1. Brown swirl

[Source│Download]

2. Intricate lace

[Source│Download]

3. Festive bells and stars

[Source│Download]

4. Blue sky and white cloud

[Source│Download]

5. Brick texture

[Source│Download]

6. Valentine’s pattern

[Source│Download]

7. Pixel pattern

[Source│Download]

8. Butterfly

[Source│Download]

9. Paw print pattern

[Source│Download]

10. Wood texture

[Source│Download]

11. Mosaic pattern

[Source│Download]

12. Henna floral

[Source│Download]

13. Leather

[Source│Download]

14. Escheresque

[Source│Download]

15. Cloud sea

[Source│Download]

A Joomla template is a multifaceted Joomla extension which is responsible for the layout, design and structure of a Joomla powered website while the CMS itself manages the content. Joomla template contributes to the general layout and the style of the website. Content and design of a Joomla template are separate and can each be edited. Joomla template is about the major layout of a Joomla site, including several different elements such as components, modules and plug-ins, each responsible for respective parts of the entire website. Here we’ve gathered 20 Joomla templates of different styles. Is there any one you would like to use for your next website design project? Let us know.

1. Landscape

[Source Page│Demo]

The Landscape Joomla template comes with a flexible theme system which means you can choose to mix and match the colour schemes. It comes with15 rainbow variations, 10 tree variations, and 24 menu colour variations. By mixing and matching these two parameters and adding your own flavor via your photos and artwork, the Grid will really come to life.

2. Phoenicis

[Source Page│Demo]

Phoenicis gives you a lot of color styles to choose from. Among the 38 available choices, there are 20 light styles, 9 dark styles and 9 texture styles. Layout and Menu can also be customized according to your own likes. Phoenicis is also compatible over different browsers.

3. Colour Shift

[Source Page│Demo]

Colour Shift is a bold and beautiful Joomla Template. It is a responsive design that comes with 8 vibrant colour schemes to make your part of the web a happy place. Colour Shift is optimized to display across all browser widths and screen sizes. The same design is served up to desktops, laptops, tablets and smart phones alike. The Zen grid framework offers a number of options for determining the display of menus and modules on small screens.

4. Organica

[Source Page│Demo]

Organica has two different types of page layouts with the sub page layout consisting of anywhere up to 4 columns. Organica comes with the option of including either the prettyPhoto or FaceBox lightbox scripts used to display your content and galleries. The prettyPhoto script also works with the prettyBox Joomla gallery.

5. Lacuna

[Source Page│Demo]

The Lacuna Joomla template gives you the option to combine up to three design elements with a range of palettes at your fingertips. You can select the background colour, the typography and combine it with the footer colour to create your own multi-coloured Lacuna theme. There are a range of simple background colors or gradient inspired textures to choose from and the template includes a switch to enable/disable the sunshine and clouds that lie on top of the background.

6. Canvas

[Source Page│Demo]

Canvas is the ideal creative solution to set your folio site. With two fresh gallery modules, nine unique themes, an extraordinary 27 module positions and a galaxy of typographical choice, there are endless possibilities to suit your style. Canvas comes with nine different colour themes – light, white, dark, black, wooden, grass, flame, clouds, dark clouds. Each of them has its own type of feeling depending on the mood of your site.

7. Inside Out

[Source Page│Demo]

Inside Out is a fresh Joomla template that perfectly suits your online magazine or folio sites. It comes with a unique left column setup that keeps your menu items up front and on the screen regardless of where your user is on the page. Inside Out Joomla template also has four tab modules built into the template which provides a useful tabbed interface for your front page content.

8. EKHO

[Source Page│Demo]

EKHO has its own framework with unique full screen functionality. As many as 70 module positions or various combinations are provided. Other features like responsive grid, 960px grid system, social media support are included. The clean yet stylish interface will surely draw your visitors’ attention.

9. Naong

[Source Page│Demo]

Naong is a simple, modern and impressive Joomla template. It’s responsive and optimized for tablet as well as mobile screen. 9 color theme variations are available for customization. Well CSS structured, it should work well for businesses, artists, website designers, books and more.

