The Best WordPress Real Estate Themes

Most people who are looking to buy real estate will do research online before anything else. For this reason having an effective web presence is essential for real estate agents and brokers. Several years ago it was costly to set up a professional-looking real estate website that could be maintained by the agent or an assistant, with no web development skills required. Today, however, there are much better options.

WordPress, the most popular (and free) content management system in the world, is a viable option for anyone in the real estate industry because of the quality themes that have been developed specifically for the industry. For less than $100 a high-quality theme can be purchased that will allow any agent or broker to maintain a website that is attractive and effective.

Here we'll take a look at some of the best themes that have been created for the real estate industry...

The post The Best WordPress Real Estate Themes appeared first on Vandelay Design.

from Vandelay Design http://www.vandelaydesign.com/best-real-estate-wordpress-themes/

Font of the Week: INK BANDITS by Callie Hegstrom

Today we are starting off a new series of articles: Font of the Week. The initiative arose from the need of shedding the light on the best fonts out there, helping designers choose the most suitable font for their projects. The star of this week is, as the title subtly suggests, INK BANDITS by Callie Hegstrom. 

 

Probably one of the most exciting part in creating a website, a digital product, a mobile app, or literally anything that requires a design is choosing the right font. This, of course, comes with many responsibilities and details to keep in mind. It looks like every designer’s new slogan is “less is more.” Driven by this principle, you want to create legible designs, as airy as possible, that don’t overwhelm your client. Depending on the context and situation, your font choice may vary. The font you’d choose for a lawyer’s business card, for example, would be totally different than the font for a floweriest. You want the font you use to describe the mood and the personality of the project or of the client.

The font we recommend you today, INK BANDITS, isn’t fit for everything, but can definitely give your design a unique touch. Featuring hand-written aesthetics, the font is great for invitations, packaging, art-related business cards. Callie describes it as “A little bit delicate. A little bit daring.” Depending on your preferences, the font comes in a fun, sans serif style, as well as an irregular script. Moreover, the designer offer includes 85 catchwords and ornaments “to add some extra hand-lettered flair to your work.”

INK BANDITS SANS

The interesting characteristic of INK BANDITS SANS is that it looks like all the letters are capitals. Indeed, they look very much alike, but small details make the difference, right? Take a closer look at the letters below, and notice how diligently Callie has differentiated the two cases.

 

INK BANDITS SCRIPT

The bold INK BANDITS SCRIPT looks so fun and cheeky, the perfect combination for greeting cards, stamps, banding, unique typography work, shabby chic wedding invitations, and so on.

INK BANDITS EXTRAS

These little swirly ornaments for your designs will style up your projects in no time. Callie’s hand-drawn extras emphasize again her focused on details work, a trait that every designer needs to success.

INK BANDITS FONT PUT IN PRACTICE

You can view more of Callie’s design on her personal blog, on Behance, Dribbble, and Instagram.

Would you like us to feature one of your fonts on Webdesignledger? E-mail us @ webdesignledger.blog@gmail.com and we’ll tell you what you have to do. We are always in a search for fresh fonts and we are very interested in yours!

Read More at Font of the Week: INK BANDITS by Callie Hegstrom

from Web Design Ledger https://webdesignledger.com/font-of-the-week-ink-bandits-by-callie-hegstrom/

Designing a WP website without coding? Do that with Elementor

Have you ever thought about being able to design a website from top to bottom and element by element without having to write a line of code? Elementor turned this daydream into reality by creating the ultimate WordPress website-building solution.

Now you can design a total website, including the header, the footer, and everything else, without even having to think about writing a line of code. Even better; with only a few clicks you can spice up your website with plenty of dynamic visual content.

It’s no wonder than in not much more than 2 years, Elementor, #1 page builder, has acquired a base of more than 900,000 happy users. How did they do it? Every one of Elementor’s highly specific features was created with web professionals in mind.

