Lorem ipsum
is a block of dummy text in Latin often used in design and publishing to fill space in a mockup. The brilliant Dummy Image Generator is like ‘lorem ipsum’ for images.
Like ‘lorem ipsum’, the Dynamic Dummy Image Generator offers a glimpse at what content might look like in a layout, but instead of placeholder text, it creates a placeholder image. Using the service is dead simple:
Sometimes you just need a placeholder image right at your finger tips. Just enter the width + x + height at the end of this URL and off you go!
Example: http://dummyimage.com/640x480
You can even use a dummy image as a source in your HTML, like <img src='http://dummyimage.com/340x123' alt='A Dummy Image'>, which would look like this:
The Dynamic Dummy Image Generator is free to use, and is a bit on the geeky side, but if you’re a designer or just spend the occasional free minute tinkering on the web, it’s a really simple, well-executed idea.
(Via Lifehacker.)
Twitter was founded in 2006 by Odeo (a podcasting company). It was first used as an internal service for Odeo employees, and later, it became public and then took off as its own company in 2007.
Today, Twitter is ranked in the top 50 websites on Alexa, and in February 2009, a blog post by Compete ranked Twitter as the third most used social networking site.
The original intention of Twitter was to announce to your friends and family, in 140 characters or less, what you were doing, as you were doing it. People would be updated all the time on the status of their friends.
Nowadays, people have found tons of different uses for this social media site that answers the question ‘What’s Happening?’
I know many of you are already all over Twitter and are already familiar with its benefits as a professional working designer.
If you aren’t on Twitter yet, hopefully you’ll see why you need to join in the conversation and be a part of this social networking phenomenon. If you’re already on Twitter, I hope to share some tips with you that you may not have considered before. Here are 10 tips for using Twitter to help you network, find jobs, and/or build your business.
1. Follow awesome designers and studios
They may not follow you back, but it gives you a good opportunity to join a conversation and get your name out there. Retweet their posts or comment on something they’ve said. They may also post valuable resources for you to check out.
2. Use search.twitter.com to search for jobs or projects
People tweet ‘I’m looking for a web designer’ or ‘I need help finding a good logo designer’ frequently. Search often and you’ll be able to capitalize on those opportunities to land a client, or at the very least, spread the word that you’re a working designer and available for hire.
3. Help the community: answer fellow designers’ questions
Tons of other designers and developers ask questions about coding issues, program quirks, or client dilemmas and will be very grateful for the help you can provide. The next time they need help on a project or have too much work, they will hopefully think of you.
4. Share your design critiques with designers that ask for input
Network with other designers by commenting on the designs that they post. People generally love hearing what you think about their design (or else they wouldn’t have posted it on Twitter). This is a good way to connect with other designers and also showcase your own design tastes and expertise to your followers.
5. Post your newest projects and published websites
I love seeing what other designers are doing and enjoy it when designers post their newest projects. However, don’t spam your followers with tons of stuff you’ve done, keep it to one post to announce a new site being published or a new business card you’ve designed. Keep your tweets relevant and not (too) self-promotional, or else, you might find yourself losing many of your followers.
6. Tweet and discover new web resources
Post awesome articles and tutorials that you’ve found. I can’t possibly include every cool web design blog in my RSS reader (it’s already out of control) but I love reading the occasional cool post I see on Twitter from a blog I don’t subscribe to. Sometimes I find an awesome blog that I haven’t even heard of before! Twitter is a great way to trade information and knowledge.
7. Use #hashtags
Something I don’t utilize nearly enough, but is extremely valuable, is using hashtags to categorize and contextualize your tweets. It allows other people to find you on Twitter: someone clicks on a hashtag on their friends page to find similar content, and they land on your Twitter page. Voila – another connection has been made.
8. Find and follow people and businesses in your area
Design groups, design studios, and programmers are people you can find on Twitter. There are also many people near you, but outside of the design world that would be great to network with such as the chamber of commerce in your city or new businesses that need your services. You can use Twitter’s advanced search to find tweeple that live around your area.
