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Web workers, journalists, and similar professions are dependent on a good feed reader. The Google Reader was by far the most popular online RSS reader and left a big hole when it was shut down a few years ago. Online readers have the advantage that they can be used anywhere in the world at any time. You only need a web-enabled device and, of course, an internet connection. Today I want to give you an overview of some online RSS readers that still exist and talk about their pros and cons. 1 – Feedly Feedly is probably one of the most famous and popular successors of the Google Reader. It is also available for mobile devices with Android or iOS operating systems, and then there is even a version for Amazon’s Kindle. It has a clean and well-structured user interface. Getting started is easy as pie. Feedly comes with a useful “Add Content” function which suggests content by choosing a category. This way you can quickly fill your reader. Content in the form of feed addresses or URLs can be added easily by clicking “Add Content”. After clicking on “Add Content,” you will get to this screen. Paste a feed […]

In the first article of this series, we talked about all important points for a perfect on-page performance optimization. Now you know what you need to adjust to speed up your WordPress website. Although, it sounds pretty easy in theory, it can be quite hard to put into practice. Therefore, we’ll go together through all points to make sure you apply everything right. To be clear: This article covers how to speed up a WordPress website and get a high Google PageSpeed rating. Analyzing the Initial State For this test I choose a clean WordPress installation with imported theme unit test data in order to simulate a comprehensive blog. My favorite WordPress theme is Baskerville by Anders Norèn because it needs pretty much CSS and JavaScript. In addition, I assigned each article an article picture. This simulates a long-existing well-kept blog. Also, I installed the Jetpack plugin and activated exactly the same points like I did on my website (TechNick – which has 93 of 100 Google Page Speed points). This has the advantage of optimizing a website similar to a regular rea life installation as more CSS, and JavaScript files can be found within the HTML source code. We […]

When it comes to branding, there’s no way around social media. Creating a Facebook account is a first step. One of the next should be Pinterest, in my opinion. Why is that? A Shareaholic study from 2014 compared the eight biggest social networks and their traffic. According to the report, Pinterest’s traffic grew 48% within only three months. Indeed, this increase may have a great influence on brand creation. Just think of digital marketing for products like books, journals, antiques, and services. Pinterest is a social media platform, primarily relying on the impact of images. For more than four years photos have been uploaded, presented as pins, shared, and stored in pinboards. With more than 70 million users and counting, Pinterest is a serious competitor. Push your brand forward with Pinterest marketing. Good Reasons to Start Pinterest Marketing In the following, I’ll give you 12 good reasons and tricks why your company should have its own Pinterest page and the importance of Pinterest marketing. For a better understanding: Imagine Pinterest as an online pinboard where you pin photos that you want to share with others. Therefore, an image is called pin. You can follow others, and they can follow you. […]

As already pointed out in the first part of this series, an organization’s website is the lynchpin for most successful online marketing strategies. After all, the goal is to direct more traffic to your website. A Facebook company page or similar tools cannot substitute a company’s owned web presence. There are three powerful reasons why. This part of the series explains them all. It is true, there are some examples of being successful without a website. And Facebook, as the ubiquitous social network, certainly has extended its options for achieving this in recent years. But at the very least, this depends on the industry you are in. Facebook and the likes are not suitable for everybody. And even industries that fit should keep some serious disadvantages in mind. To get specific: The German edition of men’s magazine FHM scrapped their website in 2010 and tried to rely completely on Facebook. Their domain just redirected to the Facebook company page. But about a year later the publisher canceled this strategy without fanfare. I can only suppose this experiment did not come quite cheap. As far as I know the company never discussed the whole matter at all. I would argue, though, […]

I’d like to share with you a series of articles about ECMAScript 6, sharing my passion for it and explaining how it can work for you. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I did writing them. First, I work in Microsoft on the browser rendering engine for Project Spartan, which is a vast improvement over the Internet Explorer engine we got to know (and love?) over the years. My personal favorite feature of it is that it supports a lot of ECMAScript 6. To me, this is a massive benefit to writing large applications for the web. We now have almost 70% of ECMAScript 6 features in Project Spartan so far according to http://kangax.github.io/compat-table/es6/ and ES6 on status.modern.IE. I love JavaScript, but when it comes to working on large projects like Babylon.js, I prefer TypeScript which is now powering Angular 2 btw. The reason is that JavaScript (or otherwise known as ECMAScript 5) doesn’t have all the syntax features I am used to from other languages I write large projects in. I miss classes and inheritance, for instance. So without further ado, let’s get into just that: Creating a class JavaScript is a prototype oriented language and […]

