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Even if you are just getting started using WordPress, most average users will know about shortcodes. These are the small bits of text which run PHP functions in your backend, only requiring a small tag in your post content. So you may run something like [greenbutton] or [redbutton] to include dynamic HTML elements right within your WordPress content.

The Lizatom Shortcodes plugin was built to encapsulate some of the most common interface features you will need. The plugin has shortcodes for buttons, columns, tables, accordion menus, tabbed widgets, and so much more. All of these features are quick to include from within any post or page in the administration panel.

This current deal is phenomenal because you are purchasing one of the highest premium plugins released for WordPress developers. Newcomers are capable of picking up this plugin with just a few hours of practice. The regular price is $137 but going right now you can purchase the plugin for only $19USD. That is well over $100 worth of savings just for purchasing during this week. And you will also get three(3) free premium themes included with the bundle! Three entire WordPress themes added in for completely free.

In the words of the plugin’s web copy you can see there are over 5,000 different shortcodes to choose from. This plugin brings a lot of content to the table and you cannot beat the going price. Here is a small snippet from the website:

Easy to install, this lightweight, cross-browser plugin is jam packed with over 5,000 shortcodes that are simple to integrate into your site. The shortcodes are even mixed in seamlessly with your WordPress WYSIWYG, so you can spice up your content with just the click of a button. PLUS – This new version is 100% responsive and it also includes several new features such as: filterable portfolios as well as 3D Animated jQuery buttons and accordions.

If you are a WordPress user or freelancer who deals with clients managing WP, check out this plugin and see what you think. I have been very impressed just looking over the typical features. This plugin does not seem to have much competition, either. So along with the extra 3 premium themes it is a great investment to be used on almost any WP project.

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Web hosting is either a very simple thing, or it can give you a headache the size of Mount Everest. Seasoned online dwellers may already have done a lot of trial and error research to find the web host that works best for them. Newbies yet have to go through the process.

Whether you’re a newbie or you’ve have your fair share of web hosting woes, we have something that will certainly provide an efficient, alternative solution.

SpyreStudios has partnered up with WebHostingBuzz to bring you this fab giveaway! Read on to find out how to win a year’s free hosting, including a free domain name, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited disk space, free account transfer, plus more!

Who are WebHostingBuzz?
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Giveaway Prizes
WIN:
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• Unlimited* Disk space
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How to Join
Let’s make it really simple. Just take a look at the Rafflecopter widget below, and follow the instructions. Remember, we are giving away THREE one-year subscriptions. You can send in as many entries as the widget will allow, to increase your chances of winning. (Hint: leaving a comment as an answer to the question via the widget will give you the most number of entries!) The giveaway is open to anyone worldwide, and we will select random winners on May 16, Thursday, around 10PM EST. The winners will be announced via our Facebook page, so stay tuned!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Before posting large media files onto your blog or website you should consider the best means of transferring from the server to your readers. Large HQ video and image files will take up a lot of space on your server. This also means that they require loads of bandwidth to push out to everyone. Images are much smaller than audio/video but all media files over a certain size can slow down the webpage.

So what are the best ideas for publishing media on your website? I have just a few thoughts worth sharing on this topic. I feel that anyone who runs their own website must run into problems with handling media. Plain text does not always cut it and sometimes you’ll need to illustrate things beyond the page context.

CDN Hosting

This alternative is not great for everybody however it is always an option. Content Delivery Networks are just servers which are physically located all over the world. CloudFlare is one of the most popular options and they provide servers located in almost every country on Earth.

The reasoning behind this technology is to quickly deliver copies of your media to anyone on the planet. Users who are in China or Romania can get a much quicker connection into the local CloudFlare server, rather than accessing your website’s single server. The latency is a lot smoother and it’s more noticeable when users are streaming video or audio files.

