Table of Content

1.    Introduction

Revenue generation on the internet using the content and different models of selling and advertising is a hot topic in the internet and marketing society. Internet being in its all time high usage is a best place for innovators, the marketing and online trading of goods and services are at all time high. This all results in the formalization of the methods used on the internet and development of frameworks that are being used by the innovators to maintain and scale their internet businesses. Revenue generation models are an example of the systems developed for formalizing the methods.

The Report presents the discussion on the content management system and their usage in the revenue generation models specifically the case of subscription sites. The report starts with the back ground of the revenue generation models then we move forward to the content management systems in general, the discussion will lead us to the details of the revenue generation models used today. Subscription sites being one of the revenue generation models is discussed in detail with all its classifications, target markets and content usage methods.

The report gives us the overview of the revenue generation models implemented on the web, and the content management system, and the detailed insight into the subscription sites option. The report ends concluding our findings in the report and results that are derived from our discussion.

2.    Historical background

During the last decade internet has grown to be the most viable market of the world. Internet marketers and advertisers have paved a way to make this market viable. They have provided the suppliers, traders and manufacturers with the tools and techniques to market their products. The marketing and advertising companies get their share from the price of the products, the systems developed were the pay per click advertising campaigns and the sellers pay the advertisers for the advertising their products. The system was successful in building the market share for the products and this paved new ways for other campaigns to be part of the systems, these campaigns are today called the revenue generation models. They generate revenue for a site in different schemes that are discussed in detail in the next sections. Another factor in the success of this system was the easiness and advancement in the management of the web content, the introduction of the content management systems in the web development technologies have extended the possibility of management of large sites and enormous content based on the rule sets. The management of the sites became easy and the productivity of the site increased making it a perfect place to market the products. The search engine optimization started a race in the competition for customer access and making it a vast industry of marketing and advertising of products.

With the increase in the available tools and techniques the possibilities increased for all the online businesses. The revenue generation models are at the core of this online success, there are a lot of success stories, and a lot of failures as well. But the industry adopt systems that sustain and able to provide them solution for maximum productivity.

3.    Content Management Systems

The term content management system is a generic term used for the set of tools and techniques used for the management of electronic documents in a system. The development of these systems started as a result of problems in the management of large archives of documents. With the increase in the content that the information systems produce, document management became a problem, the workflow implementation was important so the content management systems started to develop. The document management system is a primary part of a content management system. The system manages content like images, documents, html files. And script files. The system stores and retrieves the files in predefined methods that are suitable for the development of workflows and procedures.

A content management system is mostly a centric to the document management system. The most important and used systems are used to manage the content of websites. These are mostly web based applications that are used to manage websites that that a lot of content. The content management systems allow the application to control the content in an office, but now they also are used to manage the content over the internet. The content that are mostly managed by a content management system is text based documents, text elements, files on the file system, multimedia files, html content, images, and almost all electronic documents.

The term workflow means that the content management system controls the working flow of the office by sending the documents to the pre defined personal and make them approve the documents. The workflows are now used to implement the automation in the office documentation process. The web based content management systems are used to manage the website content. This content is published as a website and managed through the system. This content is versioned, maintained, published, and protected by the content management system. The management of website becomes easy through the usage of these systems; they provide templates for the web site designing. They provide most standard implementations and also they are updated regularly for new features.

The most popular web based content management systems are Joomla and Drupal.  These are primarily developed in PHP and are used to publish html documents for a website, these web CMS application provide templates, upgrade features, and most of the content visualization, so that the management can see what the content will look like when it is published.

IN the revenue generation models the content management system played a vital role, the content management systems provided better publishing of the content and thus provide more visibility for the content, also the content management systems publish the content in a way that is easily understandable by the search engines, that makes the content more accessible by the users. This way the content management system proved to be a catalyst in the change towards an internet economy. The revenue generation models uses these content management systems to replicate, reproduce, store, secure and publish the products and offers in a way that they become more visible to the target buyers. This makes the content management systems an integral part of the revenue generation models implemented on a large scale.

4.    Revenue Generation Models

Revenue generation models are the models made by the marketing innovators and advertising companies to make the product advertisement and merchandizing more easy and letting the web communities participate in the marketing and advertising of different products on a price. The revenue generation models span from selling services to the advertising products for different vendors. Some of the examples of revenue generation models are direct advertising which involves text based advertisements on you website. Paid directory listing on your site that will list the sites according to their area of business, you can charge the customers for advertising on forums on your site. Other examples are products of affiliate companies on your site that will pay you if someone buys the product from your website. You can have direct contact with the merchant that sell products on your website or you can sell your own products of services on your website. These revenue generation models can be classified in some categories that are discussed below.