1. Introducing Elementor

One major problem many web designers face is feeling constrained by, or “stuck” in a theme. Elementor solved this problem by offering web professionals a tool that gives them the freedom to create websites the way they want, without having to design from scratch, and without having to resort to code.

This resulted in the first WordPress theme builder in which everything is designed on the frontend; giving you total control over layout customization and instant results.

Not entirely satisfied, Elementor’s team took things several steps further with Elementor 2.0; a souped-up version in which nearly all its new features have already been released.

Why wait? Check out Elementor 2.0 and see for yourself. You’re sure to be impressed!

2. The Latest Elementor Features

For Bloggers

Now you can design your blog just as you’ve always visualized with Elementor’s new Single & Archive Builder. You can not only complete your design lightning fast, but you’ll have total control over every design detail as you proceed and optimize your workflow without conceding anything in terms of quality or flexibility.

You can use Elementor’s special Blog Archive and Single Posts elements to customize and add personality and spice to your blogs. You also have Search Results page design options that will make it as easy as possible for users to locate what they’re looking for.

 

Design You Own Header and Footer – Zero Code Required

This brand-new feature takes web design to an unprecedented level by allowing you to fully customize your headers and footers, as opposed to having to choose among several options (or none at all). It’s not all that hard to do either, especially for those who’ve had some experience building toy houses from building blocks.

This is an especially cool feature when you want different headers for different pages, plus you can apply a sticky header feature that follows along as users scroll, making it easier for them to navigate.

 

“Escape” the Theme and Create Dynamic Content

This is accomplished by using several Elementor features. Single Post and Page allows you to apply a template you’ve design as many times as you want. The Blog Archive feature helps you put together your blog design piece by piece and watch it all come together in real time.

Create your own 404 template, customize your Search Result page to your liking, and use Dynamic Widgets like Featured Image and Author Box when creating a template.

 

Creating Great Content? Use or Reuse It as Much as You Want

The nicest thing about dynamic content is that once you’ve designed it you can use it again and again, anytime you want, and with a single click. In fact, Elementor enables you to create a content framework and apply it across your site; again, with a single click.

Another nice thing about dynamic content; making the smallest change to a static template automatically used to require writing code. That’s no longer the case.

 

3. What Made Elementor the #1 WordPress Page Builder?

First of all, the Elementor 2.0 design team kept the amazing features that quickly made Elementor #1 in the first place (reaching 900,000 active installs under 2 years).

Such as:

Total Layout Customization

Most WordPress theme builders promise high levels of customization. The Elementor team took it a step further by giving its users virtually total control over such items as section widths and heights, column size and position, and content position along with dynamic settings for padding, margins, and column gaps.

An Impressive Variety of Beautiful Templates

Elementor’s pre-designed templates cover major industries and styles, along with a host of different niches. Should you feel the need or desire, you can always create a page yourself, and add it to the library for later use with other websites or share it with others. You can also import and export templates.

A Free Package of Cool Elements

This package includes advanced widgets like Google Maps and Carousel, plus it gives you access to a variety of customizable widgets that help you create any layout you want, down to the minutest detail. You can also increase the number of design elements and options by adding your favorite plugins or widgets and do so without any need for coding.

 

100% Responsive Design

Since anything less than 100% responsive design can break a website, Elementor’s team devoted 110% of their energy to ensure your pages will look flawless on any device. Device preview screens, percentage-based element widths, and device visibility control ensure that both you and your users will see the same thing and be satisfied.

 

Like What You See? Try Elementor Now

Elementor seriously changed the way in which websites can be designed. Thanks to its newly-released features, it’s easy to design a fully-customized website from top to bottom without needing a single line of code.

That was just a starter, Elementor 2.0’s features have given its users even greater power and flexibility to build what they envision including forms & integration, whether they are veteran designers/developers, or just starting out. You can acquaint yourself with Elementor’s infinite possibilities, its use of dynamic content and its building-blocks style from the get-go. You might even become addicted.

