Congratulations, Jay Callaghan!

You’ve won the following:

1. Interspire Shopping Cart Ultimate: $1,795
2. Interspire Email Marketer 10 User: $995
3. Interspire Website Publisher Enterprise: $695
4. Interspire Knowledge Manager Enterprise: $1,995

Don’t Fret if you weren’t Chosen!

Interspire is also awarding a Bronze store at BigCommerce to the first three (real) comments on this page! Quick…leave a comment!

• Follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to the Nettuts+ RSS Feed for more daily web development tuts and articles.

To enter, all you must do is hit record, and teach us something related to web development in five minutes or less. That’s it! We’ll then filter through the submissions, and choose the top five winners.

How Do I Enter?

Easily! In fact, everyone can enter! Here’s how:

Step 1: Visit Screenr





Step 2: Press record!



You should consider lowering your capture size. Use one of the presets or set your own custom size with the handles – perhaps 1280×720 or 1280×800. Also, it’s not required that you use a condenser mic. If you’d instead prefer to use your computer’s built in mic, be sure to adjust the input levels prior to recording. It might take a few test videos to get it just right. Here’s a great screencast that demonstrate how to adjust your mic levels on a Mac.

Step 3: Teach us something related to web design/development in five minutes or less.

Just remember that the tutorial should appeal to our specific audience. For instance, a Java screencast, though fantastic, isn’t the best tutorial for Nettuts+.

Step 4: Make a tweet linking to your screencast, and include the “#nettuts” hash – so that we can track it! Your tweet counts as your submission – that’s all you need to do.

After you finish recording your screencast, Screenr will allow you to automatically tweet a link to your video tutorial. Just be sure to add the #nettuts hash.

All submissions must be received by September 30, 2009 CT (US), 11:59 PM.

Prizes Awarded

1st Place Grand Prize

• $500 cash, paid via Paypal.
• 12 month Net Plus subscription.

4 Runners-Up

• $100 cash, paid via Paypal.
• 3 month Net Plus subscription.

Need a Sample?

Here’s a five minute screencast that I created, which would be perfect for this contest. Notice how it doesn’t try to cover too much. It focuses on one helpful technique, and nothing more. Remember – Screenr limits your recording time to only five minutes.

How to Add a Drop-Shadow Across All Browsers

Thanks to our Sponsor, Screenr!

“Screenr is a web-based tool that lets you create screencasts without installing any software. You just click the record button and your screen activity is recorded along with narration from your microphone. Screenr then publishes your screencast in high-definition Flash format. Screenr makes it easy to share your screencast on Twitter, YouTube or anywhere else on the web. Even iPhone users can view your screencast.”

• Follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to the Nettuts+ RSS Feed for more daily web development tuts and articles.

In their own words: we create private label PHP ecommerce, email marketing, CMS and knowledge management software for designers, developers and agencies. We have 40,000 customers and have been around since 2003.

What Will I Win?

The folks at Interspire have put together a neat little package for the chosen winner.

1. Interspire Shopping Cart Ultimate: $1,795
2. Interspire Email Marketer 10 User: $995
3. Interspire Website Publisher Enterprise: $695
4. Interspire Knowledge Manager Enterprise: $1,995

Essentially, designers can take this software, rebrand it, and use it for their clients – all while making anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of dollars per client.

How Do I Enter?

Quite simply, actually! Just follow Interspire on Twitter, and make a tweet referencing them sometime between now and September 7th. We will then randomly choose a winner to receive this amazing software.

What’s the Software Look Like?

Take a look!

Hurry Up

If you’d like to be entered to win these great prizes, be sure to tweet about Interspire before September 7th. If you have any questions, just leave a comment, and we’ll get back to your shortly.

• Follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to the NETTUTS RSS Feed for more daily web development tuts and articles.

How’s it work? In a sentence: the authors of the three best submissions to these categories, between now and August 14, will receive prizes and exposure, courtesy of CSSRockstars.com.

How Do I Enter?

Very easily, actually. Prepare either a JS or PHP component and submit it to ThemeForest. If it’s approved by the ThemeForest reviewers, submit a link to your item through the competition entry form. Once you’ve done so, you’ll automatically be entered!

