We will start off with FreeLayouts. When you arrive at their site you will see templates for normal websites, blogs, as well as MySpace. Click on MySpace Layouts in the main navigation menu and then you will see more specific sections.

The sections are CSS< XHTML, 2 Column, Fixed Width and eleven different colors as you can see below from the screenshot.

Here are some of the free MySpace templates that were displayed on the homepage while I was checking it out. Notice a lot of themes surrounding holidays.  Valentines Day that just passed and St. Patrick’s Day which is coming up.

You can click on preview to see a close up view of what the template really looks like. That will bring up this window:

You can click on the Get Code button to retrieve the code you will need to integrate the template like so:

Simply highlight the code and paste it into your About Me section of your MySpace profile to get started. I clicked on the box, hit control A to select all of it, and then control C to copy it and finally control V to paste it where it needs to go.

You also have the option of setting up an account and creating favorites that you can refer back to.

The next website for free MySpace templates we will be looking at is called MySpaceLibrary.

I scrolled down and chose layouts and started browsing around what they had to offer.

Looking around they have a little something for everyone. I found sports templates, music templates, geeky templates…seriously if you use MySpace you will be able to find something here!

After finding the template that you like, click on the link below it that says Click to view large and get MySpace codes.

That will take you to this page:

Just like before, if you want to use it copy the code and paste it into your About Us page on MySpace. To view the template click on the preview button below the picture of the image. That will show it to you like this:

The last site we will be checking out is called MySpaceSkins.

Scroll down when you get to the site and you will see the templates. The first section is called Girly MySpace Layouts followed by grunge, fashion and beach layouts as you can see below:

Click on one of the layouts or on a More [Category] MySpace Layouts button to see more related layouts. After selecting a layout you will see something that looks like this:

You can grab the layout code as we have before for the other sites but here we have some other choices like customizing the layout with their online MySpace profile editor.

or adding a custom Google search box on the page.

If you have other sites and resources hook us up and leave the URLs in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (8)WriteOnIt – Funny Photo Captions, Magazine Covers & Other
• (7)Using CSS to Create Document Templates
• (16)Update all your Social Status Messages with Ping.fm
• (26)The 5 Free Wordpress Templates To Dress Up Your Blog
• (6)Scrapboy- Desktop Client for Facebook, Myspace & Orkut (Win)

The best resource, in my view, for learning graphic design is Robin Williams’ classic, The Non-Designer’s Design Book. She outlines the basic principles of design: proximity, alignment, repetition, and contrast. What you learn from her book can be seen in well designed templates that come installed in programs like Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, and Apple’s Pages and Keynote. While in a pinch, you could pull up these design templates and use them without much customizing of the layout, but it would be better to recognize the design principles used in these templates to help make your projects unique. The basics principles of graphic design are not as difficult to understand as you might think.

So launch Microsoft Word, Pages, or any program using professional design templates and let’s use the them to recognize basic design principles.

Font Styles

When you examine professional design templates one of the first things you might notice is that there are usually no more than three different fonts used in a document or design piece. Many newsletters, for example, make use of the classic and readable Helvetica or Helvetica Neue font. A designer will use the same one or two fonts, but will will change the size and style of the font for different parts the document. Regular Helvetica Neue font style may be used for the body text, while a slightly larger size of the same font, in bold style, will be used for sub-titles and pull-out quotes. Highlight the texts in templates and make note of the names of fonts that are used. Typically they include Helvetica, Courier, or Baskerville, with a variation in size and style of the font (e.g. bold, all caps, italics.)

Proximity

The next element you will want to notice in design templates is how items and information are grouped together. As Williams points out, “When several items are in close proximity to each other, they become one visual unit rather than several separate units.” For example, in this business card, information is separated into groups, instead of scattered all over the card. This makes the information easier to read.

Repetition

Well-designed documents also use a repetition of elements, as we can see in this newsletter where three images are cropped and aligned together for effective repetition. Again, as Williams points out, “You can repeat colors, shapes, textures, spatial relationships, line thickness, fonts, sizes, graphic concepts, etc.“ The effective use of repetition is pleasing to eye and it can communicate important content in a design.

Contrast

Notice also how the designers use contrast to make layouts graphically appealing. The large PortagoITC TT font used for the nameplate of the newsletter below is in near stark contrast with the Helvetica Neue used for the body font. We also see how the designer used a strong red graphic fill to make the nameplate stand out. The idea behind contrast as Williams explains, “is to avoid elements on the page that are merely similar. If the elements (type, color, size, line thickness, shape, space, etc.) are not the same, then make them very different.“

Alignment

Probably the easiest basic principle of design to recognize in templates is alignment. Body text of course is usually always aligned to the left. But notice how other elements (images, boxes, titles, and information) are aligned with one another. “Nothing should be placed on the page arbitrarily,” writes Williams. In the postcard below, the alignment of elements is very evident. The image of the house is aligned with the green box. The street name and price of the house are both centered, and the contact information is grouped together under the photo of the real estate agent. The arrangement of these elements helps the reader move his/her eyes from one element to the next.

There’s nothing wrong with using templates to produce documents, but when you understand the basic elements of design, you can customize templates and make them unique for your individual purposes.

