Post pobrano z: Buying Domains in 2018: How to Figure Out a Good Name for your Site

Your website’s name and URL address are how customers remember you. Your website also has an IP address that anyone can find for free using WhoIs.com

In the screenshot above, you can see the result of a WhoIs search for Amazon.co.uk. The IP address is highlighted. But who is going to remember the IP address of every site they visit? Site names make the Internet possible for ordinary people to use.

What Makes a Poor Site Name?

Users must be able to remember your site’s name.

• Avoid numbers (either written or numerical eg three or 3) – people have to say “number” or ‘word’ every time
• Avoid dashes (-) – Sites with hyphens are often perceived as low quality
• Avoid underscores (_) – Who is going to say “underscore” when they are talking about your site?
• Avoid trademarks (eg Hoover, BBC) – That way you avoid expensive legal battles you will lose
• Avoid mis-spellings (eg hoovver) – Their legal team has more clout than yours
• Avoid triple letters (eg MissScunthorpe) – They are hard to remember

A good site name must be memorable, easy to say and have an unambiguous pronunciation.

Ideally, it will include what you do, be one word that you can trademark, eg, WordPress or two words run together, eg, InMotion or LinkedIn.

Where Should You Buy Your Domain Name?

Most web hosting companies give you a free domain name, but experts agree this is an unwise option to take up for your company name: Rather, you should buy your site address from a different company.

Trust is essential when searching for a domain name, and your searches must be private. Some name resellers sell your search data to unscrupulous domain “investors” who buy the domain you searched for and try to blackmail you into paying ten times what they paid.

LCN is one domain name seller you should look at.

LCN offers free domain privacy so a simple WhoIs search won’t reveal your name and address. They keep your searches private so that you can come back the next day and no domain sitting parasite will have ‘stolen’ your preferred URL.

Do .shop and Similar Domain Names Work?

You have a whole galaxy of domain name suffixes to choose from. Forget them all: Nothing works like .com or .co.uk.

Country-level domains work well within that country, but .com domains are essential for international businesses: Nothing else conveys the same authority.

Can You Use Your Business Name as Your Site Name?

Yes if someone hasn’t already registered that URL.

Should you do so is another question.

If your website visitors come from Google and Bing, your URL should tell users about the services you offer. This is less important if yours is a high street business with mostly word-of-mouth custom.

BobJones.com will work for a company with mostly local trade where everyone knows who you are and what you do. If you are targeting a broader geographic area through search engines, BobJonesHardware.com will work better

Think about your business exit strategy before settling on a site name. The name would need to be attractive to anyone buying your business. If your preferred URL were HarrogateHardware.co.uk, that would only appeal to potential buyers of your business from North Yorkshire. Similarly, avoid local colloquialisms, eg, JonesButties.com, because ‘butties’ is meaningless to many outside the North. (If you are not a Northerner, it means sandwiches.)

Other Ideas for Your Site Name

If you are setting up your business and website simultaneously, then you must check any business name you think of to check if the .com domain name is available.

Think of adding an extra letter to a URL that is unavailable, eg, Cowws.com or Letterss.com. Another trick is to use homophones, eg, Lyft.com or Silli.com.

Long Story Short

Never search for a web address on an untrustworthy site, and that includes many web hosting company sites. Only search on a website that is entirely trustworthy and guarantees your search data will remain private.

Look for a .com site name that reflects what your business does and that will have a broad appeal to buyers. If possible, your URL should be similar to your ‘trading as’ business name, but it must not include numbers or dashes.

Once you have set up your site there is more to be done – Check out this TechDonut guide to improving it.

Post pobrano z: What inspires you as a designer?

As a designer, you never know when inspiration will strike.  Although we might feel inspired while working, it is normal while taking a break that we find ourselves inspired.

This because during off times, our minds are free to process our experiences and to come up with new ideas.  As a result, we often feel inspired by walking, spending time with friends, going out to dinner or watching a movie.

Without our design inspirations, we often don’t add fuel to our creative fires.  This often results in a ‘creative block’.  It is therefore very important to surround yourself with artistic inspiration in order to feed your imagination.