• Entries will close at midnight, August the 14th (Pacific Standard Time).
• Anyone (worldwide) is eligible to enter, as long as you are not an Envato staff member or regular author.
• Regarding the CSS Edit prize – PC users can request an extra 6 months Plus membership instead of this prize.

Winners

A team of no less than four developers will determine the winners. The top three authors will receive the following:

1st Place Prize

• We will pay for a new iPhone 3G S ($199 USD value) – via a $200 Apple gift card.
• 1 x CSSEdit ($42 USD value, or + 6 Months Plus membership for PC Users)
• 1 x One-year Plus Membership ($117 USD value).

2nd Place Prize

• 1 x Western Digital 1TB External Harddrive ($110 USD, or equivalent cash value if outside US)
• 1 x 6 Month Plus Membership ($44 USD value).

3rd Place Prize

• 1 copy of CSSEdit ($42 USD value, or + 6 Months Plus membership for PC Users)
• 1 x 6 Month Plus Membership ($44 USD value).

What happens to my items if I’m not in the Top 3?

That’s the wonderful thing about this competition. Even if you don’t win, you’ll still earn 40-70% for every sale on ThemeForest! So actually, you can’t lose!

Don’t forget to check back on August 14th to determine if you’re a winner or not!

Sponsors

Special thanks go to CSSRockstars for providing the main prizes!

CSSRockstars provides PSD to HTML service in just 3 days, for only $149. They take your existing design and transform it into valid, high quality, hand-coded markup. They also offer templating/skinning of the hottest CMS, Shopping Carts, and Blogging platforms such as WordPress. With semantic markup, microformat inclusion, documented CSS / HTML, and a money back guarantee, CSSRockstars offers one of the most feature complete packages available.

• Follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to the Nettuts+ RSS Feed for more daily web development tuts and articles.

Many factors were considered when deciding: aesthetics, documentation, coding practices, average sales per day, etc. So without further ado, here are the best of the best.

Thanks again to our sponsors: MediaTemple, E Text-Editor, and Packt Publishing. We’re all huge fans of the services you offer.

5th Place: COZA

By: Zigmat

Coza — xHTML/CSS template which went through the first version Cozacoza PSD template. It is perfect for portfolios, magazines, blogs and etc.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Prizes Awarded

• $50 credit to be used on all of the Envato Marketplaces
• 3 Month Plus Membership
• Exposure on Nettuts+ and ThemeForest.net

4th Place: PLATINO

By: Stefano Gilibeti

Platino is a clean and professional html template ideal for softwares, online services and applications websites, or just anything else.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Prizes Awarded

• $50 credit to be used on all of the Envato Marketplaces
• 3 Month Plus Membership
• Exposure on Nettuts+ and ThemeForest.net

3rd Place: FOLIOTASTIC

By: Justin Scheetz

Foliotastic is a feature-packed portfolio/blog theme that includes a full-featured, tabbed Admin Panel to change numerous options like colors (you can even enter your own custom HEX value), category settings, logo settings and more.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Prizes Awarded

• $75 credit to be used on all of the Envato Marketplaces
• 3 Month Plus Membership
• 1 copy of E-Text Editor
• Exposure on Nettuts+ and ThemeForest.net

2nd Place: WORDFOLIO

By: Akay

Wordpress + Portfolio = Wordfolio, a wordpress theme which is suitable for graphic & web designers. Special thanks to Jon for his Badass Wordpress Logo tutorial.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Prizes Awarded

• $125 credit to be used on all of the Envato Marketplaces
• 12 Month Plus Membership
• 1 copy of “jQuery UI 1.6″, by Dan Wellman
• Exposure on Nettuts+ and ThemeForest.net

Grand Prize Winner: ICONIC

By: Brandon Jones

This theme is a complete site, designed from the ground up to promote anything from a corporate business to a portfolio site. Here’s what you get with your purchase:

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

An enormous congratulations goes out to to Brandon Jones. In addition to the wonderful sales he’s currently experiencing on ThemeForest.net, he’ll also receive the following as our grand prize winner!

2 Years Media Temple RAGE Server – $2000 Value!

Media Temple hosts websites. Big and Small. For years we’ve taken complex technology and simplified it for the everyday website owner. Our products are designed to be powerful, affordable and relevant. Please take a look around; perhaps (mt) is a good choice for your next project.