The biggest problem with using a CDN is the price cost. Unless your website is earning money and really needs to offload some of the hosting, CDNs may just be too expensive. The alternative would be using a free hosting service like YouTube or 4shared but this means you are not in control over the file management.

Preview Snippets

If you cannot afford to lose quality in your files then why not consider replacing them in the page with a thumbnail? Visitors will be presented with a small preview image from your larger photo or video file. In this scenario your pages will load much quicker because the stream of data is smaller.

Also your visitors will be in full control over whether they want to stream a video or not. The same options apply for audio streaming and clicking a thumbnail to view the full-sized image. Previews are the best workaround for handling high-quality media because you are giving the option to connect with the larger file sizes. Plus with so many open alternatives for sharing music and video there really isn’t a whole lot to worry about.

You should consider these techniques and offload your bigger files whenever possible. Unless your web server can really handle large influxes of traffic, it is reasonable to think that YouTube or Vimeo can handle your video streaming better. Same goes for audio files on SoundCloud or any other related network. Do not be afraid to try new ideas and eventually you will find your preferred method for dishing out website media over the Internet.

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Freelance job boards were not so common looking back 5 or 6 years. But nowadays modern businesses are more willing to work with each other and hire freelancers from anywhere in the world. This is great news for people who work online because the options are practically endless. But what about new webmasters who are interested in launching their own job board?

Well I have put together a huge collection of 40 outstanding job board websites. These examples are mostly focused around design aesthetics and good user interfaces. Please note this is not a gallery of marketplaces or job auction websites, there is more focus on job boards with direct connections to the project manager. You should pay attention to what makes a job board user-friendly for any typical visitor. A website’s design is crucial to drive more attention and traffic onto your homepage.

Programmer Interview Job Board

Authentic Jobs

Dribble Job Board

Blogging Pro

Design:related Jobs

WordPress Jobs

Freshwebjobs

Blogger Jobs

Krop Creative

37Signals Job Board

Sensational Jobs

Freelance Switch Job Board

People per Hour

Smashing Jobs

Coroflot Jobs

JavaScript Ninja Jobs

Behance Job Board

Remix Jobs

WP Job List

WP Hired

Programmer Meet Designer

Jobsbridge

Freelance Writing Gigs

Freelanza

Freelancer Jobs

oDesk

Joobs

Chinwag Jobs

Jobbi

Freelance Global

Creative Hotlist

artsHub Jobs

Search Web Jobs

PHP Jobs

WordPresslance

JustTechJobs

iWriter

Startuply

Translator’s Café

Mediabistro Jobs

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There have been online CSS galleries running for a decade or longer. These websites are more like curated directories which contain the best examples of website design. I will often use these resources for ideas on new layouts and interface features. CSS galleries are very common and there are so many to choose from – how can you know which is best?

In this showcase I have put together my favorite 35 CSS web design galleries. Webmasters and developers who build their own websites may consider submitting a few of their works into these galleries. You can drive a small bit of traffic from people who are interested to see your design. Plus these are also great learning tools for studying the most popular design trends.

Awwwards Gallery

CSS Star

CSS Remix

CSS Nature

PatternTap

Design Fridge

CSS Drive

CSS Elite

CssDsgn

CSS Beauty

Ars CSS3 Gallery

Design Bombs

Best Web Gallery

CSSGal

Divine CSS

CSS Exchange

Webinspeer

CSS Creme

Minimal Sites

CSS Glance

CSSLine

Site Inspire

Make Better Websites

CSS Based

App Sites

Unmatched Style

Website Gallery

CSS Band

One Page Love

The Best Designs

Boxed CSS

Design Snack

CSSBloom

CSS Impress

CSS Eye

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Building websites on Mac OS X provides a completely different landscape in comparison to Windows or Linux. The applications are designed much differently and built from a different standard of programmers. Not to mention the enormous Mac App Store which offers immediate downloads for software you can purchase right away.

