Open Source: Free Web Development Tools

January 12th, 2010

Okay, so some of the best web tools out there, in my opinion, are free or even open source.  While I’m not the biggest fan of the current direction Firefox has taken, it remains a leader and a major player and has a lot of tools available as addons.  There are also a number of platform independent tools available, so long as your using a computer platform.

Just like my last post, list items in bold are the bees’ knees.

FIREFOX

  • Firebug ::: Particularly useful for inspecting elements and seeing a real time “update” to whatever change you make.
  • Web Developer ::: This is a great plugin for inspecting elements and has quick links for the W3C Validator.
  • SearchStatus ::: Set this one up and enable MozRank and Compete Rank and get some great SEO stats.
  • YSlow ::: Why is your site running slow and great recommendations regarding performance. (Requires Firebug)
  • ColorZilla ::: Great for those of us who are colorblind and need to grab a quick hex value… ie. me.
  • QuickJava ::: Adds button to quick enable/disable JavaScript.  I use this regularly when checking just how gracefully degrading some of my JavaScript really is.
  • Google Toolbar ::: Pretty useful for quickly bookmarking sites to your Google account, getting to your documents, calendar, etc.
  • Foxy SEO Tool
  • Dummy Lipsum ::: Lorum Ipsum Generator… for all those times you have a client who wants a really sweet design so they can “put cool words and stuff on it… you know, for people to read”.  If you are one of my clients, please do not download this tool.  It won’t help.
  • Jiffy ::: Displays Javascript timer measurements
  • Window Resizer ::: Select a screen resolution you’d like to check out.  This will automatically resize the browser window.

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Top Eighteen Wordpress Plugins

January 11th, 2010

Okay, so this is my first “listing” post ever, so don’t get your hopes up too high.  Most (if not all) of these are being used on this blog site.  I emboldened any that I thought should ALWAYS be installed on any Wordpress blog site.

Note: Actually, I have to cross some of these out since some of them have some pretty awful markup… great functionality, if they worked correctly.

  1. I need a good recommendation on a solid contact form.
  2. Addthis Social Bookmarking Widget
    1. This has one error if you’re running xhtml strict 1.1 and that is “border=none”.  Easy enough to remove.
  3. Admiyn Juitter Wordpress Plugin
    • Had some validation issues and caused some conflicts for me.
  4. All In One SEO Pack
  5. Apture
    • Had some validation issues and caused some conflicts for me.
  6. AskApache Crazy Cache
  7. AskApache Google 404
  8. DISQUS Comment System
  9. External Links
  10. Google Analytics OR Ultimate Google Analytics
    • Google Analytics sets up the code right before the ending body tag as Google suggests, but Ultimage Google Analytics has a lot more features for what it’s worth.

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Intro Tutorial to Setting up a Ubuntu Server

January 1st, 2010

This is a brief overview and does not cover anything in the way of performance tuning, security, or any other form of optimization.

Your initial setup:

  1. sudo passwd followed by prompt for new root password
  2. aptitude install apache2 mysql-server php5 php5-mysql curl php5-curl phpmyadmin libapache2-mod-proxy-html
  3. For mod_rewrite to work go to “/etc/apache2/sites-available” and in “default” change “AllowOverride None” to “AllowOverride All” for any directory you want to allow mod_rewrite to work.  You’ll also want to run “a2enmod rewrite” to load the rewrite module.
  4. Restart apache: “/etc/init.d/apache2 restart”
  5. Not required, but I’ll install libapache2-mod-security2 as well.
  6. Not required either, but it’s also a great idea to increase your memory limit in your “php.ini” to a higher number.  For most sites 32M is fine.  I typically set it to around 96M for my Drupal sites.
  7. Adding mod_deflate will decrease processing and load time to your sites’ pages.  Here’s how: ”
    a2enmod deflate”.  Then restart Apache again.  On Apache2, all we need to do is load the module since it should already be installed on the system.

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The Days of Dial-Up BBS Systems May be Long Gone

October 23rd, 2009

jamesmanBBS systems of ages past (aka “Middle School”) never had the kind of technology that makes the Marvel Comics website what it is today.  Although I can’t say I learned anything about anything else ever because of Flash media, the fact that I can spend less than a half an hour turning myself into a ridiculous super hero is better than anything dial up ever had to offer me.  I will probably always prefer jQuery and some SVG goodness to Flash and it’s proprietary elitism, but daggone… I’m a superhero.

The thing is, I’m considering dropping my full time position as a web developer to join the ranks of crime fighters and upstanding citizens.

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Thank you for visiting this site. The web fairy will visit you in your sleep... you know, I was going somewhere with this, but it really doesn't have as much innocent charm as the tooth fairy, especially when I picture the web fairy as someone much like the Simpsons' Comic Book Guy but with wings. It's just not something I want.