We are really happy about that. Our special gratitude to the winner of the contest – the very creator of Flashmint’s Blog new appearance!
But don’t worry – this was not the last opportunity. We promise to impress you with new not less interesting contests and valuable prizes!

P.S. We have some additional information for you. Our blog is in the test mode now, please feel free to post your comments.

Why choosing flip books?

Dynamic flip book templates give the customer unique opportunity to build eye catching and user friendly website within a couple of hours. You can add as many pages as required without deep knowledge of flash technology and action script.

This product is truly customer oriented. We tried to make things as simple as possible. All script settings are stored in external text files, so you can reconfigure the template within a couple of minutes.

The dynamic nature of Flip Book templates makes the website load faster. Now you do not have to wait for 10 minutes till the website loads. In fact it happens in seconds and the majority of the visitors do not even notice the loader at all.

Getting started.

To insert your own content you will need 2 variants of each page:

1. Big JPG image 850х1088(actual pages in 100% size)

2. Small JPG image 85х109(page thumbnails)

Every big image must be converted in SWF format(Flash 8), this is required for graphics dithering and http links embedding.

After you have prepared all pages you should edit the XML file and define path top the appropriate images. It is very important to keep existing naming system.

To edit the “content menu” please open mag.fla file using adobe flash 8, find “subContent symbol” in flash library, open the 1st frame of layer3 and go to line 18 in action script panel. This will allow you to create your own menu.

Navigation Items.

ZOOM Button- set page scale to 100%.

FULLSCREEN Button - switches fullscreen mod on.

PAGES Button - displays page preview thumbnails.

CONTENTS Button - Shows flip book content links.

SAVE Button - download PDF/DOC version of the flip book.

PRINT Button - prints the current page.

FAVORITES Button - adds website to favorites.

SEND Button - sends the website URL by email.

LINKS Button - the list of link partners.

NOTES Button - adds a note to the page.

SOUNDS Button - switches ON/OF the sound track.

HELP Button - brief navigation description

Except for it, we have received FIVE designs more. Though they are not winning, but nevertheless, we found them really appealing. Designed by Harmen Stoppels, it was the first theme which we received: Connor Leigh-Smith from Sharkofmirkwood Narendra S.V. from TechTreak GoBlogging.net Fikri Wirawan

As the received themes are not our property, these authors can use them for any puproses they want, but without any graphics associated with Flashmint. And if you want And now, let me come up to the part which is not less interesting - the contest for bloggers.

According to our statistics, the first largest number of visitors to us was brought by http://work-at-home-wealth.com/, the second largest number - by http://www.dulcenegosyante.com/ and the third - by http://www.contestwinner.blogspot.com/. All the winners, please send your PayPal details to flashmint.contest-at-gmail dot com. The payment will be issued within 24 hours.

Others who took part in the contest, don’t worry as we keep our words. Please, find a backlink to your websites HERE. If we have forgotten to mention you, please, don’t be angry with us. A lot of bloggers have taken part in the contest and we did our best to reward all of them. Just write to the following address - flashmint.contest-at-gmail dot com and we’ll add you to the list. Please note that we offered PR4 link back but in result you will get PR5 backlink

Thanks all. Waiting for the new contest

The key feature of Business CMS templates is their User Control Panel. Due to it you do need no additional software to modify a flash template. Within one hour a user without programming background can do the following:

• change the company name, slogan, logo, background, texts, copyright;
• change the colors of the menu, copyright, company name and slogan;
• upload the sound track in MP3 format.

This is how the user control panel looks:

You can add, delete and edit web pages by means of the page wizard. View the screenshots of steps 1-3:

The interface for editing pages looks like this:

Here is what a user can easily do with the created pages:

• edit a menu title;
• edit all the texts due to the built-in text editor;
• add, edit, delete blocks and change their order;
• edit contact form fields;
• update the news feed

And the last, but not the least, feature of Business CMS templates is their competitive prices. The highest price is currently only $80. So, all this makes Business CMS templates the most cost-saving and the quickest tool for creating a small or a medium-sized business website.

More information on Business CMS templates is available here

And here is how the newly launched Business CMS templates look like:

Consulting Flash CMS Template 2220

View live demo here

Business Group Flash CMS Template 2219

View live demo here

Insurance Business Flash CMS Template 2218

View live demo here

Trade Company CMS Flash Template 2217

View live demo here

• a full screen template, which are not very numerous on the Net

and at the same time

• a stretched template, which fills the browser window regardless of its resolution;

• xml-driven, which means that you don’t have to have Flash soft to customize a photo gallery.