1. Subscription Sites

There is a variety of content and documents that can be accessed through the subscription based sites and these sites have a yearly or monthly fee. E.g. To access the ACM research library we have to get a membership at a fee. There are sites which provide lectures on specific topics on a fee for subscription.

2. Files and Documents at Pay Per View condition

There are sites that allow the content on a pay per view basis, specially the media content can be specified in this model. The movies can be rented for watching once. The video and music can be downloaded and have digital rights management built for letting the user only play once. There are lectures of some people available that can only be seen once or for a specific time period. This model can only be applied to digital documents through the digital rights management.

3. CPM advertising model

This model caters the advertising of the content of a client on the website, the client is charged for every thousand views of the advertisement. The ads are displayed through a third party ad server or the sites ad server. Google AdSense also provides such package for the websites so that the client will have to pay cost per thousand views by the users of the site. Most of the time the advertisement banners and offer banners are shown on the sites through this model.

4. CPC advertising model

This is another advertising model for the revenue generation, in this model the site shows the advertisements but they are only paid on the number of clicks that user do on the advertisements, these advertisement are mostly text advertisements. This model is also available on most of the ad providers like Google AdSense.

5.  Selling site space for advertisements.

Another revenue generation model is to sell your web sites space for the advertisements of another company or product. The companies mostly pay higher for such spaces, the websites with a large number of users and huge traffic sell the space for the advertisement to the advertisers. Most of the advertisers have similar content, e.g. on the programming forums the programming API sellers place ads, and because the programmers visit the blogs and forums regularly and they are the customers of the API providers. So they buy space on the forums to sell their API packages. The space can be sold on the yearly basis or on the monthly basis.

6. Affiliate model

There is another model for the revenue generation from the website. we can become an affiliate of a product selling site, we will be selling their products on our web site and they will be paying us for selling. In this option most of the sites provide commission for the products sold from our site. Some as well provide the commission if someone gets to their sites by clicking on the product. This model can also extend to many other configurations and provide a better earning on the sites that have product selling potential. Many ad providers are now providing this option. Amazon and E-bay are examples of affiliate sites that provide commission on products that you sell on your sites.

7. E-mail Marketing Model

This model is also used for revenue generation, the sites that collect customer data and get their permission for emailing them for products and affiliate products can mail the advertising material to their customer list. Some companies also sell this kind of mailing lists of other companies. The customers can also be posed to the questioners or product reviews for market research from the customers about any products.

8. Online Services options.

Another revenue generation method is to provide services for online research and surveys, these sites pay the users for conduction surveys and the companies order them for researching some surveys. The websites provide surveys according to geographical locations and product specifications.

9. Online Products Selling.

This is another option for revenue generation. The company can sell their products in an online store; the online store implement a shopping cart to handle the transactions and provide the products to the online customers, this option can also use the above options for marketing and advertising purposes. This option is most popular among the product manufacturers group.

There are several factors that are involved in online revenue generation businesses. The mixture of models is mostly used to maintain consistent and best possible revenues. When a website starts the implementation of online revenue generation model the first thing that is done is the planning of the options before the development. Then the targeted content is generated and sometimes more than one websites are consolidated into one sites to make it better visible and more accessible.

 Subscription Sites

Subscription Site are among the most popular revenue generation models toady, a lot of sites are offering the subscription based services in different service areas. The subscription site is a normal website which provides a service to the customers that subscribe for that service, its provided normally on a fee. The subscription based sites can offer from news reviews to jokes, lecture notes to business report. All the content that is provided on these subscription sites is rendered to the clients through a subscription program. The websites offer from already prepared course material to the regularly updated feeds. The information services for the research and development of products and product review services are rendered through this model.

One of the famous name is marketingsherpa.com that provides services in research and writing for the marketing professionals. They have blogs and articles on variety of topics related to marketing. The subscription sites mostly categories the service as free and paid services, the free services are available to all the users and are limited demonstration versions of the full services. This way the users can try the services without the fee and they have a better chance of subscribing to the service if they are interested in the material provided.

