Musings and things that amuse us

Photo Credit: SMITHMag

Update #1 – March 14, 2008

Update #2 – September 22, 2008

Translated into Italian at Geekissimo

There is some amazing stuff out there on the Web–resources, tools, tricks, and tips. Problem is, as a Web developer, you spend so much of your time just keeping up with new technologies – learning, playing – and this doesn’t leave much time to go hunting for the latest and greatest tool, or for a better way of doing things.

So we’ve put together a list of over 100 resources to help make your life as a developer easier; where to find snippets of code, sites that automate processes, cheat sheets, lessons, useful tools and a couple of silly videos to give your brain a break if you make it through to the end. Please enjoy!

Code

Photo Credit: Josh Lewis

1. Little Boxes
CSS Templates for various page layouts

2. Snipplr
Collection of code snippets – JavaScript, HTML, PHP, CSS, Ruby, Objective C

3. AJAX, DHTML and JavaScript Libraries
An extensive list with over 60 Ajax, Javascript and DHTML Libraries – with detailed descriptions.

4. Javascript Framework
Easy Ajax and DOM manipulation for dynamic Web applications

5. AJAX Javascript Solutions for Professional Coding
Over 90 useful AJAX-based techniques you should always have ready to hand

6. DHTML and AJAX samples
Nice looking simple downloadable DHTML and AJAX code

7. AJAX Patterns
A Wiki of reusable AJAX code, and huge AJAX resource

8. Mozilla Developer Center – AJAX
Mozilla’s offering on AJAX

9. CSS Typeset
Interactive CSS generator

10. Open Source Directory
An archive of the Web’s best Open Source software, applications and references.

11. .htaccess Creator
Online tool to create .htaccess files

12. PHP Form
Create HTML Forms in seconds and get the code

13. Best Solutions for Images
30 scripts of impressive slideshows, lightboxes and galleries you can use for effective presentations of your images.

14. Lightbox
Lightbox is a simple unobtrusive script used to overlay images on a page

15. Design patterns and tips
101 Design Patterns and Tips for Developers

16. Spanky Corners
Creates CSS and GIF images for rounded corners

17. Nifty Corners Cube
Rounded corners with no images

18. How to redirect a Web page the right way
Don’t lose PageRank! Steven Hargrove gives you the code to redirect using htaccess, Mod_Rewrite, IIS, ColdFusion, ASP, Java, Perl, Ruby and PHP.

19. jQuery
jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you write your web pages.

Cool Online Tools

Photo Credit: Stavros Markopoulos

20. Pipe Bytes
Send files of any size through any Web browser. No software to install, private and the recipient can start downloading while you’re still uploading

21. PHP FTP Synchronizer
Free program to update your website from local files

22. Dummy Text Generator
Generate text by number of paragraphs, words, bytes or lists

23. UTF-8 decoder
Unicode Decoder

24. CSS Tidy
Open source CSS parser and optimizer

25. HTML Tidy
Open source utility for tidying up HTML

26. FireFTP
Free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox

27. FileZilla
Free FTP client and FTP server

28. Dust-Me Selectors
Firefox extension that finds unused CSS selectors

29. ColorZilla
Get a color reading from any point within Firefox

30. FireFox IE Tab
Run IE inside Firefox

31. Font Sizer
Let visitors change the font size on your site. XHTML, CSS, and PHP source available

32. Recaptcha
Captcha helps prevent automated abuse of your site, ensuring only humans perform certain actions; free

33. Super Screenshot
Take a full sized screenshot of any Web page

34. Web Site Thumbnails
Get thumbnails of any Web site

35. Back Orifice
A remote admin system that enables a user to control a computer over a network

36. CoPilot
Remote control another computer – free on weekends, otherwise $5 for 24 hours

Documentation and Reference

Photo Credit: Perreira

37. Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications
The ultimate AJAX introduction

38. Cheat Sheet Round Up
Your one stop shop for all cheat sheets including: Actionscript, Ajax, Apache, ASCII, ASP, C#, CSS, CVS, C++, Django, Firefox, Google, HTML/XHTML, Java, JavaScript, LaTeX, MySQL, Perl, Photoshop, GIMP, PHP, Python, Regular Expressions, Ruby, Unix, Linux, Weblogs, Windows, XML.

