Web Design & Dev

Jamie of Blog2Life has finished the Simple Help redesign (99%). Based on reader feedback a few things have been changed already, and there are one or two more to go. But I couldn’t be more happy with the results, and couldn’t recommend Jamie enough as a designer/developer.

The entire redesign process was accomplished using the online tools Zoho Notebook, GTalk and email. Jamie put up with my constant requests for changes, nitpicking and borderline unreasonable requests, all the while never complaining. More importantly, he also introduced me to a number of tools and concepts that had never occurred to be before.

With all of that said, and now that he has some time on his hands, Jamie is looking to redesign another site - for free. Contact him and include the site you’d like him to redesign and develop. Be sure to include as much detail as you can (does your site run WordPress, Blogger, or on a custom platform) and he’ll get back to the selected site owner.

SmallScreenX is a Cocoa version of the “Small Screen” utility for the old Mac OS. It simulates smaller screen resolutions, which can be particularly helpful for web designers. This overview gives you a run down on its main features.

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Why MWSnap doesn’t show up on every “top Windows freeware” list, I’ll never know. Version 3 has been around since 2002 (!?). Admittedly, it hasn’t been updated since 2002 either - it still works perfectly well in XP (I haven’t tested it in Vista yet). With the resulting screenshots you have a choice between BMP, JPG, TIFF, PNG and GIF formats, with selected color depth and quality settings - among dozens of other features. This “part tutorial, part overview” will get you started using MWSnap in no time. [click to continue...]

After being appalled at what I saw when I viewed Simple Help in my Smartphone, I decided it was time to figure out a way to make this site more appealing to folks using mobile browsers. It didn’t take long for me to find Alex King’s WordPress Mobile Edition plugin. If you follow the instructions outlined in the README (included with the download) it only takes about 30 seconds to convert your WordPress installation to a very usable site for mobile web browsers.

Simplehelp in a mobile browser

Simplehelp post in a mobile browser

From their site:

“The Google Analytics widget is an Adobe AIR application that runs on your desktop and displays basic stats for your Google Analytics account.”

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At some point yesterday (Nov 12th, 2007) Google Webmaster Tools got a bit of a redesign. And at least one new feature was added - Subscriber stats. Now you can view the number of users who have subscribed to your RSS feed(s) using Google products such as iGoogle, Google Reader, and Orkut.

Are there any other new features I missed?

Screenshots:

Dashboard Overview	What Googlebot Sees
Google Subscriber Stats	Tools Overview

This brief tutorial will guide you in using The Gimp to resize pictures/images. It’s also a part of the Linux for Parents - A Beginners Guide to Ubuntu series. Though the Gimp is not a Linux specific program, it is included as the default image editing software in Ubuntu. [click to continue...]

For the last few days I’ve been trying to figure out how to best write this post. This is what I’ve come up with, I hope it’s helpful (cause it sure is long, winded).

1. What I’ve done
2. What I think I’ve done right
1. SEO
2. Content
3. Responsive
4. Thankful
5. Research
3. What I think I’ve done wrong
1. Community participation
2. Took a break
3. Low Page View per Visit ratio
4. Misc. Mistakes
4. What I was surprised by
1. Traffic sources
2. Browser type
3. Top content
5. What I still don’t understand
6. What I’m going to do next
7. Summary of my tips/suggestions

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FeedBurner recently announced that their Headline Animator tool can now be used to promote your RSS feed (or site) through other FeedBurner feeds (pubvertising). This brief tutorial will walk you through the steps to do just that. [click to continue...]

This tutorial will guide you step-by-step through installing IE 5, 5.5 and/or 6 in Ubuntu - using the terrific software IEs4Linux. IEs4Linux was developed for web designers that want to move to Linux but still need to test their sites on IE and Linux users who have to open IE-only sites. [click to continue...]

The iWebTool plugin for Firefox is really just a quick way to access the tools located at iwebtool.com, but it’s still pretty helpful. [click to continue...]

Not long ago, Mashable did a very cool roundup of 15 Online Graphics Generators - with a heavy emphasis on the Web 2.0 style. This post was inspired by that list - with no duplicates, and additional resources including pre-created images/logos, tutorials, WordPress Web 2.0 themes etc. And since it’s not exactly an original idea, I decided to double their 15. [click to continue...]

The following overview lists the supported blogging platforms, features, license (4/5 are free), a summary and screenshots for 5 blogging clients. I should also mention, 3/5 work in Linux too. [click to continue...]

Though this was originally created for another blog, I’ve updated it (more steps, more plugins, more theme sites etc) and posted it here.

One of the great things about WordPress is how easily you can have it up and running, completely customized to your liking, in such a short period of time. After setting up WordPress for several of my friends, I found that having a ‘checklist’ makes things go even faster - so I decided to write it all up and share with you. Please don’t hesitate to use the comments to suggest additions etc, I’ll update the checklist accordingly.

1. Create blog title, add email address
2. Change your password
3. Disable visual rich editor
4. Add users
5. Change the tagline
6. Edit Membership permissions
7. Set a date and time format
8. Modify Reading and Writing settings
9. Edit Discussion settings
10. Modify Permalinks structure
11. Pick a theme
12. Customize your theme
13. Write down CSS info
14. Change title format
15. Edit blogroll
16. Edit the About page
17. Add some categories
18. Edit the example post for testing
19. Install plugins
20. Install widgets
21. Check blog and test plugins
22. Create a favicon.ico
23. Create a shortcut to the Dashboard / setup WordPress client
24. Create a test environment
25. Start posting!

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