Invision Skins

Create the Space

admin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 01:33:05 +0000

There’s a plain page or not at all a page r if not an awkward page available to show the information of your company. How does this sound? Does it seem you don’t even exist? Well that’s true. With the huge impact of the World Wide Web in our day to day lives. It has become imperative for all of us to make use the designing tools in order to develop a website for the company and then flaunt it.

This technology has a huge impact in increasing your customer base since it is a source of your existence easily accessible to your users at any point of time. The creativity lies in the arrangement of your content on your website and indeed the display as well.

The reason behind the development of a website is to have all the various files on various servers available and display the information and the user friendly options to the visitor visiting the site at convenience. For a simple display of images and text languages like HTML/XML can be used. If an another scenario a website is intended to be a highly graphical equipped one, then the use of much complex software such as flash come in to the picture.

Website development

It is imperative to understand the needs being accomplished by the web design created. What would that need be? Firstly, you would want your potential customers to be glued on your website. They should have all the information easily accessible and in a presentable manner. Well to make that possible, all we do for you is go through a planned approach so that the result does not disappoint you.

A website is no different from a book which implies that when you try to read a book, you prefer to have the access to the information at ease. Similarly, the creation of the website requires the context to be in place in order to make the clients aware of your knowledge being imparted and then, follows the designing phase. You have the framework ready and now you need to understand why the website is being created. If it’s a source of enlightening the knowledge of the audience, a basic website would satisfy. In the other case, is you are having it as a source to have transaction with the clients, a dynamic website would be preferred. A clear idea of the targeted audience and style of displaying is essential.

Few steps to take and another source of opening your doors to the potential customer is achieved!

Landing Page – Your Best Salesperson

admin — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 03:31:35 +0000

There is a well-known proverb – “First impression is the last impression”. I won’t say that first impression is last impression but yes, it is very important to impart a good ‘first impression’ as it moulds people’s thinking. The ‘first impression’ applies not only to human beings but to the websites as well. With respect to a website, it refers to the first page of the website which the visitor sees when they click on the website link. This page is also called the ‘landing page’. There are many factors contributing to the impression of the landing page, including look and feel, functionality, ease to use, adequate information, relevant content etc. Here I will discuss some of the key points about landing page and that how you can make landing page your best salesperson.

It should not necessarily be the home page but it can be any page of your website. Think of the landing page as a way to welcome your visitors and that you want to give them your best. This way you will be able to design a page which is very impressive and will be able to retain visitors for a longer time period.

Landing pages become more important when you know that what kind of visitors you have. When you want them to sign up for a specific purpose, promote a product or want to get ads published to pay for the incoming traffic, in those cases the designing of the landing pages becomes even more important.

Here I would like to discuss some of the key factors in deciding and designing the ‘look and feel’ of landing page:

Visual appeal: the page should be pleasingly catchy to human eye. Instead of putting in just text full of relevant content, put some images, videos, animation etc. to give a greater impact.
Key message focus: don’t try to put everything you know on the page. Just put the things you want to focus and can attract the visitor towards the site.
Catchy titles: the thing that binds the visitor to read content is the title or headline. The headline should be simple, direct and clear and must tell the visitor about what is to be accomplished.
Rich user experience: there should be a clean and clear navigation pathway. The experience of the visitor on your page should be smooth and flawless.
Clean and clear: use of abundant white-spaces makes your message easier to scan, read and differentiate from other messages. Users usually scan though a lot of pages, a clean page will help them scan your page easily.
Deliver value: answer all the queries of visitors even before they ask. There should be answers of all what, why, how on your page, that a visitor can ask. Use of bullets proves better than plain text.
Convincing message: the landing page works for you as your salesperson. It should be able to convince the visitor and compel them to buy whatever yiu are selling.

If you design your landing page keeping these small but important things in mind, I can assure you that you are hiring the best salesperson in the industry.

Black Kitchen Cabinets

admin — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:53:18 +0000

By: Custom Cabinets

There is a growing trend in cabinet making to paint kitchen cabinets black. This is difficult to fathom because black is so absent of any color (obviously), but it actually adds a modern look to the room without having to redesign everything. The best way to make the room look modern is to paint the cabinets black. More importantly, it is incredibly inexpensive and can make old cabinets as good as new. Finally, the process of painting cabinets black is really quite simple. Follow these few steps and you’ll have the perfect black, modern looking cabinets.