The mp3-palyer with tags and the adjustable interval between pictures in a slide-show make this web template maximum customizable.

Hurry up to check out this template at Flashmint.

Good luck!

I have selected 10 photo portfolio templates which stand out among the rest with their original web design and prime functionality. This round-up is not only a chance for us to view the cream of web templates development, but also a great possibility to express our gratitude to all our web masters who make the greatest contribution to our triumph in this field.

Settle back comfortably in your chair and enjoy this set of ten portfolio templates. I am sure that you will definitely find something appealing to you no matter what you are working on, your personal or your customer’s project. This is it…

Photographer website CMS v2 flash template 2208

View Live Demo here

Photography website CMS flash template 2207

View Live Demo here

Photography studio CMS v2 flash template 2206

View Live Demo

Digital photo gallery CMS v2 flash template 2205

View Live Demo here

Personal portfolio CMS v2 flash template 2197

View Live Demo here

Photo portfolio XML flash template 2191

View Live Demo here

Portfolio Flex CMS Flash template 2183

View Live Demo here

Photo Circle Flex CMS Flash template 2178

View Live Demo here

Photo Gallery Flex CMS Flash template 2175

View Live Demo here

Creative photographer CMS flash template 2173

View Live Demo here

The festival of creativity is going to take place at Flashmint.com. We are announcing a Contest for Flashmint Blog Design to begin at August, 1st. Those of you with creative minds are welcomed to participate and Flashmint will reward the most creative and original works generously.

So, here is what we need - a custom WordPress theme for our FlashMint Blog.

It should come with the following features:

• 3 columns;
• fixed width (optimized to 1024×768 resolution) and widget support;
• coded;
• the colors and style of the theme should correspond to Flashmint design!

How it works? Just submit a zip file and a screenshot (300*300px) in the submission form below from August, 1st  till September, 1st. The winner, chosen by our team, will be announced in next 2-3 days and get the prize money - $500.
But keep in mind that all other worthy designs will be showcased at Flashmint blog along with the links to their developers’ websites.

Note that if your wordpress design is not chosen as winning, you are allowed to use it for any purposes providing that there are not any graphics associated with Flashmint in it.

To make your work on design easier, we are providing you with the The PSD of Flashmint logo so that you could apply it for your future design. Download it here

Hurry up! There’s not much time left.

What should you do? The rules are quite simple:

• write a blogpost about our Contest and link back to Flashmint website from your blog by adding a code fragment into the post. Get the code here.

OR

• just add the code fragment under your latest post. Get the code here.
• Surely you can make minor changes in the text of the paragraph at your discretion, the only request is to leave the anchor texts just as they are, and the links should be “dofollow”.

And if you do not feel confident that your blog can attract a highly competitive number of visitors, do not hesitate to participate!  ALL the other participants whose blogs will not have scored enough referrers for the first three places will get a free PR 4 backlink to their website. Good luck!

Submit Your Wordpress Design Here:

cforms contact form by delicious:days

1. Could you explain to people who don’t know, what Xpellshop is?

At first there only was Xpell.com, a very nice website, coded in Swish with 3D animations. It caused a sensation and we got many awards for our website. After that we started creating further websites and then we decided to sell them as templates. In such a way Xpellshop.com was born in 2003.

Xpellshop offers Swish and Flash templates maintaining the highest standards of quality. We specialize in code and design of Swish templates because Swish is much cheaper than Flash and offers the same opportunities to create multimedia websites with nice effects. Our customers are mostly web designers who order our Swish templates, modify and sell them to their customers. It is really fast to buy a professional design and only make some changes in the content.

2. What was your motivation for starting Xpellshop? What was it like in the beginning?

Customers, who want to have very nice individual Flash websites, have to pay really much money. Our idea was to offer them much cheaper. To sell one design for $3500 is not so easy. But to sell a very nice design 10 - 50 times is more likely.

3. What are the core principles you use in your daily work?

It is important to work reliably and create a design that identifies the topic of the template. I also try to code the templates simply, so that customers can modify them very fast. And I make video tutorials to show them how to customize them.

When I create a Swish template, the most of work takes up the design. I try many different colors and positions and only when I see “that’s the perfect design for this topic” I start working and code the template. While coding, I start realizing how to animate it. That’s a growing process and at the end there is a (hopefully) nice template.

4. What distinguishes your web templates from competitors’ ones?

Other competitors like TemplateMonster create templates like on the assembly line. Surely they have nice effects, but if you look deeper, you can see that they are the same all the time. They don’t really look for the topic of a template.

