1. Smashing Magazine

Smashing magazine, founded in 2006, is undoubtedly one of the best web design blogs that keeps its readers updated with latest trends and techniques in web development and useful information. Visit the site for wide-variety of high quality articles, resources and tools related to web design and development.

Smashingmagazine.com

2. Net Tuts

Nettuts, is one of the quality web design blogs that publish articles and tutorials on technologies, skills and techniques. Subjects or topics that they cover include HTML, CSS, Javascript, CMS’s, and PHP etc.

net.tutplus.com

3. PSD Tuts

PSDTuts showcases quality Photoshop tutorials. The blog is a part of Tuts+ network. Visit for tutorials related to Photoshop with great graphics and effects and techniques.

Psd.tutplus.com

4. Six Revision

Six Revisions publishes useful articles, tips, tutorials, resources for web designers and developers. The site was launched in 2008 and run by professional web developer Jacob Gube, the present Chief editor of the site. Articles for Six Revisions are written by professional from around the world.

Sixrevisions.com

5. We Function

A popular web design site which publishes articles, tips, tutorials and resources related to web designing and development covering subjects like Photoshop, web design inspirations, html, Wordpress themes etc.

wefunction.com

6. Smashing Apps

Smashing apps offers free and useful online resources for web designers and developers. The web design blog covers mostly topics related to latest trends, developments and technologies related to web design and development.

Smashingapps.com

7. Fuel Your Creativity

Fuelyourcreativity puts more emphasis on creativity as the name suggests. Visit the site for anything related to web design like useful articles, creative tools, inspirations, current trends or news, freebies, interviews etc.

Fuelyourcreativity.com

8. Think Vitamin

Think vitamin – the web Practitioner’s blog as they put it, was launched in 2006 for designers and developers by designers and developers (again as they put it). In 2007 it won a SXSW (south by southwest) award for ‘Best Educational Resource’

Thinkvitamin.com

9. Instant Shift

Instant shift has been one of the best destinations for web designers and developers; you can find variety of useful stuffs like articles related to web design, wordpress, css, icons, fonts, tools etc, showcases, wall papers, tutorials, freebies and many more.

Instantshift.com

10. Web Designer Wall

Web designer wall is maintained by Nick La, the owner of the blog, with several years of experience and having several of his work published on number of popular magazines. He writes about his design ideas, tutorials and modern web design trends.

Webdesignerwall.com

11. Noupe

Noupe was founded in 2007 by Noura Yehia. Noupe delivers News, articles, current trends related to web design covering subjects like CSS, Ajax, CSS, Java Script, Web design, Graphics, Typography, advertising and many more.

Noupe.com

12. Web Design Ledger

Web Design Ledger is platform for sharing web design related knowledge and resources and WDL team covers topic range from design inspiration to tips, tutorials, tools etc.

Webdesignledger.com

13. Designm.ag

DesignM.ag has been successful in creating a community based platform for web designers and developers. To keep the design community involved, the site has different sections to attract visitors or members like a popular blog, a user-submitted news section, a design gallery and a job design board.

Designm.ag

14. Abduzeedo

Abuzeedo was founded in 2006 by Fabio sasso, is one of the popular web design blogs that attracts more than hundred thousand design enthusiasts and around three million a month. Visit the site for tutorials, inspirations, wall papers and interviews.

Abduzeedo.com

15. Specky Boy

Speckyboy Design Magazine was launched in 2007, the site which was launched as a personal blog evolved into a popular design resource magazine over the years. They publish web design related tutorials, techniques, fresh and useful resources, inspirational art and also cover topic related graphic design, mobile development and advertising.

Speckyboy.com

These are some of the best web design blogs that serve as great source of inspiration, resource and knowledge for thousand of web designers and developers around the world. The list was prepared on the basis of quality of posts, popularity of the blogs based on traffic, Page rank and other parameters like brand name, visibility, recommendations from design experts etc.

Note: we don’t claim that these are the best, but undoubtedly some of the best.

Few strong reasons why people go for re-design of their websites:

Before you step ahead, try to find out whether or not you have a strong reason to do so, because you are investing the assets of business here; time and money!! There are a few basic reasons why people often redesign their websites and they are really worth thinking over.

• Attract Enough Visitors- You had put all your efforts to create an effective website for your business. But all you got in return was just a few visitors not contributing much to your success. Then it’s definitely the time to plan out a strategy which also includes changing certain areas of your website, as the earlier design has not been able to impress the web visitors. You can use tools like web analytics, Click Tale etc to track visitor statistics like number of visitors coming to different pages of your website, bounce rate, time duration etc. So, go ahead and see what’s missing!!
• Complains about Accessibility and Navigation- You were able to get visitors for your website at the beginning with an impressive and informative homepage, Later on, you continue to lose visitors, poor navigation can be a reason. Easy navigation and user friendly sites get the edge over the complicated ones.
  
