A Spot of Community News
Oct 15th in News by Collis
As most of you know, this site is still finding its feet in terms of content, format, writers, and delivery. But things are starting to come together and I have a few announcements for you all!
More Writers
First and foremost, I'd like to welcome a new regular tutorial writer to the team, all the way from sunny Brazil! His name is Zee and you may even be familiar with his excellent tutorials from his home site Abduzeedo. A couple of my favorites are Creating Smoke and Magic Lighting Effects. Zee will be putting together a couple of fantastic tutorials every month and is the first step towards diversifying the voice on the site and making sure you don't all get sick of reading my ramblings! Additionally a few tutorials have been sent in as guest contributions, and I'll be putting the first one up later this week. Don't forget if you'd like to write a guest tutorial, we will pay for anything we publish and you can get more details on our Write a Tutorial page.Site Advertising and All
Currently the site's budget is ... erm .. limited so Zee and I will be the only regular writers, but I hope that as advertising starts selling and the site gets on to a roll this situation will change. Next week I'm going to be ditching AdSense as I think it looks a little cheap and doesn't really produce much income anyway. Instead we'll be switching to relevant affiliate programs like Arsenal (which as you probably know we've had on the site for some time). So we'll see how that goes; if nothing else it'll look a little prettier than ugly Adsense! Additionally I'd like to thank all the people who have been donating with the Buy-Me-a-Coffee button down the bottom. There have been over 30 donations in the last month! This is so fantastic as it really says something about the audience here at PSDTUTS. There's not many sites out there where people voluntarily give money ... at least not many that I've heard of :-)New Site Design
Recently I put up an article about web design and when the site was frontpaged on Digg, there were lots of comments about the quality of the PSDtuts design itself. Normally I ignore most comments on Digg as they don't exactly make you feel good, but in this case the criticisms of the site design were fairly well-founded. In particular, this brown on brown color scheme isn't very easy on the eye for people with low-contrast monitors. Additionally I have my own pet peeve which is that there is no strong brand here, the logo being a rather weak, forgettable bit of text. So being a designer, I couldn't resist redesigning the site! The Photoshop layouts are all done and as soon as I get a chance, I'll be cutting it all up into Wordpress. Note that I have a history of taking a long time to do the actual building of sites so it may be a little while before I finish that! And because this time I was organized, I've been screenshotting the design process along the way to write up a little tutorial on it when the whole thing is done. To give you a taste of what the new design is going to look like, here's a teaser screenshot...
- Community Link Feed I've never done it before, but I think I know a way to add a community link feed to the site so that anyone can add their favorite link or news item, and once a day they'll be screened and added to the site. That way as the PSDtuts grows, there will be an easy, accessible traffic source for our readers!
- User Image Account What is super cool about writing tutorials on a site like this is that readers take those ideas and methods away and then create their own versions, building on the tutorials and often improving them. For this reason we're going to open a public Flickr account for PSDtuts readers to add their images, which will then be piped through on to the site's sidebar.
Happy Blog Action Day
Finally I'd like to mention that for those of you who hadn't heard, today is Blog Action Day, a day when over 16,000 bloggers are posting in unison about the environment. It's a really exciting initiative that a couple of other bloggers and I cofounded and which has grown rather huge, reaching a combined audience of - wait for it - 12.5 million people! PSDtuts isn't participating, but you can read about the initiative and what we've been up to over at NorthxEast, by visiting the Action Blog or by just visiting your favorite blog and reading their Blog Action Day post! So a very happy Blog Action Day to you all!Related Posts
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User Comments
( ADD YOURS )Ravi Vora October 15th
I am excited to see the new blog design!
You’re right, it takes a lot of great readers to be such an involved community.
My blog is growing to a great reader base and my photography/design section has been influential too. Keep creating great stuff!
( )pkchukiss October 16th
You have some really useful tutorials for building Web 2.0 styled pictures and websites - I’m very grateful that you guys are around: your tutorials have made my school projects suck less!
( )Mike Robinson October 16th
Can’t wait to see the full new design
The screenshot looks pretty cool
( )Jonny October 16th
The Design here is perfect, but it is true that it’s hard to read on some screens. Nonetheless a great one regarding the use of brownish colours…!