For example: I create a Swish template for a photo designer. I put in an endless gallery to present as much photos as the customer wants to show. If you take a normal template from TemplateMonster, there is only a gallery which includes 10 images. Or if I create a website for a beauty salon, I will put in a registration form which also WORKS. TemplateMonster puts in a contact form and I am not sure if it works. (only a button send but nothing happens at all)

I just want to say that I think before I make a template. My aim is not to produce thousands of templates which have the same features, but to create really good solutions like these:

5. I know that you do not work on templates designs only, but you also develop custom projects. Do you remember your first big project?

If you mean a really big project, it was Mannesmann here in Germany. We created a local multimedia Flash presentation with share prices, weather and traffic information, slide shows, video shows etc. It also had rotating icons for navigation. We coded an automatic mode and a customer mode. So if someone wanted to know if there was any congestion on the highway, he or she could browse traffic information using a space navigator. This project was one of the biggest we have created until now.

6. In your opinion, what is your most successful work for the time being?

The most successful work was Xpell.com. With this website we got our foot into the www and managed to make a name for ourselves. In 2003 Xpell.com was at every forum and people discussed it. Some people said “Flash sites are pure shit and absolutely unnecessary”, however, the majority had contrary opinion.

7. What are the major difficulties that you or the company faces?

The major difficulty is to get reliable partners. I searched a month ago for a partner for coding all the Swish templates and also in Flash. I can do it myself, but I don’t have the time to do it. But if someone says he will make it, he works 1 or 2 days and after that I never hear anything. I noticed that your customers also want to have Swish templates instead of Flash. Even someone who reads my letters wants to work with me. Till now I have been making the whole project alone. Customer service, accounting…..

8. Do you have any future plans of the site that you could share with us?

Of course. If I had a partner who codes Flash templates, it would also be possible to offer those Flash templates at Flashmint. Further I am thinking about reselling Flash templates from Flashmint at Xpellshop.com.

Most of Xpellshop.com customers are from Germany. I would also like to expand to the United States and worldwide. It would even be possible to start a joint project selling Swish templates as a main product.

9. If you had any advice to give to somebody starting up their own template selling business, what would it be?

It is very difficult to start a business like this. First you must have some nice website designs and your own style. People must love your work and your personality. I did many free works for customers and so they come back every time. And you have to know much about SEO to push your website. If you don’t have traffic, you can’t sell any product even if you have the best website templates of all. I often see companies who offer templates I would never buy. But other visitors do purchase their products, as they couldn’t find your website because of bad SEO.

10. How do you see the future of Swish or Flash technology?

I think Flash and Swish will reach a higher level in the next years. Internet at home will be going faster and faster, so, loading a Flash website will be really fast. Flash and Swish are nicer and it is like a game to surf a great Flash or Swish site. Primarily Flash and Swish will be used for product or company presentations. I think this market will be going bigger and bigger. At the beginning of techno people said: “That won’t survive.” Today here in Germany is the 17th Love parade with about 1.000.000 people who scream to hard techno beats. For me, Flash and Swish sites are the techno of the www and they will outlive everything.

11. What websites or blogs do you follow on a regular basis?

I read the Swishzine, newsletters of SwishMax. I also look out for nice Flash and Swish sites every day. I don’t follow one blog or one website. Sometimes I also take a look at other template providers. It is important to know what your competitors are doing.

12. What are the tools you couldn’t live without?

That’s a very easy question. My life would be nothing without SwishMax and Fireworks. Both programs are absolutely great and I love to work with them.

The soft yellow color of this site will warm your sight and make you … wonder what it’s all about. This is actually the site from a photographer Joe Grisham. Take a look. Apart from being color yellow the site is very trendy from the point of view of web design.

Men with yellow faces and without eyes, noses, lips… This is what you get if your website is not compelling, according to this design studio. So, yellow is not only a bright color, it is also a color of blank.

The same idea of yellow emptiness is conveyed the next site, but this time it is applied to a non-living object, such us space around us.

Using yellow as a background looks good too. Quite appealing, isn’t it?

Yellow occupies a worthy place in this orange-yellow-green-blue design.

Look how yellow header can refresh the whole site and make it rather catchy.

Yellow curtains and yellow sun, a nice combination for a perfect web site.

Have a glance at the following site. Nothing special but the color adds a nice final touch making the webpage quite attractive.

How does gold look like against such background? Check up on.

The last site in this series is… Let me give here some space for your opinion. Enjoy!