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Many blogs get re-designed every couple of years, if not more frequently. Re-designing a blog brings a number of challenges because more content is being added to the site all the time, new types of content may have been introduced since the last design, and the priorities and goals of blogs often change or evolve over time. This means that when re-designing a blog you’ll need to take some time before jumping into the design work in order to think about how to prioritize the right content, how to make it easy for visitors to find what they want, and how to use the design to make the blog more effective at achieving it’s purpose for the owner.

The success of a blog re-design is more heavily influenced by a proper planning process than it is by the design skills of the person creating it. A blog can get a fancy new design that looks great, but if it doesn’t help to make the site more user-friendly and it doesn’t do an effective job of achieving the blog’s purpose, the impressive look ultimately has very little impact.

In this article we’ll take a look at 7 keys to the blog re-design process. These are all things that should be considered at the time of the re-design in order to make the site more useful for visitors and more effective for its owners.

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Open-source content management systems like WordPress and Drupal get a lot of attention on design blogs, but they are not the only options when it comes to choosing a CMS. There are a number of hosted CMSs available that are popular with designers and their clients.

While the features vary form one hosted CMS to another, several of the primary benefits are common to all or most of them. Things like having the hosting included, the possibility for designing and developing sites very quickly, availability of pre-designed templates, and support tend to be listed among the benefits of choosing a hosted CMS.

Some hosted CMSs allow designers the opportunity for a private label, meaning that designers can brand the CMS as their own. In this case clients will see the designer’s branding rather than that of the company behind the CMS. In many of these cases the designer can also earn a commission on monthly hosting fees, which provides a nice stream of residual income for designers who use the CMS with a number of clients.

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In this post we have put together some fresh and beautiful minimal web designs for your inspiration. Enjoy! If you like this post you might also enjoy the posts below.

56 Light & Clean Website Designs Using A Minimalist Color Scheme

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Every company, regardless of the industry, can benefit from a quality website. While design is certainly not the only factor in creating a quality website, it does play a significant role. In this post we’ll take a look at 25 excellent examples of corporate website design. You’ll see examples from a wide variety of industries, and hopefully this showcase can provide inspiration for your own work.

GlobalLogic

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Photoshop is an amazing tool that allows designers and photographers to do some incredible things. But not every Photoshopped creation works out exactly as planned. Whether it is poor execution, going too far, or oversight of something important, Photoshop disasters are not uncommon. In this post we’ll showcase 30 examples that come from psdisasters.com, photoshopdisasters.com, and photoshop-disasters.net.

Holding a Hand

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In this post, I’m sharing twenty iPad Apps that designers may find helpful. Many of these apps have been developed in the last few months and several are also free.

If you liked this post, you may also want to check out this post on 7 Tips to Help Freelancers Get the Most from their iPad at the Freelance Folder blog. You may also want to check out 15 Amazing iPad Apps.

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Textures are used all the time by designers for both web and print projects. A effective use of texture adds character and makes a design more interesting and appealing (for some examples see our post 35 Websites with Outstanding Use of Textures). At Vandelay Premier we provide high resolution textures to our members and customers, and there are of course countless other places where you can buy textures. However, creating your own textures is also an option, and in this article we’ll provide some tips to help make your texture photography more effective.

For the purposes of this article, we’re assuming that your goal for photographing textures is to use them in your own graphic design, or to distribute them to other designers. Someone who wants to photograph textures for the art of photography may approach things differently. We’re primarily interested in photos that will be highly useful for incorporating into graphic design. Scanning textures is also an effective option for flat objects like paper and fabric, but for this article we’ll focus on photographing textures.

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Infrared photos are taken using a filter, allowing infrared light to pass through the filter while blocking other light. When used with infrared-sensitive film or sensors amazing results are possible. In this post we’ll showcase 35 examples of infrared photos from various photographers. If you want to learn more about infrared photography, this post is a good source of information.

Photo credit David A. Evans

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Every now and then we like to look at a particular web design trend. You may have noticed a trend recently with sites using more circles in designs, especially circular logos. in this post we’ll showcase 35 examples of websites using circles, and hopefully it will provide some inspiration that can be put to use in your own work.

Arbol

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Web designers are constantly looking for hot new trends to catch their visitor’s attention. This list of exciting design trends has changed dramatically in the past 10 years, but dark-themed websites have always been in style. This color swatch combined with many different web elements is a surefire way to draw in attention. If you’re a fan of these deep-rich color schemes please spend some time perusing my design gallery.

Kisko Labs