Category: Tutorials

You learn something everyday if you pay attention

How to Create a Gradient Icon Inspired by Instagram in Adobe Illustrator

What You’ll Be Creating Rebrand your logo in style with this quick tutorial on creating a gradient icon in Adobe Illustrator CC. We’ll build our icon design from scratch with quick and simple shapes and pair gradients and effects from the Appearance panel to complete our on-trend design.  Alternatively, you may wish to use a… Continue reading How to Create a Gradient Icon Inspired by Instagram in Adobe Illustrator

Using Laravel Valet for WordPress Development

If you’re familiar with the PHP community, then you’re likely familiar with a number of the different applications and frameworks that are currently popular in the development space today. One of the more common frameworks that we’re seeing used to build web applications is Laravel. Though this tutorial is not specifically about Laravel, I recommend checking… Continue reading Using Laravel Valet for WordPress Development

How to Build a News Website Layout with Flexbox

What You’ll Be Creating It’s not necessary to understand every aspect of Flexbox before you can jump in and get started. In this tutorial, we’re going to introduce a few features of Flexbox whilst designing a “news layout” like the one you can find on The Guardian. The reason we’re using Flexbox is that it… Continue reading How to Build a News Website Layout with Flexbox

Using Subversion to Check Out WordPress

There are a lot of reasons to enjoy following open-source software, one of which is the ability to learn from the code that others have built.  Other examples include: following along with bug tickets seeing new features merged into the code base learning how to achieve something programmatically viewing the deprecation of an old feature… Continue reading Using Subversion to Check Out WordPress

How to Integrate SmoothState.js Into a WordPress Theme

In our previous tutorial, we used the History Web API within a static site to serve smooth page transitions. In this tutorial we’re going to take things to the next level, by applying what we learned in a WordPress website. There’ll be one crucial difference; we’ll leverage SmoothState.js instead of building our own from scratch.  SmoothState.js will: Request pages asynchronously (AJAX) and… Continue reading How to Integrate SmoothState.js Into a WordPress Theme

How to Create a Watercolor Wedding Invitation in Adobe InDesign

What You’ll Be Creating Painterly designs are a big trend for wedding invitations right now. Romantic without being overly feminine or floral, they have an effortlessly cool, beachy style which is perfect for outdoor or more laid-back ceremonies. In this tutorial that’s suitable for beginners to the software, we’ll walk through the steps of creating an… Continue reading How to Create a Watercolor Wedding Invitation in Adobe InDesign

How to Create a Misty Landscape Photo Manipulation With Adobe Photoshop

What You’ll Be Creating In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create a misty landscape with rocks, an arch bridge, flying birds, castles, and a medieval woman. You’ll learn how to combine simple images into a cohesive scene, play with the depth and atmosphere, adjust the colors, and more.  Tutorial Assets The following assets… Continue reading How to Create a Misty Landscape Photo Manipulation With Adobe Photoshop

Power Up Your Mobile Game With Design, Sound, and Music

A successful game needs to be beautifully designed and immersive. Most game developers aren’t good designers, though. And it doesn’t stop with design. Sound and music are just as important to captivate people playing your game. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a design or team up with one to create a fantastic game. You… Continue reading Power Up Your Mobile Game With Design, Sound, and Music

How to Create an AJAX Driven Theme for ProcessWire

In this tutorial we will look at setting up a simple theme in ProcessWire, we’ll investigate delayed output (now the default theme strategy within ProcessWire), and setup our site to request new content using AJAX. To accompany this tutorial I have created a new theme for ProcessWire, making use of both AJAX and delayed output,… Continue reading How to Create an AJAX Driven Theme for ProcessWire

10 Remedial Design Pointers for Developers

Here’s a situation which may be familiar to you: you’re a developer and you build a prototype to demonstrate something. It works just as you mean it to, but the looks of horror on your users’ faces tell you something is wrong–your demo looks like crap. Let’s look some simple guidelines and tips to help… Continue reading 10 Remedial Design Pointers for Developers

20 Best Shopify Themes With Beautiful eCommerce Designs

When it comes to eCommerce, the design of your site plays a crucial role. It can make or break your website—leading to sales either falling flat or converting profitably.  Even though you are probably eager to get your new site up and running as quickly as possible, it’s important to first make sure you pick… Continue reading 20 Best Shopify Themes With Beautiful eCommerce Designs

Using Let's Encrypt SSL With Your WordPress Project

What’s Let’s Encrypt? For years, purchasing, renewing, installing and managing SSL certificates overwhelmed me with expense and complexity. Now, Let’s Encrypt makes it fairly simple and free. Let’s Encrypt is an emerging, free, automated, and open certificate authority brought to you by a California public benefit corporation called the Internet Security Research Group—it also has nonprofit status.  Its… Continue reading Using Let's Encrypt SSL With Your WordPress Project