So how aware are you of basic design principles in the work you do? What online and book resources have you learned from?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (23)5 Excellent Sources To Download Free Text Fonts
• (11)4 Custom Bullet Tips and Tricks for Microsoft Word 2007
• (9)3 Ways To Strip Formatting From Text in MS Word 2007
• (16)How To Turn MS Word 2007 Into A Minimalist Text Editor
• (6)How To Hide Text In Microsoft Word 2007, Reveal It & Protect It

People would have loved these types of sites 10 years ago! Some of them even have Flash templates also for free. We will take a look at 3 of the best sites for downloading and finding free web templates. We will run through what they offer, the quality of the templates and how easy they are to modify!

The first site we will cover is Free Website Templates which you can get to from here.

When you arrive at the site you will see some pretty nice free web page templates on the homepage including the template of the day. You will see links to download the templates as a zip file or to preview a mock up website using the template you are looking at. Hit preview and experience the template before downloading it.

You can click here to view the site preview and get the big picture of what I am talking about. I clicked on the preview link for the featured template and this is what I saw:

Continuing on I checked out some others which are exquisite!

When I downloaded the template as a zip file this is what it comes with:

You will see an images folder that has all your images, a PSD (Adobe Photoshop file) of the site, the HTML and the CSS files. Below you can see an example of the HTML. It is very clean and highly customizable.

Next up is Free Web Templates accessible by this link here. They offer some templates for a fee but click this link to see just the 3000 odd titles.

Once you get to that page, you can click on a category. I choose High Tech and this is what I saw:

Clicking on the title of the image will show you the templates homepage. For example I clicked on the first one titled metamorphosis and saw this:

If you click on the bottom link that says click here to download templates 8966 you will be able to download a zip file containing the source files like so:

There is no PSD file for this site though but you do have individual images like the last site. So you should like the overall template if you are choosing from this site. If you need to HEAVILY modify the graphics it will be harder but not impossible. If you just want to change text and some header graphics you should be fine.

I tried many different sites and these two had the nicest easy to use free web page templates. The first site makes it much much easier for real deal customizations by providing you with the Photoshop PSD file so you can really modify the look and feel of your new website.

If you have other sites offering up good free web page templates drop them in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (35)Top 10 Professional Sample Code Websites For Programmers
• (38)How To Install Firebug on IE, Safari, Chrome & Opera
• (6)Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox
• (21)Selected 25 CSS Applications and Tools
• (22)Notepad Programming on Steroids for Application Developers

For a long while, you needed to use Microsoft Word to design and print media resources using one of hundreds of Avery templates. But Avery also now provides two free standalone applications, called DesignPro (one for Mac and one for PC users) that includes all its templates and the design features for putting together and printing media projects.

If you want, you can design your digital printing project in say Photoshop, save it as JPEG file and import it as an image file into DesignPro. In this article, however, I will give you an overview of designing a label project in DesignPro for Mac.

• Start a new project (File>New) in DesignPro. Select the type of media project you want. Search for the type of template you want to use. You’ll probably want to make sure your local office supply store carries the media stock for the template you’re using. Or you can order the stock online.

• Double-click on the pre-designed template label you want to use, or select a blank design. Now customize the template. For many projects, like labels, I suggest using strong bold fonts (e.g. Arial Black, Helvetica, Baskerville) with a 10+ point size. The design features of DesignPro are not nearly as advanced as what you can do in Photoshop, but most for jobs, the tools are sufficient. The application includes tons of clip art and vector shapes, and you can also import existing image files from say iPhoto or anywhere else on your computer.

• Now here’s the tricky part. You can select to print the same text and design on each label, or you can choose to have different text and/or design for individual labels. If you choose the latter, you’ll have to select each individual label and copy and paste in the design and/or text you want. There’s no way, as far as I can tell, to select five labels at once and paste in the design or text. If you select the first label and create a design, it will be applied to all the labels that come after it. But when you click the All Same – Off button in the tool bar of DesignPro, you can further customize individual labels.

• There’s also an option to use Mail Merge in DesignPro with your contact data in Apple’s Address Book or Mail application. But for some odd reason, this mail feature merges all the contact data in those applications. You can’t select individual contacts to merge with those data applications. So it’s better to create a comma delimited (CSV) or tab delimited (TSV) spread sheet of your contacts and import it for mail merge in DesignPro.

• After your labels are set up, you‘re ready to print. I suggest first doing a test printing on regular typing paper before using more expensive Avery media stock. When you’re ready to print, make sure you have selected the appropriate media stock in your printer’s dialogue box.

If you have any questions about using DesignPro, drop me a line in the comment box.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (29)[Google Picasa 101] – Getting Started
• (13)The Challenging World Of Image Editing
• (3)SnagIt Beta – Possibly The Most Advanced Screen Capture Tool [Mac]
• (9)PHOTOSHOP DISASTERS: 2 Blogs with Bad Photoshop Images
• (5)Mightier – Innovative Puzzle Platformer Fun

One of the alternatives that we could use to create documents on a Mac is Apple’s Pages, part of iWork’s suite of productivity applications along with Numbers (spreadsheet) and Keynote (presentation). The suite is tagged at US$79 and available for 30-day free trial. While the price is far less Microsoft Office suite, paid is still paid. But I think Pages has great features that’s worth the look, even it’s only during the free trial.