In this collection I am focusing on the 20 most useful OS X apps worth downloading for web design/development purposes. You will obviously not need every application listed, but it is worth taking a peek at each piece of software to determine if you can use it during your workflow. If we missed any great Mac applications feel free to share your ideas in the post discussion area.

Coda

Sketch

Fontcase

CodeKit

Gitbox

Espresso

Slicy

Antetype

Transmit

Sequel Pro

Kaleidoscope

CSS3 Toolkit

Xscope

Logoist

VirtualHostX

LiveReload

On The Job

PHPStorm

Alfred

HTTP Client

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The minimalist flat design trends have been pouring out onto the Internet in recent months. I have witnessed a large number of new UI kits and website designs full of colorful flat buttons, links, navigation items, and input forms. These are not exclusive UI elements but just a few examples to show how quickly the flat design trend has picked up steam.

In this gallery I have put together 35 great examples of new flat websites. Many have been online for years but never been published in a gallery before. So these flat websites should be a unique surprise for designers. The minimalism is also a common trait where you will find very few illustrations or big elements on the page. Check out some of these designs and let us know your thoughts in the post discussion area.

Friends of the Web

Squidee

Geckoboard

Future Insights Live 2013

LayerVault

Sevenly

Kin HR

Every Last Drop

Eva Black Design

Kippt

Foundation

SumAll

Invoisse

oak.is

TheIssland

Design Zoom

Symbolset

Knap

Very Makeup School

Chris Boddy

Buffalo

William Leeks

Combadi

Art, Copy & Code

Opoloo

Concrete Matter

Robbie Tilton

Jake Giltsoff

Landor Associates

Soleil Noir 2012

Pixelplant

Thomas Schrijer

Iconmonstr

Thibault Jorge

Pears Design

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I have run into a number of simple effects to generate image magnification. You can sometimes find this on e-commerce websites for product images when you hover onto the thumbnail and a bigger zoom effect will display. This is a great technique no matter what type of website you have. But I was running into a lot of trouble with plugins, and then I managed to find this excellent tutorial on The Code Player.

All of the source codes are released in a repository on Codepen.io which also has a lot of follow-up discussion. I was very impressed with the codes and I wanted to organize everything a bit better. So in this tutorial I want to demonstrate how you may customize this basic JS code to work for any image on your website. The jQuery is structured for targeting a specific class of images on the page and then displaying the full view when hovered. I’ll explain the most important bits in greater detail.

Live Demo – Download Source Code

Structure the Webpage

We do not need to worry about much HTML in the layout. I am using a standard HTML5 doctype along with a local copy of jQuery 1.9.1. Also I’ve taken the time to copy over all of the JS code into a new file called magnify.js. There should not be many areas which require editing so it helps to organize everything separately.

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en-US">
<head>
  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8">
  <title>jQuery Image Zoom Viewer Demo</title>
  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://spyrestudios.com/favicon.ico">
  <link rel="icon" href="http://spyrestudios.com/favicon.ico">
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all" href="http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lato">
  <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="all" href="style.css">
  <script type="text/javascript" src="js/jquery-1.9.1.min.js"></script>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="js/magnify.js"></script>
</head>

The image area block is encapsulated inside a div with the class .magnify. You’ll find an empty div area using the class .large which contains the magnifier object. All of the width/height features are created in CSS which looks a lot better in almost every browser. Then I have renamed the image class to .thumb so it is easier to recognize.

  <div class="magnify">
    <div class="large"></div><!-- This is the magnifying glass which will contain the original/large version -->

    <!-- Image source http://www.flickr.com/photos/rustyangel/4509569191/ -->
    <div class="imgbox"><img src="images/fullsize/01-psx-controller.jpg" width="600" height="398" class="thumb" /></div>

  </div><!-- @end .magnify -->

This is probably the most important code in your document since it all requires some effects via jQuery. And the selector objects will be looking for these exact classes. The only custom addition .imgbox is a container I added onto the image to keep it centered within the layout. It is also important to recognize I am linking directly to the fullsize image in the src=”" value. This is crucial because the hover effect only works if we have a full-scale image resized via width and height attributes.

