It’s hard to put a finger on what makes a good website design go the extra mile to be amazing. That’s why the team at Modern Signal is careful to know where to go for the best, most useful information on top industry trends. It all comes back to making sure we deliver the best design and database solutions on the market.
Here are our team members’ top three picks for go-to websites to answer any question: from UI/UX and web design, to SEO and technology trends:
Best Site for UI/UX Development: Nielsen Norman Group
“I get the email alerts from this group,” says co-founder Eleanor Frias. “I love the concept of putting usability first, above everything else.”
The Nielsen Norman Group is a leading voice in the user experience field. They conduct research and evaluate interfaces of all shapes and sizes. For a taste of their commentary, try “Flat Vs Deep Website Hierarchy,” which provides valuable insight into structuring your website. The post “Serif vs. Sans-Serif Fonts for HD Screens“ is also worth reading, revealing that the trend of nicer computer screens has lead to new usability guidelines for on-screen typography.
Other strong IX/UX and web design websites for us include A List Apart and Smashing Magazine, which both feature articles with lots of personality and opinion.
Best Site for SEO: The SEO Book Blog
“I visited this site a lot during my initial research of SEO,” said Cathy Field, Modern Signal’s veteran project manager.
The SEO Book Blog provides great content for marketing, search, and online business from an algorithmic, publishing, and business model perspective. If you’re just getting started with SEO, try “How to Win in Local Internet Marketing”. For a more intermediate level education, “Optimizing the SEO Model,” a post that discusses Google’s recent algorithm shift, is a valuable investment of time.
Runners up? Try Moz and Search Mojo. Says Cathy, “I found that Google brought me to all three of these sites and answered most of my SEO questions.”
Best Development Website: Stack Overflow
This site is the first stop for co-founder and veteran developer, David Hammond. Says David, "9 times out of 10 it has the best answers to technical problems and questions that come up in the course of development”.
Wondering where to start? Stack Overflow is based on a forum model and is great for problem-solving, so visit the homepage and perform a search for anything specific you’re looking for, including particular topic tags. Popular questions include “How Can I Prevent SQL Injection in PHP,” and “The Definitive C++ Book Guide and List,” and forum threads are updated regularly.
For more tech blogs, we also recommend Simple Talk for SQL Server, Scott Gu’s Blog for ASP.NET, and Raymond Camden's Blog for ColdFusion, PhoneGap, and jQuery.
Did we catch any of your favorites? Let us know in the comments if there’s a great blog we’re missing out on!
Posted on December 16, 2013 10:35:42 AM EST by Catherine Field