The Power of Templates

At the most basic level, Pages is a word processor. So you can use it for your everyday word processing activities from creating a document, writing and editing the text, importing other elements like charts and pictures, to printing or saving the document as a PDF.

Pages can also open documents from many other formats including Microsoft Word documents. Your work from other computers under any other OS can be resumed on your Mac using Pages. The same thing goes for the other end, Pages can also save your work as Word documents. To reveal more saving options, click the little arrow beside the name field when you save your work.

But the true power of this app lies in its beautifully pre-designed templates. Users can use these templates to quickly create professionally looking documents. As Apple puts it, “Even before you start writing, your document looks great.” This template-based method is also used by iWeb, Apple’s webpage design application.

There are over 180 templates for you to choose from, divided into two categories: Word Processing (work-related kind of documents) and Page Layout (more to the ‘fun’ type of documents).

From the Word Processing category, there are Letters, Envelopes, Forms, Resumes, Reports, and Outlines; while from the Page Layout category, there are Newsletters, Brochures, Flyers, Posters, Cards & Invitations, Business Cards, and Certificates. Both categories also offer blank documents and miscellaneous templates.

You can add your own templates and they will appear in “My Templates”.

Creating a good looking document using Templates

My first encounter with Pages was when my friend asked me to help him create a class newsletter. He was amazed at the stunning result that we produced in a short time.

And the process of creating that document required no rocket science. Here are the simple steps for creating good looking documents using Pages’ templates:

1. Open Pages and create a new document.

2. Choose a template

3. Edit the text and replace the pictures

4. Add as many pages as you need

5. Don’t forget to save your document after you’ve done.

Each template listed in the Template Chooser comes with several types of documents and each document consists of several types of pages. Playing with the combinations will provide you with a large number of choices and could keep you busy – in a fun way – for quite a while.

But if you think that the pre-designed templates are not enough, you could add more templates – free or paid – from the internet. One of the recommended places to get free templates is iWorkCommunity.

You could just open the downloaded templates, but if you want them to appear in Pages template list, you should put them inside this folder:

~/UserFolder/Library/Application Support/iWork/Pages/Templates/FolderName

Creating your own templates

But why stop at using templates from others? If you think you have an artistic side that you could be proud of, or if you think that you will consistently use a series of layouts over and over in your project, you could create your own templates, either for personal use or to be shared with others.

You could start building your template from a scratch by opening a totally blank page or you could also do it by modifying another template.

If you are starting from naught, you’d want to add elements to your documents like text boxes, and shapes. This can be done by going to the “Insert” menu or by clicking the icon in the toolbar.

To fill in the text boxes, you could generate some “Lorem Ipsum”s from Lipsum Generator.

To add pictures, open Media Browser from the View –> Show Media Browser or by clicking the toolbar icon.

Then insert some pictures by dragging and dropping the items from media browser to document.

Every element of the page can be edited by selecting it and open the Inspector (View –> Show Inspector or Command + Option + I or the Inspector toolbar icon).

Add more pages according to your needs and repeat the steps.

Once the layout process is finished, you should enable every element of the page(s) as a placeholder. This way, you are able to customize those elements later when you use the pages you’ve created as template.

To do this, go to “Format –> Advanced –> Enable Placeholder Text Authoring” menu. Then select the text and choose “Format –> Advanced –> Define As Placeholder Text”.

To do the same with images, click on the item but choose “Format –> Advanced –> Define As Image Placeholder” instead.

The final step is to turn your document into template. Choose the thumbnail of a page and go to “Format –> Advanced –> Capture Pages” menu.

And name the page.

Repeat the process to other pages.

You could manage multiple pages in a template from “Format –> Advanced –> Manage Pages” menu.

Then use the arrows to rearrange the order and the minus (-) button to delete the pages that you don’t need.

If you want to share your creations, they are available in the same location as your other imported templates: ~/UserFolder/Library/Application Support/iWork/Pages/Templates/

So far I haven’t found any free Mac alternatives for template-based word processors similar to Pages. But if you know any, share using the comment below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (7)Using CSS to Create Document Templates
• (13)Type Emails Faster with Texter Text Replacement Software
• (10)The 3 Useful Office Apps To Reduce Your Paperwork
• (27)Sublime Text: The Text Editor You’ll Fall in Love With (Windows)
• (36)PhraseExpress – A Great Alternative Text Replacement Tool

Many are. But then, downloading blog templates and installing them can be time consuming, not to mention expensive right? I recall laughing my head off when I seen the prices that some developers are charging for mediocre themes!

Below are five of my favourite free Wordpress blog templates that won’t cost you a single cent.

Creative Art

This theme is really attractive mostly because of that giant notebook-style posting area. The scrappy style is continued on to the left with a ‘Post It’ lookalike categories list. The background and the oddly placed RSS feed button just make it even better. Greys, reds and little features such as the tape that appears to hold up the posting area are nice touches.

