Recommended Web Tools Blog

It sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, but mind mapping is no more than a way to organize your thoughts on paper. It is, in some ways, a method of note taking. In other ways, it is a means to gather information on any topic and present it to any interested party. Mind maps have been used to organize thoughts around personal matters (finding a job) to work related matters (gathering user requirements for software development). Mind mapping can be used for any creative endeavor, writing, business, planning, project management, learning, studying and memory improvement.

Mind maps can be constructed using paper and pen or via software. I will review two mind mapping programs later.

The technique and structure of mind mapping is simple.

Start with a concept/idea/problem. I will use the example of “finding a new job”. Take a sheet of paper, place it in landscape position and write the phrase in the middle of the piece of paper.

Write “places to work” in the upper right, “people to contact” in the upper left, “websites to visit” in the lower right, and “resume to do list” in the lower left.

Each of these new categories then can have subpoints or branch out to new thoughts, etc.

It is hard to describe in words, a quick visit to the sites listed below will quickly give you the idea.

Think of mind mapping as a graphical means to do an outline or a decision tree.

Why talk about mind mapping on a site like this?

The goal of this site is to provide beginners with a comprehensive resource of tools to enable them to build their own websites. Mind mapping software is a tool that could help future web developers and content writers organize their work and their writing.

One last note, mind mapping is a technique and a tool. Like all such things, it may not prove to be useful to some people. It is not perfect for everything. I have found it useful for initial brainstorming and for organize thoughts when I need to write a longer article. Give it a try and leave your comments.

For more information on mind mapping check out the resources below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_mapping

http://www.mind-mapping.org/

http://www.mapyourmind.com/

http://www.buzancentres.com/

Compressing CSS files can greatly reduce the size of the file and thus reduce the amount of bandwidth used every time the file is called from within a webpage.

On this blog I have talked about two tools that assist in compressing CSS files: CSS Tweak and Code Beautifier.

There are two problems that you should be aware of before using any CSS compression tool. These problems are related to editing the file.

The practical practice of editing the CSS file is hampered in several ways. When a CSS file is optimized and compressed, all the white space is removed. Thus, all the code is scrunched together. All line breaks and carriage returns are removed. When an optimized file is opened in a text editor, the text fills the screen and is difficult to read. Finding the item that needs to be edited is difficult. These problems exist even in tools such as Top Style Lite. While Top Style Lite can still find all the selectors, it cant navigate correctly to them since all the carriage returns are removed. It sees the file as one big long text sentence. It can’t find individual terms without the proper breaks and spacing.

To get around this issue it becomes necessary to have two CSS files. One that is readable yet not used “live”. The second one is a compressed version and is used in the live environment. When changes to the CSS file need to be made, changes are made to the readable version which is then recompressed. This recompressed file then replaces the current compressed “live” file. It can be a pain in the patookus.

If anyone has any practical advice please leave a comment. I am curious how others handle the editing of their compressed CSS files. I am especially interested if there is an editor that can easily read and find selectors of compressed files.

There are several frustrations working with CSS files. One is keeping the size of the CSS file small so that it does not take up a lot of bandwidth. Second, is keeping the CSS file “clean”. CSS optimizers seek to help users overcome these frustrations.

There are several CSS optimizers out there and I have reviewed one other in the past. Code Beautifier is a little more advanced than other optimizers and provides a greater set of options to control the optimization process.

The interface is easy. Either copy and paste your CSS file into a text box or point Code Beautifier to the URL of the CSS file. I would suggest that Code Beautifer also include a means to upload an actual fiile.

There are several options for optimizing your CSS file.