39. Quick reference
Searches for references on C, C++, CSS, HTML, HTML DOM, Java, JavaScript, MySQL, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby

40. Got API
Easily search sites for API documentation

41. CSS Basics
Cascading Style Sheets made easy

42. The Ultimate CSS Resource

43. RSS Specifications
The authority on RSS – from Harvard

44. RSS Best Design Practices and Icons
All things RSS including free icons

45. Go To and Learn
Free video tutorials on Flash

46. Optimize Your PHP code
40 Tips to optimize your PHP code

47. Optimizing MYSQL queries
10 Tips to optimize MYSQL queries

48. How to Create a Dynamic BlogRoll
Using Feedjumbler – it takes 5 minutes

Testing

Photo Credit: Sebastian Bergmann

49. CSS Validation
At W3C

50. HTML/XHTML Validation
At W3C

51. HTML Validator
Firefox extension to validate your HTML (as used within http://validator.w3.org/)

52. Link Checker
Checks for broken links in your HTML pages

53. Firebug
Edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any Web page

54. Gray Bit
Online testing tool; convert a full color page into grayscale to visually test contrast

55. Cross Browser Compatibility Testing
Check your site with multiple browsers on a single machine

56. Screen Sizer
Check out your site in different screen sizes

57. Feed Validator
If you’ve ever noticed invalid characters or XML markup in content items, check your feed for validity problems.

Windows

Photo Credit: Marius

58. Windows Unlocker
Tells you the application that is stopping you from deleting a file

59. Windows Dependency Walker
See which DLLs are required for Windows applications

60. Pending Moves
Show files will be updated when you next restart Windows

61. Process Explorer
View active processes – Task Manager on steroids

62. Process Monitor
Monitors file system, registry and process/thread activity

63. Regulazy
Visual regular expression builder

64. WinDirStat
Display size of files and folders graphically

65. wget for Windows
Gets a HTML resource (HTML, image, document, javascript, css etc)

66. WinSnap
Takes a snap shot of your screen ($19.90)

Converters

Photo Credit: AndiH

67. Convert HTML to RSS
Generate an RSS feed for almost any Web page.

68. Convert RSS to HTML
Creates a widget displaying a specific RSS feed in HTML.

69. Binary to Base64
Create data streams for embedding images (or any type of file) in (X)HTML, CSS and XML

70. HTML To JS/PHP/Perl Converter
This tool will convert normal HTML code to a script based language such as JavaScript, PHP or Perl

71. Text to Voice
Create an MP3 of a voice reading your text

72. Free PDF online conversion
Converts various files (DOC, PUB, RTF, XLS, PPT, HTML, JPG, PNG, BMP, TIFF, WMF, EMF, GIF etc.), to PDF online, then e-mails you the PDF

73. Web 2 PDF
Allow your visitors to create PDFs of any Web page

74. Text to Hex converter
Write your name in hex

Graphics

75. YotoPhoto
Search engine for royalty free images (over 250,000 indexed)

76. Background Image maker – http://lab.rails2u.com/bgmaker/
Create background images online with this quick and easy tool

77. Iconaholic
Lots of great free icons

78. Animated GIFs
Generate and preview animated GIFs, then download

79. 216 Color Webmasters Palette
Web Safe colors for webmasters

80. ASCII Art
The original Web Art

81. ASCII Generator

82. Image to ASCII
Convert images and text to ASCII

83. GIMP
GNU Image Manipulation Program

84. Inkscape
Open Source vector graphics editor, similar to Illustrator and CorelDraw

85. Create Web 2.0 Badges (image –png)
Ajax lessons show you how to create a shiny Web 2.0 badge in eight easy steps

86. Color Scheme Generator

87. Smashup Graphics
Smashups to create logos, backgrounds, buttons and menus.

88. IconFinder
Great looking resource with easy to identify licensing information.

89. Tabs Generator
Creates tab buttons on demand.

Site Analytics

Photo Credit: Wessex Archaeology

90. Who is the Owner?
Find out who owns a Web site quickly

91. Google Banned Tool
Quick way to find out whether your URL is in Google’s banned database

92. Crazy Egg
Variety of products to see what people are doing on your site using a heatmap or just plain hard data. Pricing plans start with free accounts that let you track up to 5000 visits per month and four pages, up to Pro an offering for $99 per month that lets you track 250,000 visits per month.

93. SiteScan
A free way to ensure that your website is configured properly for Google Analytics.

94. Reinvigorate’s Snoop
Real Time Web Analytics – free for PC and Mac. Greater flexibility than Google Analytics

95. PopURI
At-a-glance link popularity of any site based on its ranking (Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati etc.), social bookmarks (del.icio.us, etc), subscribers (Bloglines, etc) and more

96. Quantcast
Demographics for your site

97. Social Meter
Scans popular social websites to analyze your social popularity.

98. StatCounter
Highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats. Useful for European Web sites.

99. Clicky Web Analytics
Web analytics – nicely organised and oh so pretty.

WordPress

100. How to create a WordPress theme
A 16 part series on how to build a WordPress theme from whoa to go

101. Highlight Author Comments
Matt Cutts shows you how to change the color of your own comments so they stand out. For WordPress

102. 100 High Quality and Free WordPress Themes
Smashing Magazine has downloaded, installed, and tested hundreds of themes; these are their top 100 picks. Whether you are after design inspiration or coding solutions, this is the place to start

Online Storage

Photo Credit: Kevin

103. Box
Up to 1GB free storage but monthly bandwidth restricted to 10GB, file size restricted to 10MB

104. Xdrive
Up to 5GB free storage. AOL sign-up required.

105. Humyo
Up to 30 GB [25 GB media (phots/music/videos) and 5 GB non-media files]. BUT files are deleted if no login on the account within 90 days.