Inspiration gives us the energy to create new designs and to work hard to ensure they fit with our image or vision.  It is when we are inspired that we produce our best work.  Inspiration assists us with brainstorming, mapping out new ideas and with bringing these new ideas to life.

As designers, inspiration assists us with keeping our creativity alive.  When we are innovative, we are able to produce ideas that have never been seen before.  It is our creativity which produces ideas which are ‘fresh’, ‘new’, out of the box or even genius.

As a designer we can use simple things around us to get inspiration, as example having a motivational wallpaper on your desktop is a very good option for this job.

So how do we ensure we remain inspired?

Set the parameters

When we are working towards creative design, it is important to consider the purpose of your graphic.  Explore:

What do you hope to achieve with your work?

What message would you like to create and how would you like to deliver it?

Are you working towards an online design or will your design be printed?

Who are your clients, and what guidelines have they given you?

Who would your audience be?

By taking your design brief into consideration, you will be able to create parameters for your design.  This helps you to eliminate possibilities and focus clearly on your options.

Source your inspiration

When we work creatively, there is a wide range of possibilities which are available.  We can find inspiration for dinner, other people, photographs, ideas and even experiences.  In order to find inspiration, we simply need to open our eyes to the world around us.

Often, we may have a specific aspect or area where we go to find inspiration.  We may explore the designs or color palette within nature.  Alternatively, the designs of others may fill us with wonder.

This often means taking ourselves to a specific place, such as the beach at dusk or an art museum.  At other times we may find inspiration during times of rest or relaxation.  We may find it when we run to catch the bus, walk in the park or are on the verge of sleep.

However, we do know that people or situations inspire us, fill us with awe and motivate us to add to the aesthetics we see around us.  We are often inspired by something extraordinary, just as we find delight in an exquisite restaurant meal when compared to a takeaway.

However, sometimes an everyday object or event can also offer up a sense of wonder when we open our eyes and truly see it for the first time.  Many historical artists were able to depict the beauty in everyday objects such as apples on a kitchen table.

Inspiration often has an emotional impact on us and leaves us touched by wonder.  Our minds feel inspired to create.

Inspiration touches each of us in different ways.  One person may be inspired by a bowl of fruit while another is inspired by a girl, a bridge over a canal, or the sky at nighttime.  Drawing upon our creative inspirations assists us to put together a campaign.

Working with inspiration

As designers, we depend on our inspiration in order to work creatively.  Giving our best at work depends on our creativity.  Many creative people work flexible hours, taking on tasks while their creativity moves them and allowing themselves periods of contemplation or exploration when it does not.

However, many designers have deadlines to meet and short-term projects which do not allow us to contemplate.  There is a need to draw on creativity the majority of the time.  It is therefore important to know ourselves, find out what inspires us, and understand where to look for inspiration.

Some people might have an intricate knowledge of how to find inspiration, but others are still finding what moves them.  Below are some spaces where inspiration can leap out at you.

Explore social media

Access the internet to a great peek into the collective unconscious.  Pinterest and Tumblr are image-based social media platforms which offer up great inspiration.

Both are packed with photography and design ideas and are easy to navigate and search.  Whether you’re searching for inspiration for a website design, logo or simply a color scheme, Pinterest, and Tumblr offer a great range of visual treats to explore.

Search the pages of a magazine

Design magazines are often inspiring because they offer up quick snapshots of some of the best work in the industry.  As a designer, these magazines are bound to leave you feeling awed.

Have a look at the creative use of color, composition or font and pick a look that inspires you.  You can pull out the pages you feel awed by and file them or keep them in a folder you’ll be able to refer to later on.

Gather up your inspiration

When you find websites which inspire you, bookmark them.  Pin images to your Pinterest board.  Use Twitter to follow designers who you love.  When you create a collection of images which move you, you’ll gain great inspiration for future projects.  You could even store your inspirations using Google Drive.

Make connections

Start conversations with designers or creators.  Share your projects, what inspires you, what you find challenging, and those places you find inspiration.  Other designers may give you great advice.