10. Leo Restro

[Source Page│Demo]

Leo Restro is a responsive Joomla template, designed to adapt to browsing devices of different screen sizes, on Smartphone such as iPhone, Android and other mobile devices like tablets. The template should work well for showcase, portfolio, blog site and the alike. Leo Restro comes with 3 amazing themes, color, clean styles and it supports background customization, text-color, font-size..etc can also be set via the template configuration.

11. Epicure

[Source Page│Demo]

Epicure is an elegant responsive Joomla template with subtle textures and refined typography. It features a responsive slideshow using Zentools module which means users can have a responsive and mobile-friendly website as well as a powerful slideshow module to showcase. Epicure Joomla template is optimized to display across all browser widths and screen sizes.

12. Primer

[Source Page│Demo]

Recently, Primer Version 1.3 has been updated to Joomla 2.5. Several shiny features have made the Joomla template stand out among the rest. Such as its unlimited skins, quickstart package, gallery plugin and video plugin. The video tutorial has also contributed a lot to guide users along the way.

13. Highline

[Source Page│Demo]

Highline Joomla template is a beautiful responsive Joomla template that combines a popular full screen slideshow with a flexible masonry like layout – it’s ideal for magazine, blogs and portals alike. High Line provides its users with as many as 23 hilite options.

14. Newstream

[Source Page│Demo]

Newstream matches simplicity with a bold colour palette to create an elegant Joomla news portal. It also comes with an incredible K2 Joomla template that can help you to create an interactive online portal being absolutely stylish and since the template is built on the Zen Grid Framework, it is almost effortless to create your own flexible interactive magazine masterpiece.

15. Superb

[Source Page│Demo]

Superb Joomla template has a very clear and modern look. The large slideshow area gives a platform for your future slideshow. The drop-down navigation tabs on the top is also very convenient to navigate through the whole site. Superb has 16 skin colors for users with PSD attached. Superb is compatible with Joomla 1.7.

16. Ecospirit

[Source Page│Demo]

Ecospirit is a responsive Joomla template, which means that it is optimized to work on your Joomla website across all screen sizes. It scales effortlessly inside the browser window regardless of screen size. It’s built for a variety of uses with mixed delicate textures, soft stained grunge elements to create a clean Joomla template.

17. Cultivate

[Source Page│Demo]

Cultivate is a good companion for your yoga or natural medicine Joomla site. It’s designed as a professional looking business Joomla template with a slightly create or eco-edge. It comes in 5 core colour schemes to give you 20 different variations, has an elegant K2 template and is built on the Zen Grid Framework which makes it easy to use.

18. Grid

[Source Page│Demo]

The Grid Joomla template brings all the myriad facets of your world into sharp focus. Earthy and colourful yet practical and clear, this Joomla template is the ultimate blog, folio or magazine organizer. Grid is a tableless CSS-based template. Its layout and theme options are quite flexible due to 22 background variations, 22 menu colour choices and 49 module positions.

19. Hub

[Source Page│Demo]

The Hub template is a simple design that incorporates subtle textures fused with bold colours to create a striking Joomla design. With its elegant magazine-like crafted design, the whole template gives out an nice and clean look. 9 colour highlights are available for your choices. Source PSD and PNG files are attached in the template.

20. Black Studios

[Source Page│Demo]

BlackStudios is a modern, clean and stylish template designed for Joomla! 2.5. Perfectly suited for web studios, creative agencies, product websites, blogs, portfolios and alike. W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional Code is valid with BlackStudios. 5 color variations for black and white version. Users are allowed to configure different grid-size layouts based on number of published modules, not having to use the dame grid layout for every page.

With CSS3, you don’t have to add extra js documents to perform various tasks, which means that you’ll be making less http requests and your page loading speed will be faster. Due to the fact that CSS3 isn’t fully developed now, jQuery is also widely used in web designs given its excellent compatibility over browsers. Here we’ve collected 15 marvelous CSS3 and jQuery tutorials that you don’t want to miss.

