Want some inspiration for user-interface design? Read about the amazing backend and custom CMS done for the AIGA website over at Weightshift. This client-tailored solution is an inspiration to any designer or developer interested in user-interface design.

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Today I had to create a 404 page, and I wanted something a bit better than the drab, 1990s-version of the typical 404 page. Enter A List Apart.

This great article at ALA gives tips on creating 404 pages that help improve your site’s usability and create a friendlier user experience for your visitors. Among the tips:

• Don’t admonish the user
• Keep it minimal
• Incorporate javascript to tailor the 404 error based on how the 404 page was reached.

Check it out for specific javascript example and a more in-depth look at the hows and whys of creating a usable and friendly 404.

Horizontal centering in CSS is not particularly difficult. Vertical centering on the other hand can be difficult at time in my past experience. Here is a pretty good example of vertical and horizontal centering using only CSS. Note that some special “care” has been exercised to get Windows Internet Explorer to behave properly.

In the blogosphere of late are a couple of interesting posts about client/contractor relationships. Over at StuntDubl, Todd Malicoat features a humorous, albeit relevant post about how to “Break up with bad clients.” Somehow, yours truly ended up with one of her “breakup lines” in the list.

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WordPress gets better and better by the day. It has always been great, but with plug-ins I have found it beyond great. One of my favorite plug-ins has always been the semi-static front page plug in from SemiLogic. It was part of my standard install until the latest version of WordPress that well … builds the feature in standard. Go to Options > Reading > Front Page. First create your front page and then select it.

HTML.it has some nice clean css/html page layouts offered over on their site. Not a bad place to start designing a good clean layout.

This site looks to have some very nice tutorials on css (Cascading Style Sheets), including lists and floats. From a quick look it appears easy to follow as well and written in plain English. I’m putting it on my todo list.