1 copy of E-Text Editor

E is a new text editor for Windows, with powerful editing features and quite a few unique abilities. It makes manipulating text fast and easy, and lets you focus on your writing by automating all the manual work. You can extend it in any language, and by supporting TextMate bundles, it allows you to tap into a huge and active community.

12 Months Membership to our Plus Program

If you’re enjoying our Tuts+ sites, you’ll love Plus. For a low monthly fee you’ll get access to an exclusive members site complete with hundreds of source files from all your favorite tutorials, special Plus-only tutorials that everyone else doesn’t get and regular bonus downloads of vector and brush packs, layer styles, tools and more.

$200 Credit Towards the Envato Marketplaces

Whether you’re in need of site templates, Flash files, audio samples, or icons, the marketplaces have you covered!

1 Copy of jQuery UI 1.6

Build highly interactive web applications with ready-to-use widgets of the jQuery user interface library.

1 Copy of Learning jQuery 1.3

Revised and updated for version 1.3 of jQuery, this book teaches you the basics of jQuery for adding interactions and animations to your pages. Even if previous attempts at writing JavaScript have left you baffled, this book will guide you past the pitfalls associated with AJAX, events, effects, and advanced JavaScript language features.

Featured Author of the Week on ThemeForest

Another Competition in the Books

So there you have it; the best of the best. Not only will these authors, and everyone else, enjoy wonderful sales on ThemeForest.net, but they’ve also earned the admiration and respect of their peers. Thanks again to everyone who entered. This was an extremely tough decision that honestly came down to a few votes. So until next time…

To all of the winners: please email nettutsblog@gmail.com to receive your prizes.

• Follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to the NETTUTS RSS Feed for more daily web development tuts and articles.

Today is decision day. We have the difficult task of choosing the best five templates that were submitted within this time span – and we need your help! If you’re willing, please review the following submissions and leave a comment with your choices for the top five templates. We’ll then combine your scores with ours and announce the winners! So put on your reviewer hat and get started!

The Contestants

As you review each submission, don’t forget to click on the “Live Preview” link to browse their entire site. This is important!

MAGAZINE O’TUTS

By: Dan Harper

Magazine o’Tuts is the perfect theme for a tutorial or community WordPress site, with a clean & stylish design which takes full advantage of WordPress’ capabilities.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

CUBIT 6 IN 1- BUSINESS

By: Christian Budschedl

Cubit is a clean and flexible wordpress theme with 6 different cholor schemes(see preview Pics), which is best used for portfolio and business sites.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Our Agency

By: Hein Maas

OurAgency WordPress theme is a fully customizable CMS theme – you can easily create a whole site with a homepage, subpages and a blog. I wanted to make it as user friendly as possible while still giving you full control over your content.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Necoan

By: Jay

Necoan is a WordPress Portfolio theme. It shows both portfolio posts and normal blog posts.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

The Untitled Blueprint

By: Arun

This blueprint is for the business that is aimed at a “fun” market. The template places its focus on the products and services and the light colors add a “light-hearted” approach to business.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Business Solutions

By: Darren Pangan

Business Solutions WordPress Theme sports a clean, sleek, professional look in standard blog format. The focus of the design is content presentation – easy navigation and readability.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

EZI Theme

By: Mark Dijkstra

This is a modern template which uses a lot of jQuery to create great user experience.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Coza

By: Zigmat

Coza — xHTML/CSS template which went through the first version Cozacoza PSD template. It is perfect for portfolios, magazines, blogs and etc.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

FolioTastic

By: Justin Scheetz

Foliotastic is a feature-packed portfolio/blog theme that includes a full-featured, tabbed Admin Panel to change numerous options like colors (you can even enter your own custom HEX value), category settings, logo settings and more.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Photo Nexus WordPress Gallery

By: iMagine

Photo Nexus wordpress gallery is a 2 column , 2 color variation ( Bright and Dark) theme.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Soft Business

By: Ryan

Soft Business is a simple business theme that has lots of great features that enhance the user experience.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Nice and Clean Portfolio/Blog

By: Yuriy Portnikh

Very Nice & Clean site template. Includes portfolio & blog pages. Can be used as business or/and individual portfolio site. Make your visitors feel at home.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Iconic

