Antonio Riveras

It’s been quiet

Antonio Riveras — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:23:14 +0000

I haven’t posted anything for a while, and I haven’t uploaded anything on Graphic River either. The reason is that I have no clue on what to create. I’m thinking about some slider designs or anything jQuery but I still don’t know.

If any of you have an idea please don’t hesitate to tell me. I’m blank right now but I want to upload more stuff since the market is really great.

Reasons I choose Wordpress

Antonio Riveras — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:32:53 +0000

I’m a huge Wordpress fan. Every project I work with ends up being a Wordpress site. I can be honest and say that it’s the only CMS I know how to work with besides CushyCMS and that’s the main reason I choose to work with it.

Even so, I have more reasons than the previously stated.

Lots of Plugins
Easy to tweek the code
Lot’s of themes
Huge online community and support

I also believe that Wordpress will grow to be the biggest and most common CMS in the market, even for those who don’t know about web and internet. Thanks to Google and the love it has for Wordpress, many people are starting to switch over to Wordpress from Joomla and other systems.

What CMS are you using and why?

The programmers choice?

Antonio Riveras — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 11:12:33 +0000

When buying elements on the river you see alot of different categories, with items ranging from business cards to backgrounds for the web. When designing these kind of elements you have to consider who is buying it and not only design something that you think is pretty.

My thing is trying to figure what kind of graphics a programmer would want to buy…

Buttons

Buttons are very popular on Graphic River and I’m not surprised that they are. Programmers need buttons designed not only for the web, but for their applications as well. It could be an iPhone app just a button for a sig up form.

Menus

Programmers who don’t need an entire template but just a few elements designed usually buy menu graphics. Menus are extremely popular and they also serve as a starting point for the rest of the design on website.

Business Cards

For a while, business cards flourished on the river and people where designing cards like crazy. A business cards is a must have when running a business and that’s why I believe that they will always stay popular, especially for programmers who don’t have a clue about how to design business cards.

Classic Essentials – essential web items

Antonio Riveras — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:44:42 +0000

If you want something that’s easy to edit with an affordable price then you should definetaly get this Classic Essentials Web Kit for $2.00. Included in this package is:

Badges
Galleries
Buttons
Text-Style
Smooth Gradients
Unique details

With this set I tried to cover all of the basic needs you might have when launching a web site. Everything nowadays has to be clean, crisp and modern, which is what I tried to achieve when I started designing this set. You can purchase the set through Graphic River

Blog Post Designs

Master Banner Glow Collection

Antonio Riveras — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:57:55 +0000

This is a package of banners for your commercial web projects. The package contains ,4 sets of 13 banners in 6 different colors. As usual, you can ,buy this package at Graphic River.

The aim for this project was to create a solid ground for you to finalize any kind of banner that you can use to promote your own web site or future projects. I also made sure that the ”glow effect” always stays put no matter what color you change the banners into. All done in editable layers, ofcourse.

How to sell well on Graphic River

Antonio Riveras — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:27:38 +0000

Graphic River is a great market, sure. But the competition is getting tight, more and more creative artists are starting to upload outstanding work for all you programmers out there. Selling is a competition and it’s important for you to know just how to gain first place, and sell well on Graphic River.

Look at what’s popular

Take a look around the gallery and see what’s popular and selling the most. Pick something you’re familiar with, don’t try to exceed in something you don’t have a clue about.

Can you do it differently?

When you’ve finished your search and seen what’s popular, try and look at it and think – ”How can I do it differently?”. There is absolutely no point in doing the same thing, it won’t sell and it won’t be approved either.

Make a good impression with a good presentation

Presentations is key and will determine how well your item sells. I’ve seen hundreds of ”not-so-good” items sell in huge amounts just because the presentation is done well.

Make sure that you show a close view of your item, but also the entire item. A good example is something like this:

Here I’ve tried to showcase the best features of my item and at the same time show the entire package. This items has sold 15 times since April 18:th. Pretty OK if you ask me…

Provide a solid description

The only this left now is the items description. Try to cover as much as possible without writing an entire essay. A smart way of desicribing is putting up a list of what’s included in the package. This gives your buyer a good and easy view of what’s he/she is buying. Simple as that…

From Photoshop to Wordpress

Antonio Riveras — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:51:00 +0000

It was only about a year ago that Wordpress was introduced into my life. All the positive feedback I read on forums and blogs made me order the book Wordpress Complete and start learning everything there is to create Wordpress Themes. Wordpress is an excellent tool if you’re a designer or developer and want the opportunity to create a flexible web site.

When creating a Wordpress theme the steps look something like this:

Photoshop –> XHTML/CSS –> Wordpress.