This theme would suite your blog if you have a good following and blog about informal yet popular topics such as art, music, technology and the woes of life!

Modicus Remix

The Modicus theme is a little more plain than the last but it is by no means basic. It keeps the same artsy feel as the theme above but leaves more to the imagination. There is no colour at all with this theme, just a stark contrast between black and white. The amount of plug-ins and features that look good to the right-hand side of this theme is amazing – such as that ‘sign in‘ facility for your readers.

I recommend this blog for the more formal of bloggers out there such as those who see their blog as more of a regular column.

Aspire

An individual looking theme that looks like old parchment and worn manuscripts. It’s basically comprised of many different diluted shades of brown that make for a very attractive blog. Again, the posts go to the left with tags with the calendar and recent comments going to the right along with the categories. This theme is also available to download as a ‘Blogger’ version on the download page for those of you who use BlogSpot.

I think this theme would suit the more factual blogs that tend to discuss subjects within a niche. It wouldn’t do so well for a personal blog as the ‘manuscript style’ points to something entirely different.

Reviews Theme

This theme has curved corners with straight edges – one of my favourite styles for business/professional blogs. It looks good but doesn’t over-sell itself with artwork or over design. It has some good features such as a search bar and good navigation buttons along the top to direct the user to various contact and ‘About’ pages which are essential for a business blog.

The deep blue with the white, as I said, doesn’t jump out at you and do a song and dance like the other themes because they’re separated by different tones and shades of blue. The content sells itself. A professional and practical theme for a company’s site.

Light Weight

To end out list we have an elegant theme that has minimalistic design in mind. The baby blue background and the blue text work well together in this theme. The menu bar across the top is good for simple navigation and it separates the headers from the main attraction: your personal posts.

Given its simplicity yet attractiveness, I would recommend this theme for a personal blog. It has the necessary few buttons such as ‘Contact’ and ‘Subscribe’ with the posts being the centre of attention. It’s wide and as such it’s good for big photographs and screenshots that we all post on our personal blogs.

So, what do the MUO readers think of these free Wordpress blog templates and what themes do you recommend for small-medium blogs?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (25)Save $87 By Making A Free ‘Thesis’ Wordpress Theme Clone
• (14)Wordpress.tv – The Best Wordpress Tutorials Ever!
• (14)Wordpress Exploit Scanner Helps Administrators Scan Their Database For Malicious Files
• (65)How To Setup A Self-hosted Wordpress Blog for Free
• (30)How To Install Wordpress Blog Locally On Your PC

Earlier, I introduced MUO readers to my love affair with Excel when I wrote about how you can use it to create an effective household budget. I was also pleased to read some love from other MUO authors, such as Karl’s article about how to split a monster sized Excel spreadsheet, or Eyal’s Excel printing tips.

Today I’m going to share a few additional cool features in Excel that you can use specifically to make a calendar template in Excel.

Make a Calendar Template in Excel – A Step-By-Step Tutorial

The following calendar sheet is an Excel calendar template that you can open up and print each month. You have the option to keep it blank and it’ll automatically update to the correct month – all you have to do is print and fill in the days. Or, you can use the last few techniques described at the end of this article to fill in the sheet with the days before printing. It requires a little extra work, but it looks very cool.

Step #1 – Create The Header And Title

The first thing you’ll need to do is create the weekday header as well as the month title. This step will demonstrate the merge-and-fit feature as well as how to set the width of multiple columns at once.

First, type in the weekdays in a row across the top, but leave one row blank for your title.  Format the text around 12 point and bold. You’ll notice that some of the weekdays extend beyond the limit of the column.

To fix this, just highlight the weekdays that you’ve typed and then select Format -> Column -> Width – and set the width for around 15 to 20.

Now that you’ve got your weekday header nicely formatted, it’s time to add the current month at the top of your calendar sheet. While you could just manually type in the month at the top of the sheet, this wouldn’t be very efficient, as you’d have to change it every time you wanted to print a new calendar sheet. It makes more sense to create an Excel calendar template that knows what month it is and changes the month title for you.

You do this by choosing any cell above your weekdays, and typing in the formula, “=TODAY()” – which tells Excel that you want today’s date in that field. After you do this, you’ll notice that it looks nothing like the month and it’s formatted all wrong. First, format the title with a font of around 20 to 22 and bold. Then, go into the Format -> Cells -> Number tab, select date and choose the format that you’d like for the month title.

Once you’ve got your title formatted correctly, you’ll still notice that it’s not centered properly and exists only within one cell at the top of the spreadsheet. In other words, it looks odd. To fix this, highlight all of the cells above your weekday header (including the one where your month is displayed) and click on the “merge and center” button.

Clicking “merge and center” turns all of the highlighted cells into one collective cell, and then centers your title in the middle of the highlighted region. Now you’ve got yourself a nicely formatted, automated calendar header.

Step #2 – Create The Calendar Days

The next step to make your calendar template in Excel is to once again use the “merge and center” feature, but this time you’ll merge a few empty cells in order to create one larger cell that represents a single day.

