Every now and again we take a look around, select fresh high-quality free fonts and present them to you in a brief overview. The choice is enormous, so the time you need to find them is usually the time you should be investing in your current projects. We search for them and we find them, so you don’t have to.

This month we are glad to present you Goudy Bookletter 1911, Advent Pro, Ambrosia, Andale Mono, Telegrafico, Fonce Sans Regular and the Luxi Font Family. Please read the license agreements carefully - they can change from time to time.

• You can find over 70 more free fonts in our section Free Fonts.

Free Fonts Of The Month

Goudy Bookletter 1911
A serif old-style OpenType font. You need to scroll the frame to find the download link. [via derSven]

Advent Pro
A fresh, modern typeface coming in 7 weights — bold, bold extra, regular rounded, regular, regular oblique, light and light extra. Commercial work containing this typeface must include the reference to the author; personal projects don’t neccessary need to have a reference. The advanced version of the font can be purchased.

Ambrosia
This font is free to use for personal purposes only. This version doesn’t contain kerning, accented character and foreign currency symbols.

Andale Mono
Andale Mono is a highly legible monospaced font which was originally distributed as part of the Internet Explorer 4.0 add-ons page as Monotype.com. It distinguishes well between the zero, and the O. You can find 4 further monospaced fonts in Hamish Macpherson’s article The Typography of Code. You might want to check out 22 more Monospaced/Fixed Width Programmer’s Fonts as well.

Credits: Hamish Macpherson

Telegrafico
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. TrueType (.ttf).

Fonce Sans Regular
A sans-serif typeface that includes old style (hanging) numbers, a number of english and non-english lettering, some additional symbols and complete punctuation. This typeface is considered a Trial Version, in which certain letterforms have been replaced. Available only for non-commercial use as .otf. The advanced version of the font can be purchased.

This typeface is being released as a sort of “beta,” in which people might become accustomed to the typeface and also voice their opinions on its usability.

Luxi Family
Luxi fonts are commonly found on free software operating systems, such as Linux. They are the default fonts in Red Hat’s Bluecurve theme. This family includes Luxi Sans, a family of four sans-serif fonts, Luxi Serif, a family of four serif fonts and Luxi Mono, a family of four monospace fonts. These fonts can be downloaded using OpenOffice.org’s FontOOo wizard. (via Chris Apalodimas)

Technorati Tags: downloads, Fonts, free, freefonts, typeface, typography

RSS is extremely simple and yet so powerful. Not only does every weblog need it for content syndication; the number of RSS subscribers is a metric for weblog’s popularity and its success in the blogosphere. However, although millions do use RSS, hundreds of millions don’t. That’s no good news, since RSS offers a bunch of advantages that can boost your productivity and improve your information consumption in a quite elegant and easy-to-use way.In this article we give an overview of what RSS is and present best design and usability-practices for design and placement of RSS-buttons on a web site. We also showcase dozens of free RSS-icons and provide you with references to related tutorials and how-tos.

Please notice that

• you can find even more icons, buttons and design templates in our articles 20+ Free And Fresh Icon Sets, Freebies Round-Up: Icons, Buttons and Templates and in our Graphics category.

more>>

In many blogs header graphics often takes a prominent position as bloggers try to impress visitors with distinctive and appealing visual elements. In fact, designed properly, header graphics can create an appropriate atmosphere and convey the style the designer has chosen. Well-designed themes can be as useful as templates, particularly if you can download them and experiment with them as you wish. However, you won’t find that many sources on the Web. That’s time to change it.

We’d like to create a small smashing gallery of blog header graphics which every designer could use for free and without any restrictions whatsoever. To achieve this we need the help of our creative visitors. To achieve this we need your help. Which is why we announce a Header Graphics Contest.

Update (02.02.2008): please notice that this contest is not about designing a header for the Smashing Magazine web-site. Your header graphics don’t have to be related to Smashing Magazine at all. This is about sharing your skills with fellows designers and creating a free repository of downloadable header graphics.

 Examples>>

So I’ve been blogging now for a  while now and I have recently been thinking, “What makes a successful blog?”.  To be honest this is a question with endless answers, with many different variations and opinions, however, I thought I would voice my say.

Content

Well as they say content is key, you have to pick a topic from which you have a wide ranging knowledge.  If you can find a niche and strive to become an authority on the topic then people will pay attention.

