Here are our choices for the best 5 websites of May 2009:

1. Piksal – Online portfolio of designer Phan Hoang out of Vietnam. Hoang is the Art Director at Firework, a web a graphic design company. When visiting “Piksal” you can choose between different headers and backrouds. Give it a try.

2. RIP IE – RIP IE is a public service announcement regarding the death of Internet Explorer 6. The creators of RIP IE beg web developers from around the world to spread the word that IE is dead, or rather “born dead”. When you’re at the site, check out the vivid images and vibrant colors.

3. Hardscore Rock – While Hardscrore rock is written in Polish, they appear to offer web services such as PSD slicing, CSS design, and CMS solutions. All we know is, the have a great design and header.

4. Designer UAE – Sanjai Nath’s Designer UAE offers web design services specifically to students who need help with design and development. The site has a somewhat unusual color scheme, but it really works. Especially cool is the main navigation and the scrolling “works” display at the bottom.

5. Lendl Allen V. Trazo – Lendl Allen V. Trazo is a graphic and web designer from the Philippines. While Trazo has earned a BS in Computer Science, she refers to herself as “self-taught”. Some especially notable elements on her online portfolio are the vivid images and animated footer.

There were some great ones this month and it made it hard to pick favorites. We’ve been getting some top quality sites lately and we feel honored to be able to showcase such great work. Thanks to everyone for all the submissions. Keep them coming!

Here are our choices for the best 5 websites of April:

1. Der Vigilant

2. Kuh Boom

3. Russell Bishop

4. Saddleback Leather

5. Patrick Bizier

This was another tough month to choose the top sites. We’ve been getting so many great sites submitted to us, its really a treat to look at them all. Thanks again everyone and great job this month.

Doug of Divine CSS

Divine CSS is made up of 4 designers and 3 programmers all based in the UK. We have combined industry experience of 22years. We are aged between 23 – 42. Some of us work for leading web design agencies here in the UK and some own their own web design businesses. We all take part in maintaining Divine CSS and each website that goes through our submission process is assessed by the whole team. The process is not a quick one which is why we always seem to have a huge backlog of submissions!

We look at design, ease of use, innovation, build quality and technology/programming. Also, where applicable we look at the products/features the website offers. Sometimes the website doesn’t make it into our showcase gallery, but we will feature it in our ‘Awesome Finds’ section of the Divine CSS blog.

• How long have you operated Divine CSS?

  We launched Divine CSS back in October 2008

 

• What gave you the idea to start a CSS Gallery?

  Well it was by accident really, we were well aware that they existed and had used them on many occasions to promote our own work.

  But it was a bit of a let down that in general, some CSS galleries seemed to be showcasing…. well pretty poor websites, seemingly slapping on anything that was submitted. There were only a few of the ‘old school’ showcase sites still keeping a high standard.

  CSS Galleries seem to have taken a bit of a side step recently. Websites are being submitted in a hope to gain some traffic and ranking – instead of because of their beautiful designs. And the showcase sites themselves seemingly just trying to make a few bucks from advertising.

  So we took it upon ourselves to pull together a team of Designers and Programmers and launched Divine CSS, with the aim to only showcase the best of the best.

  PS – Yes we do now offer advertising by only because of demand! :)

 

• Your site is gaining a lot of popularity. What would you attribute your success to?

  Good quality showcases, good quality showcases… oh and good quality showcases.

 

• What is your favorite part about running Divine CSS?

  Quite simply – getting inspiration. Remember we are made up of web designers and programmers, so it’s great to see all these fantastic websites, beautifully designed and utilizing new technology. Everyone can learn something new.

 

• Do you have any special plans for Divine CSS in the future?

  Who knows, for now we just want to keep showcasing great websites. That’s really all DivineCSS is about so we see no need to change that.

 

• How many hours a day do you work on Divine CSS, and your other projects?

  Not as much as we would like to! We do work hard to get submissions seen quickly. I can tell you that on a normal day we have around 50-70 submissions to go through but realistically we tend to actually process around 30 a day, so there is often a small backlog. But all are reviewed and if you are lucky enough to be showcased, we send you an email confirming so.

  We encourage our users to subscribe to our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter, that way they can keep up to date on our submissions.

 

• Are you working on any other projects?