By: Brandon R. Jones

This theme is a complete site, designed from the ground up to promote anything from a corporate business to a portfolio site. Here’s what you get with your purchase:

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Fun Design

By: Karan

Fun Design is a simple and clean portfolio template.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Blue Diamond

By: Ian Wilson

A simple and minimalistic portfolio / corporate template. It includes a jQuery portfolio, a JSON powered gallery and ready to use AJAX contact form.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Dynamo

By: Kevin Rajaram

A very outstandingly creative and unique template for show off your portfolio and offer your services at the same time.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

WordFolio

By: Akay

Wordpress + Portfolio = Wordfolio, a wordpress theme which is suitable for graphic & web designers. Special thanks to Jon for his Badass Wordpress Logo tutorial.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Clean and Minimal Template

By: Guus Jonker

Nice, clean and minimal looking HTML Template.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Light

By: Jay Kostere

Light is a clean and simply portfolio template featuring a header graphic depicting light photons. Light is designed for you to showcase your work in the web/graphic design field.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

Platino

By: Stefano Gilibeti

Platino is a clean and professional html template ideal for softwares, online services and applications websites, or just anything else.

1. Live Preview
2. Screenshots

What Do You Think?

Take some time, look over each template, and then let us know your top five choices. We’ll then combine our reviewers’ score’s with yours and announce the winners! Thanks so much, and don’t forget to leave a comment with your decision.

• Follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to the NETTUTS RSS Feed for more daily web development tuts and articles.

The Competition

I want you to create the most fantastic ThemeForest template you’re capable of. We’ll be choosing the five best submissions between now and April 21 (anniversary). You’re free to submit a sleek HTML/CSS website, WordPress template, or a complete Joomla site!

What Will I Win?

We have bunches of prizes to award to the top five winners.

5th Place

• $50 credit to be used on all of the Envato Marketplaces
• 3 Month Plus Membership
• Exposure on Nettuts+ and ThemeForest.net

4th Place

• $50 credit to be used on all of the Envato Marketplaces
• 3 Month Plus Membership
• Exposure on Nettuts+ and ThemeForest.net

3rd Place

• $75 credit to be used on all of the Envato Marketplaces
• 3 Month Plus Membership
• 1 copy of E-Text Editor
• Exposure on Nettuts+ and ThemeForest.net

2nd Place

• $125 credit to be used on all of the Envato Marketplaces
• 12 Month Plus Membership
• 1 copy of “jQuery UI 1.6″, by Dan Wellman
• Exposure on Nettuts+ and ThemeForest.net

1st Place Champion:

2 Years Media Temple RAGE Server – $2000 Value!

Media Temple hosts websites. Big and Small. For years we’ve taken complex technology and simplified it for the everyday website owner. Our products are designed to be powerful, affordable and relevant. Please take a look around; perhaps (mt) is a good choice for your next project.

1 copy of E-Text Editor

E is a new text editor for Windows, with powerful editing features and quite a few unique abilities. It makes manipulating text fast and easy, and lets you focus on your writing by automating all the manual work. You can extend it in any language, and by supporting TextMate bundles, it allows you to tap into a huge and active community.

12 Months Membership to our Plus Program

If you’re enjoying our Tuts+ sites, you’ll love Plus. For a low monthly fee you’ll get access to an exclusive members site complete with hundreds of source files from all your favorite tutorials, special Plus-only tutorials that everyone else doesn’t get and regular bonus downloads of vector and brush packs, layer styles, tools and more.

$200 Credit Towards the Envato Marketplaces

Whether you’re in need of site templates, Flash files, audio samples, or icons, the marketplaces have you covered!

1 Copy of jQuery UI 1.6

Build highly interactive web applications with ready-to-use widgets of the jQuery user interface library.

1 Copy of Learning jQuery 1.3

Revised and updated for version 1.3 of jQuery, this book teaches you the basics of jQuery for adding interactions and animations to your pages. Even if previous attempts at writing JavaScript have left you baffled, this book will guide you past the pitfalls associated with AJAX, events, effects, and advanced JavaScript language features.

Featured Author of the Week on ThemeForest

If you’re chosen as the 1st place winner, your profile and template will be featured on the front page of ThemeForest!

