In Inspiration Mar 12, 200846
Promote Yourself Through CSS Galleries
So you’ve spent the last few years developing your skills as a web designer, and now you want to offer your services to other people. Obviously, you need to create a portfolio site, but how do you get your new site in front of thousands of people? The best and easiest way is to get featured on CSS galleries. They are quickly becoming one of the first places professionals look when trying to find talented web designers.
Here are a few tips that will help you get featured and make the best of it:
Make it Gallery Worthy
First and foremost, your site needs to look good, but your idea of looking good may differ from that of the design community. It is important to know what trends are popular. So start surfing the galleries and soaking up the latest design styles. I am not encouraging you to just do what everybody else is doing, but instead learn how to apply current design trends in your own work.
As you have probably already figured out, the presentation of your site needs to be CSS driven. A good way to get a CSS site up and running is use Wordpress. Wordpress is a free blogging platform, that works just as well as a CMS, and using the default theme as a foundation is a great way to build your own theme. If you are just now making the transistion from table based layouts, it is also a great way to learn CSS. Wordpress as a CMS is a widely adopted practice and there are even galleries dedicated to this type of site.
Submitting with a Purpose
You could randomly submit your site to one gallery and more than likely end up on many more. However, if you take a more structured approach to your submitting, you end up getting featured on more sites. There are some galleries that want to be the first to feature you, and probably won’t feature you if you have already been seen on too many other sites. The key is to submit and get listed on these first, then follow with the less picky sites.
Make the Traffic Long Lasting
Being featured on CSS galleries can give you traffic increases of up to 5,000 uniques a day that last for several days. Once the initial spike ends, you will continue to see several hundred visits a day. This spike in traffic is great, but there is more benefits than just the direct referrals. Many of the gallery sites are very high ranking sites which means any outbound links to you tells Google that the content on your site must be important. However, people probably won’t be searching for terms related to your portfolio pieces. So, consider adding some relative content in the form of a blog or articles. If you end up using Wordpress to power your site, adding this type of section will be that much easier.
Guide to the Galleries
These two are the upper echelon of CSS Galleries. They only showcase the best of the best and according to them there aren’t very many.
These galleries only post top notch designs, and seem to be very particular in their selection. Make sure to submit to these first:
If you failed at getting listed on the above galleries, feel free to submit to all of these:
- CSS Mania
- CSS Drive
- CSS Artillery
- Unmatched Style
- CSS Based
- CSS Bloom
- CSS clip
- CSS Collection
- CSS Container
- CSS Demo
- CSS Drive
- CSS Elite
- CSS Flavor
- CSS Galaxy
- CSS Globe
- CSS Hazard
- CSS Import
- CSS Impress
- CSS Love
- CSS Mess
- CSS Princess
- CSS Reboot
- CSS Showcase
- CSS Smooth Operator
- CSS Top Sites
- CSS-Galleries.com
- Cssspot
- Design Meltdown
- In CSS
- Light on Dark
- Liquid Designs
- Most Inspired
- Submit CSS
- The Daily Slurp
46 Comments
Mar 13, 2008
I think your tips on making a site “Gallery Worthy” are a little misguided. You say you’re not encouraging designers to just do what everybody else is doing, but CSS galleries tend to feature sites that look a certain way, and designing a portfolio to fit in with this probably means foregoing any sense of individuality in the presentation of the portfolio.
Also, you advise anyone new to CSS layouts to try using Wordpress. There are a couple of issues with this; firstly, there’s no way that anyone using a Wordpress theme designed by somebody else is going to get their site featured on a design gallery. Secondly, the way that Wordpress themes are put together means that the stylesheets are often fairly complicated, and certainly not a good starting point for beginners.
Mar 13, 2008
Interesting and handy article, thanks.
Mar 13, 2008
Robin,
Thanks for the comment.
I think CSS Galleries feature a wide variety of design styles, not just one certain kind. My suggestion was to encourage people to get out there and see what is considered great design. If you never compare your work to others, you will not grow as a designer. If you have another suggestion for finding web design inspiration, please share.
I’m sorry if my suggestion of using WordPress was unclear. I don’t think that I mentioned using someone else’s theme. I did however mention “building off of” the CSS provided. Maybe I need to re-word that.