106. Orbitfiles.com
Up to 6GB free storage, but monthly bandwidth restricted to 20 GB, file size restricted to 100 MB.

107. GigaSize
Unlimited storage, but file size is limited to 600 MB, and files are deleted after 45 days. Unspecified download limits apply. Awful ads!

108. DropBoks
Up to 1GB free storage, but file size is limited to 50MB.

109. Get Gspace
Use Google’s GMail 2 GB storage as your own private online storage with this Firefox extension.

110. WordPress.com
Want another 3GB of free online storage? Why not make a private blog and use the space for your files!

Miscellaneous

Photo Credit: Robin Hutton

111. Map-o-net
Shows you where you lie in the structure of IP addresses

112. Domain Hacks
Helps you find domains which are the combination of unusual TLD, directories and subdomains. For instance, http://l.id can be registered (from Indonesia)

113. Scratch – programming for kids
Want your little person taking over the family web development business? Let them play with Scratch. Developed by MIT

114. Internet World Stats
Comprehensive statistics about the Internet and Web

115. Feed Journal
The next generation newspaper, FeedJournal turns your RSS feeds into a newspaper formatted PDF so you can print it out and read it anywhere – free

Useful Sites

116. Windows Guides

Fun Stuff

You’ve made it this far – so a little silliness for your viewing pleasure – enjoy!

117. Music using ONLY sounds from Windows XP and 98! (approx. 2 mins)

118. Mac Parody (approx. 3 mins)

119. Ze Frank’s Punctuation Substitution (approx. 2 mins)

120. Wes Borg-Internet Help Desk Live (approx. 6 mins)

121. BlueScreen of Death Screen Saver v3.2

I’d love to see this list grow over time; get rid of defunct listings and add new and useful ones as I come across them, so if you know of any that should have been included (or if you think some are really awful) please let me know, and I’ll keep editing. With your help, I think this could be a great resource for tons of folk!

Photo Credit: Studio Y?

In part one of the blog well series, I asked and answered the question, Should small businesses blog? – Hell yes! Today I want to take a look at the things you need to think about before you start your business blog. At the end of this post, you’ll find a link to download the blog plan – print it up, work through it, I promise, once you have a firm idea of where you are going it will be a lot easier to get there.

Stuff to think about:

• Once you have your plan on paper, keep it close, you can refer to it, modify it, and expand on it – it is your game plan.

• Google’s Search Evangelist Adam Lasnik, recommends allowing comments on your site to start a conversation with your visitors: “They love to ask questions and get feedback, particularly from people that are important to them – and you guys are” (Adam’s Interview). This enabling of conversation has a natural side effect – it strengthens community.

• Make sure you don’t make basic mistakes; read Remarkablogger’s: 25 Reasons why Your Business Blog Sucks!

• Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress recommends: “Get to know what others in your field are doing by reading other blogs and news; you’ll know soon enough whether you have anything useful to contribute to the blogosphere” (Chat with Matt). If you don’t know where to start, go to Technorati (blog search engine) and type in your keywords. You sell tea? Type tea and its variants in.

• Avoid putting flashy and obtrusive advertisements on your blog.

• Once you have a plan, don’t get complacent. Invite comments and participate in the conversation, and be flexible enough to modify the plan if change is required.

Blogs encourage communication, help establish your online presence, promote information sharing, and are contributing to the growth of the semantic (meaningful) Web.

As a result, the planning of your site’s content, design, and navigation structure is crucial to your success.

The blog plan is one of the essential elements most people miss out on when they start blogging – don’t be one of them.

Download The Blog Plan now. (PDF)

This is the second in a series on how to blog well called the Blog Well Files.  If you’ve missed the others, you can find them here:

• Blog Well Files – Part 1: Should small business blog – Hell Yes!
• Blog Well Files – Part 3: Choosing a Blogging Platform
• Blog Well Files – Part 4: Creating a Blog Strategy

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Photo Credit: David Paul Ohmer

B. L. Ochman recently wrote a post titled Should Every Company Blog? Hell No!

While I understand her logic that the larger corporations need to think about this very carefully (she deals predominantly with Fortune 500 companies), my take is, if you’re a smaller business, especially a bricks and mortar business – Hell Yes!