The regularity at which you add content to your blog also provides a key point in determining whether visitor levels grow.  Frequently added content will help to drive new visitors to your blog whilst also providing regular readers with a reason to keep coming back.

Research research research

Keep your ear to the ground and finger on the pulse looking for the latest news and technologies.  Your users want to find cutting edge articles and if you can’t provide them they will find another site which can.

Create controversy

Now this is something I hear other bloggers mention a lot and to be quite honest I’m not too sure I totally agree, so let me explain.  If your articles cause controversy but you believe in everything your writing and feel you can back up your statements then I have no problem with this.  This is the start of a debate not a war, however, if your sole aim is to cause controversy with the aim of driving traffic and you can’t substantiate your claims/statements then I believe you will only create a negative long term impact on your blog.  Users are not stupid and do not like deliberate and underhand attempts for attention, plus it’s never a good idea to get yourself a bad reputation.

Passion and drive

Your articles must display your passion and drive for your desired topic.  Without this your articles will undoubtedly be a less then entertaining read and more than likely provide very little interest to readers.

Think SEO

You may have the best blog in the world but if nobody can find it whats the point?!  Consider how you name your articles, the keywords you use within your article content as well as your templates HTML structure to name but a few.  Have a look at SEO related sites such as Matt  Cutts dot com and SEO Trickster dot com to help increase your SEO knowledge as your blog will directly benefit.

Publicise

Promote your website and its articles on sites such as Digg, Stumbleupon or reddit.  If your article hits the spot and proves popular with readers then expect huge levels of traffic to descend on your blog, whilst obviously raising your profile.

Guest Blog

Guest blogging, although it could easily fit into the category above, further helps to raise your profile.  Offering articles to popular sites with similar content to your own (making sure you are referenced at the top of the article with a link back to your site) again increases awareness of you and your site, whilst also driving traffic.

Show personality

It is important to show your readers that you are a human being.  By allowing your personality to flow through your articles you can easily endear your readers to you.  This can help develop a sense of community and loyalty prompting repeat visits and high levels of commenting.  Remember users love an active site with frequent commenting.

Monetise

How does monetising make a successful blog?!  Well I guess it does depend on your ambitions for your blog, although as I’m sure your aware any money you make through schemes such as Google Adsense or the Yahoo! Publisher Network can be directly pushed back into your blog for programs such as Google Adwords or maybe you want to pay a friend to create a fresh design.

Network

Talk to other bloggers and listen to their views and opinions.  Not only can this gain you a very vital link if you get on well, but it can also provide you with a very nice topic for you to debate on your blog.  A bit of sensible blog rivalry (debating) never hurt anybody and again can gain you some much needed online attention.

Link to other blogs

Link to other blogs can work on many levels; firstly if trackbacks are enabled on the recipient site then you will receive a link back to your site and the possibility of further traffic and secondly, as stated above in the “Network” section, it can provide a topic for debate with other bloggers gaining you valuable attention.

Link bait

Although many users frown upon “link bait” (articles or content which are “guaranteed” to receive incoming links from other sites) you should never rule it out.  Increasing the amount of inbound links to your site will help increase your traffic levels through referrals as well as improve your natural search rankings, whilst also raising the profile of your site.

Encourage repeat visits

From a must have online tool that users just can’t live without to the killer list of resources, it is essential that users have a reason to keep coming back to your site.  Without this your site will have a very limited life span.  These reasons can also help to provide the required “link bait” as stated above.

Refresh your blog

It is important to visually refresh your blog over time as nobody wants to visit a site that looks like it was built in 1997 so try and keep up with the times.  Mixing up the design of your site can also offer further stimulation and greater levels of interaction to users helping to increase repeat visits and the time spent on your site.

Do not rest on your laurels

Finally it is important to remember that no matter how popular your website/blog you cannot afford to rest on your laurels.  Doing so means your website can only go in one direction, backwards.

Keep those ideas and enthusiasm flowing and I’m sure you’ll all side step this particular hurdle.  Happy blogging!!!

Today we have part 1 of our series on the most useful tutorials released in 2007, taking a close look at most useful code snippets and examples that you can find handy to incorporate into your websites - here we bring together the very best tutorials and demos gathered from the net on our first series

Let’s take a look at some of the best tutorials we’ve found in the Web so far.

2007 Hand-Picked Tutorials