Mandar Apte

UI/UX Designer from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Category: Web Design

Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design, interface design, authoring, including standardised code and proprietary software; user experience design; and search engine optimisation.

  • Pages not working after installing or activating WordPress Multisite i.e WP MU

    Here is the solution to this problem: when you activate wp mu on your single domain, i.e. you add a subdomain through WordPress MultiSite, suddenly your pages are not showing up, and it is through the ‘404 Not Found’ Error…

    404 Error File Not Found

    First thing you have to do is navigate to:

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  • Search Engine Optimisation for Title Tag & How it works & How it is crawled by Google, A lesson learned from my own portfolio website

    Here is what I learned from Google’s Web Crawling algorithm over the years,

    For the last three to two years, I have used ‘Design Portfolio | Mandar Apte’ as my title tag for my personal design portfolio website’s homepage, i.e. ‘Page Name | Website Name’. This is nothing more than to explain to people that they can get a complete insight into the website by just looking at the title on Google’s search result page.

    But for the last few days, I got this result when I searched my name on Google. Yes, I was listed first when I searched for a name, i.e mandar apte,

    But the result was something like this: ‘Mandar Apte: Design Portfolio’ instead of my curated title ‘Design Portfolio | Mandar Apte’. It seems Google altered my website homepage’s title tag on their search results. I was amassed, wondering why this should happen, and then I contacted Google support for the same.

    mandar-apte-search-results-before

    & I got this answer from them…

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  • WordPress Installation Security & Performance Boosting with easy .htaccess hacks.

    I am writing it down to help you secure your website & boost your WordPress website performance with this simple .htaccess hack.

    Implement or copy-paste this code in .htaccess in your root of WordPress installation to secure wp-include only files.

    # Block the include-only files.
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
    RewriteRule ^wp-admin/includes/ - [F,L]
    RewriteRule !^wp-includes/ - [S=3]
    # RewriteRule ^wp-includes/[^/]+\.php$ - [F,L]
    RewriteRule ^wp-includes/js/tinymce/langs/.+\.php - [F,L]
    RewriteRule ^wp-includes/theme-compat/ - [F,L]
    
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  • How Odd Numbers are out & Even Numbers are in for Web Designer & Icon Designer or even for any designer

    While I was designing Icons for my client, I realised that it is true in website design as it is in Icon Design: you can work in odd numbers,

    When you have even numbers like 14px Square or 16px Square, you can easily fit a round box inside it, but in a 15px Square Icon, it’s tough to manage…

    Here is The example…

    Odd Numbers of Pixels:

    Odd Pixels with 15px by 15px

    15pxicon

    Even Numbers of Pixels:

    10px by 10px, with 1px of rounded corners, it fails to generate an illusion of circular when viewed at actual size or maximum size

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  • Useful Free Services for Web Designers

    This is real useful service for Web Designers who is moving his or her server to new location or moving hosting service from one service provider to another.

    Service’s Name is ‘Open DNS’

    It’s related to DNS (Domain Name System)

    As WikiPedia Explains what is DNS:

    The Domain Name System (DNS) is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities. A Domain Name Service resolves queries for domain names (which are easier to understand and utilize when accessing the internet) into IP addresses for the purpose of locating computer services and devices worldwide.

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  • Design Schools or Design Institutes in India

    India’s Education System (mainly Mumbai University from where I belong) is based on 10 + 2 + 4 years of graduation program.

    For applying to graduation program in Art you need to have following qualification, You must have 10 + 2 passed certified program that means you must pass Secondary School Certification (SSC) & then 2 years of Higher Secondary Certification (HSC) then only you can apply to Art Institutes like Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art & Sir J. J. School of Art for graduation in Art.

    In last few years common entrance test like MH-AAC-CAT (Maharashtra Applied Arts & Crafts Common Aptitude Test) are introduced in Maharashtra state. By passing this test it allows you to choose between art colleges for graduation in Maharashtra.

    Graduation in Design
    You have to start to learn design only through Art Colleges as there are no design colleges available for graduation in design.
    But there are few courses available to graduate in Design from NID & IDC.
    NID has ‘Graduate Diploma Program in Design (GDPD)’

    Following are the famous art collages mainly in Maharashtra, India.

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  • Why we don’t do Pilot Projects or so called Free Mockup Designs? & Why Pilot Projects & Free Mockup design doesn’t work?

