Update: The site that was stealing content has removed their post, although I did not get any sort of reply email. And to the people that were emailing me from Web Design Tuts with those dirty messages - it was other people stealing WDT content, not the other way around

Second Update: The site owner has kindly emailed me and apologized for what happened. The article was removed and no harm was done. I will keep this post up as a way to help deter future content thieves. Look everyone, if you’re going to take content, at least don’t steal someone’s bandwidth, and it never hurts to give a credit link. We all make mistakes, but hopefully this will prevent some from happening down the road.

Today I received an email from a reader of Web Design Tuts informing me that someone had republished one my first tutorials on another site. I checked it out, and there it was - my six hours, and 2,000 words of work. I scrolled the page looking for any kind of link or credit to WDT, none. I soon realized that they were even grabbing the images right off of my server, thus taking up my bandwidth!

And THIS, my good people, is why you should NEVER steal online content. I have emailed them and left a comment asking for them to kindly remove the tutorial. Until they do, their readers will see what they have done.

I realize that this happens every day online, but listen everyone: the internet is a community. As bloggers especially, we need to work together to build better websites and put together better content. Stealing is never the right way to go about doing this.

Well I knew it couldn’t stay a secret forever. Today, after writing a 6 hour, 2,000 word Photoshop tutorial, I went ahead and did an early-open for Web Design Tuts. I rolled out a couple of Twitter updates to get a few people’s reactions to the site. Some loved it. Some hated it.

@BuildInternet was the first to actually look up Web Design Tuts on Who Is and noticed that the nameservers were pointed to Elite By Design. And the secret was out!

So yes, I am launching Web Design Tuts as a companion site to Elite By Design. I’ve written some posts in the past here on EBD about web design, but there was something within me that wanted to take it further and really push myself to teach other people what I know, and grow as a designer in the process. I plan on writing one post per week at first on both Web Design Tuts and Elite By Design. As the sites gain more momentum, I’ll be more comfortable increasing the posting rate and even hiring some guest posters down the road.

Until then, feel free to check out Web Design Tuts and read How To Design The PSD Tuts Website In Photoshop. Please be sure to subscribe to the feed so you can get updated when our next post rolls out.

On a side note, I’ve received a few emails, direct messages, and comments calling me out on copying PSD Tuts in naming the site Web Design Tuts. In fact, just a few minutes after launch I already had someone hating the blog.

Let me assure you a couple of things:

1. I didn’t name the website to try and emulate or impersonate Collis and his wonderful websites.
2. I am not affiliated with the Envato network.
3. I support Collis and the Envato network and I am in no way trying to push my site by ‘playing their name.’

If you have anything you’d like to talk to me about in regards to Elite By Design, Web Design Tuts, or if you’d just like to leave your opinion, don’t hesitate to comment on this post or get in touch with me.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and opinions on the new site.

When it comes to blogging and online content management systems, one name is spoken more often than any other: WordPress. This amazingly user-friendly, endlessly-customizable framework is an open source project that has revolutionized the online community since its creation in 2003. Cropping up on hundreds of thousands of sites across the interweb with eager users and community created plugins to enhance performance, this programming powerhouse shows no signs of slowing down.

With so many sites on the bandwagon, designers and developers have answered the call by bringing a multitude of WordPress-ready themes to keep sites looking fresh and new. Given the popularity of the product, these themes make waves when they land in the cyber sea and finding examples that have not been widely used can be difficult and a little bit intimidating. However, after scouring the vast recesses of the web, we have found a few gems that you may not have seen before. Here are some of the standouts we happened to uncover.

Perfectom Theme

Features

• Optimized for all browsers
• XHTML/CSS valid
• Fixed width
• 2 columns

This theme offers a clean, very sleek setup for your website. It seems like it would be ideally suited for a fashion blog of some kind. Very crisp, overall.

CSS Gallery Theme

Features

• Built in tagging
• Google ads and a sidebar block with 125 x 125 banner ads
• Valid XHTML 1.0 transitional and valid CSS

Technically this theme was built as a base for a CSS/website gallery, and wonderfully so, however, personally I think the design also lends itself to being used greatly as a portfolio or as a general showcase gallery.

Langit Theme

Features

• Clean and simple
• 3 columns
• Sidebar widget ready
• XHTML + CSS valid
• Tested in Firefox, Internet Explorer 6, Opera, and Safari
• Compatible with Wordpress 2.5 and below
• Logo PSD and font are included in the package

This is simply a wonderful theme for anyone looking to organize an in-depth blog or manage content that requires multiple category listings and also needs a lot of features. This theme meets both of those stipulations with grace and ease.

Linoluna Theme

Features

• Lean and simple CSS
• Grid Layout
• Tabbed Navigation
• Slideshow animated featured articles on front page

An extremely deep magazine theme suited magnificently for multi-author blogs. Among its many accessible features is a fantastic statistics calculator in each post which includes total comments, total views, author name, category, date, and an email address, not to mention the print function.