Mar 13, 2008
you left off unmatchedstyle.com
Mar 14, 2008
Henry,
I’d still say that using a Wordpress theme, whether it be the default or somebody else’s, isn’t the ideal starting point for a beginner. As you no doubt already know, a Wordpress theme is broken into several parts; the header, sidebar, footer and so on, and I’d say that starting off with just a straightforward, self-contained single page layout, and going from there would be a much easier introduction to CSS layouts - but I guess that’s just me, and I’m certainly not knocking Wordpress as a platform - it’s a really nice, flexible blogging engine
Mar 14, 2008
I think CSS Galleries feature a wide variety of design styles, not just one certain kind. My suggestion was to encourage people to get out there and see what is considered great design.
I completely disagree with this statement, with an exception to the better galleries, they all tend to pick the same styles. Hell, one is even called light on Dark and only features sites with light text on dark backgrounds…
Mar 14, 2008
To submit to many of these CSS galleries, you can go to:
CssGalleryList.com
There are direct links to the submission pages of each site listed along with the Alexa rank.
While it is frustrating to see many of the same sites featured in many of these galleries, they can be extremely helpful. Not that long ago many web design galleries were focused on entirely Flash sites done for clients such as Nike and Coca-Cola. Now there’s nothing wrong with those sites, but for the vast majority of us as designers, we don’t have clients with nearly unlimited budgets and instant brand recognition. Many of the sites in these CSS galleries showcase great design done for small to medium sized businesses on a budget.
Mar 14, 2008
Robin,
That is a good point. I know everybody is different, but I tend to learn better from seeing something in it’s final form and then picking it apart.
Mar 14, 2008
Robin,
I do think Wordpress’ default themes have some bulky CSS. However, I usually always start with the sandbox theme (http://www.plaintxt.org/themes/sandbox/) since it places CSS hooks on the BODY element and others relating to time of day, date, pageID, etc. I highly recommend it as a “clean slate” for Wordpress that is both powerful and elegant and also very useful for creating a theme to distribute as well.
Regards,
Chris
Mar 15, 2008
Try out http://www.inspirationfolder.com . They seem to be the biggest gallery on the Internet and it seems to offer something different than all the rest;Inspiration Folders.
Mar 16, 2008
Good article.
You should add UniqueCSS.com to your list. Unique CSS only features 8 designs each month. Users vote on these designs and the design with the highest ranking wins $25!
Mar 21, 2008
You left off http://www.cssleak.com
Thanks for this article
Mar 21, 2008
Whoa. I’m always on the lookout for some nice galleries to browse. This just might be THE LIST.
Mar 21, 2008
There’s a new css gallery. http://csspick.com/
Mar 22, 2008
just for you guys to know, i have learned css by editing wordpress themes, changing colors, then pictures, then make my own pictures and upload them, its a very good way to learn and understand css
Robin Parker: i think you just want to call for attention, nothing more…
nice post Henry
Mar 24, 2008
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Mar 25, 2008
Don’t forget http://www.boxedcss.com
Mar 25, 2008
The list is great… Another gallery which shows only the best designs it is FantastiCSS http://www.fantasticss.com/
Mar 31, 2008
http://zeniltuo.com - hodge list with showcase galleries
Apr 8, 2008
Here’s another great gallery:
http://www.cssdivine.com
Apr 10, 2008
Another one
http://welldonesites.com
Apr 16, 2008
There’s a lot of codes on the default wordpress theme and it will definitely eat up the time studying “why is this here and what does it do?”
I think it’s better to start off with your own hand made css rather than starting off studying how css works on the default wordpress theme.
Or probably have some one code your design for you. Why waste your time with codes instead of focusing your creative juices in designing?
Apr 17, 2008
Francis,
You are right, there is extra stuff within a WordPress template, and maybe it might be difficult for some to sort it out, but I have to disagree with you on “learning CSS is a waste of time” for a web designer.
Apr 17, 2008
Yeah… I think I made a mistake there. Designers do need to learn css and its limitation so that they won’t make a design that can’t be done on css. Or that it can be done but not to what the customer is expecting.
What I said before about learning css that designer should focus more on designing than learning how CSS works on a WordPress template.
I’d love to hear your ideas on why designers should learn CSS. Care to share some thoughts?
Apr 17, 2008
Francis,
I think we have two different definitions of “web designer”. Your’s doesn’t go beyond Photoshop, and mine includes designing the look and feel as well as designing the front end markup and presentation, and sometimes a little scripting.
So to answer your question…if you visit Krop, and do a search for “web designer”, you would be lucky to find many jobs that don’t require a strong knowledge of XHTML/CSS, along with many other skills beyond Photoshop.