This step is where you’ll build the body of your calendar template, but it’s also the easiest step. First, highlight about 5 or 6 cells, and click on the “merge and center” button. This will form one cell the perfect size for one day on the calendar. Then, while this large cell is highlighted, copy it (control-c or Edit->Copy) and paste it into the other days (or just drag the lower right corner of the box over to the right). This will duplicate your box for every day of the week. Do this for five rows. Your calendar should now look like this:

Highlight your entire calendar click on the borders tool, and select the “grid” so that every grid line shows – essentially “drawing” out your calendar for you. Finally, you can either leave your template as it is (so you can write in the days yourself) and move ahead to step 3, or you can add in the days using Excel. Instead of going through and manually typing in “1″ to “30″, you can save a lot of time by using Excel’s auto-fill feature.

Using this technique, you simply enter in a formula for the first Monday and the second Sunday of the month. For example, if the 1st of the month is on Sunday, you’d enter “1″ into the first Sunday box (and of course nicely format it at 14-point and bold). Then, for Monday you’d type “=” then click on the day before it (A1) and type “+1″.

When you’re finished, highlight the box where you’ve entered this formula, and drag it across the entire week – this will correctly fill in all of the days of the week. Then, do the same thing for the following Sunday, but click on Saturday and add 1.

When you’re done, drag this box down each week so that every Sunday has the same formula (adding 1 to the previous Saturday). Drag the formula from the previous Monday down through the month as well – and then drag from Monday across each week. While it may sound confusing, as you give it a try you’ll find that filling in the days only requires a few clicks and less than 5 minutes.

Step #3 – Printing Your Calendar Template

Finally, you’re ready to print out your calendar to a nice clean paper so you can pin it up on your wall. By this point, your calendar should look like this.

While this looks absolutely fantastic within the Excel sheet, it won’t print properly because the edge of the calendar template goes beyond the printable page, so you’ll end up with parts of it on two pages. To fix this, go to File -> Page Setup, click the Page tab, and make sure it’s configured as shown here.

Set the format for landscape, and fit the entire calendar to 1 page wide by 1 page high. Click OK, and when you do a print preview you’ll find that your calendar template is formatted on one sheet and ready to print!

The next month, just open up the same Excel file (the month will already be correct), renumber the days and click Print – it’s as simple as that!

Do you have any tricks that might make creating a calendar in Excel a little simpler? Have you ever created any unique projects using Excel? Share your experiences in the comments section below.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (45)Use OfficeTab To Give Microsoft Office Firefox-Like Tabs
• (13)Top 3 FREE web-based Office Suites (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)
• (7)Ribbon Hero – Boost Your Microsoft Office Skills With This Fun Add-on
• (5)OxygenOffice Pro: Enhanced Version of OpenOffice
• (5)How To Split a Huge CSV Excel Spreadsheet into Separate Files

So, you can use all the help you can get. I am going to show you a few sites where you can grab free downloadable resume templates. Some of the templates are in PDF format and some of them are in Word format.

The first thing you should do is grab an old copy of your resumé or a list of your past jobs and accomplishments.

That will help you immensely when you need to replace the generic information with your own.

The first site I found has very generic templates that will allow you to totally customize the resumé. This is just for the formatting, there is little to no content that you will be able to use.

These are called Blank Resumé Templates and can be found here: http://www.professional-resume-example.com/free-blank-resume-template.html

They offer three types of resumé templates and they are Chronological format, Functional Format and Combination. We will show you each of them here with a link to their respective PDFs

This is the plain Jane old school format. Still expected by older companies and should not exceed one page. The next up is a variation on the classic resumé and called the Functional resumé seen below:

And then there is the combination of the both of them:

And next up, we have http://www.collegegrad.com/ with their resumé section located at http://www.collegegrad.com/resumes/quickstart. The difference between these two sites is that Collegegrad breaks up their resumés by major. So, you can find a more specific resumé geared towards you to customize. I choose computer science and got this: http://www.collegegrad.com/resumes/quickstart/compsci.doc

And last but not least, http://www.easyjob.net has free downloadable resumé templates broken down in 3 categories:

And best of all – all this information is FREE! Between this site and browsing other people’s resumés on Monster.com, Hotjobs.com or any of the other popular job seeking sites you can customize your resumé and make it pop! Remember a direct cover letter is just as important as a great resume!

Do you have a favorite free resume template website? Maybe you have some other job seeking tips? Well, if you do, leave them in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (36)Top 5 Free Resume Hosting Websites
• (0)Build An Impressive Free Resume Online In 15 Minutes With JobSpice
• (11)3 Less-Known Free Online Resume Builders
• (7)Using CSS to Create Document Templates
• (25)Top 10 Most Effective Job Search Websites

Chart Chooser from Juice Analytics is an innovative tool that lets you create Excel and Powerpoint charts and choose what characteristics you wish to highlight in your data; Comparison, Distribution, Composition, Trend, Relationship and/or Table, and it will filter the selections highlighting the possible charts for your needs.

Once you have decided on your selection, Chart Chooser will display options to download templates for Excel and Powerpoint. The downloaded files will have random data filled for you to get an idea of how the data is presented and where you will be able to enter your own figures.