9. Customize the design of your page
Create something that matches your blog or website and list the services you offer. You can use your Twitter background to display links to your other social media profiles. Customizing the look of your page goes a long way in terms of self-branding.
10. Build relationships
Creating relationships is the single most valuable part of Twitter in my opinion. It gives us the opportunity to network and socialize informally while sharing ideas and resources.
Join the conversation! Twitter may have started as a way to keep your friends and family updated on what you’re doing but it’s a valuable resource as a working professional these days.
Maybe you think that you don’t have time to get involved in another social networking site, but I think you can’t afford to miss out on the opportunities with Twitter.
(Via Six Revisions.)
9 SEO plug-ins to help you optimize your wordpress pages weights
1. All in One SEO Pack
All in One SEO Pack will help you the basic content of the blog search engine optimization elements, including a separate page title, Meta tags, keywords and description.
(Note: All in One SEO Pack is easy to slow down the system and some of its functions can be achieved manually change the code, you can refer to the egg of this article.)
2. Redirection
Modify the previous text of the old Bo, WordPress upgrade or modify the permanent link structure, especially in the blog after the move, there will be blog post link to change.
Generally speaking, each post has a unique permanent URL address, the address change may occur after the visitors unable to visit, redirection plug-in will bring visitors to the new address, to avoid the situation can not be accessed.
(Note: not just SEO, for many useful Windows host friends,, redirection can also help you to remove a permanent link in the index.)
<3. Robots Meta
Under normal circumstances prime search engine will crawl your blog, and contains all the pages, this can easily lead to the appearance of duplicate content, so you need to guide search engines included prime, Robots Meta will make your blog get more weight and flow.
4. SEO Smart Links
Internal links are SEO, one of the key issues, more importantly, the content should have more internal links, you can search within the chain, told the prime engine, what is most important. If the manual to create internal links would be very time-consuming and laborious.
SEO Smart Links will allow you to specify a word such as ‘search engine optimization’ and then the contents of the article it appears a ‘search engine optimization’ is the word, it will be automatically turned into the designated links.
5. SEO Friendly Images
Photo Also in the blog optimization play an important role, so to establish the correct label image becomes very important, and this is precisely the function of SEO Friendly Images, if you prefer to use images in the blog article, then the SEO Friendly Images is a must for small.
6. Google Positioner
Choose the right keywords is very important that this plug-in can help you to bring traffic to track the search keywords, you may aimlessly choice words and then create some content, in the hope to get a good result, but the SEO need to take the initiative to track the results.
7. Permalinks Moved Permanently
Blog main common mistakes is to choose a permanent link to the wrong structure, and start writing blog when you feel the most appropriate choice, but over time you may also intend to change the permanent link structure, and this time you may take several months prime time in order to be search engine re-included.
Permalinks Moved Permanently and Redirection role similar, but more likely a better way to manage a permanent link to change.
(Recommendation: no matter what the situation is not going to change your permanent link.)
8. Nofollow Case by Case
In the last two years, nofollow attribute has been deeply affected a blog, WordPress for all of the message of the connection have used Nofollow tags, which means that a message in the connection does not pass Page Rank (PR). If you want to attract more visitors comments, Nofollow Case by Case allows you to remove the message in the link Nofollow tags, which require exposure of a new blog is very useful.
(Note: Dofollow is indeed a good idea to publicize your blog, but the same will be destroyed Spam your blog, nofollow also the effect of weight change.)
9. SEO Slugs
Do not use was found to prime the engine ignores words, posts often have their title may be elements of search engines is meaningless word, so if you post entitled ‘What You Can Do Immediately For Higher Rankings’, then the a permanent link to the default may be what-you-can-do-immediately-for-higher-rankings, but you are not more like a permanent link to the following: immediately-higher-rankings
SEO Slugs can automatically link to permanently remove from the meaningless words, to help you achieve better rankings.
Always have your stuff when you need it with @