eye and connect with the viewer without just writing about what you do through text.

3. Parallax Develops Credibility

There’s a reason why both examples of parallax scrolling we’ve looked at so far are from creative portfolios. Parallax scrolling, with its excellent storytelling capabilities, is great for demonstrating your credibility as a digital expert. Basically, it’s a version of “showing” and not “telling” customers about your skills.

You can tell someone that you know how to use tricky techniques like parallax animation correctly, but they’re less likely to believe you that way. If you can show that you have the skills to create something amazing, that’s more engaging.

The OK Alpha team is a great company to reference when it comes to sensational design. This company seems to always be on the cutting edge of the latest trends, whether it’s bold typography or bright colors. To add to the impact of their website, the company has combined parallax effects into the mix to make everything more immersive as you scroll.

This is a beautiful example of how companies in the design landscape can use techniques like parallax scrolling to show what they’re capable of.

4. Parallax Makes Information More Fun

Most of us are naturally visual learners. We like to consume information in a way that’s refreshingly eye-catching and attractive. That’s why visual content generally earns more social shares and attention than written content. With parallax scrolling, companies that want to deliver valuable information and educational content to their audience can do so effectively.

Rather than just scrolling through a page and seeing lots of text, your customers can see images and graphs come to life alongside the blocks of text they’re reading. It’s like adding video demonstrations next to a textbook to help people better understand what they’re reading about.

Look at the Web Design and Art History microsite from Webflow as an example. The company wants you to understand how web design and art have evolved over the years, but it doesn’t want to deliver that information in a boring format. The bright graphics and parallax animation work together to give you a more contextual, meaningful experience.

5. Parallax Replicates Another Medium

What if you could remind someone of their experience when reading a book or watching a video while telling them about a video or a novel? Parallax scrolling and animation can help with that. It’s a way of making your website feel like a video presentation or slideshow without the added components of implementing video players into your back end.

Parallax scrolling also has another slight benefit over a standard video-based website. On a website that uses a video for a background, the video often plays automatically. This means that your visitors can’t control how quickly the video plays.

On the other hand, parallax animations driven by scrolling action allow your customer to collect information at a pace that suits them. Take a look at the Story of the Goonies website, for instance. This stunning parallax site introduces you to the details you need to know about the movie in a way that makes it feel like the intro to a film.

The great thing about the parallax on this site is that the slow video-style design also gives you a dose of nostalgia – which ties in perfectly with the movie.

6. Parallax Is More Memorable

What’s the main reason any designer does anything special to a website? To make it stand out, of course. Web design is all about conveying the unique essence of a brand, business, or entity in a way that’s going to make that client unforgettable. Although parallax isn’t as novel as it once was, it can still be a way to make your site stand out – if it’s used correctly.

The key to success with parallax scrolling for memorability is making it smart. The layout needs to feel simple and intuitive. Everything needs to work well together, from the lightly shifting font to the various parallax effects that work together to draw the viewer’s eye (and attention).

A great example comes from Jomor Design – another designer with a portfolio that really grabs your focus from the first second. The layout is beautifully done, with plenty of mini moments for engagement and interactions throughout. As you scroll through the site, you get a better idea of what the designer is all about. The little moments of animation make the whole experience so much more memorable.

When your site is more memorable and engaging than that of your competition, you can drive many major benefits for your brand, including an improved bounce rate.

What To Remember When Using Parallax

Parallax is just like any other design technique. There are ways you can do it wonderfully, which engage and delight your audience. However, there are also a lot of areas where you can easily go wrong. When using any design element, the main thing to remember is that the primary focus should always be your users’ experiences. Parallax shouldn’t just be a way to show off your design knowledge. It’s just another feature that you can use to create an amazing website.

Remember that user experience and visual appeal need to work perfectly together for parallax to work. If scrolling through the page is practically impossible for people on a mobile device, then you’re not going to get the results you want. If it’s difficult to take in the message you’re trying to send because the content is moving too quickly, again, your users will suffer.