Another popular subscription site is webmasterworld.com that provides different set of services for search engine marketing professionals. The website provides the latest information on the marketing trends, the blog entries by the professionals and the tips and tricks for the new professionals. The website needs a subscription to access the material on the site.

There are other sites that provide the tutorials for the students of programming and need sa subscription before the students and professionals can access the tutorials. One such site is expert-exchange.com. the site is pretty famous among the programming community and the website have a rich set of articles and tutorials for the programming languages. The site also provides the solutions for programming problems to the subscribers.

Another aspect of subscription sites is somewhat diverse, the trend of subscription is going into other fields as fashion, doylemueser.com is a site that provides the suiting services for men and they have many options for suiting, the users need subscription before they can access the services.

The subscription sites can be classified on the basis of the services they provide or the material that is available on the site. The most popular categories of services that these sites provide are described as follows.

Articles: These articles are on the latest trends and issues in the market, the articles can be from the news reports to the specific problems discussion in the market. The articles are written by the professional hired by the website. The professionals write the articles on the specific topics and post on the website. The users that had subscribed can access these articles online.

Research Reports: These are similar to the articles but they are made on the request of the users, the users that are subscribed to the service ask for research report on a specific topic and the website has hired researchers to research on the topics.

Product Reviews: Another category of service is the product reviews, the users ask the website to review their products based on the subscriptions. The products are reviewed using surveys and research on the specific industry.

Attractive Offers in our interest: there are also sites that offer different buying offers for their customers, the users that subscribe the service set their preferences about the products. the website maintain the set of offers and pricing comparisons for that specific product and the users are sent the new offers.

Personalized products: There are sites that provide services to their subscribers about the personalized products, the users set their criteria for a product and the websites search for these criteria in the products and make an offer for the users.

Lessons based Tutoring: A major category of subscription sites is the Lesson and tutoring sites. There are many websites that provide lessons for different subjects ranging from preschool to K12 and up to university learning. They provide these tutorials and live lessons to the students that have subscribed to the service.

News on specific topics: This is a specialized service that is mostly provided by the news groups, the users that subscribe to the service can create a news alert on a specific topic. Whenever any news on that specific topic is released the users are sent the news.

Question answers: there is another service that is subscribed by the users, its about the questions answers that are asked by the users. The questions can be from a variety of topics and the website provides the answers for these specific questions posed by the subscribing users.

Live Help: This category of subscription sites comes with other services. The product users can access to live help if they subscribe to it.  The product does not include the live help in their price. The live help is only for the users that subscribed to it and paid for it.

6.    Revenue Generation from Subscription based sites

The subscription based sites are a good revenue generation model, as they provide the services and also can use the other revenue models on their sites; they have legitimate users that have subscribed to the services. The subscription sites can generate revenue from different options that are discussed as follows.

Subscription Fee:

The subscription fee for the services is a first revenue generation option for the sites. This is most basic option and also the main source of revenue for these sites. Almost all the subscription sites pose a fee for the subscription.

Marketing Products on their site:

The second option is to market products on their site, it can be affiliate products from other companies or there can be products that the website provides to their users. The product marketing is also used by many of the subscription sites; the users tend to buy related products from the subscription sites which provide reviews about these products or provide the market surveys about the comparing products.

Product reviews:

The product review is also another method of generating revenue the product manufacturers pay the websites to post reviews on their sites about their product. The users on the site feel easy to buy the products after reading the reviews. This also takes good part in making the product reputation in the market.

User Traffic:

The subscription sites can also use any of the marketing campaign on their websites and affiliate with any ads service provider to place ads on their sits.

7.    Target Market

The target market for the subscription based sites consists of two main categories, first are the users that need to have solution of some problem in any academic circle or the need information to a specific topic. The second are the users that need to be remain updated on their professions and interests. These users are mostly executive officers or hobbyists that use the subscription sites for their pleasure or professional growth.

Need based users:

The need based users are those that need solution to their problems, need to learn something or need the research material on something. These users need information specific to their request. The subscription sites do charge these users and provide services in time and deliver specific items for specific users. These services are not for a all the audience, only a user or a group is intended audience of such service. These sites maintain a variety of research areas and only provide specialized services in these areas.

Casual Users:

This is the second category of users that user the subscription services for pleasure, as a hobby or for advancement in their knowledge in some specific area. These users are generally categorized in large audience and the services are designed for a large variety of users. E.g. magazines are printed for many number users in an area. The users that are attracted to that specific area subscribe to the service and pay for it.

