News and Articles

With December just around the corner, how about some new desktop wallpapers to welcome the last month of the year — and the holiday season, if you’re celebrating? Our latest edition of monthly wallpapers has got you covered. Enjoy!

CAPTCHAs were meant to keep bots out, but too often, they lock people with disabilities out, too. From image classification to click-based tests, many “human checks” are anything but inclusive. There’s no universal solution, but understanding real user needs is where accessibility truly starts.

We’re so happy to announce that “Maturing Design Systems”—a Smashing book by Ben Callahan — will soon be joining the Smashing Library! Ben’s insights and advice are so powerful, we thought you might like to read an excerpt from the book. Subscribe to our Smashing newsletter to be notified when orders are open.

Practical guidelines on designing time-critical products that prevent errors and improve accuracy. Part of the Measure UX & Design Impact (use the code 🎟 IMPACT to save 20% off today). With a live UX training starting next week.

A collection of the best anti-spam WordPress plugins that will cut fake comments, form entries, signups, and email scraping, so you can keep your site safer and cleaner.
The post The 7 Best WordPress Plugins for Blocking Spam in 2025 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Animations can be one of the most joyful parts of building interfaces, but without structure, they can also become one of the biggest sources of frustration. By consolidating and standardizing keyframes, you take something that is usually messy and hard to manage and turn it into a clear, predictable system.

Server chaos doesn’t have to be the norm. AI-ready infrastructure and automation can bring clarity, performance, and focus back to your web work.

Save on web hosting this Black Friday 2025. A roundup of the best deals, who each suits, performance and support notes, plus what changes at renewal.
The post The Best Web Hosting Black Friday Deals 2025 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Black Friday brings huge savings on WordPress hosting. See which hosts offer real value, solid performance, and lasting discounts this year.
The post The Best WordPress Hosting Black Friday Deals in 2025 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Debugging controllers can be a real pain. Here’s a deep dive into how CSS helps clean it up and how to build a reusable visual debugger for your own projects.

There are many existing web features and technologies in the wild that you may never touch directly in your day-to-day work. Perhaps you’re fairly new to web development and are simply unaware of them because you’re steeped in the abstraction of a specific framework that doesn’t require you to know it deeply, or even at all. Bryan Rasmussen looks specifically at XPath and demonstrates how it can be used alongside CSS to query elements.

There are lots of tips for [improving your website performance](https://www.debugbear.com/blog/improve-website-performance?utm_campaign=sm-10). But even if you follow all of the advice, are you able to maintain an optimized site? And are you targeting the right pages? Matt Zeunert outlines an effective strategy for web performance optimization and explains the roles that different types of data play in it.

SVG is one of those web technologies that’s both elegant and, at times, infuriating. In this article, pioneering author and web designer Andy Clarke explains his technique for animating SVG elements that are hidden in the Shadow DOM.

Should freelance designers or developers list prices on their website? Learn the pros and cons of public pricing, from setting expectations to avoiding undercutting competitors.
The post Should Freelancers Advertise Their Pricing? appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Is WooCommerce the right niche for your WordPress agency? Explore its pros and cons, from flexibility and growth potential to the real costs of building expertise.
The post Should Your Agency Focus on WooCommerce Projects? appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

AI can speed up WordPress development, but overreliance can hurt your workflow. Learn how to use AI tools effectively without losing control of your code.
The post Use AI to Enhance – Not Replace – Your WordPress Expertise appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Want a faster WordPress site? Learn how to boost performance with better hosting, lightweight themes, optimized images, and smart caching strategies.
The post Tips for Building a Performant WordPress Website appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Let’s dive into the building blocks of UX strategy and see how it speaks the language of product and business strategy to create user value while achieving company goals. Part of the Measure UX & Design Impact (use the code 🎟 IMPACT to save 20% off today).

With component variants, design systems become more flexible, letting you reuse the same component while adapting its look or state with ease. In this article, Daniel Schwarz demonstrates how design tokens can be leveraged to manage components and their variations using Penpot, the open-source tool built for scalable, consistent design.

A collection of the best free video templates for creating intros and openers in After Effects. All editable, and perfect for your next project.
The post 25+ Best Free Intro & Opener Templates for After Effects in 2025 appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.