Remember the following tips:

Simple is better: Reduce the amount of content and visual elements on your page whenever you can. The less information there is to capture your customer’s attention, the less likely it is that you’re going to end up with a problem.
Compress file sizes: Make sure that you’re not reducing the speed of your website by creating a huge single page with tons of high-quality images. You’re going to need to use the smallest possible file sizes.
Check responsiveness: Make sure that the parallax effect works just as well on your smartphone or tablet as it would on a desktop. As more people move their browsing experiences into their palms, you can’t afford to ignore responsivity.
Find the “wow”: Look at these examples of parallax websites. Every one stands out because it does something special with the scrolling effect. If you’re going to be using this strategy with your website, you need to make sure it’s worth the effort. Don’t just follow the same guidelines as everything else. Find the idea that’s going to make people take notice.

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19 mai 2021/par Service comm.

What Is The Independent Web And Does It Matter In 2021?

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Ten years ago, people began talking about the “Independent Web.” Although we don’t commonly use the term anymore, that doesn’t mean that it’s not still as vital a topic of discussion today as it was a decade ago.

Today, I want to look at where the term came from, what it refers to today, and why it’s something that all of us in business, marketing, and web design should be thinking about.

What Is The Independent Web?

The Independent Web is a term that was coined back in 2010 by John Battelle.

In “Identity and The Independent Web,” Battelle broaches the subject of internet users losing control of their data, privacy, and decision-making to the likes of social media and search engines.

“When we’re ‘on’ Facebook, Google, or Twitter, we’re plugged into an infrastructure that locks onto us, serving us content and commerce in an automated but increasingly sophisticated fashion. Sure, we navigate around, in control of our experience, but the fact is, the choices provided to us as we navigate are increasingly driven by algorithms modeled on the service’s understanding of our identity.”

That’s the Dependent Web.

This is how Battelle explains the Independent Web:

“There is another part of the web, one where I can stroll a bit more at my own pace, and discover new territory, rather than have territory matched to a presumed identity. And that is the land of the Independent Web.”

In 2010, this referred to websites, search engines, and apps where users and their activity were not tracked. But a lot has changed since then, and many websites that were once safe to peruse without interference or manipulation are no longer.

What Happens When the Dependent Web Takes Over?

Nothing good.

I take that back. It’s not fair to make a blanket statement about Dependent Web platforms and sites. Users can certainly benefit from sharing some of their data with them.

Take Facebook, for instance. Since its creation, it’s enabled people to connect with long-lost friends, stay in touch with distant relatives, enable freelance professionals like ourselves to find like-minded communities, etc.

The same goes for websites and apps that track and use visitor data. Consumers are more than willing to share relevant data with companies so long as they benefit from the resulting personalized experiences.

But the Dependent Web also has a darker side. There are many ways that the Dependent Web costs consumers and businesses control over important things like:

Behavior

If you’ve seen The Social Dilemma, then you know that platforms like Facebook and Google profit from selling their users to advertisers.

That’s right. They’re not just selling user data. They’re selling users themselves. If the algorithms can change the way users behave, these platforms and their advertisers get to cash in big time.

Many websites and apps are also guilty of using manipulation to force users to behave how they want them to.

Personal Data

This one is well-known thanks to the GDPR in the EU and the CCPA in California. Despite these initiatives to protect user data and privacy, the exploitation of personal data on the web remains a huge public concern in recent years.

Content and Branding

This isn’t relevant to websites so much as it is to social media platforms and Google.

Dependent Web platforms ultimately dictate who sees your content and when. And while they’re more than happy to benefit from the traffic and engagement this content brings to their platforms, they’re just as happy to censor or pull down content as they please, just as Skillshare did in 2019 when it deleted half of its courses without telling its course creators.

What’s more, while social media and search engines have become the place to market our businesses, some of our branding gets lost when entering such oversaturated environments.

Income

When algorithms get updated, many businesses often feel the negative effects almost immediately.