  We are always working on new projects, but nothing to report just now :).

 

• Is there anyone that you look up to and try to model yourself after?

  Anyone involved with the great websites we showcase on Divine CSS!

 

• If you didn’t know the internet existed, what would you be doing?

  I’d be outdoors, getting fresh air!

 

• What advice would you give a new webmaster setting up their first site?

  Oh man that’s a hard one, there are so many areas to cover. I think really it’s got to be research. Know your competition; know what others are doing both in business and design. Make your website easy to use, this is especially important if you are trying to sell something…. Just keep it simple. Also… design for people, not for search engines!

Mike Archibald

Mike Archibald is the founder of 939 Design in East Yorkshire UK. 939 Design provides clients with a full array of quality web services including web design, graphic design, online marketing and more. Mike is involved in several other projects such as the well known CSS Gallery CSS Design Yorkshire and Web Design List.

• How long have you operated CSS Design Yorkshire?
  Since October 2006, so that’s 2 and a half years or there abouts.

 

• What gave you the idea to start a CSS Gallery?

  I just wanted to promote web standards design especially in Yorkshire. Believe it or not there are some very good css designers in Yorkshire. But CSS Yorkshire reviews websites form all over the world and to get in they have to be well designed, well built and validate.

 

• Your site is gaining a lot of popularity. What would you attribute your success to?

  Regular updates, careful SEO, good submissions, Google listing CSS Yorkshire number one for the phrase “CSS Web Design” helps.

 

• What is your favorite part about running CSS Design Yorkshire?

  I get to review hundreds and hundreds of websites, I guess it keeps my finger on the pulse of what’s going on and what’s new.

 

• Do you have any special plans for CSS Design Yorkshire in the future?

  Lots, but it’s getting the time!

 

• How many hours a day do you work on CSS Design Yorkshire, and your other projects?

  CSS Yorkshire, about 1 hour a day.

 

• Are you working on any other projects?

  Lots – I’ve got to eat!

 

• Is there anyone that you look up to and try to model yourself after?

  There are a lot of great web designers out there too many to mention here.

 

• If you didn’t know the internet existed, what would you be doing?

  Snowboarding.

 

• What advice would you give a new webmaster setting up their first site?

  Work hard and love what you do – even if people call you obsessive or nerdy.

As a web designer, I’m always looking for ways to speed up the design process. Anything that can save me time, is a big plus. Now creating a basic layout will take you no time at all. The resources below will help you create the initial infrastructure for your site. You will want to build upon this design and make it your own, but its a great starting point and saves a lot of time.

CSSCreator.com -This site will allow you to enter things like the color, the width and the columns and it will produce the code for you right there. You won’t need to fool around with templates here, its just straight code, which is very easy and useful.

Layout Gala – This site provides 40 different layouts for you to see and download. Very useful if you need to put something up fast.

Intensivstation - Here you will find 16 different templates that you can view and download. Great time savers to throw up something quick.

Code Sucks.com - With over 90 layouts to choose from, Code Sucks has a great selection. Fixed and Faux columns at your fingertips.

Dynamic Drive - Dynamic Drive offers over 12 easy to use layouts for your site. This site offers a lot of great coding resources, on top of these css layouts.

Every month we like to showcase the 5 best sites that were submitted to be in our gallery. Most of the sites submitted to CSS Perk are great, but there are a few that really stand above the rest. We’d like to give these sites special recognition for creating something outstanding. Feel free to congratulate these website owners for their hard work. So here you have it, the best 5 websites of March:

1. Elemental Piercing and Tattoo Studio

2. Lenordik Nature Spa

3. Battle Forge Card Game

4. Bulgarian Kendo Federation

5. Visual Wild Portfolio

There were so many great sites to choose from, it was really tough to choose our favorite 5. We are adding some sites that we feel derserve honorable mention below for their uniqueness, creativity and overall wow factor. Great job everyone!

Welcome. This being CSS Perk’s first blog post, I’m going to let you know what to expect from this blog in the future. We’re going to be posting as regularily as possible on the following:

• The top 10 sites each month will get a special review.
• CSS and Flash news
• Helpful CSS and Flash Resources
• Special CSS and Flash oppurtunities

We will keep things updated as often as possible.  Please check back for updates and thanks for stopping by.