1. Swatch Book with CSS3 and jQuery

[Tutorial│View Demo]

2. Simple yet Amazing CSS3 Border Transition Effects

[Tutorial│View Demo]

3. Create a Unique Contact Form with CSS3 Transitions

[Tutorial│View Demo]

4. Direction-Aware Hover Effect with CSS3 and jQuery

[Tutorial│View Demo]

5. Animated 3D Bar Chart with CSS3

[Tutorial│View Demo]

6. Thumbnail Proximity Effect with jQuery and CSS3

[Tutorial│View Demo]

7. Make an Accordian Style Slider in CSS3

[Tutorial│View Demo]

8. Circle Navigation Effect with CSS3

[Tutorial│View Demo]

9. CSS3 Hover Effects with Websymbols Tutorial

[Tutorial│View Demo]

10. Showing Product Information with CSS3 3D Transform

[Tutorial│View Demo]

11. Create CSS 3D Transform Card Flip Gallery

[Tutorial│View Demo]

12. Portfolio Flipping Slider Using jQuery and CSS3

[Tutorial│View Demo]

13. 3D Thumbnail Hover Effects

[Tutorial│View Demo]

14. The Creation of a CSS3 Clickable, Rotating Menu

[Tutorial│View Demo]

15. Item Blur Effect with CSS3 and jQuery

[Tutorial│View Demo]

Conclusion

With all the benefits of the CSS3 and jQuery technologies in web design, you do want to try them out in your website design, don’t you? We’d love to see your work.

· First of all, make sure that he writes all the HTML codes manually.

· The second thing to be made sure is that he should optimize for search-engines by creating meta-tags.

· Thirdly, he should work with computer languages like JavaScript.

· Fourthly, he should have the ability to create things like forms in addition to other interactive content.

· Fifthly, he should have a cultivated habit of working with websites in a secured server environment.

Make sure that your web designer has all these qualities. It doesn’t really matter whether or not you need these things in your website, but it certainly makes sure that the designer you have hired is competent enough. If he isn’t competent enough, then he might not be the right one for your website project.

The next thing you can do to test his skills is by asking him questions about the programs he used to create. This test could be another helpful way of defining his professional skills. Although good websites can be created from cheap software as well, but some intelligent questions can help you determine the dexterity level of the designer:

· Ask him about whether he uses Microsoft FrontPage for creating websites. If not, then this answer could be a warning signal for you.

· Try to grasp his knowledge by asking him whether he works on plain text editors or the other ones. If he works on the plain one, then this could prove the fact that he writes all the codes manually, further proving his good understanding of the medium.

· Ask him about Adobe Dreamweaver. Owning it is a good sign but using it proficiently is a great sign. Owning this software doesn’t necessarily mean that he is a master in the program. Despite owning, it could be possible that he does not know how to exploit this program to the fullest. This expensive program requires a great dexterity level to operate it well.

Another thing to keep in mind is that don’t worry too much about what software he is using. It is just an indicator as to what they use for web designing purposes.

· Ask them about what will they do to optimize the site for SEO purpose. If they answer you that meta-tags are responsible for optimization, then it is almost sure that they aren’t knowledgeable about this thing at all.

· Make sure to ask him questions about copyright. If he wishes to retain a copyright, never ever hire him. The website belongs to you; under no circumstance should anyone interfere.

· Finally, don’t forget to ask him about the cost of building the website as well as the expenses to update the site later on. It is very important to keep the cost within your budget.

Conclusion

With all these easy tips, you can certainly hire the best web designer to create your website.

Those who enjoy expressing themselves through images place heavy emphasis on the selection of nice photography (which you will find in my previous posts about full screen slideshow and large background image websites). Still, there are designers who find themselves comfortable building up websites relying on typography.

95% of the information on webpage is in written language and that explains why it is so crucial to choose the right typography. Typography in web design plays an integral part in setting the general tone of a website. All too often, the choice of typography shows the personality of the web designer and expresses the theme of a certain website. Here, typography doesn’t merely mean font selection. It also has a lot to do with how texts that come in different types of fonts are placed on the webpage.

It is possible to build a really gorgeous website without the use of image, however, designers are not often advised to do so, especial for designers who have just stepped into the web designing field. Hopefully the examples below can lead you to a better understanding of websites with compelling typography.

