We are delighted to announce that the workshop we organised last week (full details are here) went very well. Everybody who participated in the workshop left very satisfied alhamdulillah.  It’s been such a wonderful experience to meet different Muslim business representatives, share their thoughts and network with them, mashallah.

The following Muslim businesses have participated in our workshop held on Saturday, 30th of January:

• Jobs Middle East

• The Islamic Establishment

• The Educational Hajj & Umrah Ltd

• Birmingham Central Mosque

• Al Hijrah Library

• Faith Old Coins

• Alhambra Networks

• Lightimage Photography Gallery

• Kreative Designer

• Al-Firdous Publications

• Green Globe

• Ummah Vouchers (Guest Speaker)

Our appologies for those who wanted to come for Saturday session but because of the space limitations could not book themselves in. Inshallah, we will be repeating the same course this month so please keep checking our website inshallah :- ).  To guarantee your place please send us your details to workshop{at}ummah-design.com and we will add you to our waiting list IA.

Here are some pictures from the workshop:

We will post the video from the workshop as soon as we get it ready IA. So stay tuned. :- )

Please let us know if you want to particiupate in our next training workshop inshallah.  Any comments, suggestions or feedback -  please let us know.

Wassalamu alaykum.

“And among His signs is this, that He has created for you mates from among yourselves, that you may dwell in tranquillity with them; and He has put love and mercy between you.  Verily in that are signs for those who reflect.” 30:21

Marriage is a compulsory act of worship and a means of completing ones Deen/Faith, it’s a subject of our everyday lives and of everyone’s concern. It plays a great role in our lives and is largely discussed in our Muslim community. Whether you’re a father looking for a spouse for your daughter or a mother looking for a spouse for your son, or maybe a brother or sister looking for yourself, in either case it’s more commonly a long, tiring and confusing process, especially here in the west. However,  as it has been ordained by Allah the Most Wise and All Knowing, marriage is sure to have many virtues and advantages Inshallah for those in whom seeks genuinely, wisely and according to the sunnah of our most blessed and beloved Prophet Muhammad (SAAWS).

Ok, so one of the most common & convenient ways of finding your life partner is by internet, muslim matrimonial sites are increasing rapidly year after year and is thought to be one of the most successful so we decided to compose a small showcase of the top matrimonial sites for your convenience to choose from.

Muslima.com

Qiran.com

Singlemuslim.com

Baitulnikah.com

Islamiclove.com

Muslimmatch.com

Muslimlife.eu

Icmarriage.com

Islamicintros.com

Meetmuslimsingles.com

Mymuslimmarriage.com

So what do you think? Please leave your comments and share any pros and cons of searching for your loved one on line, do you have a success story or maybe some concerns? Or maybe you don’t agree with online searching at all, so give us some alternative methods, whatever your outlook please don’t hesitate to leave your views and suggestions.

Also, if we missed any other Muslim Marriage/Matrimonial website that  is worth  including here, please leave them below along with your comments. Jazakallahu khayran.

Wassalamu alaykum.

Alhamdulillah, as we have mentioned before, Allah (SWT) has blessed us in the way that recently we have had and still having the pleasure of designing and developing many Islamic non-profitable sites, so much so that we have come to know many important key skills relating to such projects that we would like to share with you today inshallah.

Firstly, these types of sites need to be user friendly with easy navigation, so we have to use appropriate fonts, colours, and other design elements to ensure this but at the same time coinciding it into the site so that it doesn’t look all mismatched. The design should revolve around your content and your mission not the other way around, and that doesn’t mean your site can’t meet the modern web design trends, just that we have to take into account the type of information you’ll be providing us with for the site and the formats that will be used.

Secondly, the website needs to make it easy for Muslim brothers and sisters users to find out more about the cause, to donate money, and to become more involved, it needs to make it easy for them to find the information they need and the contact details of the person in charge. And it needs to do all this in a way that’s inviting to the organization’s targeted donors and/or volunteers.

Thirdly, we have to make sure your organization’s purpose is clear and immediately apparent, I mean how many times have you gone to a website and not had a clue what the site was about? This is so common. Clients often take for granted what their visitors will already know about them if they know anything at all! A good solution to this is choosing the right name for your organisation because a good name can say it all or why not put an abbreviated mission statement on the home page?

Finally, including a news section or blog on your site has some important advantages too, for example, it can increase the traffic coming to your site because blogs and news sites are often quoted by other blogs and news sites, hence, giving you more exposure!

Plus it gives your site a regular change of content, this increases your search engine visibility by making it easier for Muslims actively looking for related information to find your site and then maybe becoming a regular visitor, subscribe to your news page via RSS or just becoming more involved Inshallah.

I’d like to briefly add at this point that it is so much easier when clients know their site’s purpose beforehand, we encourage them to mention their list of main aims and objectives they want to achieve from their website on our Client’s Needs Analysis Form before we start on the design process, making this clear beforehand will save so much time, money and effort later on down the road making any unnecessary changes.