• Compression - This setting determines the level of compression. The levels are Highest, High, Standard and Low. The difference between each is the level of readability. The Highest level will remove all white space and scrunch everything together. This is ideal if you are seeking to shrink your CSS file as small as possible. Users can also create their own custom compression levels. I have not read how to do this, but it involves the creation of a template.
• Preserve CSS - If checked, this will keep all comments and hacks. If you want to compress your file as much as possible it is best to leave this unchecked.
• Sort Selectors - This checkbox controls whether the optimizer should alphabetically sort your selectors. I am really surprised they offer this as an option. Changing the order of your selector WILL AFFECT THE BEHAVIOR OF YOUR CODE!!! Personally, I would not use this option unless I had a really small and simple CSS file.
• Sort Properties - If checked, this will alphabetically sort the properties underneath each selector.
• Regroup Selectors - If you have multiple selectors such as a, a.hover and a.visited it will merge these items under “a”. Unfortunately, this can have undesired effects. It will obliterate the differences and thus may change your styling. It is best to leave this at “Do not change anything”.
• Optimize Shorthands - A variety of values for properties can be written in a shorthand format. Choices include “Don’t Optimize”, “Safe Optimizations” and “All Optimizations”.
• Compress Colors - If checked colors such as #336600 will be rewritten as #360.
• Compress Font Weight - If checked, a font weight of “normal” will be rewritten as “400″, etc.
• Lowercase Selectors - makes all selectors lowercase. Recommended. This is needed to comply with XHTML standards.
• Case for properties - select the case for all properties and their values. Lower case is recommended.
• Remove unnecessary backslashes - this may affect any hacks. Careful with this.
• Remove last ; - removes the semi-colon at the end of each property
• Discard invalid properties - This is useful only in a development stage. Discarding invalid properties may remove selectors that affect the styling of your pages.
• add timestamp - adds a timestamp to file
• output as file - When optimization is complete, will provide a button to download the new version as a file. Otherwise, you will have to copy and paste the new code.

Once all options have been selected and the CSS file processed, Code Beautifier will output a series of messages of all items that have been changed. Below is an example from my test CSS file:

37 Optimised number: Changed “0px” to “0″
61 Optimised color: Changed “#000000″ to “#000″
62 Optimised color: Changed “#ffffff” to “#fff”
63Optimised color: Changed “#003366″ to “#036″
121Removed unnecessary backslash
Optimised number: Changed “1.0em” to “1em”
Optimised shorthand notation (padding): Changed “2px 5px 2px 5px” to “2px 5px”

Notice it provides the line number where the change was made.

CB will also provide the starting size, ending size and compression ration. My file started at 13.762 KB, ended at 8.522 KB, with a compression ratio of 37.9%.

Overall, Code Beautifier is a good tool though it may be a little dangerous for the beginner. Some of the options can have dire consequences if you are not aware of what the option may do to your file.

Code Beautifier is based on the open source project CSSTidy.

Writing a website or blog part-time is full of hazards. The number one hazard is time. Time to write, time to read, time to think, time to design.

The last few months have been tremendously busy and stressful for me. As I headed into this time of busyness, I thought I was prepared to continue to maintain this site. I failed. A post here, a post there. Nothing consistent.

So what makes the difference?

How can a part-timer maintain a blog even when life is bursting at the seams?

As I reflect on the last few months, I found at least three main ingredients necessary to maintaining this blog.

First, is organization. Are you organized? Do you have a list of things you want to write about? Do you have a list of things you want to read? Do you have a plan for your blog writing? If you attempt to sit down and write everyday for your blog and do it from the top of your head, you will fail. When the busy times come, your efforts to maintain your blog will be severely hampered. Knowing the NEXT topic to write about helps tremendously. Even if you know you cant write every day, at least you can be working on the next post until you have it written. If you are organized, you know what the next post after that one will be, and the next. This makes blogging so much easier!

I was organized. I have all my stuff categorized and planned out for the most part. But I still failed to maintain a good writing rhythm.

Enter commitment. Are you committed to your blog? Seriously. Ask yourself that question. If you are committed, then you will get yourself organized. You can see where I am headed. However, you can over commit. I thought I would be able to maintain at least 5 posts a week. I wasn’t able to do it. I ended up writing nothing because I was paralyzed by my over commitment. I should have lowered my goals to once a week. I could have done that easily.

My big downfall though was not on the commitment front. Tired from work, then stressed by my personal life, I found I lacked one thing: energy. I would sit down to write, gather my notes and thoughts, look at the screen and…nothing. Blah. Zippo. Nada. I found it easier to surf than write when I was tired. Now sometimes there is not much you can do when you find yourself at the end of the day and you have no energy. However, go back to the commitment issue for a moment. What if I had committed to writing just one post a week but I “scheduled” some time to do it? Instead of waiting till the end of the day to write, I could have schedule a lunch break once a week. Lunch is in the middle of the day. I would have energy. I would even be awake! The best way around the energy issue is to schedule your writing time during a part of the day when you HAVE energy. Plus, limiting your goals makes attaining and meeting your scheduled times much easier.

So here is to organizing and committing around a time of day where you have energy…cheers!