Most small businesses don’t have a Web presence. This is largely due to the misconception surrounding blogging in general, and the misconception of the costs and tech skills needed. But, the Web is moving forward at such an amazing pace, that every small business today can have a site up and running within hours – for minimal cost.

This article is the first in a series about small business blogging. I want to try and convince you to at least take the time to understand blogs better, and show you how useful they can be to your business.

Over the next few weeks I’ll talk more about creating a blog plan, the software/designs available, what to include, where to get content ideas from, how to generate traffic, and how to make sure you really start a conversation with your customers. Today, I just want to talk about why blogging is so important.

Small Business Blogging – A Must!

Blogs today are nothing like the blogs of five years ago. Today, some blogs even look like traditional Web sites, so much so, that recently, after showing a blog to an administrator at a local elementary school, she replied: “Oh, no, that couldn’t possibly be a blog; blogs are just for people who want to talk about what they ate for breakfast.” (And I live in Silicon Valley.)

Blogs have matured. Just take a look at some of the biggest sites out there – all of them running blogs: Wall Street Journal (Hi Walt), New York Times – (Hi Jeremy) Harvard – none of them talks about bacon and eggs, or their cat; they do however, provide really useful information.

But why should a small business have a blog? Because it is a LOT easier to create than a traditional Web site – and in today’s world of all things Internet, you know you need an online presence.

Picture it:

We moved to Silicon Valley over two years ago. I hate shopping. When I shop, I want to buy what I like, when I like – in and out – no more than half an hour. I don’t like walking from store to store, or spending a day in a mall – ugh!

My taste in clothing is very simple. I like Indian inspired clothing. In Australia, I knew exactly where to find this stuff; here, it’s driving me nuts. It took nearly two years for me to find one store that had this type of clothing. What I couldn’t understand was if the owner had spent a day setting up a site, I could have found her years ago, and given her much of my hard earned cash.

I asked her about it. She said she wants an online presence, and she knows she needs an online presence, but she just doesn’t know how to go about doing it easily and with minimal cost. Well the answer to that is – blog. Sure, it will take a day or two to put it together, and an hour or so a day to maintain it, but the benefits can be huge – no better free publicity for her store!

Over the past few months, I’ve been helping people start blogs. And although their reasons vary, the bottom line for all of them is they want an online presence that is cost effective.

Blogs are cost effective

If you hire a programmer to build a Web site it is going to cost you anything from $2,000+. The biggest problem (other than cost) is you need to pick a great developer, one that has some SEO knowledge, and basic design skills. If you don’t, you might get a really nicely coded site, but it may look a shocker to your visitors – and it may not get the Google juice you’re after.

Your option then, is to hire a designer to make it visually attractive (add another $2,000), an SEO/SEM firm that can get results (most of the reputable start at over $10,000), and a brilliant copywriter; someone who knows how to write copy that sells (add at least a couple of hundred per article).

So, as you can see, with a traditional Web site, the costs are huge just to set the thing up; let alone maintain and update it.

With a blog, your biggest costs are the domain name [$10] and hosting [$50-100/year]).

If you use WordPress software, your code is free. You won’t need a developer to write the code, it’s already written, ready to go. You don’t need a designer. If you choose to have WordPress host it for you, they have in excess of 60 designs to choose from; if you host your WP site yourself, there are hundreds if not thousands of designs ready and waiting for you.

Blogs get you into search results quickly

While optimizing your site to ensure you turn up in Google’s results page can be a costly and time consuming effort, most small businesses are not that concerned with keywords –yet. Right now, they just want to turn up in search results when someone types in their name or business name.

Blogs, unlike traditional Web sites are updated frequently, and Google likes nothing more than fresh content – so getting into search results requires no great effort from you. If you name your site well, and ensure your name is associated with it, you will appear in Google’s results within the day, if not the hour.

I have done very little to optimize this blog, but go to Google, type in blogwell and you should find this site pretty easily.

If you’re a small business that only wants an online presence, one that lets you showcase your products/services and lets you interact with customers, blog well and blog now. It just makes good business sense.

Many businesses fail when it comes to blogging because they don’t spend time planning before they jump in. Don’t be one of them. Read the second article in the blog well series: The Blog Plan

This is the first in a series of posts about how to blog well. If you’d like to see the next two, you can find them here:

Blog Well Files – Part 2: The Blog Plan
Blog Well Files – Part 3: Choosing a Blogging Platform
Blog Well Files – Part 4: Creating a Blog Strategy 

 

 

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2008 is now 48 days old, yet there are a number of sites which still think its 2007.