The good news about this service is that Juice Analytics doesn’t seem to be stopping with the current selection of graphs available on the site. Users are encouraged to suggest different charts to be added to their website and even design bespoke versions for organisations. Juice Analytics have also endeavoured to make all their charts Tufte-compliant (clean and minimal) whilst remaining visually aesthetic.

Juice Analytics also operates an analytics blog that focuses on free tools and open source code. Here, you are able to find a wealth of information on how the Juice Analytics team tackle different projects, including this project inspired by the New York Times.

One tool that the team recently released was Concentrate, a search analytics tool for SEO and paid search professionals who wanted to make sense of search keyword data. Concentrate works by connecting to your Google Analytics account and helps to visualize keyword relationships to see connections and performance of common word combinations. All data collated by Concentrate is automatically formatted and information such as categorized search phrases and pattern groups can be downloaded to CSV format for off site analysis.

Juice Analytics is a great source of Excel and Powerpoint information as well as providing open source code, most of which are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. If you need to impress the board, your boss or your peers at your next meeting, a visit to these guys, even just for the Chart Chooser, should be your first stop.

Do you know of any other sites that offer templates like these? If so, let us know of your recommendations in the comments!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (67)9 Must-Have OpenOffice Extensions
• (18)Use PowerPoint Video Converter to Convert PowerPoint Presentations to a Video
• (45)Use OfficeTab To Give Microsoft Office Firefox-Like Tabs
• (13)Top 3 FREE web-based Office Suites (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.)
• (13)The Best Websites For Free Clipart Downloads

Here at MakeUseOf you will find mentions of three calendar creating websites. These are Free Photo Calendars, Compact Calendar Creator and Printable Calendars. This list gives 10 more ways to ignite the creative Zen.

Printable Calendars

As simple as it gets. Printable Calendars is a free service that lets you download printable calendars in RTF format. Select your calendar date by month or year and hit the create button. Download the RTF file and print a calendar using your printer.

Vertex

A site leaning more towards MS Office templates and Excel calculators also has a calendar tab. Vertex has a fairly good assortment of calendars which can be downloaded in the PDF format and printed.

The calendars though are unembellished with graphics. You get the calendars in both portrait and landscape modes and in varying colours. Most of the calendars also come with U.S holidays marked out though there is the blank option as well so it can be used by anyone.

All calendars are free and the only constraints are the link and the copyright notices which come printed as footers.

PrintFree

This site is hardly anything to look at but it offers another simple way of making simple calendars. The calendars mostly are in monthly formats. It’s all on one page. Some format options like ‘Monthly Vertical’, ‘Monthly Horizontal’, ‘Bold’ and ‘Extra Bold’ are the few you could choose from.

If you like a simple calendar in a jiffy then this website could be one tool to look at.

MintPrintables

This website offers free calendars that become your own with just a printer. You get calendars by week, month and year. A few blank templates are available that you can use for filling up as you like. Six nature portrait based calendars are available which would require a good colour printer at your disposal. Though the choices are limited you can give this site a see through.

HP Calendars

Hewlett Packard has put up a few calendar templates on its site. You can customize them by downloading it in the DOC format and adding your or the company name to it. The templates include – monthly calendars, quarterly calendars, yearly calendars and an interesting 3-D calendars section.

Calendar Labs

CalendarLabs (Alpha) gives you a variety of print-ready calendars. The motley group includes – Monthly and Yearly calendars, Holiday calendars, iCal holiday calendars, PDF calendars, Blank calendars, Astrology calendars, Printable calendars (Customize by paper size and download in MS format) and lastly Photo calendars where you can use flora or fauna images or one of your own.

To print just click on the desired calendar link. Follow it up by clicking the ‘Printable Format’ link which opens a pop-up with the calendar. Use the browser’s print function to take it to the printer.

DLTK’s Free Printable Custom Calendars

This website lets you use your own image or fall back on the plethora of themes to generate your personal calendar. From themes like the 10 Commandments to images of Animals, Holiday Season and Cartoons. You can either use the colour images or its b/w counterpart. The site also covers calendar creation in any of these languages – English, Spanish, Dutch, French, Italian and Latin. The calendars generated are not very stylized but serve simpler purposes.

SpeedyCal

Things get savvier with this web service. SpeedyCal is a free calendar making application which lets you use default images or user uploaded images to create high quality downloadable calendars. You can choose images from a default gallery (or your own images), add borders and select fonts and create a calendar in a 12/18 month format. You can also choose to mark out U.S or South African national events. A more flexible approach by adding your own events is also allowed.

The final stage takes place in the PDF Folder of the program. You can quickly check your handiwork through a ‘Create a Preview Quality PDF’ or adopt the slower approach of ‘Create a Print Quality PDF’. The latter assembles all your data and generates the finished calendar after a delay depending on the data. All that is left for you to do is to download the finished PDF file and print it.

The interface is slick and the web service requires signing in and an email validation.

Disney’s Calendar Creator

In most cases school-going kids require calendars just as we do. Disney Magic Artist is a tool which allows them that. The interface is child’s play. Select an image of a Disney toon…select the month by using the arrows…mark out special days by clicking and dragging the given stickers to the calendar…click on the print button. If you like to save your ink/toner then go for the B/W option provided.