Ever try to track down a problem in your CSS file and find yourself frustrated in tracking down the exact class or id? When a CSS gets to be a certain length it can be a bear to maintain. CSS files are typically organized logically, never alphabetically so things are easier to find.

I have found using the Find function within my text editor is an inefficient way to find my way around my CSS files.

With TopStyle Lite, I have found an easy way to edit and maintain my CSS files.

The benefit of TS Lite is the ease of editing. If you are looking for a tool to help with CSS layouts, etc. then you will want to consider more professional versions. TS Lite helps me see my CSS files in a very organized way. There are two key panes in TS Lite. The Style Sheet pane and the Style Inspector Pane. The Style Sheet pane displays the CSS file you currently have open.

Sometimes a CSS file looks like a blur when viewed in a regular b&w text editor. Items within TS Lite are color coded for easy identification and readability. Color coding also helps in trouble shooting. It is easy to find missing dark blue parentheses, etc.

The Style Inspector pane is divided into two tabs: selectors and properties.

The selectors tab displays all the elements, classes and ids in the style sheet. As a reminder, elements are all items that are “standard” parts of html such as ‘body’, ‘table’, ‘h1′, etc. Classes are items defined by a period (’.') and are typically meant to be reusable. ID’s are items defined by the pound sign (’#') and refer to very specific elements typically used only once per page.

These three categories are displayed in a tree format. Below are screenshots of the three categories:

The organizational tree is extremely helpful. The item is placed in alphabetically ordered within the appropriate category. Need to find your #header id? Very easy to find. No more looking through your whole file trying to remember if you placed it at the top, in the middle or at the bottom.

Simply clicking on the element from the selector tab puts your cursor at the very place it occurs within your file. This is displayed in the Style Sheet pane.

For example, clicking on ‘body’ under elements will place your cursor right before the ‘body’ entry in the CSS pane.

Editing from that point is easy. Manually type the new code and click save.

If you are editing from the CSS Pane you have another option for adding properties. Instead of manually adding them, a property tab is available. The property tab looks like the image below.

The property tab lets you add properties view point and click. Its a nice feature to have only if you are unsure of the syntax. Once you get familiar with the syntax it is easier to type the code out manually. However, it can definitely be a benefit to beginners.

TS Lite also has a preview pane which will preview your CSS file. It previews colors and formatting. Keep in mind that it will not correctly disp

Is the PRO version of TopStyle or any purchased CSS editor worth it?

For the beginner I would say “no”. Save your pennies for other things. If you find you are doing A LOT of CSS work then I would download the trial version of TopStyle PRO and see if it meets your needs. If you only do occasional CSS work, then your text editor and TSLite are all you need.

A reader had emailed me a few weeks ago to let me know that my Web Tools Directory had been infected with malware and was now displaying viagra ads. I have fixed the problem and those pages are displaying correctly.

Firefox is a great browser for many reasons. One of which is its ability to extend itself with addons. I have written a page about the Firefox addons that can turn Firefox into a web development tool.

I have been away from my blog for several weeks now and before I wrote an “I’m Sorry I’ve Been Away” post, I decided to be more constructive and write about the appropriateness of such posts.

If you have been taken away from writing your blog for ANY reason, consider the following:

1) Are you a part-timer or a full-timer? Full timers have a larger responsibility to their readership. In most cases, full timers probably plan for their absences with fill-in writers. Part-timers should not feel compelled to apologize for an absence. You can if you want to, but I feel it is not necessary. It just matters that you are back writing quality content.

2) Do you have a large readership or a small readership? Blogs with a large readership require extra effort to communicate with their audience. Blogs with a small readership still have a responsibility to their readers. However, this can be simply accomplished by saying “Hey Im Here, did you read about _____? (Fill in more thoughts here)”. Readers appreciate your back. They appreciate it more when you write something useful.

3) Do you need to give a detailed account for your absence? A lot of bloggers do. Frankly, I could care less about the details of their lives. I don’t read their blogs for that reason. Some blogs quickly become less about the topic and more about the soap opera of the writer’s life. Spare me! A simple note indicating general personal reasons should suffice. In the end, it really is not anyone’s business. You need to chose the level at which you want to share.