How to Create a Dory-Inspired Photo Manipulation in Adobe Photoshop

What You’ll Be Creating To celebrate Finding Dory, the upcoming sequel to the classic Finding Nemo, I’ll show you how to create realistic fan art easily in Adobe Photoshop. Inspired by the movie, learn how to use photo manipulation and digital painting techniques to make any character come alive. Let’s get started! Tutorial Assets The… Continue reading How to Create a Dory-Inspired Photo Manipulation in Adobe Photoshop

New Course: How to Use Live Shapes in Illustrator

What You’ll Be Creating Want to learn a new Illustrator skill in just ten minutes? In our new Coffee Break Course, illustrator Simona Pfreundner will introduce you to Live Shapes in Adobe Illustrator CC. You’ll get a brief introduction to what Live Shapes are, and then you’ll learn how to create something using this very handy… Continue reading New Course: How to Use Live Shapes in Illustrator

Free Course: Create Content in WordPress With Posts and Pages

What You’ll Be Creating WordPress is a powerful and easy-to-use tool for creating websites, but for beginners it can still be a little hard to know where to get started. What’s the best way to fit your content into the WordPress content management system? In our new course, Create Content in WordPress With Posts and… Continue reading Free Course: Create Content in WordPress With Posts and Pages

Ruby Templating With Slim: Part 2

In the second and last part of this mini series, we’ll finish this introduction with sections about outputting Ruby code, interpolation, plain text and how to customize Slim to your needs. After that article you should be ready for some Slim action.  Outputting Code You have already seen a bit about how to use Ruby in… Continue reading Ruby Templating With Slim: Part 2

20 Useful WordPress WooCommerce Plugins Available on CodeCanyon

WooCommerce is a free plugin that transforms WordPress into a powerful eCommerce solution. This WordPress eCommerce plugin now powers over 37% of all online stores and offers a wide variety of plugins that extend and customize WooCommerce in many different ways. Here are 20 useful WordPress WooCommerce plugins available on Envato Market that are worth your… Continue reading 20 Useful WordPress WooCommerce Plugins Available on CodeCanyon

It’s Tough Out There: A Look at Brutalism in Web Design

Brutalist websites were thrust into the spotlight recently when Pascal Deville’s brutalistwebsites.com hit Hacker News and went viral. This collection showcases the less warm and fuzzy side of the web–let’s take a look and see if we can pull some inspiration from brutalism. Brutal Buildings “Brutalism” (or “New Brutalism”) is a term which has been rattling… Continue reading It’s Tough Out There: A Look at Brutalism in Web Design

How to Use Pantheon to Set Up and Maintain a Production-Safe WordPress Site

Today, WordPress powers 25% of all of the world’s websites, so it’s safe to say that what started as blogging software has grown into something much bigger than its humble origins, and is ready to be used on production-level sites from news portals to complete web applications. With this level of professionalism, new needs arise.  On a personal blog read by… Continue reading How to Use Pantheon to Set Up and Maintain a Production-Safe WordPress Site

5 Common Problems Faced by Python Beginners

More from this author How to Launch Your Next Tech Product for Free (Almost!) API Building and Testing Made Easier with Postman Are you in the process of learning Python? It’s a fantastic language to learn, but as with any language, it does present challenges that can seem overwhelming at times, especially if you’re teaching… Continue reading 5 Common Problems Faced by Python Beginners

10 Amazing Photoshop Templates That Every Designer Should Own

What You’ll Be Creating Photoshop templates are a great way of transforming your images instantly into something more eye-catching and professional-looking. Creating a vintage-style collage? Using a vintage PS template will give your photos that authentic aged look. Looking to improve a set of so-so wedding photos? Using a soft focus template will make them… Continue reading 10 Amazing Photoshop Templates That Every Designer Should Own

Building a Vertical Timeline With CSS and a Touch of JavaScript

First, we’ll create the basic structure with minimal markup and the power of CSS pseudo-elements. Then, we’ll use some JavaScript to add some transitional effects as we scroll down the page.  Let’s get an idea of what we’ll be building (check out the larger version on CodePen). This tutorial has been updated with another… Continue reading Building a Vertical Timeline With CSS and a Touch of JavaScript

Learn the Basics of HTML in Our New Course

Do you need to learn HTML from the ground up? If so, our new course, Start Here: Learn HTML Basics, is perfect for you. What You’ll Learn The most critical first step to becoming a web designer is learning how to code HTML. By the end of this short course you’ll know what HTML is, how it… Continue reading Learn the Basics of HTML in Our New Course