• Search Engine Friendliness- Search engine ranking is important in terms of traffic and if your site is not being able to attract enough visitors, a major reason can be poor search engine ranking; to improve ranking in search engine, you need to pay attention to on-page activities including your site’s structure and design (coding, images and other necessary factors).
• Product and Service Information- A few people decide to redesign a website as; they feel that they need to present their products and services in a better way or when their products and service offerings increase and redesigning is a solution for this.
• User Friendly – A site is also re-designed, when the site owner feels the site should be more user friendly and interactive.

These are few major reasons why one thinks to change the design of his/her website; however, there are few more reasons like; to make the content more relevant, to communicate more effectively with your stakeholders, etc.

Now, moving on, we will talk about the precautions which are necessary to consider before and while implementing this major step.

Points to Consider

• Most of the time, while redesigning a website, people find it a good opportunity to fix the rotten URLs which isn’t a good idea. By doing this, you may lose your traffic and also search ranking. The links that your website gets from other websites will not be transferred to the new page without taking necessary precautions.
• To minimize issues while taking this step, you need to pass on all requests from the old page to the new. Not just adding a link pointing to the new page will do, but also should notify the search engines and visitors about the change in location of the page.
• Yet another thing to keep in mind is that while changing the appearance of your site, you should try modifying the CSS file only. This is because it becomes an easier process, as; this way you can avoid going through every single page in order to do the modifications.
• This thought to change the design of your website does not necessarily come once. It might rise again and again, with different reasons every time, depending upon your satisfaction level. I know of sites which have opted for redesigning their site 5-6 times. In order to make it easier for yourself, you should hire a proper and sophisticated web editor who uses advanced management site tools and can change your website design on a single template page. No doubt, popular companies will cost you more but their dedication and work for your site will save your time; a kind of payback for your invested money.

Last but very important thing that you should not miss is to keep an up -to- date backup of the existing site before going for any changes in it. The reason behind this is that despite all precautions and planning, it may happen that, you are not satisfied with the changes you made. So, in that case if you have a backup you can easily revert back to the original design. You can also add a beta link on the existing site to the new design. User can be presented the option to navigate to new design. Also allow the visitor to provide the comments on the new design. Proper analysis of those comments will result in proper design.

Update your website with fresh news to give readers a feel that you are active; this can be possible when u add a blog section on the site. You can also add social network icons/ content sharing tools, to make your blog more interactive.

Analyze Google Analytics report to see where users are dropping off and try to make changes there. This may take a few trials, but if you pay attention to data, this will definitely improve conversion rate.

Conclusion:

Redesigning your website is not something to create havoc about, but yes, it’s a work full of planning, analysis and precautions. Invest well and get the best!!If you succeed, that means you have turned the table in your favor!

404 error pages on a website are the most underestimated. But a well-designed error page can significantly enhance the experience of the website visitors.

In this article, we are including 15 creative 404 pages which we have found after doing a extensive research of over thousands of websites.

1. http://patterntap.com/404

2. http://www.jhuskisson.com/404

3. http://technorati.com/404

4. http://es-es.www.mozilla.com/es-ES/404

5. http://www.trubru.co.uk/404

6. http://www.southparkstudios.com/404

7. http://ifolderlinks.ru/404/

8. http://www.orangecoat.com/404

9. http://deaxon.com/404

10. http://www.heinz.com/404

11. http://www.apple.com/macosx/404

12. http://www.cafepress.com/notfound.aspx

13. http://twurn.com/404

14. http://www.alistapart.com/404.html

15. http://www.tattoosales.com/404.aspx

It is a well known fact that it takes an average user 3 seconds to decide if she wants to stay on the current website. Since header is the very first thing which attracts the users’ attention, it must be aesthetically designed.

In the showcase below we present 15 beautiful headers. These headers are manually selected after visiting hundreds of websites.

1. http://www.huxleyprairiefest.com

2. http://www.finerhome.co.uk/monster-sale

3. http://ma.tt

4. http://rustinjessen.com

5. http://wecareabilene.org

6. http://www.remedydrive.com

7. http://clandrei.de

8. http://www.takethewalk.net

9. http://www.dananddave.com

10. http://www.tastebook.com

11. http://www.yourchurch.com

12. http://www.signalapps.com

13. http://www.armadacreative.com

14. http://tearoundapp.com

15. http://mastergrinding.com