1Planning the Website

Is your website a static website or dynamic one? Do you need any kind of Content Management System (CMS) to drive the website? Do you need a blogging platform or a membership framework in the website? All these things must be taken into account before moving to selecting a suitable web-hosting solution.

2Selecting a Web-Hosting Solution

Now that you have planned the website, you should select a suitable web-hosting solution that will provide you with all the necessary technologies required for the website. There are numerous web-hosting services like this but you must note how their uptime and customer services are. A good web-hosting service must give you 99.9% uptime guarantee (don’t go by what they claim on the website, most of the time it’s fake). Also, they should have live-chat services and ticket-based helpdesk support. Web-hosting solutions that offer CPanel based hosting are the best.

The best web-hosting solutions are Bluehost, iPage, Justhost and Hostgator. They have been leaders in web-hosting for a long time.

You have to pay a small monthly fee towards the web-hosting service. If you sign up for a yearly service, then there should be huge discounts. The discount percentage will increase with increase in term of service (3 years subscription will cost lesser on per-month-basis compared to a 1 year subscription).

3Registering the Domain Name

Now this is a very crucial part, choosing a proper domain name. Randfish from SEOMoz explains it very beautifully in this article. You should go through the post to get an idea of how domain name should be chosen.

A domain name can be registered during the time of registration of web-hosting service. Most of these services provide a free domain name for 1 year after which you have to pay the standard yearly rate for that domain. Also, make sure that you include domain privacy so that your personal details stay completely anonymous to trackers and robots when crawling through the websites.

By now, you should be all set to go with the website hosting. If you have a developer to make the website, feel free to communicate with him / her and provide the credentials for accessing the web-hosting service. Since you are disclosing the credentials to web-hosting service (and handling over the entire web-hosting to developer) make sure to create an set of terms with the developer so that nothing goes wrong during the process of development. Once the site building is complete, immediately change the web-hosting service access credentials.

Please feel free to share any feedback you have regarding this post. The posts are continually modified as always so your contribution will be greatly appreciated. Good luck in hosting your first website!

The post Planning for a new website: A simple n’ complete Guide appeared first on Bada Designs.

1. Stylebot

Stylebot is one of the most important Google Chrome extension for web designers and developers. It is a very easy-to-use CSS editing software. With Stylebot, you can edit CSS stylesheets real-time and see the changes instantly in the webpage without having to refresh the page. With advanced settings, you can even insert new styles in the current web page.

2. Awesome Screenshot

Awesome Screenshot produces a very accurate and high-quality web-page screenshot. It can also create partial screenshots on a webpage. The final output can be cropped and saved in PNG format.

3. Resolution Test

You may test your website’s compatibility on different display resolutions using Resolution Test. This is perfect for testing responsive designs.

4. Chrome Sniffer

This amazing extension will let you know the technology or framework a particular website is using. It will also help the developer inspect the Javascript library running in the particular website.

5. WhatFont

WhatFont will tell you the font being used by just a simple hover using the cursor.

Applications

6. CSS Grady

CSS Grady is a beautiful gradient generator tool. You may use the output code on any web page.

7. CSS3 Generator

CSS3 Generator can generate codes for gradients, shadows, boxes or even multi-columns for web pages. The codes can be copied and pasted on any web page.

8. ShiftEdit

ShiftEdit is an online IDE that will help you to code scripts and display them real-time. You may save the code if you have an account with ShiftEdit and use them on webpages.

Do you have any other Google Chrome extension in mind that will be helpful for Web designers and developers? Please feel free to share your opinions or provide feedback about the article by commenting below.

The post 8 Important Google Chrome Extensions for Web Developers appeared first on Bada Designs.

So the first thing you should always know is that Photoshop or Illustrator is not the only means of giving you a perfect quality. You should keep in mind that the real quality lies in printing services. The same digital design can go either good or bad on paper depending on your choice of printers. So what are the factors which will decide the optimal quality? Let’s have a look…

Find the right printing service provider

There are many good printing service providers out there. Online printing services are generally better compared to local printing because they have solid experience in designing cards and will provide you with quality prints. The only thing you need to keep in mind – give them a proper format. PDF and TIFF files are the best for printing. There are many reputed online printers. I find Vistaprint really affordable and give great quality prints.

Verify the digital quality of your Card Design

If you have the business card design, make sure it is high resolution at minimum of 300 dpi (dots per inch). The size does not matter as much as resolution does because the latter will give you a sharper and more accurate print. Higher the resolution, better the print.

Choose the right kind of paper for your card

First look at your design. Then think – will it look better on a gloss paper or a matte-finish paper. Will it look better on a white paper or off-white paper? Should you try a thicker paper or a lighter paper? Try to understand and think out the differences before choosing the kind of paper. If it is too hard to decide (which is normal if you are printing for first time), you may ask the designer or consult with the printers and they may help you out. The choice of paper will vary depending on the type of design you have.

Be careful of low-priced printing service providers

Generally low-cost printing service providers give you a really bad print output (and I mean generally, not all). If you are tight on budget, you should avoid printing too many cards and look for printers who print good quality card. Never get attracted to low-cost printers and never think they do a proper job. Cos they don’t.

The post Printing Business Cards – The Absolute Essentials appeared first on Bada Designs.