To name but a few:

• Hollywood Reporter
• Klutz
• Palo Alto Unified School District

Rather than include the year in the site’s footer as text, which has to be manually updated, why not use the date on your server to do the work for you.

If you use PHP on your server, like every WordPress blog does, you can replace “2007″, or even “2008″ so you are ready for next year, with the following snippet:

<?php echo date('Y'); ?>

Although this does rely on server’s date and time being correct. You can ensure that your server has the correct date and time by synchronizing your server with an Internet Time Server. The National Institute of Standards and Technology provides a number of time servers through the United States. Be sure to check the status of the time servers to help you make the best choice.

Love or hate them, Microsoft provides a list of time servers available throughout the world.

For Windows users you configure the use of an Internet Time Server within the “Internet Time” tab of the “Date and Time Properties” section of the Control Panel – just make sure that you have set the correct time zone.

Rather than exclusively copyrighting the content of your Web site or blog, wouldn’t it be better to allow people to re-use the content and give a credit in return? For businesses who wants everyone to know about their products this would be the sensible approach.

BlogWell uses a Creative Commons licensing, which allows anyone to share and remix our work, provided we receive an attribution and that any such work is licensed in a similar manner (i.e. it too can be shared and remixed by others). You can see the specific license we use in the footer – check it out.

We suggest that you should review the reason why your site contains a copyright – most times this is simply due it being present in the site template or WordPress theme.

I often get questions about creating, maintaining, and optimizing an online presence from small businesses and non profits; how to get into search engine results, how to redesign an old site, what tools are available that are useful, inexpensive or free.

If you know of any tool or resource I have not listed, that is particularly good for small businesses, please take a moment and leave it in the comments below.

Before you Launch your Small Business Website

Before you Launch that Local Small Business Website

Read Rae’s tips on what you need to think about before you launch your small business website – particularly good if you have yet to begin your online presence.

Your Domain Name

If you want to create a professional and credible site, one that enhances your product, service, or business, it is imperative you choose your domain name with care. Problogger Darren Rowse explains how the right domain name can make or break your business.

10 Tools for Researching Domain Names

Not only is it important to find the right name, it’s imperative to make sure that the name you decide on doesn’t have any bad history associated with it. Steven explains it best and offers 10 tools for you to use in your research.

Blog Dammit!

Duct Tape Marketing author, John Jantsch, provides number five in a five part series, Blog Dammit! and explains why you must start and grow a blog in 2008 if you haven’t already.

WordPress: Not Just for Bloggers Anymore

Did you know that WordPress lets you build an entire website; one that is optimized for search, easy to setup and maintain, and requires very little technical nouse? If you don’t, read this article by Barry Ochsner

Creating and Maintaining an Audience

How to Get Repeat Visitors for Your Website

There are two types of visitors to a site: new visitors and repeat visitors. In this article, Maki provides insight into how to create an online place that people will want to return to.

Give Your Readers Room to Participate in Your Blog

If you are having a hard time getting visitors to leave comments, read this article by Problogger Darren Rowse that explains how you can gently encourage and engage your readers, and build a reputable online presence.

10 Free Ways to Get Blog Exposure, New Readers and Success

There is much you can do if you want to spend money on getting exposure on the Web, but what can you do to increase exposure without having to pay one cent?

Analyzing Your Site

Analytics On The Cheap: Six Free Stats Packages for the Startup or Small Business Owner

If you’re not analyzing your website, you should be. Tamar Weinberg describes six free statistics packages and explains how they can help your business.

Competitor Analysis to Build Traffic and Links

Having an analytics package isn’t enough. You need to understand how they work so you can perform competitor analysis and use the results effectively to grow your own site.

Website Grader

Website Grader measures your site’s marketing effectiveness. It gives you a score that incorporates information from Alexa, PageRank, Technorati, Del.icio.us, and offers information about the health of your site (how many links in, from where, etc). Good for an overview, but will never replace a professional SEO audit. Read Michael Gray’s post Why Website Grader is a Bad Idea for more information.

Check your Google PageRank

Type in your URL and your Google PageRank will be displayed.

Google Webmaster Tools

See how Google crawls your site and any problems it’s having; you can also see how your site is performing here.

DNScoop

DNScoop attempts to estimate the value of an established website or a domain name, by using factors such as; links, popularity, age, pagerank and traffic of the domain.

Business Blogging

Business Blogging 101

Darren Rowse gets you thinking about how businesses should use blogs, and gives you the basics in plain English if you want to start blogging.

Choosing a blog platform

There are many blogging platforms around, some requiring technical know how, others not. Read this post if you are not sure which platform suits your needs best.