8.    Conclusion

Internet being a market place of the future is now involved in many of our daily life operations, people used to research the library or consult the teachers in different parts of the country. For the profession expertise you always had to reach out to some facility or some company that provide consultancy. With the invent of internet these services become available online. The expansion of the internet resulted in the emergence of revenue generation models. Primarily used for advertising purposes but these revenue generation models are now became a good profitable business. As the competition increases and time and reach became crucial factors in the success of businesses, the need of advertisement and timely research increased. These all factors contributed to the advancement and formalization of revenue generation models.

The report has presented the revenue generation models in general and the subscription sites in specific. The revenue generation models are the methods that are used by the web based businesses for revenue generation. The revenue generation models have a vast variety of implementations and can be used in the websites in many configurations. These configurations are based on the website manager’s preference and the statistics about the website. The subscription sites are implementation of revenue generation model that provide services to the limited users that subscribe it.  These subscription sites can also use other models for revenue generation as well.

The subscription of a service is normally derived by the need of information about a specific topic. The users that need information on specific topics tend to subscribe to a service. These services include tutoring, online lectures, online research, surveys and many other similar services. The users pay for the service they get. Although these are revenue generation sites but still they can use many other models of revenue generation, like they can provide space for advertisements on their websites, along with the users requested material.

9.    References

[1]: http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan05/doe.shtml

[2]: http://www.squidoo.com/what-is-a-subscription-website

[3]: http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/620/subscription-site-internet-business/

[4]: http://www.slideshare.net/portlandten/startup-workouts-revenue-generation-1670083

[5]: http://www.webpronews.com/site-revenue-generation-options-2007-03

[6]: http://www.mansfieldsp.com/mansfield-sales-blog/bid/52660/Rethinking-the-Sales-Revenue-Generation-Model

[7]: http://domainmanagement.net/revenue-generation-model.php

[8]:http://www.smartinsights.com/digital-marketing-strategy/online-business-revenue-models/online-revenue-model-options-internet-business/

Introduction

The blog entry presents my study of the grid based web designing technique, the designs of the web sites have been changing in the life of World Wide Web and html. The html has been complimented with CSS to cater the design requirements and the consistency issues with the web sites. With the start of web 2.0 the CSS has been playing an important role in the web design. The blog entry will discuss a new trend in web designing that is intended to cater the semantic web requirements and provide a flexible yet consistent design framework. Below we will be discussing the interface and interaction considerations of the grid based design, the users experience and the layouts that are used for different design frameworks. The discussion will see how grids present the content and create the balance in the web design, the resolution considerations and usability factors. The frameworks for the grid based web designing and the examples of the implementations.

Web design

Web design is all about planning and creating the web templates and web pages from which user can get information. Planning and creating a website from which user can get information is also called as web design. Usually web designers used to use images, text, digital media and interactive elements to display the information to different users with the help of web browser.

For this purpose web designers uses different kind of languages in order to perfectly describe the information that they want to display in the web browser. Usually mark-up languages are being used to design the web pages. Html and CSS are used markup languages that are being used by the web designers to display the information and the hierarchy of information elements. Besides this designers use java script to add different kind of interactive functions.

The whole process of web designing includes different processes which include research, advertising, planning and conceptualization etc. The whole web design is divided into different web pages. Different hyperlinks are being used for the purpose of navigation between the pages and within the pages as well. The color of hyperlinks is usually blue and underlined. Designers can use images as well in order to replace the hyperlinks.

From a technical point of view, the art of web designing is difficult. It is so because it is very much different as compared to the traditional print media. Web design usually has to be displayed at a no of web browsers. So the html that is being written to design the web page reflects different view in other browsers. So it is difficult for the designer to write the html for all the web browsers that render the html to show the view or information. Designers usually use the html standards made by the W3 consortium so that they can display the information same as on all the browsers.

In spite all of these web designers also check and balance the different monitor sizes on which web pages and information is being displayed. For this purpose they use different kind of techniques that vary from browser to browser. So they need to check the web pages for all the sources and media.  The discussion that the design of web pages can have many elements of architecture is a interesting fact and web pages are designed to cater different needs of a design. The design consists of many architectural elements that represent the structure of the design and the content as well. A well knows and famous approach is grid based design. This technique is popular for its purposefulness and discrete nature. There are many critics of this technique as well. The argument goes on as we discuss the details of the grid based design technique and its related concepts.