    Few collection of thoughts from my experience of design freelancing & pursuing design processes & doing design oriented business for living for last more than 4 years.

    When somebody asks for Mockup before starting any paid & finalised project,

    Following situations can be seen & felt by designer

    • Client is unsure about prospect of project
    • Client has unpractical approach towards project
    • Client lack proper investment & money
    • Client is hesitant about future of project
    • It’s just real waste of time if you are not going to paid for it
    • There is confusion in conversation of respective parties client & designer
    • Time is blocked by unpaid Mockup design process
    • Designer can’t take more interesting & paid work because he is occupied by just making Mockups
    • Mockup has no value for showcasing in real world because people want what is more sellable content & design & finished product

    Now you can understand why we don’t do Mockups for any clients or any prospective client.

    Thanks & Regards
    Mandar Apte

  • Using large font size for web content which is what works in real situations in daily website browsing life

    Designing Websites through CMS – Content Management Systems is big business nowadays.

    Designing Website themes with Font that seems right to eye than seems more readable to eye & become eye candy of viewer is big challenge for designer.

    Designing website with font variation from font size from 5px to 25 px is big trend that captured the whole designer community world wide.

    What I think readability & getting attention of reader through large or more readable font size should be criteria. Using font size of 14.5px to help reader to concentrate & not irritate his eye to read small font size of so called ‘content’ area.

    Using large font size & grading content on basis of maximize of 14.5px font size should be right direction to move forward.

    Large font size for content like 14.5px helps communicator to convey message to reader & gain effective result of making him frequent visitor to website to which he loves to read the content from.

    Here are Pros of using 14.5px font size or more

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  • Design Inspirations: Getting Inspired…!!! to do design & finally learning from it…!!!

    Today with broadband connection on my iMac & connected to the World Wide Web fearlessly with my own website & design blog… Switching from one website to another, reading blogs, going through Twitts, reading Facebook updates… Sometimes I feel It’s really easy to get inspirations through web if you do it right…

    Not like olden days when you only have to visit art gallery exhibition to see art & get inspired with…

    Here are few links that I find as inspiration to learn & do design…

    Apple Developer
    A website dedicated to Apple Mac, iOS & safari developers. Registration is free & site is loaded with deleopment learning videos & ebook learning resources… So happy Learning…!!!

    Adobe Developer Connection
    Adobe’s website do feature developer resources to develop for their adobe products or just learn to design using thei products like Photoshop, Illustrator etc.
    Adobe Developer connect is do present on iTunes Podcast Directory… You can find it here.

    Adobe TV
    Adobe TV is like adobe’s version of YouTube but all gathered to learn & get inspired about designing & learningthrough their products.

    Animation Mentor Blog
    You may know ‘Animation Mentor’ as an Online Animation Training school for learning Character Animation. But they do featured their own blog which is worth reading & bookmarking. Here is link for ‘Animation Mentor Webinar’. Here is link for ‘Animation Mentor Podcasts’

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  • Wondering How to give design Interview? Here are few Design Interview Notes that will help you to prepare for the same

    Here are few words about Design Job Interview preparation from my own experiences.

    Here are my two earlier blog post that will allow you to prepare Resume & Portfolio

    1. How to write your Design Resume?
    2. Creating & Choosing Your First Design Portfolio Format & updating it over the years

    Details of Preparation

    • Prepare yourself for interview a day before on interview date
    • Cycle through in your mind what are your capabilities, your professional goal in life etc.
    • Go through your portfolio to see it is in perfect order for presentation
    • Read your resume to see there is no spelling mistakes or something missing from it etc.
    • Preparation can also start with having own domain & personal dedicated blog & portfolio website that showcase your work handsomely.

    Preparing specific job related Resume
    It’s not bad idea to have separate resume for different domains of Design dedicated to each i.e. If you work in this three domain called Web Design, Animation Film Design & Graphic Design then you can prepare three different resumes dedicated to each three domains.

    Preparing specific job related Portfolio
    If you have three types of resumes dedicated three different domains that can also go with three differently designed ‘Portfolio’ dedicated to three separate domain of design. e.g If you are going for post of Web Designer then surely you can show Web Design Portfolio & Web Design Resume to recruiter to tell him you have mastered the web technologies like HTML5, CSS3, ActionScript & even design tools like Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Flash, Adobe Photoshop etc.

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