WordPress.com

For an easy to use, non-techie approach to blogging, WordPress will give you more than other platforms. Ad-Free, customizable, and optimized for search, Google loves WordPress, so will you. If you are tech inclined, you can run WordPress software (free) on your own site. See also, WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org for more information about the differences.

How to install WordPress software

Ten video tutorials from Stefan Mischook on how to install and configure WordPress if you want to give it a go yourself.

Ninja Blog Setup

If you decide to go with WordPress software and host it yourself, but don’t want the headache of setting it up yourself, these guys will set up a blog for you, for free. They make their money by providing hosting partners.

Small Business Blogging: What to Blog About

If you’re not quite sure what to write about, read this post by Dan Bricklin that offers practical advice for small businesses.

Legal Guide for Bloggers

The Electronic Frontier Foundation offers a basic guide to laws surrounding bloggers.

De Clutter your Blog

If your blog looks cluttered but you aren’t sure which components you should remove, read this. This is particularly interesting for those who cannot work out the ‘musts’ in a sidebar.

10 WordPress Plugins that Encourage Visitors to Return

If you want your blog to be user friendly, there is no nicer way than to offer visitors options that are useful and helpful.

10 Things CEOs should know about Web Design

Anita Campbell points out what works and what to steer clear of when it comes to Web design.

Design decisions that annoy readers

Things to think about and not do when designing your site.

9 Ways to Gauge Your Visitors’ Experience

Vandelay Design helps you understand the opinion of your visitors, and explains why you need to take the time.

Signs it’s Time to Redesign your Website

Erin Ferree points out seven ‘tells’ that will let you know it’s time to redesign.

Does your Web Site Suck?

Two checklists from Vincent Flanders, author of Web Sites that Suck to help you determine whether you need to overhaul your site. Fill them in, learn from them, and then use this page to help you fix things.

How to Redesign a Website

You’ve made the decision to overhaul your site, now what? From .net magazine, the things you might want to consider.

How to evolve your irrelevant corporate website

Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst at Forrester Research explains why your website may be irrelevant, and gives tips on how to rebuild to stay relevant.

Best Premium WordPress Themes For a Non-Blog Look

If you don’t like the blog look, but want the advantages that a blog brings, take a look at Donna’s post.

Cream of the Crop: Six Cutting-Edge, Minimalist WordPress Themes

According to Skellie, these six themes are at the forefront of modern, minimalist, typographically interesting WordPress theme design. She also tells you how to tweak them for maximum impact.

Content for Your Small Business Website

The Seven Deadly Sins of Website Copy

Michel Fortin shows how simple copy changes to your site can transform an average site to a great site.

The Power of the “About Us” page

Do you have an “About” page? Was it just thrown together, or did you spend time putting it together for maximum impact? Bryan Eisenberg gives expamles of the most common mistakes.

Building More Effective “Contact Us” Pages

When putting together a site, not many people think about their contact information. It’s time you did and Bryan Eisenberg shows you how.

Forms that Work: From the book Web Design for ROI (Sample chapter PDF)

If you have forms on your site, read this and make sure you don’t annoy your visitors by making your forms too tricky

Page Not Found: Error 404

What makes up a good error page? Have you even thought about it? If you haven’t, it’s time you did. WebMama shows you what to think about.

The “Coming Soon” page

While not everyone agrees you should have a coming soon page, if you decide you need one, take a look at this first.

A Complete Guide to Finding and Using Incredible Flickr Images for Free

Skellie shows you how to make your site more interesting by incorporating great imagery. It doesn’t need to cost much; oftentimes it will cost you nothing more than time.

Search Engine Optimization for Small Business

SEO Jargon Buster

A complete glossary of essential SEO jargon for beginners.

13 Ways to promote your local business for free

Small businesses take note. Michael Gray gives you quick and easy tips to get noticed in search results, that can bring more traffic to your site.

10 Tips to Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

Mike Busson explains that search engine optimization is not rocket science; you just need to be aware of the basics.

7 Steps to Get Your New Site Indexed in 24 Hours

There are ways to speed up getting noticed by the search engines; you just need to know what they are. Michael Jensen explains.

7 Simple Ways to use Universal Search to Appear on Top of Google

Tad Chef walks you through the various components that make up Universal Search and how to use them to increase your chances of being included in Google’s search results.

What is the First SEO Question? What is the Second SEO Question?

The first two questions you should ask yourself before you embark on an SEO program, and a third on the way from WebMama.

Introduction to Keyword Sniping

How to choose keywords, and how to use keywords; one of the most important articles you can read from Courtney Tuttle.

All about Permalinks

Mark Blair explains permalinks, and why it is important to get them right if you want search engines to like your site.

All about Title Tags

Title tags make up the text that appears in the top left hand corner of your browser when you visit a Web site. Did you know that you can choose to put your own words there? Jill Whalen offers the ultimate in title tag explanations.