Adobe puts out some of the most popular Web Design and Development tools around. Incredibly robust, it can take some serious practice and help to fully master at least some of them. So why not let some of the top Adobe Instructor’s around teach you the ropes? With today’s Deal of the Week, powered by Mighty Deals, you can get unlimited access to over 5,000 professional video tutorials covering Adobe’s popular software from Photoshop to Illustrator to InDesign and everything in between! You’ll also have access to course files for each lesson, and the ability to watch the high-quality videos anywhere you go thanks to some spiffy mobile apps. Top-notch instructors, thousands of lessons, and a wide range of topics! What else could you wish for? Well. In fact, there is one more thing. Train Simple’s offering comes in at a whopping 2,500 dollars for a lifetime membership. But the Deal of the Week reduces this price down 97 percent. And voila, instead of 2,500, you’ll pay 97 dollars once, and you’re fine until your days end. Highlights: 5,000+ Video Tutorials Your access to Train Simple’s online library gives you more than 5,400 high-quality video tutorials to help you master […]

Online ads are a great way to get the word out about your online marketing campaign. However, an ad can’t simply lead to the home page of the website or visitors will be unsure as to what to do next. And an unsure customer usually ends up becoming a lost sale. This is why knowing some best practices for designing landing pages is so important. The landing page guides a customer from the ad to that next step, the call to action. But not all landing pages are created equally. As a designer, it’s your job to make sure the landing page smoothly takes visitors through the necessary steps from that first ad click to the next step, which could be anything from filling out an email form to creating a new account to shopping the site for a discounted purchase. Whatever the call to action of the landing page, you must create a design that makes the offer, benefits, and call to action clear. The design should also build trust and make it easy for a visitor to complete that next step. If you are new to landing page design or feel like your landing pages don’t give your […]

Every book should have a beautiful online presentation. The rationale is simple, good esthetics means increased conversions. It might also mean social media traffic since well-designed websites are shared. There are quite a few ways to craft book presentations. Today we want to introduce you to Qards – an intuitive user-friendly visual editor for WordPress. Qards wants to help you become a visual storyteller. Increase Conversions and Shares by Presenting Books with Qards Thanks to its pre-designed cards (blocks), this WordPress tool will let you build modern websites fast. Before we show you how to build a book presentation with Qards, let’s overview its core features and advantages: Easy to install in WordPress; Ready to use by people with limited or no technical skills thanks to its Drag and Drop Builder; Clean and friendly interface and highly optimized for performance; The ability to choose from many pre-design cards or blocks (Text, Grid, Cover, Feature, Menu, Footer etc. and mix them; Drag and drop images and easily change their color, position and many more; Quickly add video backgrounds and choose their starting as well as ending point; Compatible with major cache plugins such as W3 Total Cache, WP Super Cache or Quick […]

When introducing its Material Design for Android, Google triggered one of the biggest current design trends. It took some time, but Android looks nice at long last. Some say it can even keep up with iOS others claim it has been more beautiful than Apple’s iteration anyway. And Material Design does more than supporting mobile apps. A growing number of websites use it, too. To realize the full potential of the design, you can either try it for yourself or use one of the many Material Design Frameworks on offer. The following post presents a range of Frameworks enabling you to create your next website using the new, stylish Material Design. What is Material Design? Above all, Material Design contains design guidelines to use when developing smartphone and tablet apps for Android. Even though Material Design was first presented at the Google I/O 2014, it can also be devised for Google’s Chrome OS. Google’s idea is focusing on a clear and simple design language as well as on bold colors and a characteristic typography. The goal of the Material Design guidelines is to create a consistent user experience across all platforms. Google provides detailed guidelines and information regarding to animations, […]

If you’re the sort of person that regularly attends networking events, then chances are that you’ll have seen your fair share of business cards. The problem with most business cards is that they’re nothing particularly special. It takes something really special to stand out from the crowd, so if you’re seeking inspiration for your next business card redesign, look no further than our list of fifteen unique and inspiring business card designs below. Keep in mind, that besides talented designers you’ll also need high-quality printing from sites such as Fastprint. There are not a lot of these really capable services. So make sure to choose wisely. #1 – 1010 Tyres 1010 Tyres was seeking a business card that would help them to stand out in a crowded marketplace, so they hired the graphic design agency, Spring, to create the business card pictured above. The business card isn’t just a regular old business card as it also serves as a tread-depth checker for your tyres. This is a fantastic example of content marketing on behalf of 1010 Tyres, as the business card is extremely helpful for their customers. #2 – Doug Liddle Guitar Instruction Doug Liddle might be one of many […]