How does each step look like then?

Photoshop

I start off by designing the website in Photoshop. This is were I decide where the web sites header, menu and content is placed as well. Appropriate guidelines are set so I can begin to slice up my images.

Photoshop to XHTML/CSS

When the design is done it’s time to slice up the images so I can code the xhtml/css. Thanks to the guidelines I can quickly use the crop tool and start slicing and saving each image. This step is fast, I just save all the images with appropriate names under a well-thought folder structure.

XHTML/CSS

Now that everything is slice up it’s time to start coding the XHTML/CSS. My primary tool is xHTML-Kit. Everything is coded from scratch with the help of a modified version of Eric Meyers reset.css.

As a preamptive measure I code just about everything that’s going to be displayed on my wordpress site. Some people only code the basics and then return to Wordpress, start implementing the functions and then return to finish off the coding in xhtml/css.

That’s not the way I do it. I do the complete styling (css) of the html that Wordpress renders and then I implement all of the wordpress functions. This process is much smoother, but you need to know exactly how Wordpress renders the HTML.

XHTML/CSS to Wordpress

By now I’ve designed my Wordpress theme, slice up all the images and coded everything in XHTML/CSS. Now it’s time to make this template into a Wordpress site.

Since I’ve already styled everything I just need to divide the page into header.php, footer.php, siderbar.php and index.php. When that part is done I start implementing all of the functions.

The functions I implement depend on what my Wordpress site looks like and how it works. The primary functions are the loop, displaying categories, dates and comments.

I’m basically finished now. I might have some minor adjustments to make, but the core of the site is done and ready to be installed as a theme.

SEO-plugins for Wordpress

Antonio Riveras — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 11:51:33 +0000

Wordpress is a great platform for anyone who has a website. It’s very flexible and comes with a ton of plugins so you can enhance it’s power. Plugins come in many forms and variations. These plugins are for optimizing your wordpress site for the search engines.

All in One SEO Pack – One of the most popular plugins ever for WordPress, this plugin does a bit of everything, from helping you choose the best post title and keywords, to helping you avoid duplicate content and alot more.

Automatic SEO Links – Automatic SEO Links lets you to choose a word or phrase for automatic linking, both internal and external, set anchor text, choose if it should be “nofollow” or not, and more.

Google XML Sitemaps – An essential tool in any blogger’s armory of SEO tools. While the name only mentions Google, this plugin creates an XML-sitemap that can be read by Ask, MSN and Yahoo also.

HeadSpace2 – This plugin allows you to install all sorts of meta-data, add specific JavaScript and CSS to pages, suggests tags for your posts and much more

Meta Robots WordPress plugin – An easy solution for adding robot metadata to any page you choose on your blog. You can use it to make your front page links into “nofollows,” prevent indexing of search pages, prevent indexing of your login page and other features.

Use these plugins and you’ll get more visitors to your blog. I use All In One SEO for my blog and it does wonders with the traffic I get!

5 Unique Headers with Menus

Antonio Riveras — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:13:32 +0000

This is a set of 5 Headers with Menus. 5 different layouts and color variation is what you get when purchasing this package. My intention was to create something unique and colorful. It was also important to make the headers look different, because many users on Graphic River tend to make their items in the package look the same. Buyers want variation, I hope I managed to create that in this design..

Included in this set

5 header designs
5 menu designs
Elegant light effects
Subtle and effective details
Cool graphic effects

Buying Web Elements

Antonio Riveras — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 06:40:42 +0000

If you could buy graphics for your web site, not entire site templates…Would you? Some people might find this strange, but it’s actually a great market for those who don’t have the necessary design skills but come with an arsenal packed with programming and coding skills.

Original and editable Photoshop Files

On Graphic River you can buy web elements suchs as buttons, backgrounds, headers and menus designed in Photoshop, ready to be sliced up and inserted into your web site or web application. You get the original photoshop file when purchasing an item, so you are fully capable of editing colors and shapes if you need to make certain modifications so the item fits your project.

It’s pretty cheap too

Not only is it really easy for you to purchase an item and customizing it to fit your needs, it’s cheap too! Business cards cost $3.00 and buttons or menus can cost between $2.00 – $10.00 depending on how high of the ”level” of the item is, measured in design.

How are the prices set?

Reviewers set the prices depending on complexity, creativity and standard. They also set the price depending on how or if the items come as ”packages”. For example, one ”item” may consist of 19 buttons plus 6 menu designs.

Marketplaces of this magnitude serve as great resources for everyone who works on the web making web sites or web applications. I believe that anyone who want’s cheap photoshop graphics should become a member of Graphic River.