All About Description Tags

Rand Fishkin shows you how to make the most of your meta description tags. If you don’t know what they are, you will by the time you read this.

Optimize Video for Search Engines

Video is getting bigger on the Web every day. If you decide to use video, Jody Nimetz gives you tips to optimize them for search engines.

Optimize your Website for Google Image search

Maki explains how to optimize your images, make your site more visually attractive, and attract search engine traffic at the same time. If you’re not doing anything but uploading pictures, it’s time to understand how it all works.

Linking Strategy for Small Business

The Ultimate guide to building the perfect link

The biggest problems small businesses face is getting links to their site. Matt McGee walks you through types of links, how to approach them and what not to do.

102 Ways to get backlinks

Written in the order they need to be done, Courtney Tuttle walks you through how to get links to your site the right way.

Link to Yourself Using Anchor Text

Anchor text is extremely important if you want search engines to notice you under specific key words, Darren explains why and how to do it.

20 Ways to Get Legit Links Without Getting Penalized by Google

If you don’t want to annoy Google, but want people linking to your site, try Tad’s recommendations – they work.

Link Buying Guide: Directories, Ads and Reviews

If you want to buy links, buy links that don’t jeopardize your online presence. Loren Baker lists his favorites.

PR and Marketing

Blogging’s a Low-Cost, High Return Marketing Tool

From the New York Times, a recent (Dec 07) article explains how, for some small businesses, blogging is the way to go if they want a great tool to raise the company profile and build their brand.

Ways to Market your Business Online

You can’t expect to compete as a small business today without choosing from a growing arsenal of online marketing tools. Here are four ways to get your business noticed on the Internet from CNN Money.

I am Clueless About Your Product: Sell it to Me Correctly

Tamar Weinberg points out the importance of using everyday words on your site if you have a product to sell. Use the KISS method, easy but often forgotten.

The Etiquette of E-mail

Good business means communication, and although e-mail is used a lot, it’s not always used correctly. Gina Trapini shows you how to do e-mail right.

Features Vs. Benefits: The Showdown

Do you know the difference between the features and the benefits of your product or service? If you don’t, you should. It makes marketing your small business oh so much easier. Naomi explains.

Lowdown on press release optimization

Lee Odden shows you how to write a great press release, and offers a list of wire services you can use to distribute them.

How to Advertise your Website or Business: 8 Paid Advertising Models

Advertising is one of the fastest and easiest ways to bring traffic to your site—if you do it right. Read this if you want to understand the various types of advertising, and how to work out the best places to advertise.

How to Get News Coverage

A beginner’s guide to getting media coverage, particularly useful for those with small budgets.

Reputation Management and PR for Small Business

Online Reputation Management for Beginners

Andy Beal walks you through the importance of online reputation management. Did you know there’s a good chance that your name, your company, or your brand is out there somewhere on the Web, quite possibly put there by someone you may not know?

Search Engine Reputation Management Techniques

If you’ve ever come across your name (or your company name) on the Internet, in an unflattering light, try these techniques and turn the bad press around.

Want Your Business to be Featured on CNN? Send an I-Report

Share your tips in with CNN and you could be featured on television. Just fill in the form and you’re set.

Social Media for Small Business

Ten Reasons to Use Social Media

Tad explains the importance of using social media; why and how it can benefit your online business.

Strategies for Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

Charlene Li, senior analyst at Forrester talks about what business objectives and results can be achieved with Web 2.0 technologies and how social technologies will transform your business in the future. Audio and Video available (approx 1 hour) at PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre).

The Importance of Social Media Marketing

Maki explains how social media marketing is a low cost way of promoting your site that will get you links, attention and lots of traffic.

Online Networking and the Professions That Use It

If you haven’t been networking online, it’s time you start. Muhammad Saleem points out networks for the medical profession, musicians, educators, photographers, and business folk.

What is StumbleUpon?

Garrett Camp, Founder of StumbleUpon talks about what StumbleUpon is, how it works, why it works, and what they have learned over the years. A presentation for PARC (Palo Alto Research Centre) Audio and Video available (approx 1 hour).

What is Facebook?

According to Sugarrae, this is the updated, unofficial and smartass guide to using Facebook. If you’ve always wanted to know more, here’s your chance to find out what it’s all about in a fun way.

Facebook Ads and Will They Work For You?

Facebook advertising isn’t for everyone, but advertising on Facebook may work for you. This article explains how.

Ways to use Twitter

17 ways you can use Twitter: A guide for beginners, Marketers, and Business Owners from Maki

The Big Juicy Twitter Guide

A seven part series on what Twitter is about from Caroline Middlebrook

Effective Marketing on LinkedIn

If you’re using Linkedin and are not quite sure why, Helen shows you how to effectively market yourself with this business networking tool.