So anyway as promised, here is our Showcase of Muslim Charity Websites that we thought would be good examples of the points mentioned above:

Muslim Hands

Muslim Hands, a well known Muslim registered Charity, is one of our favourites because not only does it comply with the modern web design trends by using certain effects such as the letterpress, big typography and some textures here and there to create a mild grungy effect on their funky slide show style banner, but Mashallah, they have also cleverly incorporated their abbreviated slogan/mission statement into their logo so there’s no confusion in what they do, and they have a clear & user friendly navigation bar and donation basket clearly viewable on the top right Mashallah.

Muslim Hands - www.muslimhands.org

Islamic Relief

Islamic Relief Worldwide is an excellent example of getting a lot of information into a small space while keeping everything de-cluttered, nicely organized under meaningful sections and user-friendly, another famous registered Charity, no need for an intro. Here we see the Latest Appeal box situated right in the middle of the page where no one can miss it, we also notice the Donate option clearly sitting on the top right of their home page. Another thing I noticed was that the loading time of the website is extremely fast despite the site being very much database driven and with lots of content. Mashallah, keep it up, Islamic Relief!

Islamic Relief Worldwide - www.islamic-relief.com

Muslim Aid

Another personal favourite, you can see that they too have cooperated their slogan/mission statement just under their logo, we also see that they have a very simple navigation featuring clearly links to what they do, how to get involved and their Media Centre, having a media centre will make it easier for journalists and bloggers to find information about your Charity and they can bring you more donations or simply give you more exposure. They’ve smartly made their latest projects/appeals immediately apparent on their very eye catching banner adding the donation box to the end of it. Making them all clickable links makes it really user friendly.

Muslim Aid - www.muslimaid.org

Muslim Community Fund

Muslim Community Fund is a new charitable foundation focused on the development of the Muslim Community, primarily in the West. They grant programmes that help tackle issues and areas that need attention within our community.

Muslim Community Fund is a website we recently designed ourselves, we chose to use a light and fresh look to coordinate with our clients existing logo, we wanted to keep the theme clean & simple for easy navigation and usability and opted to use a huge typography style banner highlighting key words of our clients services, the main advantage of using this effect is that it can communicate content quickly and effectively and make it easier for users to consume information.

Muslim Community Fund - www.mcfund.org.uk

Mercy Mankind International

Mercy Mankind International was founded in 2006 by two people, Sahar in Britain, and Fahim in Bangladesh, they started work to help the poor in Bangladesh and have slowly expanded into Pakistan and have also worked in South Africa and Algeria. Their future plan is to work in the UK as well Inshallah. We chose this site for our showcase because we liked the peaceful colours, easy navigation and clean, de-cluttered layout.

Mercy Mankind International - www.mercymankind.org

Muslim Poverty Relief

Muslim Poverty Relief is another website we designed and developed ourselves. We tried to make the message of our client’s homepage immediately apparent through images and small text areas. We featured Donation Links both in the main content area of the home page and in the top navigation. Links to “Reports” and “Get Involved” sections are also included in the top navigation bar in easy view of the visitor. We featured the links to their latest Projects directly under their main banner where we thought it would be made more prominent.

Muslim Poverty Relief - www.muslimpovertyrelief.org.uk

Human Relief Foundation

Human Relief Foundation is a UK based Registered Charity established back in 1991 with offices in Bradford, London, Glasgow, Iraq (Baghdad & Mosul), Kashmir, Pakistan, Sudan & Jordan. We chose to feature this site on our showcase because of the really prominent ‘become a volunteer’ clickable link situated on the top right hand side of the home page and when clicked on it then navigates you to the relevant page where it then transforms to a ‘Please Donate’ Link. We also really liked the grungy elements they subtly implemented into their design; and in addition to that we notice they have used another web design trend for 2009 where typography is used to create a kind of news paper headline/magazine look, this is more often used in blogging but it seems to have coordinated well with their theme. We also see this effect in one of the Muslim Hands banners.

Human Relief Foundation (HRF) - www.hrf.co.uk

Ummah Welfare Trust

Ummah Welfare Trust took a different approach on their site, on the header they have used white & orange against shades of black & grey to highlight important info, Multi-media content is featured prominently on the home page, as is recent news and Donate links are clearly situated where ever you set your eyes. Mashallah, and they also have a blog! Great job guys!

Ummah Welfare Trust (UWT) - www.uwt.org

Asad Ghazi Foundation

Asad Ghazi Foundation is one we designed and developed back in February this year. We kept the design simple and clean with clear, user friendly navigation and used colour to distinguish between different sections of their site, we situated the donate box prominently under their main banner using green against the brown background to highlight it.

Asad Ghazi Foundation (AGF) - www.agfoundation.co.uk

Conclusion

We hope you have enjoyed our showcase of Muslim Charity Sites Inshallah, I must be honest, it was a bit disappointing not having much of a variety to choose from, so please feel free to add any more good examples we have failed to mention and give us your comments on what you thought of our first showcase, your feedback and advice is much appreciated.

