Graphic designers are highly in demand these days because unlike other web related businesses, graphic design gives you the flexibility to work in both online and offline media. All you need is a little creativity and knowledge in designing software to be a good graphic designer. Here are some of the things you should start doing to prepare yourself for a successful career.

1. Get a Degree- Employers prefer hiring someone with a designing degree from a reputed institution. Join a college to sharpen your skills. You may have practiced design softwares at home, but at an institution, you will learn the full possibilities of each tool, and also ways to exploit them.
2. Decide Your Field- Choose your path wisely. You can know all, but can’t be all. In other words, you can acquire knowledge on a vast variety of software but must specialize in designing any one faculty perfectly to be called an “expert”. Ask yourself what excites you? Do you love logo, brochure, newsletter, advertisement layout or website design? Follow your passion dedicatedly and you will achieve success.
3. Make Friends and Learn from Teachers- Start bonding with other students and teachers to broaden your horizon. Teachers will help you identify the mistakes and friends may share some interesting concepts with you.
4. Be Involved in Events- Participate in seminars, inter-college fests; listen to experts to enhance your knowledge. Event organization increases your leadership skills and teaches you the ways to handle pressure. Additionally, search the internet for various online designing contests. Take part in them to get  better exposure. You can also win monetary awards.
5. Try for Internship- During the last semester, start applying in different companies to get an internship. You may not earn much as an intern, but it will prepare you for a professional career.
6. Create a Portfolio and a Resume- These things are absolutely important for a newbie artist. On applying for a job, you will be asked for your educational details and sample designs. So, make sure your resume has all the personal and professional details that an employer would like to know. Highlight your expertise and experience to beat other candidates. Print only the best work for your portfolio to prove your worth as a designer. A website can also help you manifold in attracting online clients or employers.

Chase your dream and keep up the hard work to grab a good job in a reputed design company. When you start preparing for your career at a young age, the chances of success is really high.

All the best!

After the recent global recession, cost-cutting has become necessary for survival of corporate houses. Unfortunately, the brunt of reduction of excess expenditure has been employees, with large companies firing surplus resources. However, this is far from the ideal solution, instead is a horrible blow to team spirit and employee psyche in general.

Then, what is the solution?

What these companies are now opting for – keeping the home team small and outsourcing the excess baggage.

If you are running a small/large IT firm and want to reduce operational costs, consider offshore staffing. Look for part-time employee hiring. Choose to outsource your projects for the same quality output at less prices. Offshore staffing is a hassle-free process; all you need to do is contact the service provider, discuss your projects with him, select your team, sign a contract and get the work on board.

Outsourcing is far more beneficial for your business because:

It Reduces Home Cost- A permanent employee will command a hefty pay-package and solicit appraisals, including additional benefits. An overseas employee charges you only for the work he does, not to mention, a ridiculously subsidized rate.

Valuable During Economic Slowdown- This is one of the biggest benefits of outsourcing. Consider the time when there are few projects and yet, an employee has to be paid his full salary. For one $1000 earned, you pay an employee his due of $1500. Where does the extra $500 come from? More importantly, why pay when you can, in fact, invest $700 on an offshore firm and profit $300 from outsourcing?

Ensures Quick Project Completion- A freelancer is not an alternative to offshoring. Offshore providers work as a team. Most times, these are small, but established companies providing services for outsourced projects. They have the resources – hard and soft, and the infrastructure to take care of your needs. Compared to a freelancer(s), you can be sure that project requirements will be met and within the time frame you have appointed. Besides, with services under one roof, it saves you time and effort to appoint individuals to take care of your project, part-by-part.

So, is offshore staffing a spot of green for home companies?

Yes. It is!

If you believe in maximum ROI (return on investment) offshoring is your way to go.

WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems in the world and thousands of people use this versatile CMS to develop their business website. However, the popularity of WordPress has also made it the number one choice of hackers.

Hackers know that some of the most important business sites are powered by WordPress and they try continuously to find a hole in its security system. That is why, web developers should take good care of their website to keep hackers at bay.

If you have a WordPress site or planning for a WordPress website design, here are some security guidelines for you.

1. Keep it up-to-date- WordPress community regularly releases updates to enhance security features. As soon as the latest patches are available, download and install them to defend your site against malwares.
2. Update the themes and plug-ins- Maintain your site regularly, because one weak point is good enough to crash entire site. If you are using a paid theme and plug-ins for layout design and development, update them time to time to run your online business properly.
3. Remove inactive themes and plug-ins- If you have changed the layout or stopped using some plug-ins; uninstall the previous theme and inactive plug-ins for your site’s safety.
4. Replace the default admin- The default username of this content management system is “admin”. It’s probably the easiest name to guess. After installing WordPress, remove the default username and create your own username, password to prevent hacking.
5. Use a secure password- Make sure that your password is at least 8 characters long. Use numbers, symbols and uppercase, lowercase letters to create a complicated password. Don’t use your name, birth date or phone number as password, because hackers can easily guess it.
6. Use a different table prefix- Change the default prefix of table from “wp” to something else. Before installing the software, visit “wp_config.php file”, go to “$table_prefix  = ‘wp_’; and give a custom name replacing “wp”. If the software is already installed, open the database through “PhpMyAdmin and change the table name.
7. Delete version information- Hackers check the version information to understand whether they can hack your site or not. Therefore, delete the version information by adding “remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wp_generator’);” function in the PHP file.
8. Install trusted plug-ins- Before installing any plug-in, make sure that it’s free from virus and malware. Read user reviews and use highly rated plug-ins.
9. Choose your hosting service provider carefully- Once the site is developed, look for reputed hosting service provider. Ask him about the security features he is using for anti-hacking, because after the CMS, hackers’ next target is hosting server.
10. Keep your computer safe- Your commuter can also harm the CMS, if it’s not free from viruses. Install an anti virus software in your compute before starting the project and update your OS time to time to get the latest features.

Data security is a very crucial factor for successful web development. WordPress is undoubtedly a very secure CMS, but its better to be safe than sorry.

Let’s face it. Manipulations have been around since time immemorial and it is practiced by almost everyone. If you are new to the world of offshore staffing, there are some clients who would take advantage of your ‘newness’. In this post, i will talk about how they usually do it so that you can be prepared for them before they strike.

• First in my list is the technique where business owners use their authority over their outsourced employees to convince them to do something that is beyond the contract.

• A very common manipulation tactic is to demand something from your when you are focused on your work. The person who does this knows very well that your attention is towards what you are doing. They do it on purpose and take advantage of your consent. For instance, getting you to do something beyond your project scope – getting a tag-line written by you when actually, the contract is just one logo design.

• A client can sometimes also divert the topic you have been talking about in order to bring in something distantly related to the issue at hand so as to distract you. They can do it quite fast. Be careful when you talk to them, especially if you are a fresher because then you are highly likely to fall for the trick.

• If your client has repeatedly requested something that is beyond your ability to provide or is completely irrelevant to the project you have been entrusted with, he/she is manipulating you with the hope that at one point of time you will say ‘yes’.

• The last and probably commonest is the tactic of creating fear. Your clients present a scenario before you that is not real or can never be real and then they themselves provide a solution to the scenario to make you question your abilities and feel scared.

So, now you know how most business owners who outsource their projects can manipulate their offshore staff. However, not all clients do this and there are professionals who can dodge this kind of tricks. As your experiences grow, you will automatically be able to understand if, when and how you are being manipulated. Till then, use this guide and look out for what may come.