Useful Tools for Small Businesses on the Web

Blidget

Create a blidget; a widget that sits on your website and pulls in the latest entries from your blog. Customizable and free

Browsershots

Browsershots lets you test how your site looks in different browsers; Firefox, Opera, IE, Safari, running on different operating systems; Linux, Windows, Mac.

Colour Lovers

If you are planning changes to your Web site, Colour Lovers helps you work out what color schemes work well together. It also gives you RGB and Hex reference numbers if you want to pass them on to your site developer.

Contribute

If you are paying a programmer for each tiny change to your website, it can get expensive, and quickly. Contribute allows you to easily update pages on your site using your browser; no technical knowledge required and can save you tons of money in programmer fees. From Adobe – $169 with free trial period available.

Decluttered

How to declutter your desk. Not so much a tool, but a how to on making your desk neater; always good for business – and cheap and easy to do.

Deyey

Design your business cards online for free; then save them on your own PC and print them up. A nice alternative to better design without the cost.

Favicon Generator

A favicon (favorite icon) is an icon that is displayed in the browser address bar before the site’s URL. If you don’t have one, but want one, upload an image and the favicon generator will create a favicon for you to use.

Fax Zero

If you’re in the US or Canada and don’t have a fax machine, go to this site, upload your document and send your fax for free.

Feedburner

Feedburner is a free media distribution service for blogs and RSS feeds. This means you can automate the process of sending your news to your audience via e-mail or RSS. It also allows you to track who is reading your content.

GIMP

Gimp is a free powerful, full-featured photo editing program, comparable to Photoshop. Available for Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Google Alerts

If you want to know what is being said about you or your company online, Google Alerts offers you an easy way to keep track. Type in the words you want monitored (your name, your business name, your competitor etc.) and let Google e-mail you each time that word appears in search results.

Goog 411

Instead of calling 411 for information call 1800 Goog 411 ( 1 800 4664 411) and get a street address or phone number for free.

Icon Buffet

You need an icon, but where to get it? Become a member and get free icons sent to you, or buy your own packs here. The philosophy is quite neat. They give away free icons every month, but not everyone gets the same ones. The idea is to swap them (sorta like swap cards) and use what you like.

Icon Factory

The Icon Factory offers great looking icons you can use for your site as long as it is not for commercial use (then you have to buy them). But, for non profits, this just might be the way to go.

International Time

Does your business deal with customers internationally? Make it easy for them to contact you by adding a link to local time on your contact page–customizable.

Jott

Jott is a free service that converts your voice into text and sends it to you via e-mail or text message; great if you need to record something but don’t have a pen handy. (US only.)

Media Convert

You upload one file format, and Media Convert will convert it to another file format. Works with most formats of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, video and audio.

Montastic

Montastic monitor your website and send you an e-mail if it goes down. This free service can check your site every ten minutes, and saves you the trouble of visiting your site as often.

Open Source Web Design

Over 2000 free designs for you to choose from for your Web site.

PC Decrapifier

Have you ever bought a PC only to find it filled with pre installed junk you don’t need? The PC Decrapifier gets rid of all that stuff. Free for personal use

Resizer

A free image resizing site. Upload your pictures and edit them online.

SEO Tools and Lessons

9 SEO tools you shouldn’t be without from Aaron Wall (with free lessons).

Stock Xpert

Stockxpert is a royalty free stock photography community. With over 100,000 images, search by keyword for the image you need. Costs per image range from $1 – 3.

The elements of typographic style applied to the Web

For the tech inclined.

Typeflash

If you’ve ever been stumped for inspiration when it comes to typography for your site give typeflash a go.

Widgetbox

A useful assortment (over 30,000) widgets that you can add to your site – all free

How To and What is?

Understand Search Engines and Subject Directories

UC Berkeley offers lessons on how to search, including explanations on the differences between search engines, subject directories, and the invisible Web.

What is RSS?

RSS and all its bits explained by Darren Rowse.

The best 10 RSS readers for Windows, Mac and Linux

There are many free RSS readers out there, Tad shows you the best.

Understanding Domain Names

What is a domain name and how does the domain system work? A non technical explanation from Internic.

How to Podcast

A free step by step guide for anyone wanting to create a podcast

How to Design Web 2.0 Style

A tutorial that covers various common graphical elements of Web 2.0, with explanations of how, when, and where to use them best.

HTML for Beginners

In English; also has intermediate and advanced HTML.

CSS for Beginners

In English, with intermediate and advanced CSS guides.

Photoshop Tutorials

Easily understandable and doable, if you’ve ever wanted to give it a go, try visiting this site first.