Great Resources Elsewhere: July 11 to July 17

Niki Brown’s Design O’ Blog walks us through the details on creating your own iGoogle theme. Why would you want to do such a thing? Well, as Niki points out, it’s a lot of fun, and also a great way to gain exposure as a designer. Niki’s theme has only been live a few days, but has already seen over 5,000 downloads. and that’s certainly enough for me to stop and take a look!

Even if you’ve already added JQuery to your web development repertoire, this roundup by Noupe is bound to help you discover something you didn’t already know. Noupe has rounded up over 50 JQuery tutorials and examples: everything from getting started tutorials to examples of advanced animations.

As the article states, one important skill of any professional web designer is learning how to manage the clutter that comes with working on the modern web. A brand-new WordPress installation with a single post, for example, has over half a dozen paths to a single place built in! And as the number of posts grow, so does the problem. So how do you manage the clutter? Read on.

If you’re new to web design or graphic design, the idea of laying out an entire website in Photoshop can be a little daunting. Luckily, that’s why Eric Meyer invented tutorials. Here’s a roundup of over two dozen tutorials that are only too eager to help you figure out how to develop attractive websites using the Photo Tool of the Gods.

Chris over at CSS-Tricks has released a great three-part screencast entitled “Designing for WordPress.” In it, Chris goes through all the details of working with WordPress — from the initial installation on your server, to installing pre-built themes, to designing and building your own themes. If you’re new to WordPress, this is a fantastic place to start learning more.