Jazakallahu khayran and look forward to your comments.

Wassalamu alaykum.

Our team would like to present our first seasonal range of desktop designs.  Inshallah we start our on-going collection of designs with the Autumn range.

Each season we are planning to present you with 6 unique desktop wallpapers with an Islamic feel, inshallah.

Please share your comments and feedback with us.  Jazakallahu khayran. ( I like the number 4 & 5. And you?)

Update: We have added more islamic wallpapers here:  Islamic wallpapers with prayer timetables for January 2010

Alhamdulillah by the mercy of Almighty Allah we have completed another project.  The Ormari Mosque, situated in Beirut benefited from our worldwide Mosque promotion where they received a whole new website, for free!

It was a pleasue working with the brothers and pray it serves their community for a long time inshallah.

Take a peek at a screenshot of their front page

Marriage

Another one of the ways in which a person is promised an increase in wealth is through marriage.

Photo by Think Tank

This will no doubt come as a surprise to many, perhaps because of the fact that ones limited financial situation is (in our times) on of the main reasons that prevent a person from marrying! Yet, the irony of the fact is that marriage is one of the easiest ways in which a person can guarantee an increase in his sustenance from Allah .

Allah states:

“And marry those among you who are single, and also marry the pious of your maids and maid-servants (male and female slaves). If  they be poor, Allah will enrich them out of His Bounty. And Allah is All-Sufficient for His creatures needs, All-Knowing.”
Surah al-Nur,32

Al-Qurtubi writes, commenting on this verse “This means: let not the poverty of a man or woman be a reason for not getting married. For in this verse Allah promises those who get married for the sake of acquiring Allah ’s pleasure and seeking refuge from disobeying Him that Allah will enrich him…” Tafsir al-Qurtubi, v.12 p.220

We also find the companions of the prophet would encourage others to marry. Abu Bakr is reported to have said “Obey Allah in what He has commanded you to do by getting married; He will then fulfil His promise to you and make you rich” al-Durr al-Manthur,v.5 pps.80-81.

And Allah knows best!

From “15 ways of increasing your earnings. From the Quran and Sunnah” by Abu Ammar Yasir Qadhi.  Publishing and distribution by Al-Hidayah.

Ever wondered whether the Internet is evolving, how many domain names were registered, how many emails were sent  etc.  in 2008? Here is the compilation (courtesy of www.pingdom.com) for your attention.

Email

• 1.3 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
• 210 billion – The number of emails sent per day in 2008.
• 70% – The percentage of emails that are spam.
• 53.8 trillion – The number of spam emails sent in 2008 (assuming 70% are spam).

Websites

• 186,727,854 – The number of websites on the Internet in December 2008.
• 31.5 million – The number of websites added during 2008.

Web servers

• 24.4% – The growth of Apache websites in 2008.
• 13.7% – The growth of IIS websites in 2008.
• 22.2% – The growth of Google GFE websites in 2008.
• 336.8% – The growth of Nginx websites in 2008.
• 100.3% – The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2008.

Domain names

• 77.5 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2008.
• 11.8 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2008.
• 7.2 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2008.
• 174 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains.
• 19% – The increase in the number of domain names in 2008.

Internet users

• 1,463,632,361 – The number of Internet users worldwide (June 2008).
• 578,538,257 – Internet users in Asia  (39.5%).
• 384,633,765 – Internet users in Europe (26.3%).
  
• 248,241,969 – Internet users in North America (17.00%).
• 139,009,209 – Internet users in Latin America/Caribbean (9.5%).
• 51,065,630 – Internet users in Africa (3.5%).
• 41,939,200 – Internet users in the Middle East (2.9%).
• 20,204,331 – Internet users in Oceania/Australia (1.4%).

Blogs

• 133 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by Technorati).
• 900,000 – The number of new blog posts in a day.
• 329 million – The number of blog posts in 2008.

Images

• 10 billion – Photos hosted by Facebook (October 2008).
• 3 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (November 2008).
• 6.2 billion – Photos hosted by Photobucket (October 2008).

Videos

• 12.7 billion – The number of online videos watched by American Internet users in a month (November 2008).
• 87 – The number of online videos viewed per month per Internet user in USA.
• 34% – The increase in viewing of online video in USA compared to 2007.
• 3.1 – The number of minutes of an average online video.

Malicious software

• 1 million – The number of computer viruses in April 2008.
• 468% – The increase in malicious code compared to 2007.

Data sources: Compiled by www.Pingdom.com. Website and web server stats from Netcraft. Domain name stats from Verisign and Webhosting.info. Internet user stats from Internet World Stats. Web browser stats from Net Applications. Blog stats from Technorati. Email stats from Radicati Group via About.com. Spam stats from DCC. Virus stats from Symantec via Times Online. Online video stats from Comscore. Photo stats from CNET and Flickr.