4) Were you away from your blog because of reasons that are either related to the topic of your blog or could be used as posts on your blog? If you write about technology and spent two weeks in the desert investigating how techology is helping the Masai, that is very relevant. If however, you spent two weeks on the beach playing volleyball and nothing whatsoever occurred that could relate to technology then skip the long posts about oceans waves and evening sunsets.

5) Finally, use your absence to create content. Maybe your absence gave you a renewed mind and a fresh perspective. Use that to your advantage. It is always a good thing to step away from your blog anyway. Use your absence as a reminder that breaks are necessary to success.

Sitting down and determining the format (or structure) of your website requires a little thought. With the introduction of blogs, developers have multiple options when consider the structure of a website.

There are three basic formats: Website as blog, Website incorporates blog, and website with no blog. I realize these are somewhat general. A problem exists when the word “blog” is mentioned. It can connote multiple meanings in people’s minds. If I mention that I have a blog, some people react by stating “How can you share your personal life on the web like that!”. In their minds, a blog connotes something that is inherently personal, an online diary. In actuality, the connotation is really a usage of format one above (and maybe number two).

What are the fundamental differences between these general formats?

The last is the easiest to explain since it has been around the longest. It is a website as it has existed since the web began. It is multiple web pages organized for accessiblity and usability to communicate content or a message.

A website that incorporates a blog meets the above criteria as well. However, a portion of those pages are organized as a blog. My website falls into this category. Click on “Blog” on the nav menu and your taken to the blog for this website. The blog does not form the structure of the website, rather it is part of that structure. Blogs used in this manner are either used to update individuals on newsworthy items or as a manner of creating ancillary content.

Websites as blogs are structured by the blog itself. Typically the homepage of the site is the main blog page which contains summaries of the most recent posts.

Which format is right for your site?

Most company and product website typicall fall into the “website incorporates blog” category. The blog should be used to keep visitors up to date on the latest news and updates. All other content is more “static” (which is a poor term to use but I can’t find one better) describing the nature and service of the company or product. Typically this content does not exist as part of the blog.

Consider the following three examples. I link to the main page, then to their blog. When looking at the main page look for a link in the nav bar labeled “blog”. In each of these cases, the blog is used to keep people up to date about the content and topic of the website at large.

1. Napping Book / Nap Blog
2. Great News / Great News Blog
3. Virtual Handshake / Virtual Handshake Blog

Smaller information websites don’t need a blog. These typically are not updated on a regularly basis or require the kind of updates that would necessitate a blog. They usually don’t have a need to connect with a particular readership. It could be argued that some of the below sites could benefit from a blog. However, it could be counter-argued that an email newsletter would better suit there needs to connect with an audience.

1. Playsets
2. Get rid of snakes
3. Rain Chains

Sites which comment regularly on newsworthy events or a niche topic are best structured as a pure blog. The blog, in these cases, gets the front and center attention. The blog itself appears on the homepage of the website. Typically when we mention the term “blog” we think of these kinds of sites. You are probably familiar with many, here are three examples.

1. SEO Book
2. Winds of Change
3. Small Dogs

It is hard to put into words something that is often a nuance. However, by looking at the examples provided you can get a picture of the general ways websites are differentiated. The point of this post is to help beginners consider the basic kinds of structure before they begin creating their own site.

All ecommerce websites face one fundamental issue: whether they want to be or not, they have an international market. The Internet allows ecommerce to occur across all geographic and political borders. Individual sites may not ship internationally stating shipping cost, paperwork hassle and currency conversion as potential barriers.

Dynamic Converter is a tool that addresses the last of these issues. With the addition of a simple piece of javascript, Dynamic Converter can allow visitors to change the prices into their own currency.

The Dynamic Converter implementation can occur in one of several ways.

1. Dropdown Menu - users can select a currency from a dropdown menu which would dynamically change the currency of the item
2. Small Popup Menu - clicking the price brings up a small popup menu of other currencies
3. Price with Dropdown Selection - alternative currency appears within the price dropdown box
4. Flag images - users can select their currency by clicking the flag of their country of origin

How much does Dynamic Converter cost?

A free account can be created which allows up to 10,000 requests per month.

The Gold and Enterprise editions offer unlimited requests plus additional options and costs $13 and $39 dollars a month respectively.

I am in the process of firing up the ecommerce portion of this website. Dynamic Converter is currently on my list to implement once I get that piece up and running.

Disclosure: Paid Review

When choosing keywords it is important to also consider other semantically relatied terms that can be coupled with your chosen keyword.

