In need of quick design for a website, if you are like me and you probably developing the website as a favour to a friend or family member but don’t have enough time for drudging out designs your best bet is a free online CSS templates that you can download and personalize for use:

http://www.freecsstemplates.org/

http://www.free-css-templates.com/

http://www.free-css.com/

Else if you need to put together a simple a quick and easy website which you give over to user to take control of the content then your easiest bet is using word press as a Content Management System Mark Kirby has an excellent tutorial on his website http://mark-kirby.co.uk/2008/wordpress-as-a-cms-talk-and-sample-code/

If you want to add an album to your website but don’t have the space or bandwidth I suggest use online photo social sites like and Flickr and use the API’s to retrieve images on demand Or just hotlink from your Facebook albums. A bit dodgy but it works!

I wrote a tutorial on how to use flickr API which I presented at Bar Camp Brighton 3 http://etheldcofie.wordpress.com/2008/05/19/flickr-api-how-to-perform-authenticating-using-php/

If you need to knock out your own custom social netwrok for your friends, family or people with similar interest( chocolate loving geeks perhaps !) then use Ning.com. It is great platform that allows you to create your own social network and even register a domain that points to your customized social network.

This section will be updated as often as i can with short cuts and life hacks… watch this space