Sand the cabinets down. This is the first step when doing anything to cabinets because you need to get rid of all of the old stuff. You might clean the cabinets first with ammonia to get rid of any grime, but in the end, a good sanding gets rid of everything. After doing a rough sand, use a finer sand paper to get rid of any bumps and scratches in the wood. Go in a circular motion and make sure you get everything. You don’t want to have a messy looking cabinet because of laziness during this step. Clean the cabinets with soap and water to get rid of any saw dust.
Apply painter’s tape around the corners of the cabinets, on the counter tops, above the cabinets so that you don’t get any of the paint on the walls or counters. You can get this tape in a huge roll at your local hardware store. Typically, it comes in blue and it ensures that you don’t make a mess, but it can also offer some very straight edges if you are ever painting walls and decide to add stripes of some sort.
Paint the primer onto the cabinets. It is advised to use black or grey primer. We use primer because it seals very tightly to the cabinets, holds the paint nicely, but more importantly, protects the paint so that it doesn’t chip as easily. Use two coats of primer. After applying the first coat, let it dry for four hours, then apply the second coat, wait for four hours and then look at it. If the cabinets were black already, you don’t need to apply primer; however, if they were any other color, the primer ensures that the black paint is all you see.
Add the black paint. This is the final step and is really a dummy step because you need to add the paint to have black cabinets. You can use a large brush, but when you get to the edges, use a smaller one so that you can get the exact areas of the cabinets. Use an up and down motion so you can limit the amount of bristle marks that appear in the paint once it dries. You’ll want to apply at least four coats of this to ensure that it is entirely black. This may take a few days, but it’ll pay off in the end.

Black cabinets are really contemporary and offer a modern look. It would be really expensive to replace all the counter tops and appliances to have a more modern day look. Because of this, it is advised to paint the cabinets black because this makes them look modern. However, if the room is already black, adding black cabinets would just make the room look too dark and depressing. With a black room, try and mix it up a little and throw in white cabinets. The black and white checker look really has an exceptional look to it that many people can appreciate.

Member related hooking

admin — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:39:01 +0000

The mod I am rewriting is an upload/download system. In the mod, any board member can upload and/or download.

One of things I wanted to do with was provide as many links as possible to a member’s uploads. I noticed that the IPS mods have links in 5 places. There may be more. If there are, let me know.

1. In the top 20 posters you can see links to topics/posts blog and gallery

2. In the member list, similar information

3. When viewing a profile, again similar information

4. & 5. When a member has posted in a topic, and where viewing a member’s vCard, just icons no text

I decided that I would try and ‘hook’ into those places in the skin with template hooks instead of skin edits. I wanted to it this way because:

I would need no skin edits and using hooking would mean that the links would appear in every skin on the board. (One of the key benefiits of hooking rather than skinning)
Template hooks were all that was needed, and would be trivial.

Unfortunately, neither of the above proved to be true. Because of some of the ways that data is passed into skins, it’s not possible to access all the variables a modder needs to access a ‘per member’ hook for a template. Member lists contain more than one member, so does top 20 posters, topic views. And surprisingly, I couldn’t even template hook the vCard. In the end I had to use 3 different methods:

Template hooks
Skin overloaders
Skin edits

This part of my blog is about how I achieved all the above. I’ll add more entries about this over the next few days, in the hope that it will help others who are modding.

source

The Responsibility Revolution

admin — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 21:13:43 +0000

This week marked the one week anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and social commentators are beginning to notice another change in our behavior.

We all knew deep down that chasing money, greed and avarice wasn’t a good way to live our lives. But while things were good, and we were getting what we thought we wanted, we didn’t care. Debt was something to worry about another day, or to be repackaged and sold to someone else. Roosevelt said in 1937, “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals.” Never a truer word said, yet we fell into the exact same trap seventy years on.

We are changing our habits though, for how long nobody knows, but changing we are. We now buy more fair trade products, drive less SUV’s and investing more money in socially responsible funds than ever before.

Not only are we changing the way we spend our money, and where, we seem to be slowly becoming more socially responsible than ever before. Receding are the days of Me, me, me being replaced with a sense of social responsibility. More people are volunteering than ever before. America has always had a backbone of socially conscious citizens who gave more than they took, but they always seemed the minority. It may be the case now that they won’t be for much longer.

For example, socially responsible funds are increasing almost daily. In 1995 there were fifty five mutual funds that were classed as socially responsible. That is avoided investments in things like oil, tobacco and chemicals. Today there are two hundred and sixty, with an estimated portfolio of over $2.7 trillion, or approximately 11% of the total investment in US markets.

Corporations are catching on to this trend, racing each other to be the greenest, most culturally and ethically aware. They have realized the shift in our spending habits and are trying to catch up. They have discovered that ethical companies attract loyalty and investment, which is the holy grail for most.

In a recent Time poll, nearly half of American consumers said protecting the environment should be given priority over growth and profit. This poll was taken not long ago, while we are still mired in recession. That says a lot about the new mindset of the average American. More SUV’s are being replaced by more economical cars, including the Prius every day. In the same poll, respondents said they would willingly pay $2000 more for a fuel efficient car than an traditional one.

