Comparison Chart On phpBB, MyBB, MyProBB, vBulletin

Comparison Chart On bbPress, FusionBB, Invision Power, and Vanilla

About phpBB

Summary

PhpBB is designed for the average user in mind. This platform can handle a descent amount of traffic and is pretty easy to customize and there are many templates to choose from. I would recommend phpBB for someone who is looking for a free solution that is both functional and customizable.

Screenshots

Example Forums

• Mozilla Add-ons Forum
• South Park Studios
• Skyrim Forums

About MyBB

Summary

MyBB is another platform that is free, functional, and customizable. MyBB has a large support community and is easy to use. I would recommend this platform to someone who is looking for something a little different than phpBB.

Screenshots

Example Forums

• NCAA BBS
• Yu-Gi-Oh Cardmaker
• Messenger Plus Live

About MyProBB

Summary

MyProBB is similar to MyBB but offers a few additional features and support. If you like MyBB and are looking for something a little more this would be a solid option. I would not recommend this for someone who is just looking for a good platform because of the cost and limited abilities.

Screenshots

Example Forums

• MyProBB Web Forum

About vBulletin

Summary

VBulletin is a platform that is designed for large forums. This platform is used by millions of sites and can meet any can be used for pretty much anything. I would highly recommend vBulletin for any size forum in pretty much any situation as long as you are willing/able to purchase it.

Screenshots

Example Forums

• Anime Appeal
• Digital Point
• Bike Forums

About bbPress

Summary

BbPress was brought to us by WordPress and is a great option for someone looking for a fast forum. By default bbPress does not come with much but this increases the load time and performance of the forum. There is also a plug-in for pretty much anything you would want to add, just be careful not to add to many plug-ins because it will affect the performance.

Screenshots

Example Forums

• WordPress
• Singletrack
• Dropbox

About FusionBB

Summary

FusionBB is a great forum platform and can met the demands of a large community. If you are willing to pay for your forum this would be my recommendation. Yes it is a little pricy but the features and support you get will easy make up for the price.

Screenshots

Example Forums

• FusionBB Forums
• Classic Camp Stoves
• Basketball U

About InvisionPower

Summary

InvisionPower is another great paid forum platform. InvisionPower also offer several other products and if you are using them this would be a great choice. If you are not using any other products by InvisionPower I would use fusionBB.

Screenshots

Example Forums

• IPS Community
• Official eMule-Board
• GameMaker Community

About Vanilla

Summary

Vanilla forums is another great free option. If you are looking for something different than the standard phpBB forum platform this is a great option. But if you are just looking for the most functional free forum platform I would still go with phpBB.

Screenshots

Example Forums

• Vanilla Forums
• Flatpress
• Big Green Egg

It might take a little patience and effort to create a new website from scratch, test it on an Android-based Web server and then upload it to the Internet where it can go live. Here are ten of the best Web development apps that can help get any project finished while on the move.

(Courtesy of l i l o n d r a and incredibleguy)

KWS Web Server

Some Android owners are surprised when they find out they can actually serve files from their smartphone or tablet. The KWS Web Server app makes this easy. This server might not work well for serving large numbers of files for the World Wide Web, but it does a good job for testing and local Web applications.

View Web Source

Web developers often need to look at code at the browser level, but those who rely on most Android Web browsers do not have the “view source” option available to them. Users type in the address of any Web page and save it for future use by copying it to the clipboard of their device.

ConnectBot SSH

Many people would never even think about running an SSH client on a mobile phone, but this app makes the impossible come true. File transfer between a device and a Web server is easy with this app. Developers can also use it to manipulate files on a remote server, run programs and navigate the server’s file structure.

AndFTP

Move files between the Internet and Android devices with ease using this app. FTP, SFTP and similar protocols are supported on phones and tablets. This app also acts as a full-service file manager for the device and the Web server. Delete, move and copy files with ease; create folders and set permissions.

WordPress for Android

Many developers work with WordPress, a popular open source Web software product used for blogging and CMS. This app gives users many of the same options available to desktop users. Comment moderation, content creation, user management and statistics are just a few of the functions accessible from a mobile device.

Joooid

Joomla! is a popular Web-based CMS system that is often used to manage professional and commercial websites. The Jooid editor for Joomla! enables mobile users to create posts and edit HTML. With this app, users can even add images, maps and other goodies from their mobile phone.

Courtesy of growdigital)

Webmaster’s HTML Editor Lite

Developers will enjoy having an HTML editor onboard their tablet or smartphone so they can create Web pages in CSS, HTML, JavaScript and PHP. This powerful editor highlights code and completes tags. Handy shortcut buttons also help speed the webmaster’s job.