1. Ewen Spencer

2. Denise Chandler

3. Modoluce

4. Media Arts Lawyers

5. English Workshop

6. Dentistry Live

7. Peter Riedel

8. Fandango Media Group

9. Get Cirulis

10. Aaugh

11. Kansas City Creep Fest

12. Roman Gallas

13. Neue

14. Sick City Club

15. WHIT

16. Raise the Roof

17. From the Front

18. Piccsy

19. Ashfall Design

20. Amazee Labs

21. Syropia

22. Beyonce

23. Glamour.biz

24. Austin Beerworks

25. Austin East Cider

26. NEOTOKIO

27. Big Omaha

28. This is Dare

29. Thrive Solo

30. DesignWise

Conclusion

You might have noticed that sometimes web designers will make slight alternations in the way that texts are usually arranged and we might even have to readjust the reading order because the letters could be upside down in some cases. This doesn’t bother us at all as long as the entire webpage isn’t designed that way. On the contrary, it adds fun to the otherwise plain and common webpage.

When a bunch of items are listed on a webpage, it becomes hard for viewers to pick up the exact information that they are looking for as they always get distracted by other irrelevant items. This leads to the result that visitors are likely to leave the page and go for other websites. You don’t want this to happen, do you? Websites that have large attractive background and neat navigation system surely makes the webpage-browsing thing a whole lot easier.

Closely related with the website theme, the large background image creates a compelling and tempting viewing environment towards its visitors. Together with the slideshow technique, the webpage appears to be even more vigorous. The clear and structured navigation makes it super easy for visitors to go through the whole site without getting lost.

This reminds me of the classy shopping mall, where shops that are selling top-class items are never crowded like the ones that sell common goods or daily necessities. In fact, those boutiques are quite capacious and they don’t just display everything they have in store. It provides customers with a comfortable and relaxed shopping environment in which people are more likely to spend.

The above analysis applies with web design, too. Below are 30 websites that have beautiful and exquisite large image as background for you to enjoy.

1. Paperlux

2. German Craft

3. Sabotagepkg

4. Bear CSS

5. Poco People

6. Adline

7. Culinaria

8. Arbol

9. Timberland

10. Alan Lim Studio

11. MIZKO

12. Lash U Lashes

13. Ines Papert

14. Nicolas Will

15. Mike Dascola

16. Creatures Tales

17. Stephan Siegrist

18. Bently Reserve

19. Werkstette

20. H-Art

21. Christian Woo

22. Psyrup

23. Estudioagraph

24. Maud

25. Dustinwood

26. Anna Safroncik

27. Vivas

28. Gardener & Marks

29. Au Petit Panisse Restaurant

30. Raffaelecatania

Conclusion

While using large image as background for your website, you need to pay extra attention to the typography. For if you choose the wrong type of font, your text information is likely to be covered and melted by the shining image. That if you looked carefully enough at the websites I listed above, some of them need to readjust their typography as their text information is vague and hard to distinguish. Be bold enough set your text in some large or irregular font to make it stand out.

What do you think?

Parallax scrolling is amongst the hottest trends in the current web developing industry. In order to achieve an ideal parallax scrolling effect for viewers, web designers combine multi-techniques such as large image, scrolling and mathematic calculation. All these together help layered backgrounds and other webpage elements to move at an accurate speed separately and be shown at perfect positions and timing.

With the declining of Flash, parallax scrolling effect becomes a good choice to add vividness and dynamics into a website. In some of the cases listed below, parallax scrolling effect is used to demonstrate different stages of stuff, explain how a certain thing develops step by step and more importantly, it provides viewers with a chance of navigating freely through the website, each operation from the viewers will be responded simultaneously by presenting a different interface.