This may be down to the ‘feel good factor’ of saving the planet while saving yourself money, but marks a significant shift in the buying habits of consumers. One General Motors never saw coming. Both it and the other large manufacturers are racing to get more fuel efficient vehicles into the marketplace in order to compete. European manufacturers have a head start as 35 mpg is the norm there, with their efficient diesel engines getting up to 70mpg!

Long may this trend continue. While we demand greener technologies and more ethical business practices, the companies will have to provide that. Otherwise, without demand for their products they will wither and die.

“Blue XM” Skin for IPB versions 2.2.x – 2.3.x

admin — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 02:03:07 +0000

This is a very high contrast Invision Power Board skin hosted at invisionize.com

It’s dark grey, black, and bright blue. It’s compatable with IPB versions 2.2 and 2.3
BlueXM Skin, another release by http://www.ipbshock.com
Much the same as the RedXM version only with a nice pale blue and dark greys in color with a black background, a nice color combination in my opinion!
What you will get in the download file is:

- 2 Skin files (xml)
- Readme.txt – please read this, its called read me for a reason

- Banner(logo4) .psd so you can change the text in the banner.
- Font(s) – Fonts there were used in the skin

“H-Series Light Greeen” IPB Skin supports Invision version 2.2.2

admin — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:58:37 +0000

This is another nice looking free skin coming from invisionize.com

The colors are green and white. The green is a pretty light and bright tone.

Detailed Description

Skin Info
>> Skin Name: Lite Green.
>> Skin Version: v1.1.
>> Skin Supports: IP.Board 2.2.2.
>> Fonts Used: Times New Roman (Avaliable in most Operating Systems).

Version History
V1.0 Design created to work with IP.Boards 2.2.1.
V1.1 Upgraded to work with IP.Boards 2.2.2, some template bits changed.

“Ocean Blue” | IPB Skin for Invision 2.2 and 2.3

admin — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 01:51:53 +0000

This is a nice skin for Invision Power Board versions 2.2.x – 2.3.x

It is almost entirely blue and it is a free skin coming via invisionize.com.

This is a beautiful blue gradient skin. This is the first ever release of this skin, and is my first skin designed for www.IPB-Designs.com. This skin does not officialy support IP.Downloads/Gallery.

This skin does officialy support IP.Blog now!

Enjoy the nice, calming skin!

If you use this skin, you have to leave the copyright intact!
You can NOT modify the copyright in any way!
You may NOT sell this skin for profit!

You may purchase a copyright removal for $15, e-mail scotty[at]ipb-designs.com for more information.

Change log: Version 1.2
Enhanced support for IP.Blog

245 Bad Words IPB Filter [XML]

admin — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 17:33:50 +0000

When I first saw this filter I didn’t even realize there were 245 bad words in exsitance, apparantly I was wrong.

Simply upload ‘ipb_badwords.xml’ to your ACP and enjoy

EXTRACT ZIP BEFORE UPLOADING ‘ipb_badwords.xml’ !!

“Plausable Pixels” dark color skin for IPB 2.2 – 2.3

admin — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 03:02:16 +0000

“Plausable Pixels” is a nice dark skin made by plausiblepixels.com

The skin is black, grey, with white text. You could definetly use this for a gaming skin or perhaps some sort of urban/music/rap type skin. Below I have copy and pasted exactly what he said on his post.

The 4th and final version of my first skin. This is a Dark skin with some orange and Yellow formatting.
All images are custom, thats over 60 icons/buttons.
Only 2 skin edits, so this is a great skin for installing mods.
Includes PSD for logo, and the font I used to buttons and logo.
Comes with Fixed and Stretched versions for Import. On this skin I took a totally different approach for the boarder. So this means the global header and footer is very clean, even with the board around the skin you wont be able to see that html directly. The only other edited skin template was “render_row”, its very sexy now. Please note that the demo skin/site is very modified.
Screenshot:
http://www.xghozt.com/site/skins/images/ghoztcraft.png
=========================================
[Copyright Notice]
YOU ARE ALLOWED TO USE THIS SKIN FREE OF CHARGE.
YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO USE ANY CUSTOM IMAGES USED IN THIS SKIN ON
ANY OTHER SKIN OR EDIT THEM IN ANY WAY.
YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO SELL THE SKIN OR MAKE ANY PROFIT DIRECTLY FROM THE SKIN.
YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO REMOVE THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE AT
THE FOOTER OF THE PAGE OR EDIT IT IN ANY WAY.
YOU DO HAVE THE RIGHT TO EDIT ANY LOGO FILES AND PROFILE IMAGES.
Please respect my wishes by simply keeping the copyright intact and I will continue to release my skins. Anyone one that wants to remove the copyright or change images, I have all the psd’s so please request permissions from me to modify any graphics I created.
Thank you and Enjoy,
~ XGhozt
~ Me[at]XGhozt.com