For example, Facebook updated its algorithm in 2018 to prioritize “meaningful content.” This pushed out organic business content and pulled regular user content to the top of the heap.

This, in turn, forced businesses to have to pay-to-play if they wanted to use Facebook as a viable marketing platform.

Access

The Dependent Web doesn’t just impact individuals’ experiences. It can have far-reaching effects when one company provides a critical service to a large portion of the population.

We saw this happen in November when AWS went down.

When Amazon Web Services burps and half the Internet goes down maybe just maybe it’s not a great idea to have a single company with so much control over what has essentially become our society’s critical infrastructure?

— Evan Greer (@evan_greer) November 25, 2020

It wasn’t just Amazon’s servers that went down, though. It took out apps and sites like:

1Password
Adobe Spark
Capital Gazette
Coinbase
Glassdoor
Roku
The Washington Post

And there’s absolutely nothing that these businesses or their users could do but sit around and wait… because Amazon hosts a substantial portion of the web.

Innovation

When consumers and businesses become dependent on platforms that predominantly control the way we live and work, it’s difficult for us to stand up for the little guys trying to carve out innovative pathways.

And that’s exactly what we see happen time and time again with Big Tech’s buy-and-kill tactics.

As a result, we really lose the option to choose what we use to improve our lives and our businesses. And innovative thinkers lose the ability to bring much-needed changes to the world because Big Tech wants to own the vast majority of data and users.

How Can We Take Back Control From The Dependent Web?

Many things are happening right now that are trying to push consumers and businesses towards a more Independent Web:

Consumer Privacy Protection: GDPR and CCPA empower consumers to control where their data goes and what it’s used for.

Big Tech Regulations: The Senate held tech regulation hearings with Facebook’s and Twitters’s CEOs.

Public Awareness Initiatives: Films like The Social Dilemma bring greater awareness to what’s happening on social media.

Ad Blocker Adoption: Adblocker usage is at an all-time high.

Private Search Engine Usage: Although Google dominates search engine market share, people are starting to use private search engines like Duck Duck Go.

Private Browsing Growth: Over 60% of the global population is aware of what private browsing is (i.e., incognito mode), and roughly 35% use it when surfing the web.

Self-hosted and Open Source CMS Popularity: The IndieWeb community encourages people to move away from Dependent platforms and build their own websites and communities. This is something that Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, talked about back in 2012.

“The Internet needs a strong, independent platform for those of us who don’t want to be at the mercy of someone else’s domain. I like to think that if we didn’t create WordPress something else that looks a lot like it would exist. I think Open Source is kind of like our Bill of Rights. It’s our Constitution. If we’re not true to that, nothing else matters.”

As web designers, this is something that should really speak to you, especially if you’ve ever met a lead or client who didn’t understand why they needed a website when they could just advertise on Facebook or Instagram.

A Decentralized Web: Perhaps the most promising of all these initiatives are Solid and Inrupt, which were launched in 2018 by the creator of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee.

As Berners-Lee explained on the Inrupt blog in 2020:

”The Web was always meant to be a platform for creativity, collaboration, and free invention — but that’s not what we are seeing today. Today, business transformation is hampered by different parts of one’s life being managed by different silos, each of which looks after one vertical slice of life, but where the users and teams can’t get the insight from connecting that data. Meanwhile, that data is exploited by the silo in question, leading to increasing, very reasonable, public skepticism about how personal data is being misused. That in turn has led to increasingly complex data regulations.”

This is something we should all keep a close eye on. Consumers and businesses alike are becoming wary of the Dependent Web.

Who better than the creator of the web to lead us towards the Independent Web where we can protect our data and better control our experience?

Featured Image via Pexels.

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21 avril 2021/par Service comm.

3 Essential Design Trends, April 2021

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The best thing about writing about website design trends each month is looking at all the great sites that are being developed. Designers are stretching creatively and exploring new techniques and ways of doing things all the time.