Grid based design

The grid based web design techno is relatively new technique the prior methods are used to use the control structure that is easy to manage. This property is still available in the grid based designs and the new standards and protocols are being developed to cater the new needs of semantic web. The nature of the web designs changed due to the overwhelming requirements of the semantic web and the growth is rapid due to the increased interest and involvement of the open source community in the web design frameworks.

To make a mark in the history of web development and design the designers and the framework specialists are working on the new grid based design principles. The gird seems to cater the current needs of the design and make up with the design and technological trends. This includes from the traffic ratings systems to the screen resolution available in operating systems now days. The grid system is developed to maintain a balance between the layouts of the website. This way the grid system is able to provide the consistency in the layout and also is flexible in working among different browsers and frameworks which provide the design utilities.

In the early years of web development the computers tend to support the classic resolution of 800×600 and in the last decade it was standardized to be 1024 x 786. The resolutions of the new systems and machines are growing very fast and the support for higher resolution is not ending soon, so the web designs and the frameworks should be built to support such trends. Technically speaking a web page is structure of horizontal and vertical pixels. So the designers are to be aware of the fact, the designs that we make have to be set to a standard height and width. This causes a dramatic effect on the artistic abilities of a designer.

The designers use graphic suites like adobe Photoshop to make graphic elements like logos and banners, and design the whole web sites; the designing parameters in these graphics suites are different from the html and CSS. So this difference makes the web designers to think like if they are building a grid based framework for the html elements. Grids are included in the html from very beginning so to include the design elements in the web pages in a structural manner.

Grid Structure basics

The grids are structure invisible mostly and contain the elements that are to be shows in a webpage. The structure consists of columns of the elements; it has to be as wide as the size of the elements added. The container should be subdivided into a collection of containers. These containers in turn contain the web elements. For example if we have to put two columns in a grid, the grid will have to be divided into two subdivisions. The subdivisions will be aligned to the left and right to the grid container. The grid out container will have a clear fix class to provide this property.

The Grids have all the elements separated by a space so the padding is included in all the elements; the gutter is also included for this purpose. These elements make the grid structure and are flexible to work with fixed layout designs and also for the dynamic layout designs.

To define a grid based web page the following can be a fine approach for starting the designing. The first thing to decide is the width of the page we are going to design, the for the 800 resolution the 760 pixel is to be designed, and for a 1024 resolution the 960 pixel is to be designed.  The next thing is to decide which kind of grid we have to implement, the number of columns that we have to implement and the sizes of these columns has to be determined. Then we have to do the math for the content, the page is divided into the columns we have to be implement. After this the implementation of the grid layout is designed, where the columns are to be merged and where to be the vertical spaces needed. The rhythms for the design are defined. The next step is to define the gutters and margins. This will complete the design requirements for your design and now you are able to implement the design.

Page Rhythms

The Rhythm of the page is the essentials part of any web designing framework, the rhythm defines the spacing and typographic styles in a web page and web site. The grid based frameworks provide the pages with the vertical rhythm of pages. The factors that has to be considered in defining the rhythm of the design use the vertical spacing between the lines and the line height, the definition of the scale of the characters of text in the content. The line height is defined by pixels or sometimes in ems, the solution is to apply the style to all the elements such as headings, subheadings, images and anchors. So as to define a consistent rhythm. This also allows us to cater different environments and different resolutions. Just be switching the styles of the elements.

Tools for implementing the Grid system

There are many tools available to implement the grid system for your website. Some of these are discussed as follows.

Modular Grid Pattern: this is an extension for Adobe Photoshop and provides a way for creating the modular grid system.

Frak: it is a framework for fluid grid and provides the functionality of designing nested grids.

phiRatio Proportion Calculator:  this a calculator for calculating the proportions for the elements of the grid. It helps us calculate many proportions for the sizes of out grid elements.

iPhone Grid System: this is a modular grid system with 480 x 380 for iPhone applications, the grid system has 40 pixel units and 5 pixel gutter.

Griddy: this is also a tool that provides the overlay creation facility on any element in the grid.

Examples of grid based E-commerce implementations

For the study of the grid based design solutions we have to consider some examples of the web sites that follow some grid based design framework, below is the discussion on the websites that implement the grid based web designs.

The first example of the grid based design is the BBC UK site. The www.bbc.co.uk implements the grid based design so to present the elements of the content in a visually balanced approach. This design has a visual clarity between the elements in vertical position and implemented the vertical page rhythm in the design so that the vertical positioning of all the elements is distinguished in a way to make the most in the accessibility of the content.

