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David Appleyard

David Appleyard

David Appleyard helps to build fun things for the design community, including Design Shack, Theme Junkie, Creative VIP, and Themelantic.

The PSD2HTML Easter Egg Hunt

Competitions / 24 Mar 2016

The PSD2HTML Easter Egg Hunt

With the start of Spring comes Easter — a great time to celebrate the changing seasons, and a time that is never complete without a good Easter Egg treasure hunt! With that in mind, we’re excited to tell you about a special treasure hunt for some awesome discounts from top web design and development companies.

To get started, just visit the PSD2HTML site and take a look through each page, hunting down those secret eggs. They’re scattered around the website on different pages, hidden in some fun and crafty ways. You’ll need to get your thinking cap on! Read on to find out more!

Win One of Three Copies of Slides Framework (Worth $249)

Competitions / 19 Nov 2015

Win One of Three Copies of Slides Framework (Worth $249)

We have a great competition for you today, to win one of three copies of the Slides Framework. This set of design templates is a great way to help you to create a beautiful promo or marketing site, with stunning animations and clean code.

Slides contains 60 beautiful slides and 11 quick-start templates that you can combine in various ways to create a quick and easy design. Read on to find out how to enter our competition to win a free copy!

Save Over $1,000 (96%) in the November Creative Market Bundle

News / 10 Nov 2015

Save Over $1,000 (96%) in the November Creative Market Bundle

Creative Market is a community of over a million creatives who buy and sell amazing design assets. You’ll find over 350,000 resources like fonts, graphics, templates, add-ons, stock photos and themes to improve your creativity and productivity. This month, Creative Market wants to present an amazing Big Bundle of their best products to Design Shack readers.

For November, they’ve rounded up 91 items worth over $1,100 — yours for just $39. Read on to see what’s included or jump straight to the bundle page for more information!

How to Perform Real-Time User Testing With FullStory

Reviews / 20 Aug 2015

How to Perform Real-Time User Testing With FullStory

Ever visited a website that was confusing, broken, or just plain hard to use? That site probably isn’t using FullStory.

There’s no doubt that user testing is incredibly important to create a website that’s easy to use, and performs well. But watching users in a testing environment can never compare to watching actual customer interactions, and looking at the stumbling blocks they face. Today we’re taking a look at how FullStory can help with just this, and give you a powerful insight into how your customers use your website.

Get 7 Free Days of Downloads With GraphicStock

Reviews / 13 Aug 2015

Get 7 Free Days of Downloads With GraphicStock

GraphicStock have a big collection of stock resources for designers — backgrounds, concepts, icons, patterns, textures, templates, photos and more.

Today we’re featuring a great deal, which gives you seven days of completely unrestricted access to the GraphicStock library. Read on to find out more about the site, how to redeem the deal, and see a collection of different assets and resources from the site!

Adobe Stock: Shaking Up the Stock Content Market

Business / 6 Aug 2015

Adobe Stock: Shaking Up the Stock Content Market

Adobe Stock has introduced a stock content service that’s directly integrated into creative tools and workflows.

Approximately 85% of creatives who buy stock use Adobe tools, and over 90% of stock sellers use Adobe’s tools to create their images. Adobe is working with buyers and sellers to create a streamlined experience that makes the flow of content more efficient for buyers and increases the opportunities for sellers.

Win a Retina 5k iMac With Design Shack Deals

Competitions / 18 Jun 2015

Win a Retina 5k iMac With Design Shack Deals

The 27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display features a breathtaking 14.7 million pixel display so text appears sharper than ever, videos are unbelievably lifelike, and you can see new levels of detail in your photos.

This week, we’re giving one of these fantastic computers away to one lucky winner through Design Shack Deals. Read on to find out how to enter!

Competitions / 26 May 2015

Win an Apple Thunderbolt Display With Design Shack Deals

The 27-inch Thunderbolt Display supersizes your view with an incredible 2560-by-1440 resolution. It features a universal MagSafe connector that charges your notebook, a Mini DisplayPort cable for easy connectivity, three USB ports, and lots more!

This week, we’re giving one of these brand new displays away to one lucky winner through Design Shack Deals. But don’t wait, because the competition ends in just over 24 hours. Read on to find out how to enter!

How to Make a Budget Wedding Website With Tumblr

Tumblr Themes / 5 May 2015

How to Make a Budget Wedding Website With Tumblr

Having a wedding website or blog is all the rage, and it can be a great way to keep your friends and family up-to-date with your wedding planning for the special day.

There are lots of services out there to help, but many are quite expensive or complicated. Today we’re taking a look at how you can build your own wedding website in a few simple steps, using the Wedding Tumblr theme.

You’ll have a wedding website to be proud of, in no time at all (here’s an example). All for the price of a couple of wedding magazines!

Stay Up-to-Date With Webdesigner News

Inspiration / 1 May 2015

Stay Up-to-Date With Webdesigner News

There are plenty of ways to stay across what’s happening in the design industry. Twitter, Facebook, your collection of RSS feeds, and a growing collection of newsletters and news aggregation sites.

Today we’re taking a look at the new Webdesigner News, to see how it fares, and explore how it can be a useful place to stay up-to-date with the latest news, announcements, releases, and sensations in the web design industry.

30 Premium Tumblr Themes With Beautiful, Minimal Design

Tumblr Themes / 29 Apr 2015

30 Premium Tumblr Themes With Beautiful, Minimal Design

There are thousands of Tumblr themes all over the web. To be perfectly frank, most of them aren’t great, and won’t do your creative work justice. Today we’ve collected thirty of our favourite premium Tumblr themes from across the web.

All of these cost a few dollars, but all of them will take your Tumblr blog to another level. From stylish, minimal Tumblr themes, through to those featuring big colours and bold images — we have a full selection. All of them are available to buy straight from Tumblr directly, and can be set up on your blog in a few minutes!

Introducing Media Temple’s WordPress Hosting

Business / 13 Apr 2015

Introducing Media Temple’s WordPress Hosting

We’ve hosted Design Shack with Media Temple for years. So we were very pleased when they came to us, and asked us to take a look at their new managed WordPress hosting solution.

Media Temple’s new full-featured WordPress hosting solution features four new, customizable and scalable plans. Whether you’re a photographer, web designer or creative agency, there’s a plan that should work for you. Today we’re taking a look at this new hosting product, to see how it stacks up!