It’s refreshing and inspiring. This month, some of those trends include a style that nods to brutalism, slide scrolling that’s interesting and fresh, and animated typography.

Here’s what’s trending in design this month…

1. Almost Brutalism

Brutalism can be a lot to handle and only really works for certain types of projects. That being said, some of the elements of brutalism can be the foundation for an interesting aesthetic.

So, it’s not surprising that an “almost brutalism” trend has emerged.

Designers are working with some of the design elements – slab fonts, simple color schemes with a lot of contrast, twitchy animation, mono typefaces, and overall design patterns that are almost over-simplified.

The result is a striking design that isn’t so harsh that it turns users away. It’s the right combination of brutalism and usability to create something with a harder-edge feel that people understand.

Good Garms uses a typewriter-style typeface, simple patterns, and one of the most streamlined designs you might find for an ecommerce store. It’s effective and makes you look because it is different.

Dockyard Social uses an unexpected color combination with high contrast, sharp shapes, and design elements, and bold slab typography to grab your attention right away. The theme continues on the scroll with new color combinations with equally brutal design elements. It feels a little tight and uncomfortable in places but still highly usable – exactly what almost-brutalism intends to do.

ZN Studio uses the same big, bold type elements as the previous example with a twitchy-style animation to draw you into the design. The entire design uses clever animation effects with a brutal aesthetic to keep you scrolling.

2. Beautiful Slide Scrolling

You can argue the value – or lack thereof – of website sliders as long as you want to. The reality, though, is that, for the most part, they are clunky and get in the way of the content. It’s a lazy option that keeps you from having to make a content choice.

Not with these beautiful slide-scrolling website designs.

Each of these designs uses side-scrolling as a design asset. Here’s the trick that makes it work: Slide scrolling isn’t a “feature” above a bunch of other content. It is how the content is featured.

These examples show you how to use the trend well and should get you excited about slide (or side) scrolling.

Eduardo del Fraile uses a side scroll to show different projects in his portfolio. In addition to scroll, each element also has a simple and beautiful animation that allows you to see each product he has designed. Everything about the scrolling motion is intuitive, and the site never scrolls vertically, which is where many side scrollers go wrong.

Jo Ash Sakula uses a similar concept for the side scroll here but with different design elements. The bold card elements are striking in terms of color, contrast, and design. You know the scroll will move horizontally because a third element sneaks into your field of vision on the right side. It’s simple, clean, and highly usable.

Crimea is interesting because it has an “almost brutalism” style design and uses a side-scrolling pattern. The design is bold and almost overwhelming, but the scroll works to tell a nice story with visuals and content.

3. Typography Animations

Web typography can make or break a design from font choice to size and color to animation, every detail with text elements matters.

This trend explores and pushes the boundaries of animation with text elements in website design. And it is so tricky. The difference between an amazing result and a design fail is a thin line that can be quite subjective.

Each of these examples does something unique with text and animation together to create just the right feel. The flow for each is seamless and text elements – while incorporating movement – maintain readability.

Visages Du Rhone has two layers of animation. The first happens as the words come onto the screen as the color and fade change within the letters. The second is a subtle hover state with a fluid feel for the letters that match the design’s underwater theme. What’s special about the typography animation is that it happens without distorting the letters, something many other liquid text animations do.

Poolhouse uses transparent letters with movement in a layer behind the words. What’s very neat here is the additional filtering so that the background motion still works while maintaining the integrity of each letterform. Again, the focus on keeping text readable is what sets this design apart and makes it trend-worthy.

Komnata takes a wholly different approach with letters that float and look like balloons. The motion mimics what you would expect from an element that looks and feels like something in the real world. The user doesn’t have to do anything for this motion to take place. The animation might be even more effective if the scroll and pointer did not have a tail that “draws” on the screen as a distracting element.

Conclusion

The good thing about looking at variations of different trends is that you can see the practical application and apply it to your projects. While you might not move to a full sliding scroll on your website homepage, you could use that concept in another part of the design.