Drupal Editor for Android

Web developers that use the Drupal content management system will love having access to creative and administrative functions from their cell phones.

JavaScript Programming Reference

Make it easy to lookup functions and syntax while mobile. This handy JavaScript app lists official documentation so developers can quickly and accurately craft their code from the palm of their hand. After downloading this app, developers look for other reference apps for PHP, HTML, CSS and more. They will work especially for those who choose to use the HTML editor listed below.

Analytix

When developers need to stay on top of their websites while away from the office, what do they do? They choose the Analytix client for Google Analytics. This app retrieves the information from Google and presents it in an easy-to read format that is optimized for mobile screens. Now webmasters can stay in touch with their websites all day, every day.. By monitoring site performance with Analytix, developers can quickly identify problems with Web pages and their content and take steps to correct them.

Summary

Android phones and tablets extend webmasters’ reach through the use of exciting apps available for download from the Android Market. Armed with these apps, Web developers can get their work done from almost anywhere. Meanwhile, developers should keep their eyes open for more apps that can make their work easy.

This is a guest article by Ruben Corbo, a writer for the website Cell Phone Expert where you can compare plans on different cell phones.

Even as adoption of Google Plus by new users seems to be slowing down a bit less than three months after its launch in June 2011, the experts are yet undecided as to who will win the battle for number one place in the social networking arena, Google Plus or Facebook.

The bitter lessons that the Internet giant learned in the social media space with Google Buzz and Google Wave may stand it in good stead, but in the modern open source age, lessons are really out there for all to learn. Facebook’s privacy controls debacle has not resulted in a significant drop in active users, following a concerted campaign to educate them about existing and new features.

Look at how the two social networking platforms stack up against each other when compared from an end-user perspective.

1. A suite of web services versus a standalone social network.

Facebook, a social network has become a part of our daily lives. While, the highest number of Google Plus adopters were existing users of other Google services, such as Gmail, Picasa, Google Reader, and Google Docs. The reason was the ease with which this social networking platform allowed all these services to be integrated into one place. In addition, for people not using the other web services, joining Google Plus gives instant and single log-in access not only to all of the services, but also allows users to use features of other services without actively using them. Google has also cleverly repackaged other services and built them into Google Plus in a similar way, such as multi-user text and video chat, and a feed reader in the form of the Sparks feature.

2. Multi-user real time video chat.

The “next big thing” was due in the realm of video chat for quite a while, but no one had really anticipated the top grade multi-user video chat that came with Google Plus. With surprising image and streaming quality even on middle of the road broadband line, Hangout really pushes the envelope as far as technical finesse is concerned. Even though, Facebook came out with a plain vanilla video chat option soon after, Google has gained the lead as far as this aspect is concerned.

3. Privacy features out in public.

Many observers ascribe the phenomenal early adoption rate of Google Plus to the privacy issues with the Facebook way of sharing everything with everyone by default. Google Plus circumvents this with the concept of independent Circles of contacts, letting you share specific content with particular sets of people. Facebook has a similar level of sharing control called lists, but this was something that many people were either unaware of or found complicated to access and utilize. Of late, though, Facebook has begun putting its privacy tweaks out in the open in an attempt to reassure its users.

4. A difficult to beat network in terms of numbers.

Facebook has the incredible advantage of 750 million users, something that Google Plus can only look at longingly for the near future. With this huge user base and a seven-year lead in the social networking field, Facebook is at a clear advantage.

5. Innovative users find hidden value in Google Plus.

The fact that Google is often seen as the lone voice in the wilderness against the evil empire of corporate monopoly has seen a greater adoption of its services by the creative, alternative-lifestyle population. One of the first trends that set Google Plus apart from Facebook was the innovative ways that people began using the features on it, from real time video blogging and collaborative writing, to using the streams as classrooms, life-hack tutorials and discussion centers.

Wrapping Up…

At the end of an unbiased pros and cons analysis, it is clear that for those wanting to get on to the social network to find and reconnect with long lost school friends and family members, Facebook is still the preferred destination with its sheer volume of users. To date, there has been little in terms of front page features that set the Stream of Google Plus apart from Facebook’s Wall. The privacy control offered by Circle is really just a tweak on the List feature, and with the new campaign to promote its privacy features, Facebook is fast shedding its risky image.

