7 Essential Social Media Sites for Web Designers

If you’ve been in the web design field for a while, you’ve no doubt noticed that many of the social media sites that once had the best online communities have become so flooded with users that their personality has all but disappeared. However, there are still sites out there that provide plenty of information to keep web designers on the cutting edge, while still offering a great sense of online community. For some of the best bets in social media sites catering to web designers, check out the following.
Best Social Media Hangouts For Web Designers

1. Design-newz

This is a fairly new site geared toward offering web designers information and tutorials. On Design-newz, you’ll find plenty of information regarding the latest and greatest programs, including the best advice on how to use them. Many designers soon find that Design-newz is one of their favorite “go to” sites for help.

2. Hacker News

Hacker News is an extremely simple, but useful site. They focus solely on providing web designers quick access to the most useful web design articles being published. Their main page simply contains a list of the top articles floating around on web design. In just a few minutes a week you can sort through the articles that pique your interest, and easily ignore those that don’t pertain to your work.

3. Good Tutorials

This site is an absolute must for any designer using a wide variety of programs and design tools. Good-tutorials has managed to combine the tutorials from the most important and often used design and web programs. This site is one of the largest online tutorial sites and is extremely easy to use. You’ll find some very interesting blogs here, too.

4. Graphic Design Links

This site is devoted to helping graphic designers, photographers and web designers. There are lots of design blogs to review as well as design links and tutorials. You can also vote on the best links and tools and see which tools have been highly ranked by other users.

5. CSS Leak

The main feature of this website is its gallery, where you can view some of the best designs out on the web today. You can review the latest design trends and read some of the most popular web design articles and blogs, too. You’re sure to find plenty of design inspiration each time you take a look at this site.

6. Tweako

This is a very high traffic site, likely because it provides some of the best information about web design out there. There are a wide range of articles posted on Tweako, designed to help all sorts of web designers, programmers and other computing and internet enthusiasts.

7. Dotnetkicks

This is a true community site. All the content is provided and edited by the user community itself. The site is devoted to web designers and programmers, providing lots of useful and interesting articles. Articles that make the front page are those that have been most highly ranked by users.
There are literally hundreds of social media sites out there targeting web designers. You’ll find many that can offer insight and information. Hopefully those listed above, along with some other great sites, will give you the information you need, along with the community atmosphere you desire.
This post was written by a guest author, Mary Ward, who is a freelance author and writes about design job topics, such as how to choose a webdesign school, artist career tips, and more.