Also…

1. Your template will be included in a round-up of this competition’s winners. This article will be featured on both Nettuts+ and “In the Woods”.
2. As a result, your work will be exposed to over 40,000 RSS subscribers!

Don’t forget that your theme will also enjoy plenty of sales on ThemeForest.net, of which you’ll receive a minimum of 40% per sale!

How Many Sales Will I Make on ThemeForest?

It’s obviously difficult to say. However, you may rest assured that, if your template is professional and well-crafted, you’ll do quite well! In fact, we’re having to create new “sales” badges because some members have surpassed our expectations!

Meanwhiles I’m making a new marketplace badge for people who’ve sold $250,000+ .. because we’re about to get our first one. Amazing stuff!

– Collis Taeed (via Twitter)

How Do I Enter?

1. Create a unique template (HTML/CSS, WordPress, Joomla, or Miscellaneous Category)
2. Submit it to ThemeForest
3. Once the template has been approved, email nettutsblog@gmail.com and include a link to your item. When you do so, enter “Anniversary Competition” as the “subject”.
4. On April 21, the winners will be announced!

How Will the Winners Be Chosen?

The judges and I will be asking ourselves the following questions when choosing the winners.

1. Is this item aesthetically pleasing?
2. Has it been coded well? Does it follow best practices.
3. Is it marketable? We’re looking for fantastic templates that will prove to profitable for both you and us. Will this item appeal to the masses?
4. Does it stand out among other similar templates? Is it unique?

Terms and Conditions

• You WILL NOT be entered into the competition unless you email nettutsblog@gmail.com with a link to your template, after it’s been accepted.
• Entry is open to any reader who is NOT a paid staff member.
• Any approved file uploaded between NOW and 11:59PM April 20, 2009 (Central Standard Time) is eligible.
• Prizes will be awarded to the winners within a maximum of thirty days.
• The five winners will be selected solely at the discretion of Nettuts+ and its staff.
• All decisions are final.
• For questions and/or concerns, contact the Nettuts+ editor: nettutsblog@gmail.com.

How to Enter?

To be entered into the drawing for one of the five available books, find your favorite tutorial on Nettuts+, and paste a link into the comments form. That’s it; but don’t just paste any random link. Please think about which one helped you more than any other since launch!

Winners will be contacted via email.

Whether you’re completely new to web design, a seasoned pro looking for inspiration, or a developer wanting to improve your sites’ aesthetics, there’s something for everyone here.

How? Because instead of trying to cover every possible area of creating a web site, we’ve focused purely on the design stage; that is, everything that happens before a single line of code is written.

However, great design is more than just aesthetics. Long before we open our graphics program of choice, we’ll be conducting research, dealing with clients, responding to briefs, sketching out sitemaps, planning information architecture, moving from doodles to diagrams, exploring different ways of interactivity, and building upon design traditions.

• Follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to the NETTUTS RSS Feed for more daily web development tuts and articles.

How Do I Get It?

Just leave a comment asking for it! That’s enough for me. We’ll then select a few numbers at random, and will email those respective winners! Be sure to include an email address, or a link to your website. I need a way to get in touch with you! Good luck! If you don’t win, I highly recommend picking up a copy at your local bookstore. This revised book helped me a great deal when first getting started with jQuery.

• Subscribe to the NETTUTS RSS Feed for more daily web development tuts and articles.

What Was Most Important When Deciding?

Some of the videos you’ll see this week have extra noise and hiss. However, that didn’t count against the authors. This was a competition for web developers, not screencasters. More than anything, I asked myself, “Have I learned anything from this tutorial?”. Having said that, let’s get on with the show!

The Week, in a Nutshell

• Runner-Up: Working With the jCrop Plugin (Brenley Dueck)
• Runner-Up: Exactly How to Create and Implement CSS Sprites (Andres Fernandez)
• Runner-Up: Diving into Django (Jeff Hui)
• Runner-Up: How to Create a Complete XML Login and Registration System (Tim Cooper)
• Champion: Building the ImgPreview jQuery Plugin (James Padolsey)

The first screencast will be posted tomorrow!

• Subscribe to the NETTUTS RSS Feed for more daily web development tuts and articles.