Smashing Magazine Needs Your Help Today

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Smashing-magazine-advertisement in Smashing Magazine Needs Your Help Today What happened here today, on the Smashing Magazine’s website? Well, here is the thing: we need your help. Only sound financial conditions can guarantee the steady stream of high quality content which you are used to on Smashing Magazine. Today we need your financial support. Please help us by buying our new eBook “Professional Web Design”.The book contains a selection of our best articles about professional Web design and the business side of web development. It contains 10 already published articles and 2 exclusive, newly written pieces. The book costs only $9.90.Please do not worry: Smashing Magazine is not about to go out of business, but we want to make sure that the situation doesn’t get worse over the next months.[Offtopic: by the way, have you already visited Smashing Magazine's Facebook fan page? Join the community for a stream of useful resources, updates and giveaways!]So what seems to be the problem?We must admit that the situation is quite complicated right now. We have recently moved to an office and we hired more people, and we invested more money and other resources into more profound, in-depth articles written by professionals and high-profile designers and developers. Last year we have invested a lot in the Smashing Book and although the revenue was OK, the costs were huge and we had way too many unexpected costs and problems along the way.Finally, in February our traffic, server and external freelancing costs increased, together with many other things. In the end, we are now experiencing a bit difficult situation as our hands are tied and there is not much we can do: we can either reduce the costs by removing some features or posting less frequently (which we don’t want to do), or revising our financial situation and building up new revenue streams (which is what we decided to do and what we did).A couple of hours ago we made a quite bold move. We redirected all Smashing Magazine’s pages to one single page, the one asking for your financial support by purchasing our brand new eBook. We asked for your help. The interest of our loyal and supportive readership was huge, and we received many negative comments of people blaming us for being greedy, earning too much money anyway and having no conscience. It really hurts to hear this.Right now we are in the situation where we need some time to get the new projects running; yet we still have the high costs and advance payments. Which is why we decided to make this bold move. We didn’t mean to offend someone or look greedy, it’s more about us hoping that the community could help Smashing Media stabilize its financial situation and keeping it profitable in the months to come.The site is available now. We hope that the community will appreciate our efforts and support us in one way or another. We can’t exist without you, and we are aware of that. But sometimes some things need to be done. Today is one of those days.Thank you.About the BookThis e-book contains a selection of the best articles about professional Web design that have been published on Smashing Magazine in 2009 and 2010. The articles have been carefully edited and prepared for the PDF version; some screenshots and links were removed to make the book easier to read and print out. Free book sample (pdf).This book presents guidelines for professional Web development, including communicating with clients, creating a road map to a successful portfolio, rules for professional networking and tips on designing user interfaces for business Web applications. The book shares expert advice, and it also helps you learn how to respond effectively to design criticism, use storytelling for a better user experience and apply color theory to your professional designs.Buy now and download PDF right away!This book is not protected by DRM. It is available exclusively here, in the Smashing Shop. Please respect our work and the hard efforts of our writers. If you received this book from a source other than the Smashing Shop, please support us by purchasing your copy in our online store.Table of ContentsOn 242 pages you will read:

Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites (Paul Boag)
Portfolio Design Study: Design Patterns and Current Practices (Vitaly Friedman)
Creating A Successful Online Portfolio (Sean Hodge)
Better User Experience With Storytelling (Francisco Inchauste)
Designing User Interfaces For Business Web Applications (Janko Jovanovic)
Progressive Enhancement And Standards Do Not Limit Web Design (new article by Christian Heilmann)
Color Theory for Professional Designers (Cameron Chapman)
Is John The Client Dense or Are You Failing Him? (Paul Boag)
How To Identify and Deal With Different Types Of Clients (Robert Bowen)
How To Respond Effectively To Design Criticism (Andrew Follett)
Web Designer’s Guide to Professional Networking (new article by Steven Snell)
Group Interview: Expert Advice For Students and Young Web Designers (Steven Snell)