Design Styles

To fit the main container I am using margin: 0 auto along with a custom background tile from Subtle Patterns. Now the internal image is using a series of box shadows which are not visible in the magnifying glass. This is a fairly straightforward process and since we are pointing to the same URL in the image file, it makes a lot more sense.

/** images **/
.imgbox {
  display: block; 
  width: 100%;
  text-align: center;
  margin-bottom: 40px;
}

.imgbox img {
  -webkit-box-shadow: 1px 4px 9px -1px rgba(0,0,0,0.65);
  -moz-box-shadow: 1px 4px 9px -1px rgba(0,0,0,0.65);
  box-shadow: 1px 4px 9px -1px rgba(0,0,0,0.65);
}

.credits { text-align: center; margin-bottom: 20px; }

.magnify {width: 600px; margin: 50px auto; position: relative; cursor: none;}

/* Let's create the magnifying glass */
.large {
	display: none;
	width: 175px; 
	height: 175px;
	position: absolute;
	-webkit-border-radius: 100%;
	-moz-border-radius: 100%;
	border-radius: 100%;
	
	/* box shadows to achieve the glass effect */
	-webkit-box-shadow: 0 0 0 7px rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.85), 0 0 7px 7px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25), inset 0 0 40px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25);
	-moz-box-shadow: 0 0 0 7px rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.85), 0 0 7px 7px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25), inset 0 0 40px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25);
	box-shadow: 0 0 0 7px rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.85), 0 0 7px 7px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25), inset 0 0 40px 2px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.25)
}

One alternative would be to provide an HTML5 data attribute into the image, and then target this value in JavaScript. This way you could be able to display a smaller thumbnail image on the page while still linking to the full-screen image using something like data-fullsize-src=”". But of course, this requires resizing the background image to fit within the thumbnail view. It is not the easiest code to digest but the script works exactly as you would expect.

Implement with JavaScript

It is worth noting how well-written the entire set of functions appears to be. You can find comments at almost every line in the code, so even JavaScript newbies will not be scouring for questionable blocks of code. Those who are unfamiliar with JS will not need to change anything. Just remember that the .thumb class is what you need to apply onto your default image, along with an outer container of .magnify.

  var native_width = 0;
  var native_height = 0;
  $(".large").css("background","url('" + $(".thumb").attr("src") + "') no-repeat");

	$(".magnify").mousemove(function(e){
		//When the user hovers on the image, the script will first calculate
		//the native dimensions if they don't exist. Only after the native dimensions
		//are available, the script will show the zoomed version.
		if(!native_width && !native_height)
		{
			//This will create a new image object with the same image as that in .small
			//We cannot directly get the dimensions from .small because of the 
			//width specified to 200px in the html. To get the actual dimensions we have
			//created this image object.
			var image_object = new Image();
			image_object.src = $(".thumb").attr("src");
			
			//This code is wrapped in the .load function which is important.
			//width and height of the object would return 0 if accessed before 
			//the image gets loaded.
			native_width = image_object.width;
			native_height = image_object.height;
		}

I am using an updated version of the JavaScript codes which will automatically pull out the full-scale image without resizing. This means we only need to add one URL value into the src attribute. There are lots of code snippets with jQuery selectors referencing this .thumb class. I find it important that developers should be able to update this class to suit their own website layout.

But when you change this class it requires a couple updates to the JavaScript. You will just need to search for lines directed at $(“.thumb”) and change the value to whatever class name you need. There are only about 4 or 5 different instances so the Find & Replace tools within any popular IDE should do the trick. I certainly have not had any problems with this script and it should not take much effort to get it working with your own images. Of course, you can’t use partial thumbnails because then users wouldn’t be able to see the whole image when hovering(which is the whole point of magnifying).