The design provides a consistent look and credibility in the layout of the design, the pages als implemented the typography design solutions using grid based design.

The grid is distributed into six subdivisions and provides six columns for the sub elements for the individual html elements. The grid provides the flexibility to make

The second example is the grid Tesco website that provides the grid structure for the presentation of the content. The screen shows the distribution of the page into six columns and the horizontal and vertical separation of the elements in the page.

The structure of the web design is more closely match the 960 grid framework and presents the distribution of elements from top of the page to the bottom of the page.

Grid based design frameworks:

Then popular frameworks are 960gs grid framework and 978 Grid system, both provides the considerable development usage in the field and they have been used by a lot of websites.

The web designer’s community has been developing frameworks for the designing and these framework provide the standards for the designing professionals. One such system is the 960gs, although this is not the best system but it is in some cases, the usage of system depends on where the system is to be used.

Therefore all the systems do not cater all the required features. The 960 is easy to implement and is applicable to almost all kinds of websites. Another factor in the success is that it is rendered in most of the browsers.

960gs

The basis of the framework defines that the page is to be divided into 12 grid columns, each column has 60 pixels width, and 20 pixels in margins (10 on both sides). This way the gutter between the columns is 20 pixels. To cater the design needs of our page we will merge the columns into a grid structure that will contain our content. In the content we can include the images and other interactive content.

The 960gs is popular also because many screens support 960 and this will give us a space for the content which will display without scrolling to left or right side.

The 12 column design is used to distribute the content into the page, it’s not for strictly following and the columns can be changed to fit the content into. The grid only provides the basic layout and provides interactivity among the elements and guides in the placement of the html elements into the page.

The maximum sized element in a grid is 940 pixels in width, the 20 goes to the gutter. Most of the times a minimum two columns are included in the design. It is very rare that an element is so large to be contained in a single column. The gutter between the elements and the sides of the page keeps the elements separate from each other, with the increase in the columns the gutter spaces are increased and the total space occupied by the content is decreased. The kind of columns that can be defined in the 960gs are shown in the figure below, these are just some possibilities and are not limited to this.

The grid can be designed to flow between the large and small columns; this means that the grid can have some sections with the larger width columns and some sections with the smaller width columns. The segregation is shown in the above picture. The page when designed is broken down into the pieces that fit in some kind of arrangement as above, the division of the content is done on the basis of accessibility and usability factors.

There is a concern among the critics of the grid system that the grid is a hindering force in the creativity of the designer. The grids can have any number of columns that the content can have and they can have any elements, the only thing that the grid caters is that the basic structure should be followed. So the designer can design creatively that also fits in the grid system.

The other grid systems that are popular in the web designing community are YAML, 1040 grid system, 1KB Grid, baseline CSS, and blueprint CSS Grid. These all are discussed briefly below.

The 1KB grid system is a grid framework that is defined using CSS and provides a fast layout CSS implementation, the layout of your design is placed in a CSS that is in the local system so providing the faster download time. The grid system allows us to define any number of columns and any number of pixels in the margins so that we can design the page creatively. This is a simple framework and can be used to learn the grid systems.

The second in the list is the Baseline CSS grid system, this is merely a CSS template that can be used for the designing of the web pages. The system has implementation of grids and the CSS styles for the typography and block elements. This framework has been written to support the CSS3 version and the upcoming HTML 5. Thus this is a best example of the adoptability of the grids in the form of upcoming frameworks for web design.

Another Grid system is 1040 CSS grid system as name suggests the grid is designed for 1140 pixels, the grid provides the same 12 columns for the content placement. The grid is system is getting popular among the designers of mobile websites and for hand held devices.

Another example of the grid system is YAML grid system, this system provides the framework for developing layouts that can be used for fixed layouts and also for fluid layouts. It is the good solution for the large scale websites.

The last system we are discussing is the blueprint CSS system that can be used for your projects, the system can be extended with new classes, the system already provides the typography styles for many resolutions, and many devices.

Layout Types

The layout is the placement of elements in the structure. It defines how the element locations are defined and how the addressing of the elements and blocks are done in the system. There are fluid layouts and grid layouts mostly in practice now days. These will be discusses in the following discussion.