Monochrome Gallery Theme

Features

• Custom admin panel
• Easily customize theme
• Four widgetized areas
• More homepage content
• Author Archives
• Two page templates
• No editing themes files
• Blueprint CSS
• Valid XHTML and CSS

Monochrome Gallery is a free widgetized theme for Wordpress packaged with an author archives page, AJAX slideshow, categorized posts with thumbnails on the homepage, and a CSS framework to aid in customization. Need I say more?

Small Magazine Theme

Features

• Unique and fresh design
• Widgetized Sidebar
• 125×125 ad spots
• 250×250 adsense spot
• Easily customizable using CSS
• Custom 404 Error page
• Fixed width
• Right Sidebar
• Built in Flickr support
• Styled Pagination
• Built in Gravatar
• Valid CSS & HTML

Here we have a fully loaded magazine theme packed with features. Completely ready to launch your online publication style site with a built in photo gallery and featured articles sections. If it’s a magazine theme you need, look no further.

Arthemia Theme

Features

• Drop Down Menus
• Automatic image resizing for thumbnails
• Gravatar Support
• 3 column with enhanced footer

On the other hand, when you need the perfect balance between a magazine type setup and blog, then this is your theme. You get the magazine headers and featured articles, with an ordered post section below a featured category break.

Isolated Theme

Features

• Contains search, author, and links page templates.
• Mootool Accordion for bulk post display.
• Collapsible/expandable sidebar.
• XHTML1.0 Transitional
• Sidebar is above footer, and has 3 columns.
• GD Image Titles (Can be disabled via Theme Options Page)
• Tested in IE7, IE6, Firefox 1.5, and Opera 9

Probably the most unique theme I have seen in a while, this visually stunning theme, not to mention how technically interesting it is, makes me think of flipping through a book. An easy addition to the list, without question. I expect to see this cropping up all over the web.

Gluttony Theme

Features

• Two-column
• Widget-ready
• Rounded-corners

Yet another fine example of a content based theme. Meaning it is simple and clean while still offering a variety of features. Though none of that detracts from letting the content shine through.

The Morning After Theme

Features

• Clean grid-based design
• Support for WordPress widgets
• A three-column home page
• Featured post highlighting
• Associating images/thumbnails with recent posts
• Customizable logo/header image
• Easy CSS classes for adding captions and wrapping text around images in posts
• Support for asides
• Option for readers to e-mail posts to friends
• Option to switch to a print-friendly view to print posts

The theme was created based on a brief survey on the WordPress forums about what people would want to see in a unique magazine-style theme. Nice showcase layout for your recent posts.

Bonus Versatility Lite

Features

• Two-collumn theme
• Ad-ready
• Widgetized Sidebar
• Featured Post
• Dropdown CSS Menus
• Integrated related posts, social bookmarking buttons and more

As a bonus we decided to add a new theme that was just released this week. It’s a nice simple and clean blog theme released under the Creative Commons License.

What underused themes have you discovered recently on your trips around the web that you think would have made a nice addition to the list?

It’s no secret at this point, this internet thing is going to be big! Most businesses today have some kind of online presence, usually focused around their website. The marketing value of this tool is virtually immeasurable. Unless you are a company that specializes in measuring the marketing value of of the internet as a mainstream tool for enhancing your business, then you might have an idea. And if that is your business, what kind of website would you have?

Business sites have a different goal than most, to be sure. For most business sites, usability is the main focus when putting the site together. They want to make sure that function takes precedence so that users can easily find their way around to everything that they are looking for. Some businesses believe the look of the site is as important as everything else, and they have achieved usability with an equal focus on aesthetics. Here are the thirty most inspirational business websites that we found.

PhotoImageArt

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Group8020

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Cad & the Dandy

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Assaroe Falls

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Mia and Maggie

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Coconut Grove Apartments

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Expression Tints

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Porters Carpet and Furniture

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Sunderman Construction

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Rock Creek Strategic Marketing

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Tastebook

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Dornoch Castle Hotel

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The Resume Girl

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30 Elm

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Hotel Oxford

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Pink Comb Salon

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Best Mortgage Deals

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Depozit De USI

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101 Prints

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Miami Angel Properties

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Madame Surto

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Empower Walk

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EarthGoods Natural Foods

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Eliteak Outdoor Furnature

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Merchant Vinyl

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Fox Plumbing

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Oypro Commercial Real Estate

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Adcapital Industries

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Paul Geller Enterprises

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Advanced Recovery Computer Recycling

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I think we can all agree that design has been in a constant change since the burst of the Internet, however it seems that the direction of who is doing the designing has also changed from those who are ‘professionals’ in their field to the new breed – ‘home designers’.

