Some designers go that extra mile when they do not have to. Some designers are just freelancers. For some, it is not always a glamorous position, but those who give back are usually worlds above. Below are some designers and web developers who have given back with tutorials, graphics, resources, programs, plugins, and more. Please visit their sites, subscribe to their feeds (if you have not already), and drop a comment to tell them how much you appreciate their work.
Richard Darell is the man behind Minervity, a site that has quality tutorials that are extremely useful for web and graphic designers. From a tasteful design from the get go, this site backs it up with plenty of content. For a fairly new site (less than a year old at the time of this post), this site is something to talk about.
Darren Hoyt shares some useful and trendy WordPress tutorials. His site fully harnesses the power of templating and can be seen clicking from one page to the next.
Jean-Baptiste Jung seems to be in many places, and it is a good thing. However, I wanted to feature one of his sites –CatsWhoCode.com. This designer writes tutorials from php, css, and even some WordPress tutorials are very useful. This cat gives back.
Justin Tadlock seems to be a man on a mission. That mission seems to be making WordPress easier for others to customize.
Amélie Husson also known as @Othella on Twitter offers a lot of articles directing designers to inspirational works online with her site Vitali Software.
Joost de Valk’s site, Yoast is wonderfully designed. His knowledge of WordPress and dedication to making it easier for users to optimize their site. Some of his most popular plugins are Sociable, Google Analytics, and Yoast Breadcrumbs.
If you do not know Lisa Sabin-Wilson, you will now. She is the author of WordPress for Dummies. However it goes beyond that, she is a designer too. She runs a web design and webhosting business with a team of talent designers.
Jem runs a site called Jemjabella that offers several web resources like Bella Book, a guestbook script, as well as several others. She strives to spread the knowledge of web accessibility to the masses. She also has a tutorial site and two of her web creations are Rev.iew.me (a community for reviewing web sites), and staffs at CSSBake.
Webmasterish gives back a lot with his sites that feature a lot of resources. TopRoundups.com, SingleFunction.com, and EntityCode.com are just some of the work. Also, I can attest to it myself that Webmasterish, is ready to help on anything design-wise. He has been helping me with one of my projects that I will be opening soon.
Last on my list, and probably to some who regularly visit, is Matt Mulleweg. He took b2 and furthered the project as WordPress. With his team of developers, ideas, and happy to produce an open source product, he has given blogs, forum fanatics, and more new hope… or maybe I am going a bit beyond myself. He deserves it and if you have not, I suggest visiting him. He is a down-to-earth kind of guy. I know, I met him in person.
There are many more designers out there and I could go on forever, but I am against big lists. If you were not listed, do not be offended. How about you comment and fill in your favorite designers who give back?
Just a minor correction – I didn’t create cssbake, I just staff here 🙂 Nice post though, always worthwhile highlighting the people who actually bother to contribute their time and skills back to the community (because most of these people will have learnt somewhere too!) Of course, I’m not just saying that because you linked to me :p
I think developers are underappreciated and need to be mentioned from time to time.
Thank you for the correction… it has been changed to say you staff at CSSBake.
You deserved to be mention and it is noticed. I am tired of a lot of lists that just do not go out and find anyone outside their regular circle to mention in blog lists. That is a very narrow minded thought stream and from past experience in journalism, you have to dig a little to make more.
I have a feeling I am going to be cooking up a How To Make a Better Blog List #2 article…lol