One way to study you competition’s efforts (or your own) in this manner is to use a tool such as Clear Forest Gnosis.

Clear Forest Gnosis (CFG) examines a web page and categorizes the terms that it finds. It categorizes by city, country, company, industry terms, product, technology, organization, state, region and several others. The intent of CFG is to organize the terms on a page in order to understand its underlying semantic atmosphere.

It is this semantic atmosphere, especially when it consists of what CFG calls
“industry terms”, that is of use to you and me.

This kind of semantic text analysis is part of the next big focus for seo and keyword analysis. It is already happening actually.

CFC can be used for more than semantic analysis. It can be used to enhance any kind of website reading. In particular, it can help dissect news sites in order to see at a glance key terms, people and places.

What do you see when you use Clear Forest Gnosis?

When CFG is applied to an open web page, a side bar is opened within Firefox. Rainbow bands appear listing the categories. Terms appear in tree fashion below each category heading. The parentheses after each term indicates the number of times the term appears on the page. All found terms are highlighted on the page. Clicking on an individual term on the tree highlights only that term and scrolls the page to the first occurence of the term.

Let me use my home page as an example. Below is a screen shot of my home page after I have run Clear Forest Gnosis.

This second screenshot shows a closeup of CFG with the industry terms expanded.

As you look down the list you can see there is a good mix of web tool related terms. It is this kind of mix that you want to try to accomplish for your pages.

While CFG is not perfect in finding all the semantically related terms on a page, it is a great start. As the topic of web page semantic domains begins to grow look for more and more of these kinds of tools.

How long does it take your web page to load?

LORI (Life of Request Info) can help you understand how long it takes your pages to load within a Firefox browser.

I do have to qualify the above sentence with “within a Firefox browser”, since each browser renders and handles the code differently. It at least will help you pinpoint any problems within your web page that maybe slowing it down.

LORI installs on the bottom status bar and provides 4 statistics.

From left to right:

• Time to First Byte - this is the time it takes from the initial click to your website to the time it takes the first byte to load
• Time to completion - this is the total time it takes the entire webpage to load from initial click to complete display
• Page Size - the actual page size in kilobytes
• Number of requests made by your web page

Overall the faster your page loads the better. I will write another post sometime about standards in this area. Basically, try to make your web pages load in under 8 seconds and limit the amount of requests it makes. The latter is affected by number of images, etc. on the web page.

I am always trying to find the font, size and line spacing that makes for the most readable website text. I will come across websites who have a very readable text and will mess around trying to decipher their CSS code. Often it is just a waste of my time.

This problem is solved with the Font Finder Firefox extension.

Highlight any text on a web page.

Select Font Finder from the right click context menu.

Font Finder will display the CSS used to style the text. It is just that simple!

What a time saver!

Below is a screenshot of the display returned by Font Finder:

One of the most irritating tasks is opening two separate browser windows to compare two web pages.

One either has to flip back and forth between windows which is inefficient at best. Or one can resize both windows so they are side by side on your desktop. This latter method becomes cumbersome if you have to minimize one of the windows or you open up another application. Restoring your resized windows takes at least two clicks instead of one.

Now there is a better way: the Split Pannel Firefox extension (yes panel is spelled with two N’s…dont ask…I dont know why)

Open a tab or window within Firefox. Select “Split” from the context menu. The current opened page will now be split. A static panel to the left and a normal tabbable window to the right. Static may not be the right word for you can still browse; the left panel simply cannot have multiple tabs. The left panel does have forward, backward, home and refresh capability. The right panel maintains all Firefox functionality .

All other extensions work soley on the right “normal” panel. They do not work on the split left panel.

This could come in handy with blogging as well. Keep you blog admin screen open to the left and the site(s) you are writing about open in tabs to the left.

Below is a screenshot showing a split window. To the left I have Google open and to the right is Yahoo.

If you use the HeadMeta plugin for WordPress to generate description meta tags and are using WordPress 2.1 you will need to update to version 1.3 of the plugin.  Previous versions do not work.  Simply download the new plugin file. Upload it to your plugins directory (copying over the old one). Do not deactivate the plugin beforehand or you will lose any descriptions you already have entered Dougal (the author of the plugin) clarified the issue about whether deactivation of the plugin would cause a loss of data. See his comment below.   Upon a page refresh, view the source, and your meta tags should be intact.

