Custom post types add a level of flexibility to WordPress that makes this open-source Web development platform more useful on many levels. Whenever I have been faced with a Web-based task, especially one that involves organizing information, the first thing I do is examine WordPress to determine if it can handle the job. It usually can.

As an Internet marketer and analyst, I need to be able to organize online marketing campaigns in a way that is trackable in Google Analytics. This is the perfect task for WordPress custom post types. In this article, we’ll explain how to create a WordPress plugin that enables you to organize Internet marketing campaigns using trackable URLs, shortened versions of those URLs, and trackable QR codes that you can also use for offline marketing activities.

Every now and then, we release useful freebies for all of our highly valued readers. Today, it is our pleasure to present to you Cuberto‘s fantastic St. Valentine’s icon set  —  exclusively designed for Smashing Magazine and its loyal readers. The icons presented are available in transparent PNGs as well as Photoshop PSDs (128×128 px) and are perfect for any projects you have coming up for St. Valentine’s Day. Enjoy!

This icon set is completely free to use for commercial or personal applications without any restrictions. Please link to this article if you want to spread the word.

Like most well-designed things, the magic of an iPad app comes from a union of usefulness, usability and meaning. Games aside, the app must be useful by solving a problem that people actually have through the right set of functionality at the right time. It must be easy to use and, just as importantly, easy to get started using, without a lot of pesky setup and learning steps. And it must hold meaning for the user through visual beauty, an emotional connection, personal insights, etc.

In this article, we won’t outline the entire design process for creating an iPad app, but we will explore 10 of the key things to think about when designing your app (and planning the design process).

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork. And as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one — desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This creativity mission has been going on for over two years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month.

We continue to nourish you with a monthly spoon of inspiration. This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for January 2012. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!

Please note that:

• All images can be clicked on and lead to the preview of the wallpaper,
• You can feature your work in our magazine by taking part in our Desktop Wallpaper Calendar series. We are regularly looking for creative designers and artists to be featured on Smashing Magazine. Are you one of them?

We do more reading on the screen today than we did even a year ago. If we are ever to have a golden age of reading on the screen, this might be the start of it. Tablets, Nooks and Kindles make buying a book or magazine for the screen almost unavoidable. With smartphones, we carry our reading material with us and enjoy instant Web access, enabling the reading experience to flow smoothly from one device to another.

And those devices probably have stunning HD reader-friendly screens. Throw in companion services like Readmill and 24symbols, which allow us to share our reading experiences, and we have perfect screen-based access to all aspects of the written word. So, why isn’t Web and screen typography keeping up?

Controlling who is able to view a post is a simple task once the system is established. Limiting access to certain users has several advantages, ranging from a design studio distributing artwork among various clients, or a small school arranging to have its students’ homework posted online through a cheap and easy solution.

The easiest method to get this system working is to make the receivers of the information subscribers (since they will not be able to post), and the distributors of information authors (since they can only edit their own posts). This system eliminates several headaches for a webmaster by managing who has access to specific posts. The username will be used for identification of who is allowed to view certain posts since it is unique and, for the most part, constant.

UX practitioners, both consultants and in house, sometimes conduct research. Be it usability testing or user research with a generative goal, research requires planning. To make sure product managers, developers, marketers and executives (let’s call them stakeholders) act on UX research results, planning must be crystal clear, collaborative, fast and digestible. Long plans or no plans don’t work for people..

You must be able to boil a UX research plan down to one page. If you can’t or won’t, then you won’t get buy-in for the research and its results. This article addresses one key aspect of planning UX research: the one-page plan document. Before we get to that, we’ll briefly discuss the benefits of research planning and identify the audience of a research planning document.

We often hear companies, including Web agencies, boast about how they provide exceptional client service. But how do they define exceptional? Consider this scenario. You are hired to design and develop a new website for a retail client. The client loves the design, and the pages you develop use the latest in HTML5, CSS3 and responsive design, resulting in a website that works wonderfully across browsers and devices.

The e-commerce features of the new website help the client significantly increase their online sales, and the entire project is delivered on time and on budget. Now, is this “exceptional” client service? I don’t think it is. When the client hired you, they expected that you would design and develop a great website. They also expected it would be done according to the timeline and budget set during the planning stages of the project. As successful as this project may have been for both you and the client, in the end, you did exactly what you were hired to do. You did your job.

Web design is a craft that is constantly evolving and yet also sometimes sabotaged. The moment a design is released, a new version is born. In the beginning, like a baby, it seems vulnerable and weak, but in time it grows up and becomes self-sufficient. Redesigning a website for its own sake doesn’t prove anything; quite the contrary, it reveals a lack of effectiveness on the part of the designer.

Product design is a craft in which new versions come to life with increasing difficulty. We can learn a thing or two from it when designing for the Web. Forget marketing, technical specs and hardware. Products such as the iPhone, the Mini Cooper and the Zippo lighter have become wildly successful because of their outstanding design. Such massive success springs from three sources: the designer, sticking to the scope and iteration. These aspects can help us in Web design, too. In this article, we’ll look at what we can learn from successful product design.

At the heart of every modern Mac and Linux computer is the “terminal.” The terminal evolved from the text-based computer terminals of the 1960s and ’70s, which themselves replaced punch cards as the main way to interact with a computer. It’s also known as the command shell, or simply “shell.” Windows has one, too, but it’s called the “command prompt” and is descended from the MS-DOS of the 1980s.

Mac, Linux and Windows computers today are mainly controlled through user-friendly feature-rich graphical user interfaces (GUIs), with menus, scroll bars and drag-and-drop interfaces. But all of the basic stuff can still be accomplished by typing text commands into the terminal or command prompt. Using Finder or Explorer to open a folder is akin to the cd command (for “change directory”). Viewing the contents of a folder is like ls (short for “list,” or dir in Microsoft’s command prompt). And there are hundreds more for moving files, editing files, launching applications, manipulating images, backing up and restoring stuff, and much more.