Read More at Designing a WP website without coding? Do that with Elementor

from Web Design Ledger https://webdesignledger.com/designing-a-wp-website-without-coding-do-that-with-elementor/

Everything You Need To Know About Kerning

Welcome to Webdesignledger, this is your Typography Sensei. Today I will teach you everything you need to know about KERNING. But before we study this notion in more depth, we have to look first at its sisters, LEADING and TRACKING. They are not twins, but can definitely give you a hard time when trying to tell them apart. If you are here, it means that you are just as passionate about typography as I am, keen to sharpen your font-maker’s eye and polish your talent.

 

LEADING

I don’t know how it was for you all, but when I learned to write, my teacher had a problem with my Ts, Fs, Ps, Ls, Hs, and all the other letters that feature vertical lines. The rule was “go up with your ts, ls, fs, bs to the line above, and down with your ps, qs, gs, to the half of the row below. Avoid the letters from separate rows from touching.” This is LEADING; the essential design aspect that determined the distance between the baselines of successive lines of type.

Don’t let its spelling full you. The origin of the word is not the verb “to lead,” but the medal “lead (Pb).” Therefore, we pronounce it ledding. Back in the days of mechanical typesetting, the typographers would use strips of lead to separate the lines of a text. Leading is crucial in your design because it makes the difference between a squashed text, a properly divided lines in a text, or a too loose text.

TRACKING

This is where it gets a bit tricky. Pay close attention to your sensei. TRACKING and KERNING are very similar, thus frequently confused. Tracking strictly refers to the spacing you choose throughout your word. It determines a universal distance between every letter. Coming as a further step after KERNING, TRACKING can be used to equally change the distance between every letter at once.

Tracking affects the density of your text, which may result in three possibilities. If you choose to cut the space between the letters, you risk to end up with a word that’s difficult to read. If you choose to add space, you might end up with a too airy text that looks like a super long word. But, of course, you have the third option where the spacing you choose is perfect and your text looks impeccable.

KERNING

We finally get to the part you are here for. I’ll try to make it as easy to understand as possible. When you write or type a word, you do not use the same space for each letter. The space the letter “m” takes, for example, is larger than the space letter “i” needs. So far so good. What does KERNING mean then?

Imagine that each letter is in a separate box, but all the boxes for all letters are equal in size. When you take the letters and put them in a word, the boxes around them lose their margins, and you are left with letters awkwardly suspended in the air. Now you have to kern, to cut those imaginary corners and extra spaces of the boxes so that your word looks more compact, and your font flawless. Fortunately, Photoshop features a button for this. If you are not satisfied with the result, though, you can manually do it in the same program.

Tips and tricks for kerning like a pro:

When creating your own font, it is important to make it look good from all points of view. Learning to kern properly is not rock science, but there are a few aspects you need to take into consideration:

1. Certain letter combinations are trickier than others 

Kerning is a matter of taste more than a mathematical problem. For certain letter combinations, you have to try different spacing until you get the one you like the most. When dealing with a problem letter in the middle of the word, you have to make sure that the letters on each side look alright. For example, “Massage therapist” logo that is so popular among the funniest design fails was based on a kerning mistake. Written in capitals, H + E looks just fine, but without kerning, E+R creates a bigger gap, even though the same spacing has been used. Because we are so used with the word “the,” the brain automatically perceives is and separates it from the rest of the words, resulting in “the rapist.” The biggest trouble makers are:

• the letters: A, K, V, W, Y
• letters that feature arms or cross strokes: F, L, T
• combination A+V/W (or the other way around)
• T/F + a lower case letter

 

2. In order to check your kerning skills, try the following tricks:

• Whenever you think that you’re done with your editing, turn your word/text upside down. This allows you to view the spacing between letters without being distracted by the meaning of the words
• Kern your words in groups of three letters so that you may visualize each letter with its neighbors at a time
• Manual kerning is much more efficient than automatic kerning. Use the in-app kerning as a first step, but never skip the manual one. Your final will make your design unique.
• Kernign deals with details, leading and tracking with the overall looks. Save it for the last step, and spend the most time on it.
• Do not exaggerate with cutting the edges of the imaginary boxes. Make sure you “Kern,” not “Kem.”