Tired of logging into your blog website every time you want to make a post?

Doesn’t it suck to flip back and forth between the site your writing about and your blog editor?

With Performancing for Firefox (soon to be ScribeFire) you can have a built-in blog editor directly into your Firefox web browser.

Here is a screenshot. It is easier to show you then to describe it with words.

The top half of my browser window displays the ScribeFire website.  I have PFF open and it is displayed in the bottom half of the screen. You can see that I have begun writing this post.

Setting up PFF for you blog is easy.  Settings included the type of blog (WordPress, MT, etc.), the URL for your blog’s API and your username and password.  Once setup, PFF will display all available categories from your blog as well as a history of your prior posts.  The editor window is similar to most blogging platforms. You have the choice of either WYSIWYG or source code mode. All the typical formatting buttons are included as well.

Publishing to you blog occurs at the push of a button. You can set publishing options to either publish live or publish as draft.

It really is as simple as it sounds.

Why use PFF?

First, is efficiency. Because of the nature of my topic, I am always looking at a browser window when I write. I either have to flip back and forth between a website and my blog admin screen or arrange my text editor in such a way so that I can see browser window alongside it. With PFF, I can easily view both the browser and the editor.

Second, easier to write spur of the moment posts. A lot of times I put off writing something off the cuff because I don’t want to login to my site. Open PFF with a click and you can be writing the very next second. Even if you are not comfortable posting live from PFF you can always post to draft and login later to do more editing.

The Future of PFF

While PFF is supposed to become ScribeFire, I do have to wonder what will eventually happen. Performancing was recently bought by SplashMedia and that purchase only includes the assets of the Performancing website and community as well as Performancing Metrics. I do hope that PFF (ScribeFire) continues to have a lifeline.

I’ve been recently frustrated by the lack of a good download manager for Firefox.  The download manager within Firefox is fine for single file downloads, though it has no resume or pause capability nor ability to capture multiple downloads at once. The download manager I currently use works only with IE and not Firefox (which is a separate issue).  So I went searching through the catalog of Firefox Add-ons and discovered DownThemAll!

DownThemAll! will find every link on a webpage and attempt to download the file that is associated with each link.  While it grabs links to HTML, ASP, and PHP pages, I find its main use is for downloading PDFs, MP3s and other large files (including executables).

I can grab the files I want in one of two ways.  DownThemAll! will find all possible files to be downloaded and I can select from the list which files I want.  I can also set up filters that will only find the files I am interested in.  For example, if I only want to download PDF and MP3 files off a website, I can set up a filter to do so.  The filters can be created very simply by telling DTA what file extensions to look for. Advanced users can setup regular expressions to create a filter. 

The other way I can download files is with DTA OneClick.   With  one click, DTA  recalls the last setting it used and will try to download the files on the current page with those settings. This is useful for tasks which require lots of downloading off of multiple pages/sites. 

One of the great things about a download manager is the ability to pause and resume downloads. I can pause a download, exit from Firefox, even shutdown my machine, and return later to the DTA Manager and resume the download.  This is especially helpful with very large files. There are times when I need the bandwidth to perform a certain task. I can pause the downloads, do the task, then pick up the downloads where they left off.

DTA has definitely made the “downloading” portion of my life much easier.

The screenshot below shows the file selection screen. I have my PDF filter on to capture only PDF files.

This screenshot demonstrates the download screen. It shows what files are downloading, how much of that file has been downloaded, estimated time left in the download and shows all files in queue.

Quogr offers an easy way for webmaster’s to place quotes of their own choosing on their website.

Admittedly, there are a ton of php quote scripts out there. Why use something like Quogr?

Well for starters, beginners might find php scripts too technical to figure out. Quogr provides simple cut and paste code that anyone can add to their website. If you can add Adsense to your website, you can add a Quogr quote block.

Second, YOU get to add the quotes you want to appear. Heck, you can even quote yourself!
A lot of of those php scripts come pre-loaded with tons of quotes. You may not want to have most or any of those quotes appear on your website. Quogr gives you the freedom to add what you want.

Whats a quote block from Quogr look like? See below:

Are Quogr quote blocks genuinely useful or are they simply website bling?

