Haven’t gotten into the holiday spirit quite yet? Perhaps these design and development focused advent calendars will do the trick. Come to think of it, it should do even more than that; you get a treat every single day for 24 days straight. Sounds even better than Christmas day? Almost.
24 ways
This site may not have started the “geeky” advent calendar trend, but it has certainly built an excellent reputation and tradition for web designers everywhere. The design continues to be cutting edge and inspiring as well.
PHP Advent
All PHP, all holiday season long. See also the Perl Advent Calendar. (There’s a Rails one too, but the original post seems to be missing now.)
SitePoint Christmas Advent Calendar
Few things are better than a holiday sale, and this advent calendar themed bazaar by SitePoint looks great. The format is pretty clever too: each offer lasts for only 24 hours, and you won’t know what products come on next.
WP Engineer WordPress Advent Calendar
Here’s one for the WordPress lovers, made by no less than WP Engineer. I hope that next year this becomes a community-wide effort as with the PHP Advent Calendar. Archive here.
Social Media Advent Calendar
A great crash course, if you will, into everything about social media. Not quite for designers or developers, but a great resource nonetheless.
Lists done better?
Writing this article made me realize this could actually be a way to create better list articles. Instead of cramming everything in and bombarding your readers with one long, heavy post, create a series. Exercise patience and restraint on your part and theirs. Keep them coming back for more.
Once you’ve reached your quota, do a round-up, and store the past articles in a safe place. They can even be realigned or revisited (hopefully not like recycled fruitcake, mind you) when the holidays come around again. Of course you can write all year long, but the idea is also avoiding predictability and knowing when to make things special.
And speaking of which, may you all have a special holiday season this year!
Originally posted on December 14, 2009 @ 5:40 pm