3. Because I believe that this will make you the a master in kerning, I decided to save it ’till last. PRACTICE. Become the designer/lettering artist you dream to become practicing whenever you get the chance.

I hope that this lesson has a great effect on your work and future, and I would love to know your progress and results. Share your journey with us in the comment section below.

Read More at Everything You Need To Know About Kerning

from Web Design Ledger https://webdesignledger.com/everything-need-know-kerning/

Best Premium Courses To Teach Yourself Frontend Development

With time and Internet access you can teach yourself anything. And while there is a lot you can learn, this works better if you teach yourself web design or something techy. In fact professional designer & developers often forego college to study on their own. Many self-taught coders have landed jobs at big companies like […]

The post Best Premium Courses To Teach Yourself Frontend Development appeared first on Vandelay Design.

from Vandelay Design http://www.vandelaydesign.com/frontend-dev-courses/

Make Sure You’re Ready For GDPR With Our GDPR Checklist

GDPR is all about making sure companies are accountable for responsibly storing and using their users’ data. It has the effect of placing significant regulatory burden on companies that process and store user data, but this kind of thing has been a long time coming. Complete lack of oversight in storing personally identifiable information was not something that we could have expected to stick around. You can use our GDPR checklist to make sure your up to snuff on compliance.

GDPR Checklist Step 1: Are You Included?

GDPR applies to citizens in the European Economic Area. If your company is located in that region, or any of your users are located in that region, you must work within the GDPR regulations. As you might guess, this applies to nearly every online company. With users all over the world, few internet-based companies are exempt from the requirements of GDPR. Before you jump into the checklist, familiarize yourself with the GDPR legislation and get a better sense of the requirements.

GDPR Checklist Step 2: What Data You Have?

• What personally identifying data do you have?
• Do you have a list of all the data you hold and how you store it?
• Have you mapped where the data is stored and how data flows work within your organization?
• Are you collecting any of what the GDPR calls “Sensitive Personal Data?” This includes children’s data, biometric data, genetic data, health data and similar.
• If you are, do you meet the requirements for collection, processing, and storage?
• Is data being sent outside of the EU for processing or storage?
• If so, is it being handled and transmitted securely and properly during and after its trip?

GDPR Checklist Step 3: Do You Have Permission?

• Did you get that information in accordance with appropriate collection policies?
• Did you get the required consent to collect the data, and did you inform the subjects of collection about how and why you were using the data?
• Did you do so clearly and without prevarication or misleading people?
• Did you give people a right to withdraw their consent from use of their data?
• Is this information clearly communicated to the user before their data is collected?
• Does your company have a publicly accessible privacy policy that outlines processes related to personal data?
• Does your privacy policy include a lawful basis for collection and processing of the data?

GDPR Checklist Step 4: How Do You Store Data?

• Is data being secured with encryption and security protocols relevant to the risk of exposure?
• Will encryption or anonymization (or pseudonymity) be necessary to protect the user data?
• Are you collecting any of what the GDPR calls “Sensitive Personal Data?” This includes children’s data, biometric data, genetic data, health data and similar.
• If you are, do you meet the requirements for collection, processing, and storage?

GDPR Checklist Step 5: How Do You Use The Data?

• Is the data being held for only the length of time necessary for use?
• Is the data you’re holding being kept up to date?
• Is access being limited to only those that need the data to do their jobs?
• Is access limited to the part of the data required and nothing else?

GDPR Checklist Step 6: Educating the Team

• Is the security team aware of their new obligations under GDPR and do they have the training and resources to implement new processes and methods to satisfying the legislation’s requirements?
• Is there a GDPR-compliant methodology in place to handle requests from subjects to modify, remove or access their data?
• Are security breaches notifications appropriately and timely to meet enhanced requirements for actions under the GDPR?
• Have our data handlers been trained in the relevant areas of EU law to make sure they’re up to the task of meeting GDPR’s extra burden?
• Do we review and audit the data we hold on a regular basis?