Experiment, have fun and draw inspiration from trending website designs.

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5 avril 2021/par Service comm.

15 Useful Tools & Resources Worth Checking Out

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As a web designer, you face plenty of challenges, both good and bad. One of the bad ones is to suddenly find out that you’re either in danger of missing a client’s deadline or will be unable to meet it at all.

A missed deadline could be due to something beyond your control and no fault of your own. There are measures you can take to avoid what you do have control over. Such as not having the right design tool or design resources to do a task that has to be done.

An ounce of prevention can definitely be worth a pound of cure in this case. Before starting a project, make sure the tool or tools you will be using will be up to the task.

The 15 design tools presented here are the tops in their respective categories. You should be better able to handle whatever is thrown at you.

1. Be Theme

Its more than 200,000 sales to date have certainly established the BeTheme multipurpose WordPress theme as an all-time favorite among web designers.

In truth, “multipurpose” doesn’t do BeTheme justice. Users might argue that “all-purpose” would be a more accurate description.

Be’s 40+ core features give web designers plenty to work with in terms of page-building tools, design aids, design options, and special effects.

Most notably:

The Muffin Builder, which when used with other core features, makes building a website quick, easy, and coding-free;
The Admin Panel/Shortcode Generator combo gives all the flexibility designers need;
BeTheme’s 600+ customizable pre-built websites could well be the star of the show. They cover 30 business sectors and all the popular website types, they are customizable, responsive, and feature cool UX features, and they can get any project off to a rapid start.

Click on the banner to learn more about Be’s other core features.

2. Timezy Booking Software

Timezy will help you create a booking environment that works best for your business by allowing clients and customers to book your services as easily as possible. You can then integrate Timezy into your website to streamline and speed up your booking operation.

Clients and customers can book appointments online 24/7;
They can receive real-time email notifications and reminders;
Timezy can be integrated with Zoom;
You can reorder steps on the booking form to fit your needs;
Timezy can be used to manage employee assignments and schedules, vacations, and special days.

If you lack a website of your own, Timezy will provide you with a modern web page you can customize to fit your brand for clients to book appointments at any time.

3. wpDataTables

wpDataTables is the top-selling and most powerful WordPress table and chart-building plugin on the market. There are other good ones, but their table and chart-building capabilities quickly become inadequate as you go down the list of what wpDataTables can do that most others cannot.

wpDataTables key features and capabilities:

The ability to create interactive and responsive tables and charts;
The ability to create frontend editable and easily maintainable tables and charts;
The ability to rapidly process massive amounts of data that come in various formats and from various sources;
The ability to build tables and charts using real-time data.

You can also brighten up or improve a table or chart’s readability by highlighting or color-coding key information.

Click on the banner to find out more about what this plugin can do for you.

4. LayerSlider

LayerSlider is not for sliders only. This multipurpose WordPress tool can also be used to create eye-catching animations and engaging content.

Add a little spice to a stale website;
Create popups with stunning effects to interact better with visitors;
Avoid coding, since LayerSlider is drag and drop.

This popular design tool has been assisting web designers for nearly a decade and serves millions of active monthly users.

5. Amelia Booking Plugin

Amelia is a user-friendly WordPress booking plugin you can use to manage your appointments and events on a single platform.

Clients can instantly book, change, or cancel appointments online 24/7;
Employees and customers can manage meetings, appointments, and events from their own dashboards;
Amelia can be integrated with Zoom to conduct training or consultation sessions;
Amelia can also create packages of services with discounts and validity periods.

Amelia can service multiple business locations.

6. Uncode – Creative Multiuse & WooCommerce WordPress Theme

With its more than 80.000 sales to date, Uncode has become one of ThemeForest’s all-time best sellers.

You can create custom layouts and designs with Uncode’s Dynamic Content feature and use them as templates for category pages;
Uncode features the WooCommerce Product Builder, custom Checkout, Cart, My Account, Quick-View, etc.

