Web Development & Design in Medina Ohio | ETHODE

In the pursuit of trying to make my life easier, I have stumbled upon online resources that really help make my life easier. More importantly, they allow me not to re-invent the wheel every time I start a new site.

Here is a list of 7 Online Resources that you (and I) can’t live without”

1. Web Templates:  Theme Forest
   Theme Forest is a young site, but is my number 1 source when I need a new fresh template.  They offer a pretty good selection between PSD, HTML, and pre-made themes for CMS’s like Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress.  The prices are cheaper then the famed competitor Template Monster and the designed (in my opinion) tend to be more Web 2.0 and trendy.  Also, because you’re technically buying the theme from a fellow designer/developer, they become a resource for updates, bugs, etc.
2. Small Apps: Code Canyon
   Code Canyon, also very young still (just a couple months) is already starting to dominate the market and take traffic from sites like Hot Scripts.  The reason?  Their stuff is much better, better organized, more useful, and less oriented at selling “premium listings”.  Because they make money on every thing bought from their site they don’t offer specialized listings, or push you junky apps first, they really allow you to find what you wanted in the first place.    Much like Theme Forest, once you purchase something, the developer who created the small is usually pretty easy to get a hold of, and have changes made.  This is not a “must see” site, but it’s very useful and I can’t live without it.
3. Flash Apps: Active Den
   Active Den as you can imagine after checking it out for 5 minutes, is the best place to get Flash Apps.  I have in the past outsource projects on sites like oDesk, Elance, etc, but the problem is, I’m never happy with their work.  For literally hundreds less you can usually find a pre-made app that does exactly what you need and the developer is usually more then happy to customize it for you if you would like for a small fee.  Also, it’s more of a community with discussions and ways to chat with other users and collaborate.  I’ve used a couple things from their site, MP3 players, banner rotators, etc and all of them worked great and the source code was actually very neat and clean with comments on most of them.  Of course this is up to the individual developer/designer but the ones’ who succeed on these type of sites are the ones who go the extra mile.
4. Graphics: Graphic River
   Graphic River is a great resource to add to your stock photo site bookmarks.  I can’t say it fills ALL of my needs but I can usually find stuff here, and cheaper then more expensive stock sites.  I still wind up using other sites here and there, and that’s okay with me, but Graphic River has quickly became priceless for me.  Also, the competition of photographers really helps keep the photo’s top notch!

Well there you have it, that is my list of awesome resources…  That you or I shouldn’t live without and you should learn and love them.

Posted By: Joshua in Blog, Development, Joomla, PHP, Resources, Web Design
Tags: Tags: Active Den, ActiveDen, CMS, Code Canyon, CodeCanyon, Drupal, Flash Apps, FlashDen, Graphic River, GraphicRiver, Joomla, Site Templates, Site Themes, Stock Photos, Theme Forest, ThemeForest, Web Design, Web templates, Web Themes

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