1. Land Een Job

2. Neil Judges

3. Wigolia

4. These Are Things

5. Lambooja

6. Intacto 10 Years

7. Rleonardi

8. Ben The Bodyguard

9. Zebrafish

10. Mr. Brown

11. Troll iDees

12. Fracking

13. Viens-la Agency

14. MINI CROSSOVER

15. Zxcvbnmnbvcxz

16. TIUECG

17. My Alienware

18. Liechtenecker

19. Mogul

20. Torpedo Lefilm

21. Eric

22. TGTTGA

23. Salveo Mamute

24. Arunnm

25. Marco Rosella

26. Carnation Group

27. WAL

28. Sullivannyc

29. Unfinished

30. Unfold

Conclusion

The compelling power of parallax scrolling effect websites must have drawn your attention and led you through a wonderful journey browsing these highly creative and fascinating websites above. Which website do you think is the most amazing, well, I will definitely choose the “Fracking”, and you?

HTML5 helps to make webpages be compatible with as many browsing devices as possible, from desktop browsers to tablets and smart phones. One of the greatest features of HTML5 is that the video, audio and images are all written in the code with its <canvas> and <video> tags, therefore visitor are offered a more fluid flow of web contents without having to install extra plugins. Unlike Flash, HTML5 frees us from a lot of trouble and makes the web surfing an easier thing for all. As was described in my previous post, CSS3 specializes in creating a more aesthetically appealing yet highly functional websites.

The combination of HTML5 and CSS3 takes the leading role in the web development. Here we listed a bunch of HTML5 and CSS3 web design templates (two parts, free and premium), why don’t you try some and see the differences yourself?

Part 1 Free Templates (1-19)

1. Vintage

[Preview | Download]

2. PhotoArtWork2

[Preview | Download]

3. Art School

[Preview | Download]

4. CSS3 Seascape Two

[Preview | Download]

5. JustSlider

[Preview | Download]

6. Cream

[Preview | Download]

7. Immaculate 2

[Preview | Download]

8. Androidian

[Preview | Download]

9. Rock Band

[Preview | Download]

10. Consulting

[Preview | Download]

11. Zeni

[Preview | Download]

12. Valencia

[Preview | Download]

13. Animated Neoarts

[Preview | Download]

14. CSS3-six-dark

[Preview | Download]

15. Caja

[Preview | Download]

16. Zen

[Preview | Download]

17. Watercolor

[Preview | Download]

18. Simple

[Preview | Download]

19. Codepal

[Preview | Download]

Part 2 Premium Templates (20-33)

20.Construct

[Preview]

21.Muscle Gym

[Preview]

22.GamesTheme

[Preview]

23.SmartStart

[Preview]

24.Freshlook

[Preview]

25.City

[Preview]

26.Blocked

[Preview]

27.Worktropia   (WordPress Theme)

[Preview]

28.Hungarian   (WordPress Theme)

[Preview]

29.Circlus

[Preview]

30.Rising

[Preview]

31.AGT

[Preview]

32.Vega

[Preview]

33.Agility

[Preview]

Conclusion

Among all these free and premium HTML5 and CSS3 templates, have you found your favorite? Kindly to let us know your choice in the comments below.

The latest version, CSS3, is the successor to CSS2 and it provides many useful web developing tools for web designers to make their work easier. As for visitors, websites that adopt CSS3 are more pleasant and appealing for effective viewing experience.

The CSS technology is still undergoing a developing process. We rounded up 25 latest CSS3 tutorials for your reference. Hopefully, you will find them useful and apply some in your web designing project.

1. Animated Web Banners with CSS3

2. Arctext.js – Curving Text with CSS3 and jQuery

3. Interactive Menu with CSS3 & jQuery

4. Annotation Overlay Effect with CSS3

5. How to Create a Stylish Image Content Slider in Pure CSS3

6. Making an Impressive Product Showcase with CSS3

7. Filter Functionality with CSS3

8. Responsive Content Navigator with CSS3

9. CSS3 Animated Hover Effect

10. Image Accordion with CSS3

11. CSS3 Lightbox

12. Create the Illusion of Stacked Elements with CSS3 Pseudo-Elements

13. Code a Set of Animated App Store Buttons with CSS

14. Rotating Words with CSS Animations

15. Create a Swish CSS3 Folded Ribbon in Five Minutes

16. CSS-Only Responsive Layout with Smooth Transitions

17. CTA Button Without Images Using CSS3 and Entypo

18. Get More Out of Your CSS Transitions with jQuery

19. Apple-like Login Form with CSS 3D Transforms

20. CSS3 Minimalistic Navigation Menu

21. Original Hover Effects with CSS3

22. Fancy Image Gallery with CSS3 Transitions

23. Timeline Portfolio

24. Fullscreen Background Image Slideshow with CSS3

25. How to Create a CSS3 Dropdown Menu

Conclusion

We love to have your feedbacks and if you know any other good tutorials, it will be most kind of you to share with us in the comments below.