They are not for all websites. But if your website happens to be about promoting yourself, then Quogr could be a useful tool. In particular, I am thinking of all those personal coaching/self help kind of sites. Various inspirational speakers have a blog and and a store to sell their books and CD’s. Quogr would be an excellent addition to their website. Quotes from their own books and materials could appear within a sidebar. Put on your marketing hats now. Choose the right quotes and you could very well pre-sell your own material. Just a thought

Yes, Quogr could easily become website bling that will make you yawn. However, the right site, the right material with the right mindset, could turn Quogr into a very powerful self-marketing tool.

Disclosure: Paid Review

Are you tired of the same old fonts available to you through your word processor?

Do you want to make a logo but need a font with a little more edge or pizzazz?

Do you balk at paying stiff prices for the fonts you REALLY want?

Enter Urbanfonts.

Urbanfonts provides free fonts that are available for download. No membership. No cost. Free!

Free fonts are organized by category. For example, Futuristic, Handwritten and Gothic contains a number of fonts that fit that description (more or less; some fonts are hard to throw into any category). Hovering over a category will provide a mini-preview of the a font that belongs in that category. Once inside a category all fonts are provided in a very large type size that make the font easy to read. Hovering over a font provides an alphabetical list of all letters in both upper and lower case. Font are available for both Windows and Mac.

How many free fonts are there to choose from? Well, when viewing the Random category at 12 fonts per page, there are 539 pages. Doing the rough math approximates 6438 fonts.

Urbanfonts also offers a catalog of commercial fonts that are available for purchase.

The beginner can feast not only on the free fonts, but the free font education via the Urbanfont blog. I am not a graphic designer (I did take two classes in college though). So the article on the Scourge of Arial I found fascinating and the post on Typography 101 is essential reading for the graphic design beginner.

If your looking for font ideas for your new website logo, check out Urbanfonts first. There is plenty of selection there to satisfy most font needs.

Disclosure: Paid Review

Is your server down? How would you know?

Would you like to know when it goes down?

Simple Server Monitor offers a desktop tool that allows users the ability to monitor their servers.

Simple Server Monitor offers more than just a simple ping utility to test the status of a server. It has the ability to actually login to a service and logout thus testing to see if an application is actually up and running.

The possibilities with Simple Server Monitor are mainly for the intermediate to advanced user. While SSM can be used to tell if a website is up or down, it maybe overkill for beginners to use it for this purpose especially at a price of $50. However, if you host applications on shared web hosts, then this tool will be worth the small investment. SSM is ideal for those who host their own websites on their own machines or who are in charge of maintaining a series of servers. I would hesitate to say whether it is ideal in an enterprise environment. It seems more geared towards the individual and/or small business. Though as a secondary form of alert, SSM seems like it could serve in the enterprise environment as well.

You will have to adjust your firewall accordingly to let SSM reach the servers you have set it to test. When I first fired SSM up, it tested my website and told me it was down. I went out and checked and it was most definitely up. The problem was my firewall. The firewall had kept SSM from sending out it’s test ping and when SSM did not receive any packets back it assumed the server was down. I am not a network expert by any means, but if there was a way for SSM to detect the presence if not the blockage of a firewall, this would help users immensely.

The interface is clean and easy to use. Setup (other than the firewall issue) was very easy as well. If you have a small business and manage multiple servers or websites, SSM may be the right tool for you.

Disclosure: Paid Review

This is a hard thing to find out unless you’re a regular follower of the domain name industry. Unfortunately, one can’t run a WHOIS search based on owner name.

However according to this post on Domain Name Wire, NameMedia (they run buydomains.com) may indeed be the largest owner of domain names.

This post also quotes another source who ranks several other companies. Check the post out and you will find your answers.

There is an art to selling anything. The same is true for selling domain names. I personally don’t feel qualified to give you advice in this area, but I can point you to Domain Name Wire’s series “Selling Domains 101″. Currently, this series is made up of five posts that cover various aspects of selling domains. I will be adding to this list if/when more posts by Domain Name Wire are published.

