Help Desk Software
Unless your web site is purely a personal one, chances are you will have questions and comments from visitors. Until a site reaches a certain volume this can be handled manually via email by one person. However as more and more questions, comments, complaints, orders etc come in it can start to become overwhelming not to mention confusing.
Customer support can quickly start taking up a lot of time and many hours can be spent answering questions, many of which are the same ones time and time again. This is where helpdesk software can come in very handy. Read more
Create gradients fast with Gradcolor
Gradcolor is a website with the one and only purpose of creating gradients fast. You can then use the image generated as backgrounds for web sites, headings or whatever you like. Choose the image size, pick your two (or even three) colours and a gradient image is generated. You can save them on the site if you want by registering (for free), otherwise simply save them to your computer. Create as many images as you need, there is no limit.
Free video tutorials on how to become a blogger
Gideon Shalwick and Yaro Starak have released a set of 10 FREE videos walking you through how to set up and start writing a blog of your own. The videos are very detailed - from how to get a web host to using feedburner for your RSS feeds - it explains everything you need to know in order to set up your own Wordpress blog.
When you have finished watching the videos or are interested in further training they also offer a free report called “Roadmap to become a blogger” This goes into much more detail about how to make your blog successful and start you on your way to being a professional blogger. All this is free so definitely worth a look.
Colour resources for web design
ColorToy 2.0, a color scheme generator
Firefox extensions for webmasters
When creating or running a website, Firefox combined with some good extensions can be a great time saver. Below is a list of some Firefox extensions that are particularly useful for the webmaster.
FireShot - Take better screenshots of a page in it’s entirety, not just the parts visible on the screen.
Google Cache Checker - Tells you automatically whether a page you are visiting is cached by Google or not.
Adsense Notifier - This saves you from having to constantly login to your Adsense account to check your stats. Instaead you can just glance at the status bar in Firefox and instantly know your earnings for the day.
IE View Lite - Provides a context menu item for opening the current page in IE. Very handy when designing a page and checking to see if it looks good in both browsers.
Search Status - Extensive search-related information about visited web sites, including Google PageRank, Alexa popularity ranking, Compete.com ranking, and backward links from Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
Web directory form filler - Makes the job of submitting your site’s information to web directories easier.
The items on the above list come from Gadget Advisor’s best extensions for Firefox article. Visit Gadget Advisor for more useful articles such as their recommended best Windows software and Blaze Media Pro review
Feng-GUI - Feng Shui for graphic user interfaces
Feng Gui is a useful free service to which you can upload a screenshot of your web site for a computer generated analysis of where human eyes are most likely to look within the first 5 seconds of arriving on the site. This is very useful if you need to make sure your products are visible and don’t just fade into the background.
Visit them at: http://www.feng-gui.com/
The best blog coaching program at a discount
I wrote about Yaro Starak’s blog coaching program a few days ago. Yaro just informed me that his Blog Mastermind coaching program currently charges in Australian dollars rather then US dollars.
Since the US dollar is anywhere from 5% to 10% stronger than the Aussie dollar as I write this, that’s a 5% to 10% price saving for you if you join Blog Mastermind now.
By now you probably know about Blog Mastermind. Read more
PSD to HTML
Many people (myself included) find it much easier to come up with a design concept in Photoshop than to actually do the coding that is involved to turn that design into a HTML web page. I personally find the task time consuming, frustrating at worst and boring at best. I know I’m not the only one to feel this way though which is why services such as W3-markup are popping up to help out. For a very reasonable price you can submit your design as a photoshop PSD file and have it turned into a HTML page for you, complete with CSS and proper markup.
W3-markup’s PSD to HTML service comes with a very neat order form which gives you a quote right then and there depending on the turnaround time, the amount of pages you require and any additional requirements. Simply click the - or + signs, tick the options and the current total updates to reflect your changes. Once you have submitted your design, you can keep in touch with their team via live chat as well as a client area intranet.
So if you are more artistically inclined and somewhat coding challenged or you simply want to save some time, click on over to w3-markup.
Web Design Blogs
Other web design blogs. There are many more out there so feel free to add to this list as I’m always looking to add more sites to my feed reader.
Smashing Magazine - A favourite of many designers.
Modern Life - Easy to read, lots of eyecandy, all the things I like in a design site.
KillerSites - KillerSites.com’s blog.
SmileyCat - Web Design blog by Smiley Cat
Vitamin - I particularly like the articles in their design section.
Beauty In Design - Mainly Joomla oriented with tutorials and templates.
esn studio - Web Design, wordpress, SEO and more.
Webmaster Source - Useful resources for webmasters.
Webmaster Plaza - Webmaster info including how to make money online.
Web Design from scratch - A great resource for beginners.
Problogger.net - This site is not about web design as such but is a great resource for beginner to expert bloggers. It’s one of my favourites, very detailed information about just about anything you could think of on the subject of blogging.
Useful site - favikon.com
Favicons are tiny images that show up next to a web site’s name in your browsers’ favorites/bookmarks. They make it easy to find a bookmarked site with just a glance amongst possibly hundreds of bookmarks/favorites as well as making a site just that little bit easier to remember. Favikon.com is a web site where you can create your own favicon from an existing image. This is useful if you don’t want to download and install extra software. Simply upload an image (such as your logo) and the web site will help you resize it and generate it in the right image format.