They may also be able to offer you solutions to some of your challenges.  However, even just sharing will enable you to think through some of the struggles you are having.  This often creates the space for solutions.

Draw on your inspiration

As a designer, it is often possible to live with continual inspiration.  You can draw on the colors of nature, the swirls within leaves or the metallics on an insect’s back.

There’s the genius present in the clothes we wear, the movies we make, the designs offered up on the internet and the work that is constantly reproduced by artists all over the world.  Once you open your eyes and begin to notice it, you will feel alive to the creativity around us.  In return, it will enliven you.

So if you need inspiration for your designs, or you would simply like to live a life of wonder, understanding what inspires you is key.  Tuning in to the world you see around you and allowing it to carry you away to another universe will awaken your imagination.  You will feel more alive.

Summary

Inspiration can come from anywhere, a verse of poetry, the sight of a bird in flight or the colors in a sidewalk might all draw your attention.  When you draw on these images, incorporating them into your own work, you will give of your best.

A design is always a collaboration.  We build on new ideas every day.  None of the work we produce on a day to day basis would ever exist without the thoughts, ideas, and visions which inspired us in the past.  We are connected to a larger world and this feeds our artistic imaginations.

Post pobrano z: Best AWWWARDS winners of the last 12 months

When did web design become an art form? We know it sure as heck wasn’t anywhere close to when sites really started hitting the World Wide Web in waves back in the 90s. With no CSS, ugly fonts (the polar opposite of these), brutal colors and a painfully slow loading time, calling websites art back then is like calling a jackhammer music. Thankfully, we now have a world where progression is expected, and much like every technological discipline out there, web design has moved forward so fast that we’re essentially playing catch-up.

It’s quite remarkable to think that we’re in an age where pre-designed website templates exist for those either unwilling or incapable of creating their own. But while what you can find here is useful for non-web designers in terms of templates, there are still those who desire to push the envelope in terms of web design and consequently change our perceptions of what makes a great website. Does it present information in a succinct and appealing manner? Yes, but how exactly does it do that? That’s what Designer Daily is all about, as we want to delve deeper and showcase the sites which take that information and make it art.

However, it’s not just us, as AWWWARDS.com does a great job of featuring brilliantly functional and gorgeously designed sites which can’t help but put a smile on your face. AWWWARDS gives out honors for site of the day, site of the month, and site of the year (alluding to design, creativity and innovation), and as that’s far too many to discuss in one article, we’re going to focus on our favorites from the site of the month category over the last 12 months.

Tao Tajima

Filmmaker Tao Tajima’s site makes such a great use of space because as soon as it loads, the screen is filled with a full-size video of Tajima’s work while the necessary text is overlaid splendidly in white. What’s more, the transitions from one page to the next seem to shimmer and dissolve, making the whole site appear as one living, breathing entity. His videos can be accessed easily enough and come with a short and interesting backstory, while a ‘Play’ button simply begs you to click. A beautiful portfolio on a cutting-edge site.

We The Fans

For ESPN’s upcoming documentary series following hardcore Chicago Bears season ticket holders, an accompanying website has been set up to add further detail and simply to hype the project. The user is greeted with a calming blue screen featuring a lit-up stadium, in addition to the typical sounds one hears in the midst of the action. After clicking ‘Start the experience,’ you can explore particular areas of the stadium and find out more details of the fans featured in the documentary. The overall experience is soothing, delightful and enjoyable, as we’re the ones who get to move around the (admittedly small) section of the digital stadium and read about the fans as and when we feel.

Ghost Recon Wildlands

This site is made for the new Ghost Recon video game, and after the intense and quite shocking video, we’re treated with a map view of Bolivia, where we can play side missions relating to the story. While the missions are mostly observation and don’t involve the user doing too much, it’s still an immersive experience and overall, makes you feel invested in the world. The map design is fantastic, and the moving elements such as cars and helicopters turn it into something so much more.

If you’re a web designer who wants to be a trailblazer and smash preconceptions of what a website is capable of, then the AWWWARDS are merely a way of simultaneously motivating you to try harder and be inspired by the work of others.