Selling Domains 101 Part One: Terminology

Selling Domains 101 Part Two: Domain Aftermarkets

Selling Domains 101 Part Three: Domain Name Forums

Selling Domains 101 Part Four: Domain Brokers

Selling Domains 101 Part Five: End User Sales

The domain name market is exploding with places to sell domain names. A lot of registrars are beginning to offer their customers services for selling their domains. If you are interested in selling a domain name here are eight places to consider:

1. Sedo - Sedo has becomes one of the quickest growing domain name marketplaces. Buy or Sell domain names safely and proficiently. Sedo provides an escrow services in order to ensure the safe transfer of fund between buyer and seller. Read more about sedo on my blog and our in the recommended web tools section.
2. Afternic - The grandfather of all secondary market domain resellers, Afternic is also a very highly reputable name in the domain name marketplace.
3. Premium Domains - A relative newcomer, Premium Domains will only allow you to post your domain for sale through their service if it meets certain quality indicators. They provide a free quality calculator that will asses the quality of your domains.
4. NamePros - A domain name forum where it is possible for registered members to list their domains for sale.
5. DN Forum - Domain Name Forum allows members to post domain names for sale. While both DN Forum and NamePros are legitimate places to sell a domain name, the beginner is better off sticking with a place like Sedo or Afternic until they get a feel for the domain name market.
6. Great Domains - A Verisign company setup to handle the buying and selling of domain names.
7. Fabulous Domains - another domain name aftermarket.
8. TDNAM - GoDaddy’s “The Domain Name Aftermarket”. The place to sell your domain if you want it advertised with cute girls and women in bikinis.

Transferring domain names refers to the process of switching domain name registrars. Transferring domain names has nothing to do with the process of transferring ownership. The transfer of ownership is typically referred to in terms of buying and selling.

Why would you want to transfer a domain name from one registrar to another?
It simply comes down to three things:
1)Where do you like to shop
2)Customer Service
3)Services

You may decide that Registrar X has a better user interface than Registrar Y. Registrar X may have policies that you disagree with or has lousy customer service. Registrar X may have a better price than Registrar Y, but Registrar Y does not make it a hassle to manage your domains. The reasons for switching domain registrars are similar to switching grocery stores. This is a business and domain name registrars need to treat you as a valued customer.

Transferring a domain name is a two step process. First, unlock your domain at the registrar you are transferring from. Second, authorize the transfer at the registrar you are transferring to.

Unlocking A Domain

Unlocking a domain can be a very simple two step process. Some registrars have a “lock” or “unlock” option when the domain name is viewed within their management tool. Choose the unlock option. Second, set the domain password. This password will be used later as an authorization code. The example that follows below is a little more sophisticated. It is similar, but involves a few other steps. Login to your account with the registrar you want to transfer from.

Typically, clicking on the domain name will bring up options for that domain name. In this case, one of the options is Domain Protect:

The option is currently set to “On” (this is the same as “locked”). We now have the option to “Turn off or Request Authorization Code”. We want to turn domain protection off as well as request an authorization code. So checking the appropriate radio buttons and check boxes produces:

Clicking save at this point sets the domain to an unprotected or unlocked status. It also, with this registrar, generates the production of an email with an authorization code. This code will be needed to complete the transfer process at the other registrar.

At this point, all the information needed to begin the process at the new registrar has been gathered.

Completing the Transfer Process

For this portion of the example, Moniker will be used as the new registrar. Remember, this process is similar at most registrars though certain elements may be different. Consult the help pages of your registrar of choice if you get stuck.

Moniker has Transfer Domains as menu item on their navigation bar:

Clicking “Transfer Domains” leads to a page with the following box:

Enter the domain you desire to transfer and click the GO button.

The registrar then determines if this domain is available to be transferred:

If the domain is eligible to be transferred, click the Transfer button:

At this point an authorization screen is displayed:

This screen requires two inputs: an EPP Transfer Code and the Moniker Authorization Code. The latter is generated by Moniker and is sent out via email. Copy and paste this code from the email. This email is usually generated and sent immediately upon arriving at this screen.

The EPP Transfer Code can be one of two things. First, it can be the authorization code sent from the registrar you want to transfer from. Our little demo fits this case. From the email above, the authorization code should be copied and pasted into the EPP Transfer Code line. Second, if the registrar does not send out an authorization code, the password used to protect the domain should be entered here. If no password is set, set one now and then enter that password into this field.

Once the codes are entered, click Transfer again. The user is then taken to the shopping cart to checkout.

Domain Transfers typically cost a little more than a new domain registration or renewal. However, the new registration time is added to the domain. For example, a domain with an expiration of 04-01-2007 is transferred on 10-01-2006. It is transferred to the new registrar with a one year registration. The new expiration date is not 10-01-2007, but rather 04-01-2008.

This post is excerpted from my Domain Name Handbook: Choosing, Registering and Managing Domain Names.