But you can get a better idea from checking out my live sample demo below. To reiterate again these are not my own codes, but were originally published elsewhere in a related tutorial by Ruby on Tails. All of his codes are released as free and open source for other developers. I simply took this base and configured it to work in a nice layout, along with any typical images you choose. But please take a peek at my sample demo and download a copy of the project codes if you want to try out your own custom edits.

Live Demo – Download Source Code

Final Thoughts

I did go through at least 3 different jQuery magnify hover plugins before finding this gem in Codepen. I feel the magnification effect is not given enough credit in modern web design. And taking user experience into deep consideration, this effect is worth implementation when it can improve your overall website style. Please do check out my live sample demo or visit the main tutorial page if you want to research a bit deeper.

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Many users by now have already heard about the ongoing security attacks against WordPress CMS websites. To simplify the issue, a large number of IP addresses have been recorded with multiple login attempts for wp-login.php. This is usually the work of brute force bots attempting to crack into WordPress sites using weak passwords and common usernames.

It is advised that all new installs should be straying from the typical username/password combos. Admin and Administrator are typical usernames, and this is exactly how such advanced scripts gain access to the dashboard panel. Many people have been reporting a downturn in the attacks but it’s still making a lot of new headlines.

How you can ensure your safety? Well the best way is to be using a high-priority password with a great combination of letters, numbers, and symbols. Additionally the “admin” username is a fairly common disadvantage and should be avoided. Here is an excellent quote from the article on Tech News Daily:

Brute-force attacks, as their name would suggest, are some of the least sophisticated hacks out there, rapidly cycling through common directory names, passwords and IP addresses in order to access private files through sheer dumb luck.

You can find a number of open source WordPress security plugins geared towards fighting brute force attacks. But when you are dealing with a botnet containing thousands of different IPs it will get a lot more challenging. Hopefully the attacks are not damaging enough to bring down web servers. But sometimes these programs will get through and now you’re dealing with a compromised system.

I am familiar with a service Hacked Recovery to help in just such an occasion. If you are missing your username or e-mail and the account logins are not working please visit the site and see if you can find a solution. Corporate sites with smaller databases will be easier to handle than a full-scale blog. And ideally you may be able to access cPanel to fix things remotely. But keep vigilant and dig through WordPress plugins for extra security measures – just to be on the safer side in case of accidents which snowball out of control.

The WordPress system has grown in popularity to span a majority of countries all over the world. It is not a surprise to witness these kinds of attacks in a full-scale routine. I do hope that the perpetrators may be brought to justice so we can manage security in the future. But it’s not a safe world and people can always setup new botnets for brute attacks. If you have any similar suggestions or ideas on WordPress security feel free to share with us in the discussion area below.

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Technology and Internet startups are providing a quick method for new businesses to scale. There are so many great ideas out there with founders who are passionate about the cause. Even more developers are getting interested in the startup scene and looking to create their own unique website service. But what are some typical methods for designing a startup landing page?

This gallery contains 40 brand new startup website layouts and landing pages for inspiration. You can find tons of great examples useful in planning your own startup launch. The styles will obviously differ based on your business model, whether selling a product or a service or just publishing content online. All startups have a similar goal of quick traction from users with analytics testing for researching better methods of marketing. I hope you like the collection!

StudyTube

Incrowd

Clickjolt

LaunchKey

Fancred

PadMatcher

Cloze

TipTap

HipCV

Modulz

Trazy

Now Play Us

Engine Yard

Directr

Hummingbird

ViralSweep

WeFunder

Freshdesk

Codeship

JAYPEG

MyEnvytory

Hoblee

Rallyt

7Geese

Aframe

Cloudant

Collaperty

Mapkin

Covestor

Wellframe

GivingSomeThing

Dashbell

Clypd

Openbay

Awesome.me

Xamarin

docTrackr

CoachUp

H.Engage

uberVU

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