Microsoft Calendar Templates

Last but certainly not least, one of the easiest ways to create a personal calendar is available closer to home especially for Windows users. With Microsoft Office and its online website, users can download dozens of calendar templates. From Asian patterns and prints to a lunar calendar are interspersed between the classic designs. Some the templates are customizable. Also, some templates are downloadable depending on the version of MS Office being used.

There is another caveat for some of the templates – some downloads require a genuine copy of MS Office Suite.

It’s always nifty to have your own personalized calendar hanging on the wall and it’s also not bad to have it for free. Do you know any other calendar making website out there?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (2)How To Produce Easy-To-Read Webpage Printouts
• (28)How To Make A Calendar Template In Excel
• (6)How To Create New Design Projects Using Avery DesignPro
• (14)Cool Printables : Ways to Put your Dusty Printer to Work
• (8)3 Dead-simple Apps For Note Taking & List Making

Setting up and maintaining a website can be a pain because you often need to have basic knowledge of HTML, PHP, Javascript, Flash, CSS, or Photoshop. It can also be costly to run a website if you buy a domain name and have monthly hosting bills. This is okay if you are planning on maintaining a website for business or for a long-term project but why pay when you can get it for free?

It used to be that the only option for creating a free website was using a service that placed annoying ads at the top of every page and gave you limited design options. And to get a really good website you had to pay a designer and spend a lot for hosting. Today we have more free web design options and here are a couple you should check out.

Synthasite

Synthasite allows you to create a website for free and there will be no annoying ads popping up on your site either. The website templates are so cool and professional with Synthasite that you could easily create a business website using their service. They have live examples from current users who have created business websites for free. You must be at least 18 years of age to use the Synthasite Toolset.

Synthasite offers a quick and easy Website Builder that requires NO technical skills or knowledge of HTML. Synthasite lets you create a website or a blog and it super simple to use. It offers drag and drop features which makes it even easier to use. I was able to easily change templates, color schemes, delete and add features within seconds.

The Synthasite setup allows you to drag items from a scrolled list that appears on the right of the screen. Drag to the left to position an item on the page. Click once on the item to edit it and a menu appears on the right of the screen again.

Weebly

Weebly allows you to create a free website or a free blog layout. With Weebly you add content elements such as videos, pictures, maps, and text to your website by simply dragging them from the Weebly bar to a webpage you created. Click on an item and a sub-toolbar area at the top with options for that item.

Just like Synasite you are given quite a lot of professional looking templates to choose from and they make it easy to change your design by using the icon toolbar at the top of the page. You can also add a photo gallery, files, videos, audio and forms to your website with the simple click and drag features.

A standard free Weebly account is allowed 2 websites per account. There is a file size of 5 MB on the free account and there is a “create a free website with Weebly” link placed on the bottom of each free account.

If you have your own graphics you can upload those as well to create an even more customized look for your blog or website.

Features of both services:

• 100% FREE with no hidden fees
• There are no ads and no banners popping up
• You can customize your website layout and make your site unique
• You get a free subdomain or free hosting for your own custom domain
• There is nothing to download
• It works right from your browser
• Free tutorials, FAQs, and help

I tested both Synthasite and Weebly and setting up an account was quick and easy and only took a few minutes. The interface was easy to understand and there was a lot of help available when I got stuck.

Using a blank page template in Synthasite or Weebly is like opening a new document in a word processing program. Once you create a page you can add content by simply dragging and dropping a text box into the area of the screen you want it to show up on.

Have you found other good free website applications that make creating a website easy?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (10)Creating Your Own Website For Free with BlueVoda
• (8)Create Beautiful Web Pages In A Snap With SnapPages
• (12)2 Websites With The Coolest Free Web Page Templates
• (12)Write & Develop HTML Offline with First Page
• (7)Using CSS to Create Document Templates

Of course everyone wants their blog to look pretty. As pretty as possible because looks count. You want your site to look tempting yet professional. You’ll be represented by your site’s appearance.

Perhaps some of you will want to make your own themes. If that’s your thing, Jeffry wrote a great article on how to create your own Wordpress theme here.

If not, read on. Below is a list of some very good places to find your free WordPress and/or Blogger themes.

Free WordPress Themes

Lets start out with the WordPress ones. If you’re looking for Blogger skins, please skip this section.

WordPress is a great blogging engine, and one I would certainly advise to people who want to have a more advanced input.

1. 49 Most Downloaded Wordpress Themes Of All Time (by HONGKIAT)

This site has made a list of the 49 most downloaded Wordpress themes of all time (at the moment of writing). This is a great site with a lot of the best themes available.

You won’t be exactly original, but there’s a good reason these were downloaded this much.

2. 83 Beautiful WordPress Themes (by Smashing Magazine)

Smashing Magazine looked at a few things while creating this list. First, it had to be beautiful. Next, it shouldn’t already be worn out by the community, they wanted things ‘you probably hadn’t seen’ yet. Finally, they wanted it to be user friendly.

“All themes offer quality and elegance.” Here you’ll be able to find some (83) great-looking themes, to give a distinct character to your blog.