So – is this the direction for design in the future? Will design professionals be shunted off to the side to make way for other, cheaper alternatives? Or will people recognize this is killing the industry and the extra money that is paid is for quality?

Spec work seems to be the design of the future. For those who don’t know, spec work is when you hold a ‘competition’ where designers compete against each other in order to win the prize money. The thing that annoys professionals however is that the cost they can charge is being lowered as their profession is cheapened and that they could be competing against unqualified and inexperienced designers.

I myself (being an early design student) have participated in a few spec competitions to experience first-hand what it is like. Out of the 7 or so I entered, I did not come first, however, I received a commendation prize for a good design in which the ‘client’ purchased the exclusive rights to. Out of most of the competitions I entered there were 40-300 participants. Positives can be drawn from these experiences (e.g. practicing design with a real design brief) and that can be good for students however, the still-obvious downside is the cheapening of the industry.

Main reasons why spec work can be seen as ‘bad’.

1. There can only be 1 winner out of potentially hundreds of entrants
2. It lowers the amount of business they can receive. Clients see much more opportunity in paying $300 for 100 different designers.

If you take a look at the current spec sites (99designs, CrowdSpring and Incspring) you can see an evident explosion in popularity as word has spread around. As with Newton’s third law of motion, there has been refute for the idea. Protest websites like NO!SPEC have been set up to counter these various spec websites. On the NO!SPEC website it outlines all the various reasons as to why they oppose this idea so I will let you go and read that if you desire. This opens up to the main part of the post where you have your say.

Is spec work the way of the future? Is it going to cheapen the industry permanently or is it just a fad? Are the new younger designers going to replace the current experienced designers? Does education still have a place within the industry with spec work booming?

If you are reading this post right now, you are seeing the new design on Elite By Design. I’ve been working hard on this design for the past several months and I am so proud to finally unveil it!

This past week has also been Elite By Design’s one year birthday week. That’s right, we’ve been here for one year. Pretty exciting huh? Here are a few numbers I’d like to share that illustrate our growth over the past twelve months:

1. Over 825k unique visitors.
2. Over 2 million page views.
3. Two features on the front page of Digg.com.
4. 1600+ RSS subscribers.
5. Technorati rank of 7,200.
6. Almost 2,400 comments from readers.

But to me, those numbers aren’t nearly as important as the Elite By Design community. Over the past year we have gained a loyal following of designers and artists alike. To repay you for your time and devotion, we’ve added a brand new Community section onto the site.

The Community section is a place where bloggers can come and share their articles with the rest of the world. It will feature design-related articles and design resources from readers’ sites on the web.

A Note To Current Subscribers:

If you are currently subscribed to Elite By Design and are reading this via RSS, there are a couple of choices you need to make. We are now offering three different feeds on the site: One for blog posts, one for community posts, and one for everything.

Current subscribers are subscribed to both blog posts and community posts. If you would only like to subscribe to blog posts, click here. If you would like to only subscribe to community posts, click here.

In this redesign you’ll notice several new features:

1. Home page redesign - We really strayed out of the norm and turned our homepage into a directory of the site giving both new and old visitors access to the best content in our archives.

2. New and improved sidebar - The new sidebar looks and feels great on the site. With a prominent RSS feed section and clear sections for content, finding your way around the site has never been easier!

3. Recent posts - With a lot of inspiration from Tutorial 9 and now PSD Tuts, we’ve added a recent posts section below our posts so you can find articles relevant to you.

4. Author sections/pages - Below each post there is now an author’s section to feature our incredible authors on the site. Just as well, clicking on their name will take you to their author page where you can see all the posts they have written. Pay some respect and check out their sites!

5. Community area - Submit your design articles and freebies to share with the whole community! This is a great way to gear up your website and expose yourself and your website to Elite By Design’s audience of designers.

6. Theme section - The theme section is a place to find the perfect WordPress theme for your website. Yes, we are selling some themes from here, but we will also be featuring WordPress themes from other designers as well.

7. Flickr group - Now you can submit your work to the Elite By Design Flickr Group. Share your masterpieces with the world! Every month we will include a roundup of some of our favorite pieces!

8. Improved categories - Finding content that matters to you is easier than ever. On our blog, simply click to our new categories page to find the perfect post that relates to what you do.

9. New footer - The new footer below this post highlights my favorite sites on the web as well as directs your attention to our new WordPress theme directory.

10. Background - We made a beautiful background to compliment the new design. Keep checking back for updates on this background as we will be using it to highlight new events and holidays.

I would love to hear your thoughts - what do you like about the new site? What don’t you like? Has the site improved, or gotten worse? Fill out the poll below to let us know, or if you have a few minutes to spare, click through and fill out our brief survey.

Thanks everyone again for such a tremendous year, we couldn’t have done it without you!