Apr 17, 2008
Henry,
I see. The previous company I was working with has 2 set of teams, one for the web designers and one for web developers. Probably I’m just used to that way of thinking. And of course the contest holders of 99designs (previously sitepoint’s contest). Most of them, especially those who has a web business, ask a design and rarely have them developed by the same designer.
In an outsourcing point of view, what would you think is cheaper? Get one designer and one developer? Or hire 2 web ultimate (designer/developer/[enter something else])?
Apr 18, 2008
As we all, in the field, learn to become designers, developers, and such stated things, we should open ourselves to becoming all. Personally, I disagree that there should be a said designer and a said developer. The designer should learn developing and the developer should learn designing. To create such in depth works of art and knowledge, limiting yourself is only holding yourself back.
In the position of someone hiring one or the other or both, I would prefer 2 who know both over 1 of each. The team would probably bring more knowing both fields than specializing in only one.
Apr 20, 2008
Hmmm… For personal reasons, I also think that it’s better to be good at both design and develop. It’s makes your corporate value higher. But specialization should also be taken into consideration.
Anyway, I think we’re getting off the topic here.
Apr 23, 2008
Here is another good design gallery.
http://designgrabs.com
Thanks
Apr 27, 2008
Thanks for the list. I’ll be trying it out soon!
Apr 28, 2008
[...] recently read a post on Design Reviver about promoting your site on design galleries, and they give some great advice. I used to work on [...]
May 5, 2008
man i can’t believe there are so many css galleries. I recently wen through the gallery process with my new site, and learned that stylegala hasn’t updated their site for over 100 days, and CSS Beauty updates very irregularly. They are no longer the major players.
I find CSS Drive is great, except for a couple of odd choices here and there, and CSS Mania was bringing me in over 1000 visitors a day for a 3-4 days.
May 5, 2008
mooty,
Yes I think you are right about CSS Beauty and Sylegala. They have lost a lot of visitors because of their lack of updates.
May 5, 2008
thanks! i was looking for this css gallery list. thanks again
May 12, 2008
I actually really started learning CSS by making a few CSS Zen Garden (www.csszengarden.com) layouts. For a beginner, I think that’s a better choice than wordpress, because you can focus exclusively on the CSS, where as I’ve never created a wordpress theme that didn’t involve editing the xHTML and often even some PHP scripting.
Jun 3, 2008
“Number one css gallery of great sites.” - http://www.onecss.com
Jun 11, 2008
I think having Stylegala.com up there as the premiere site to be on is a farse. That site has such outdated stuff, it’s not worth going to. Their last entry was in FEBRUARY and it’s JUNE!!! They say they have the freshest content on their submit page, but they are dreaming. That site is a waste of time. And Google thinks so too. Their PR score is only 6/10. Many of the “lower tiered” ones score much higher. CSS Vault is THE one you want to be on for SEO. It has a Google PR of 8/10. Best Web Gallery comes next with a score of 7/10.
CSS Beauty has a PR of 7/10 also, but they don’t have fresh stuff on their site, so I would definitely count them lower on the chain. If you are looking for “fresh”, Stylegala and CSS Beauty are NOT the sites to go to.
Jun 25, 2008
you left to mention the new Gallery http://www.csscount.com
Jul 2, 2008
Here is a huge 377 list of all the CSS Galleries found at http://topcss.stumbleupon.com
Jul 4, 2008
CSS Design : Gallery & list of CSS Galleries
http://www.css-design.fr
Jul 4, 2008
Great resource! You also left off http://www.cssblaze.com
Jul 21, 2008
I might also add: http://css.wearethebuzz.com
It is currently the most frequently updated css gallery with a new design added every 4 hours!
Stay tuned.
Jul 23, 2008
There is one specifically for WordPress, too, http://welovewp.com. I submitted my site there and received a few hundred visits.
Good point about looking at which galleries are good for SEO purposes. I hadn’t thought about that!
Jul 25, 2008
You should also consider adding to the list http://webgallery.crazyleafdesign.com/ . It only features top notch CSS and Flash Designs, and has RSS feeds with large images, unlike other galleries.
Aug 9, 2008
Thanks for the list!
Aug 12, 2008
CSS “Cascading Style Sheets” Lessons
css list style Properties and examples — http://css-lessons.ucoz.com/list-css-examples.htm
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