Blogger Skins

Blogger has a less advanced interface than WordPress, but it’s still a great blog engine. It was even bought up by Google some time ago.

For people who don’t want things to get complicated, who want to blog in a few clicks without too much fuss, Blogger is great.

1. 70 Fresh And Modern Blogger Templates (by Mashable)

“You can never have a too wide choice of templates for your blog, especially if you’re the experimenting type.”

This is Mashable’s list of 70 free, fresh and modern Blogger templates. Here you’ll find some really great and professional looking Blogger templates.

This list features photo previews of all the themes, as well as a brief review.

2. BlogSkins.com

BlogSkins is my personal favourite. Compared to the above sites, this is not a static site, but a revolving, constantly changing template site. You can browse by Hot Skins, Recent Skins, and each day there’s an elected “Skin of the Day”.

“BlogSkins is a community of blog template designers, users, and friends. Whether you’re looking for a fresh new design for your blog or wanting to share your hot designs with others, this is the place for you!”

Go to BlogSkins.com to find the most recent and most popular blogger templates of the moment.

Where did you find your blog template? Do you have a secret online stash of templates that you’d like to share with us? If so, let us know the link in the comments and tell us why you like them so much!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (25)Save $87 By Making A Free ‘Thesis’ Wordpress Theme Clone
• (15)A Beginner’s Guide To Building Your Own Wordpress Theme
• (26)The 5 Free Wordpress Templates To Dress Up Your Blog
• (8)How To Safely Experiment With Customizing Wordpress Themes
• (11)How To Change Your Wordpress Blog Theme In 3 Easy Steps

Why use HTML?

My biggest reason for going for purely HTML and CSS documents is that it is probably the most compatible format across browsers and operating systems, except for the PDF format, which is very hard and/or expensive to do well. Using Microsoft Office is also not the best. I use Office 2007 which uses a lot of extra features not supported by earlier versions, so quality may be downgraded. Who knows what these docs will look like in Open Office for example? If you create a HTML document which looks exactly the same in Internet Explorer and Firefox you have created a document which can be opened by Mac, Linux and Windows users, and will look the same on 99% of the browsers.

What is CSS and HTML?

If you’re new to this whole HTML and CSS coding thing, don’t be alarmed. It’s very easy, and you can find plenty of resources on the web to help you. HTML and CSS code is what makes up most of what you see on this page here, HTML governs the content, while CSS governs the style or how the content is presented.

How can I create a template?

Well, you will need to study a bit of code. Thankfully, HTML and CSS is very easy to understand. To give an object a border for example, just type border:1px black solid. This will create a 1px wide black solid border. There are loads of formatting options you can look up and use, my suggestion is visualizing what you want, and then searching a bit to find how to do it. The most basic template would be an empty HTML file, take a look below.

<html>
<head>
<title>

Title of the page goes in here

</title>
<style type=”text/css”>

All your styling goes in here

</style>
</head>
<body>

The content of your page goes here.

</body>
</html>

You can then fill all this with content and styling to create your document. Take a look at example 1, example 2 and example 3 I made. Keep in mind that the code in the body, the content is exactly the same, I am only changing the css code. This shows that you can use the styling to create different looks quickly.

Why is this so great?

The reason this is so awesome is that you can create custom styles for yourself which may become a sort of "trademark" of your documents. You can cut and paste the CSS code and just think of the content once you've finalized it. Also, you can link in the stylesheet, so if you store docs online, you don't have to include the CSS in the file itself. This means you can link different stylesheets for different occasions, and you don't have to modify the document all the time.

CSS also enables quicker editing of documents style-wise. I prefer my documents to look good because I just feel better that way, and with CSS the process of formatting becomes much less of a burden. When you specify a heading style, it will be applied to all headings of that type. This means you don't have to individually change the background color, font color, boldness and underline of a heading, you just specify it once.

Also, since Google Docs now has full CSS support, you can just copy paste your styling code into Docs and change the look of your documents without having to go around formatting every single heading one at a time.

Where can I learn more?

As I said, CSS is a simple tool, but it requires some basic knowledge nevertheless. HTML is similarly logical and easy to learn, I recommend W3Cschools for both of them. I learned a lot of what I know today there, for basic needs it is one of the best sites on the net. W3C also develops the web standards, so you can be sure that whatever they write on their page works.

Another page I used to learn a lot from was Your HTML Source. This page contains HTML and CSS, and also some advanced tips on coding, promotion, accessibility, and generally how to create a good website. It has great CSS help though, definitely worth a visit.

Finally you can take a look at some related blogs and articles like this awesome roundup of essential CSS techniques and 53 techniques you can't live without.

(By) Daniel likes Ice Tea, please send him some! You can take a look at his tech blog Hack Your Day, or order some blog modifications from his Blogtastique service, perhaps in exchange for Ice Tea.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

• (12)2 Websites With The Coolest Free Web Page Templates
• (6)Web Developer Toolbar for Firefox
• (35)Top 10 Professional Sample Code Websites For Programmers
• (12)The Top 3 Free Coding Text Editors For Mac OS X
• (21)Selected 25 CSS Applications and Tools