Sorry, we are currently under construction, please come back later.

This is called a coming soon page. Nowadays, smart web designers take the best advantage of coming soon page to fully interact with existing and new visitors. Usually, the coming soon page includes several common features: the company’s name and logo, a countdown timer, email subscriber and social media link.

With all the provided information, visitors can have a clear idea of when the page will be launched, subscribing through email and interaction on social media platform can generate close contact between website and individual visitors. Here is a collection of 20 coming soon page templates, you might need them while redesigning or upgrading your website.

1. New horizons under construction

Features:
Custom written countdown
Dynamic progress bar
Fully working PHP / Ajax validation contact form
Quick Edit Photoshop Files

2. Road cone under construction pages

Features:
Fully coded (HTML, CSS, jQuery, PHP, AJAX)
Valid XHTML 1 .0 Strict
PSD Files
Form validation
Multi-browser compatible

3. BeBack

Features:
Logo uploader
Text customizing
Shortcode option

4. Placeholder

Features:
Functional landing page
Custom typography
5 alternative color styles

5. Under construction (with ballsy progress bar)

Features:
Compatible browsers: FireFox 2/3, IE6/7/8 and Safari.
Clean design style
PSD included
Fixed layout

6. Free coming soon template

Features:
Valid PHP e-mail subscription form
XHTML 1.0 Transitional valid
CSS 3 valid
Multi-browser compatible: Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome

7. Landis

Features:
Compatible browsers: IE8+, Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome
Software version: WordPress 3.2

8. Alive under construction template and WP theme

Features:
3 different templates for countdown, content and contact form
Social media interaction
Display your latest tweet on the page
RSS feed link
Newsletter sign up
Store email addresses in MySQL database and in XML file
Google Analytics integration
WordPress theme included

9. HTML5 Coming Soon Template

Features:
Based on HTML5 and CSS3
Compatible in multiple browsers: IE7/8/9, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera.

10. Construction page

Features:
jQuery Countdown
jQuery Tooltip
PSD’s included
PHP mail script included for the email input

11. Under construction page—coming soon template

Features:
4 Color styles
Subscribe form with validation and PHP
Latest Twitter message integration
Valid XHTML + CSS3
Layered PSD files for each color style

12.  Fine – under construction page

Features:
Valid XHTML 1 .1 Strict
jQuery live countdown
Twitter widget
Full layered & customizable PSD

13. Launcher

Features:
Responsive theme
Countdown timer
Twitter integration
Social media integration
Options panel

14. Coming soon page PHP template

Features:
Extensions required-HTML5 image enhancer, smart mailer PHP, universal form validator PHP

15. Cool and free launch page with Ajax newsletter

Features:
Ajaxed interface
Server-side email validation
Multi-browser compatible

16. Under construction

Features:
Multi-browser compatible: Firefox 4, IE7/8, Safari 4/5, Chrome, Opera
Valid XHTML 1 .0 Transitional

17. PaperLaunch

Features:
Ajax subscribes & contact form
9 color schemes & 15 background patterns
PSD files included
Valid HTML5 / CSS3

18. Coming soon page template download (PSD)

Features:
File Resolution: 1600 x 768 pixels
PSD format
1.94 MB (zip)

19. Web under construction template

Features:
PDF file included
Free for personal & commercial purpose

20. Pixel Media – Under Construction

Features:
Multi-browser compatible: Firefox, IE6/7/8, Safari 3/4, Chrome, Opera 9/10
Valid XHTML 1 .0 Transitional
Cufon Font Replacement
Social networking icons integration in the theme

Conclusion

If you know any other good coming soon page template, share with us in the comment box. Your feedback is most welcome!