Uncode has a comprehensive library of tutorial videos and a showcase of user-created websites that is well worth visiting.

7. Total WordPress Theme

Created with perfection in mind, Total is nonetheless an extremely user-friendly WordPress theme.

This drag and drop website building tool’s extreme flexibility allows users to create any type or style of website;
The WPBakery page builder is accompanied by an assortment of custom modules;
Total is RTL and Translation-ready and easily integrates with WooCommerce;
Total is developer-friendly.

Click on the banner to learn more.

8. Dr. Link Check

Dr. Link Check saves you the inconvenience of having to periodically conduct a manual search of your site for broken links.

Dr. Link Check inspects for:

Broken links and improper URL formatting;
Blacklisted malicious content links;
Websites that do not contain any valuable content, including ad-only sites.

Dr. Link Check publishes downloadable daily, weekly, or monthly reports.

9. Mobirise Website Builder

Mobirise is not only a top tool for creating fast, responsive, user-friendly websites. It also has the advantages of being offline. Mobirise is also free.

Factors that contribute to Mobirise’s excellent performance include:

Google Amp and Bootstrap 4 frameworks;
Professionally-crafted website templates, popups, sliders, and eCommerce features;
Mobirise is all drag and drop.

Click on the banner to download your very own copy.

10. 8b Website Builder

When a website builder is fast, free, responsive, user friendly, and Google-friendly as well, it is certainly worthy of consideration.

The 8b website builder:

Allows you to create websites at home or on the go on any device;
Features templates and website sections designed to get projects off to a rapid start;
It gives your site a Google ranking with a couple of clicks;
It can be hosted wherever you want.

Download your copy now.

11. WHATFONTIS

WhatFontIs, with its database of more than 700K commercial and free fonts and font-finding AI functionality enables you to identify fonts from images you upload.

This top-of-the-line font-finding tool:

Identifies an uploaded font 90% of the time;
Gives answers in seconds;
Identifies cursive fonts (the letters in the image must be separated);
Displays 60+ similar fonts for each uploaded image.

12. Litho – The Multipurpose HTML5 Template

Litho is a responsive multipurpose Bootstrap 4 HTML5 template that gives startups, design agencies, and other businesses an ideal website-building starting point.

Litho’s features include:

Cool selections of ready-made home pages, inner pages, and template blocks;
Page styles for portfolio, shop, and blogging sites;
Sliders, banners, forms, and other creative design elements.

Litho offers 5-star professional support.

13. XStore – The Most Customizable WooCommerce Theme Ever

XStore may be the best tool anyone could have at their fingertips when looking for a fast and easy way to create a high-performance eCommerce website – for only $39.

XStore’s key features include:

100+ customizable ready-to-go shops;
$500+ worth of premium WordPress plugins;
A Single Product builder and a Header builder.

14. Goodiewebsite

GOODIE’s web development platform assists clients who are eager to get a professionally-coded website quickly up and running.

GOODIE’s services focus on:

Web designers seeking a development partner;
Startups looking for ways to test their ideas and concepts;
Small businesses seeking an online presence or improvement of an existing one.

GOODIE’s specialties include 1-10 page, WordPress, and eCommerce websites.

15. Heroic Inbox

There are several excellent reasons for letting Heroic Inbox manage your business’s departmental email inboxes.

They include:

Encouraging efficient staff collaboration on email assignments and responses;
Helping staff members accomplish and maintain Inbox Zero status;
Tracking key team performance metrics.

Two key Heroic Inbox features are its smart workflows and a fast and friendly UI.

Every web designer owns a toolbox of tips and tricks they use in their website building projects. Even when a toolbox is superbly stocked, it is always challenging to keep it up to date. Doing so requires maintaining a knowledge of the latest and greatest web design resources and tools—some of which you may need to meet ever-changing industry demands.

This article features the top tools & resources for designers and agencies for 2021. Choosing one or more of them could not only help you stay on top of your game but could even make your day.

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31 mars 2021/par Service comm.