GDPR Checklist Step 7: Updating the Privacy Policy

• Do we have a Privacy Policy in place and if so, do we need to update it to comply with the GDPR?
• Do we have a defined policy on retention periods for all items of personal data, from customer, prospect and vendor data to employee data? Is it compliant with the GDPR?
• Are our internal procedures adequately documented?
• If we’re a data processor, have we updated our contracts with the relevant controllers to ensure they include the mandatory provisions set out in Art. 28 of the GDPR?
• In cases where our third party vendors are processing personal data on our behalf, have we ensured our contracts with them have been updated to include those same processor requirements under the GDPR?

You might also like the following posts:

The Hamburger Menu Is Stupid and Worth Killing

Best Practices for Designing Push Notifications

How to Use Bold Typography in Your Design

 

The post Make Sure You’re Ready For GDPR With Our GDPR Checklist appeared first on SpyreStudios.

from SpyreStudios http://spyrestudios.com/make-sure-youre-ready-for-gdpr-with-our-gdpr-checklist/

Gentleman Scholar Is More Than a Design Agency (of the Week #2)

While surfing the net for an amazing Design Agency for your project, it’s not always that easy to find one that meets your expectations. Design is a key factor in everyday life and having designers specialized in different fields is essential. That is why we continue to bring weekly to your attention the design agencies we love and trust. At Webdesingledger, we dedicate our time to finding agencies that stand out in the crowd. We do it hoping that we are of great help. We are glad to introduce you to this week’s agency, Gentleman Scholar.

Who is the Gentleman Scholar?

The creative production company consists of a dedicated team of designers based in Los Angeles from 2010 and New York from 2016, but with representation in Canada, Australia, West Coast and Middle & Est Coast. You can meet each member of the staff on their blog, in the “About us” section. There, they describe themselves as a team “drawn together by a love for design and an eagerness to push boundaries.” You can keep up with their work on Instagram, Twitter, Vimeo, and Facebook.

What do they do?

In order to get to know this passionate team better, you have to know their work. From the first click on their website, you will discover an amazing animated word that doesn’t only exist in pictures, but they bring it to life in short VR/AR movies. If we had to describe their work in one word, that would be “innovative.” The cool thing about Gentleman Scholar is that they don’t create just to get a job done, but they always ask “<<Why?>> Who is it for and what medium makes sense to tell the story. In VR we combine so many different elements to create an impactful, stylized universe in which to be immersed. Something that adds another dimension to your participation in a journey.”

What’s so special about Gentleman Scholar?

Well, everything. And we mean it. Gentleman Scholar is not your usual design agency. As mentioned before, they create meaningful, unique, and insanely creative animated, live action, and VR/AR short movies. They don’t use their imagination to think out of the box, but as if there were no box at all. The result? Innovation. Gentleman Scholar will take you on trips to places you’ve never imagined existed. With their creative talent, they will make any project/campaign fit their “not your average” standards.

 

Risking to sound like a infomercial, this is not all that Gentleman Scholar has to offer! They even have their own bags and accessories brand. At Scholar Manufacturing, they “developed each nook, pocket and space of our goods so that the tools we use to create with daily are always at our fingertips… Our leather bags and accessories live perfectly at the crossroads of luxury and utility.”

If you are ever in a need for an amazing video for your campaign, we totally recommend you Gentleman Scholar. They will take your idea, multiply it by unlimited creativity and deliver to you the job you never dared to dream about.

We wholeheartedly hope that this series of articles is of great use. Make sure you stay updated with our weekly recommendations!

Read More at Gentleman Scholar Is More Than a Design Agency (of the Week #2)

from Web Design Ledger https://webdesignledger.com/gentleman-scholar-is-more-than-a-design-agency-of-the-week-2/