( )Sahil Lavingia October 16th
Looks a bit too much like FSw, but I guess it’s alright since you’d like a familiar family of sites.
Looking forward to it!
- Sahil.
( )Free stock photos October 16th
Same here. I love the brown on brown though, and I’m happy to still see a glimpse of it in the screenshot
( )Scott October 16th
The Flickr idea sounds great! Would be great to see what other people have done.
( )fearlex October 16th
Can wait to see the new stuffs that are coming in, i found this site a while back, and now is on my top ten sites of choices on my Google Reader
( )Hyder October 16th
I like how you are shifting from the brown in the text area to an off white. Can’t wait to see the new version…even though I know you’ll take your sweet time with it.
( )PieterC October 16th
I’m looking forward to the new site layout. This is the only quality photoshop site I know. I hope you can keep up the good work.
( )Nathan Rutman October 16th
Since I think this site has a HUGE potential to really take off, I would suggest checking out hosting advertising for The Deck:
http://www.coudal.com/deck/
It’s a design-specific advertising network that is still quite small (as far as ad networks go), but they have huge brands advertising (Adobe, Veer, etc.) so I would hope they pay well.
I don’t know if you’re big enough to get their attention yet, but I would at least check them out and get the conversation rolling.
Thanks so much for providing this site! I’m very excited to see where it goes!
-Nate
( )Giancarlo.D October 16th
Great news. You are doing a great job. Keep it up!
( )Stephen October 16th
A true mark of excellence is always raising the bar. Sounds like great things are in store.
( )Lyndsey October 16th
Awesome, can’t wait for the re-design loving Zee’s work too what an exciting collaboration!
( )Marty October 16th
I’m excited to see it. I’m starting to realize that evolution is what sites are all about. You try it….then you try something else……then you try again till it works.
I don’t personally think the site is all that bad as it is, however….but still excited to see what happens.
( )mediamelt October 16th
Ug, white. I liked the way the site is now fairly muted in color, it made the tut images really pop. Sounds like you have great plans for the site, I’ll hold my judgment on the new design ’till your done in full! Welcome Zee!
( )Jade October 16th
I like low contract color scheme. White background is just too strong to my eyes. If this current color scheme is a trouble for some people, I think may be something like this comment panel, dark gray on lite gray is good. Just a suggestion. We don’t know until the new design is done…
( )Robin Rath October 16th
Keep up the good work, as long as you keep posting content I will keep coming back…and that cup of coffee is on its way in the near future!
( )jo October 16th
Great news and a great site! In your tutorial about the ne design: will you also explain “how to bring the psp in the internet” im a total newbie in this section and i can’t really imagine how it works.
( )Michael October 16th
thanks for the update. your arsenal of sites here are most excellent.
which brings up a point: Arsenal
where would one go for more info with regard to the Arsenal affiliate program? a quick googling provided no clue, and i’ve got to run now for a meeting.
thanks in advance!
michael
( )Hooper October 16th
This is a great site! I just found it about 3 weeks ago. I’ve learned a lot and like the layout and the quality tutorials. I use 3ds max and Photoshop.
( )Andrew October 16th
I love the current design, but hell the new one looks even better!
( )Bob October 16th
I really like the current design, but from what I see of the new one, it looks nice too.
Good luck with the advertising.
( )Phillip October 16th
As I was reading this I though what a great idea it would be to make the re-design process one of your tutorials. So glad that you thought so too!
Great tutorials, inspirational!
I’ll look forward to the web design one.
( )Eli October 16th
Wow! Sounds really exciting, and the new design looks exciting. Love all of your work so far, Collis, keep up the good work.
( )SATORi October 16th
Bravo, am sure this is going to be a blast for you guys, and we are definately going to enjoy the rest of the show. We are waiting for all these changes to take place, patiently, believe me.
I wonder what new content will await us as well.
Cheers and keep up the awesome work!
( )Michael October 16th
great show indeed. this is one of my sites to enjoy a new or a re-read with my morning coffee.
could you elaborate more on affiliate programs like Arsenal, specifically where to find more info ON Arsenal.
and again, thanks for your vision.