The fluid type of layout is not mostly used in the grids, the fluid layouts are difficult to understand and implement as they have to be in percentages and ems, the measurement in the pixels is easier to understand and manipulate. For implementing the percentages in the CSS we have to take care of the some CSS and Html layout properties.

One of the popular implementation is the Fluid 960 system, this system can work on may screen resolutions and many browsers and devices. Other fluid frameworks that are in usage are YAML grid layout, YAML stands for Yet Another Multicolumn Layout. This framework is used to make consistent html and CSS layout. The main features of this framework are the XHTML compliances, the most flexible implementation and versatility of the framework. There are many examples of code that are provided in the documentation, the framework supports the minimum of 800 x 600 screen resolution and onwards.

Conclusion

The grid system is in the basis of every web design that is implemented in the html and, the default webpage rendering is done through the width and height which is divided into the blocks of pixels. This gives us the basis of the grid layout, in a designer’s perspective the creativity that some say is hindered due to the grid system implementation can be restored and even better implemented with the grid system in mind. Many of the websites implement the grid based system for their designs. The main benefits of the grid based system are the flexibility, consistency and the easiness in the implementation. The frameworks that are available and implemented widely are 960 grid system and YAML layouts system. These systems provide a flexible and concrete basis for the designing of websites. Although the designer does not need to design in a predefined framework, but as a need of the future technologies it will be a good practice to do so.

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The Dead Sea Squirrels – an upcoming indie rock band from Sheffield 

1. www.nooriworld.net
The website contains all the necessary information like history of the band, profiles of band members, updated news, upcoming events, etc. Best thing of the website is the simple graphics which makes the website easy to navigate through different links.

2. www.linkinpark.com 
The graphics used in the website are not too heavy, but give a rich look to the website. The best thing is the website opens without any audio/video or Flash animation which makes the website heavy for some users

3. www.cokestudio.com.pk 
Again a rich looking, similar to linkin park is the website of the Coke Studio which is a collaboration of different bands and artists from Pakistan. Despite the core information about the studio and artists, it provides the links for users to becomes the fan of it on different communal websites like Facebook, Twitter, etc

Primary Health, a private healthcare company based in London.

1 - http://doctorshospital.com.pk
It helps show how, through a website, you can establish your niche in the market. The website uses layout in a way that emphasises a sense of wellbeing.

2 - www.shifa.com.pk 
There is a high level of user expectation from a health related provider which places even greater emphasis on the need to deliver an appropriately designed and resourced website.The use of animation to describe the services is a good way..

Beech Farm

1. www.corbigoehotel.com
The colours used in the website are catchy. It contains not only the business’s information but also attracts the customers for adding the city’s attractions flash animation on the side. The best thing about the website is, it appreciates the customers by giving discount to customers on online booking.

2. www.hotellondon.co.uk
A very simple website with attractive colours without any animations. Effective use of pictures tempts the customers to navigate around.

3. http://lincoln-house-hotel.co.uk
A comprehensive website which explains every aspect of hospitality. The pictures and graphics used in the website attract the customers navigate completely through the website. The website also provides the links to the London attractions websites, weather and Transport for London.

1. http://www.play.com/

This website is a virtual store for a great variety of products. This website offers products ranging from Games to Clothes and from foot wears to books and computers. The prices are very competitive and a source of attraction to the public. This website is very easy to navigate and user friendly.

2. http://www.mymemory.co.uk/

The website explains everything in the very first look what is the website offering. The website has been built in a Simple layout. The effective and light use of Flash provides the description of the item, its price and other details.

3. http://www.foundem.co.uk/

Foundem differentiates with the moneysupermarket.com in its simple layout and easy to use links which open up in drop down menus for sub-catagories. It offers the prices from all the stores wether online or on the high street where the items are available

1.Wooden Toy

This is a multi story parking facility. It is a toy made of wood. It is very rich in colurs and very attractive to the kids and young people. The structure has four stories and very elaborate building design. It may also easily be accepted as a model for a construction company.

2.Time machine Icon

This icon represents time machine. The big arrow is signifying the backward movement of time. This is a very artfull description of the idea of moving back into time. The icon was purposely designed by Apple Mac to represent its unique feature of creating automatic backups. This icon truely represents the idea Apple was aiming to propagate to its users.

3.Portraite

This picture is a glimpse into asian way of life. It depicts a relaxd evening on an eastern roof top. the colours perfectly blend with the mood this picture represents. It is also a perfect mixture of art and beauty.

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