Are you a fan of WordPress? Us, too! We came across the We Love WP site and quite enjoyed frolicking around in their gallery of sites built using WordPress. The nicest thing is that to qualify for inclusion, a site has to be custom-designed or a drastically-altered pre-built theme, so you get a nice variety of sites instead of a zillion blog-looking sites that are all nearly identical. You can even submit your own WordPress sites for inclusion in the gallery. All in all, a very cool site to check out.

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As designers in general, and web designers in particular, most of us have run into the age-old, “Oh, my God! You charge THAT MUCH to design a web site?”  It’s sad, but still the case that many clients are still unaware of the skill and time that goes into designing and building an effective web site.

Grace Smith has written a great post on why good design costs more than dinner at a so-so restaurant.

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A good article on fundamental strategies to build better, more relevant web sites, from research to design, testing and modification.

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Check out the suite of free search engine optimization tools, including Meta Tag and Keyword Analyzer, Link Popularity Checking Tool, Meta Tag Generator, Page Rank Checker and more.

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Wrangling with CSS can be a challenge at times, depending how technically-inclined a designer you are. Never fear, there are lots of great tools to help you make quick work of designing a CSS-based site.

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Social Media Explorer has written a great article on the basics of how to start marketing your business using social media. Which sites should you join? How do you keep track of it all? Check out the full article at the Social Media Explorer web site to learn how to hit the ground running.

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WordPress is a powerful tool that can be used not only to power your blog, but also as a highly-customizable content management system (CMS).  Pro Blog Design shows how to design and build a custom WordPress theme step by step.

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Once again, the folks at What Was I Thinking have hit upon a subject on the minds of many business owners – how can I use Twitter effectively to promote my business? How do I set it up? How will I find followers once I have an account?  This article is a great primer for those just getting started Twittering for business.

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NetTuts+ delivers a great post on the variety of ways that Twitter can be incorporated on a web site.

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The Web Design Ledger site features free sets of social media icons, drawn in a variety of styles – from the standard Web 2.0 look, to hand-drawn and wooden icons.

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