( )Jens MÃ¥nsson October 16th
I found this site about a week ago and it is the nicest looking PS tutorial site i ever seen! And the tutorials are really great, unlike most pages ive seen who has some good but mostly crap! More tutorials are needed though, and its really great that there is a new guy in the crew =). Thanks and keep up the good work guys!
( )Lauren Robb October 17th
I love this site. I have subscribed to your newsletter as well as your RSS feed. I visit the site everyday over lunch to try new techniques out. So far my favorite tutorial is the Advanced Glow effect:
http://psdtuts.com/tutorials-effects/advanced-glow-effects/
Great work! I look forward to seeing more of your tutorials.
Lauren Robb
( )winnipegjetsonline@mts.net
http://www.winnipegjetsonline.com
Ro Walsh October 17th
Ahh - I really like the current design - and beacuse it’s neutral it makes the project files stand out that much more… Anyway, I’m sure you’ll come up with something great. A stronger brand isn’t going to hurt anyone either.
Thanks again for the great stuff you are publishing - looking forward to seeing some of Zee’s work too! All the best.
( )Stevi3 October 17th
1. this is a beautiful website
( )2. i cant WAIT to read the tutorial on the web design process. That will be awesome
3. WELCOME ZEE!
Matt M. October 17th
Great site man! I’m loving the tutorials, finally getting some time (and a reason) to dust off my photoshop. Can’t wait for the new site design and such. Hopefully I’ll be able to donate a little money myself soon, and maybe even submit a guest tutorial
( )Chris Welch October 17th
Really looking forward to the new site design, I’m sure will be just as killa’ as this one.
I hope when you do the new site design tut, you include the Wordpress side of things as well.
Keep up the great work!
( )Blog Theme Machine October 18th
Hi,
I have to say that the new teaser screenshot looks good, but I personally like the darker design on here now. I am not sure in the screenshot, but the logo area might need a little more “design/branding” as from that screenshot it just looks like text alone? I might be wrong, and if I am, sorry.
Great work as always here.
( )Kasabian October 18th
With that polish tutorial in mind you can’t do much wrong in the future in my opinion. Brown on brown is the new hype, trust me.
( )Scott N. October 19th
I’ve heard that flickr sometimes closes accounts if they’re graphic-heavy (instead of featuring mostly photos.) Perhaps you could instead have users upload the images to their own account and tag them with “PSDTuts” and a article specific tag (which you could mention at the end of each article) and pull them in that way.
( )Jimmy V October 19th
This site is an amazing resource! I can’t wait for more stuff!
( )Cronnie October 20th
I must say this site is great!
I have learnt something from every single one of your tutorials, you guys have a firm place on my bookmark list
( )Chris Biele October 21st
You have a really great site here fo sho. I love your subtle stylings highlighted with popping effects.
I was directed here via the Creative Guy website jdempsey.com. He seems to like your Advanced Glow Effects, and I couldn’t argee more. As soon as I get the fan fixed in my PB I’ll have some new Glows of my own to post in the new Flicker group!
( )Hauff October 31st
This site must continue it’s journey. We now have the BEST Photoshop Tutorial site EVER.
( )Neo November 1st
ok cllin I’ve been scannig through the website for your emai address but can’t find it. I need your attention on some thing.
I’ve created logos for my band inspired from your tutorials and poste themon my blog. Please have and look and give me ur inputs. I’m simply in love with the white bg one. But fr some reason no1 else seems to like it. Could you please take and alook and give me your suggestions on how to improve. Please.
http://professio.blogspot.com
( )dan November 7th
Hi. Can’t wait to see the full new design. The screenshot looks pretty cool - When will it be loaded?
( )Paz November 19th
Congrats for the new redesign, Its concise and comprehensive.
And for the logo, how about having some cool web 2.0 shapes
( )Jade November 22nd
Hey, Good job! Although I am missing the dark background but overall, the site identity and navigation look so much better now, but the comment is very hard to write because text color is so light. I think you are going to fix this soon, right?
( )