For those who migrated to Google Plus thinking it is a more serious platform, well, you might not have noticed the games tab that has shown up over the last month! However, the video chat feature in Google Plus is really cool, and it will take some effort to match it. For users already on other Google services, there is a lot of comfort in this Taco-Bell-meets-KFC application. But other than these two, there is little to write home about as far as Google Plus is concerned. For all purposes, both these giants are equally placed in the battle for the social media log-ins.

About the author: Alia Haley

Alia Haley is a blogger who loves splurging on laptops and smartphones. Being a hard core biker, she is always on a lookout for latest bikes and recently has become a big fan of portable bikes.

*Comic source: XKDC’s Google +

In developing any business online one of the most overlooked areas in business management strategies is having a service oversee their website uptime. Many people assume that their web host is going to be responsible for alerting them when their website goes down. This is a big myth and in fact it runs entirely contrary to what a website hosting company would do. Think about it. Why would a web hosting company tell their clients there service is having troubles causing their site to be down temporarily? They are going to hope a client doesn’t spot it as it directly affects the claims that most web hosting companies say they can provide 99.9% uptime.

An online business is only as good as the amount of time that it’s up online. When I first got started running multiple websites online I heavily relied on my sites being up especially when I was running pay per click campaigns. Now if your just running a personal blog that doesn’t rely on being available for members, readers or advertising campaigns then you might not be too bothered by half an hour of down time but for companies who rely on their site being online every minute of the day. A 30 minute or longer down time can have devastating effects on their long term goals.

Why Website Uptime Monitoring Service Matters?

The truth is not all web hosting company can provide 99.9% uptime as many web hosting companies are packing servers with clients and multiple people are sharing servers even on reseller plans.  If you are seeking a stronger and more reliable solution they will need to look into dedicated plans that are either self or fully managed.  The challenge for many small based businesses is that going dedicated requires a huge investment of money each month when a shared or reseller plan would suffice at a fraction of the cost.  So what is the solution? Website monitoring services are, but which ones are the top services in their industry? Why are they the top? And what do you really need vs what they offer?

Key Things to Look For:

• What is the interval between each time they check your site?
• What methods do they provide to alert you to down time?
• What Reporting do they provide for tracking long term site performance?
• What are the price options?

Track Your Websites With These Uptime Tracking Services

Well, here goes the top 5 uptime website monitoring services.

Pingdom

Quoted directly from Pingdom: Pingdom is a company founded by Sam Nurmi. Sam Nurmi is also the founder and previous CEO of Sweden’s biggest web hosting company, Loopia, which he sold in 2005. Pingdom has a very strong and narrow focus. That focus lies on covering the uptime monitoring needs of 90% of the companies in the world. Instead of branching out into other areas, we will instead place all our efforts into maintaining the best uptime monitoring service available. The technology behind Pingdom is developed in house, which gives us an unparalleled ability to satisfy both the current and future needs of the market.

Also, note that Pingdom also offers its services via free apps on iPhone and Android phones. Take iPhone Apps for example, the Pingdom app allows you to get push alert of your website status as well as getting into Pingdom to view your website uptime and response time status.

In case you not know, Pingdom is actually my favorite tracking service. I’ve been using these guys to track all my test-site including WebHostingSecretRevealed.com. My recent Hostgator uptime review, for example, is built based on the server record tracked by Pingdom.

Website: http://pingdom.com/

Key Features

• Monitors every 1 min
• Packages prices: 0 (free), 9.95, or 39.95
• Alerts by SMS, Twitter and Email
• 20 SMS alerts are free as well as email
• Excellent reporting
• Reputable – Pingdom is used by companies with big brand name
• 30 Day free trial on the paid services

Mon.Itor.US

Mon.itor.us is a free, yet powerful website, server and traffic monitoring service. Mon.itor.us has established track records of robust execution, alerts delivery and helps many website owners to reach high uptime and availability at no cost. Mon.itor.us is a part of Monitis family, which provides professional, premium all-in-one monitoring service, integrating application performance with backend infrastructure with cloud monitoring.

Website: http://mon.itor.us/index.jsp

Key Features

• Monitors every 30 mins
• Sends alerts via email and RSS
  Good reporting
• Packages prices: 0 (free), $9.98, $39.98 or Custom
• Offers 15 days free trial

Service Uptime

Established 2004, ServiceUptime provides website, port and server monitoring and alerting services. ServiceUptime’s monitoring servers are located around the world in reliable carrier-class data centers with nearly 0% downtime. What ServiceUptime does is deploying remote monitoring agents in strategically selected cities and on major backbone segments around the world to simulate the end-user experience of your web site and its key areas at any given moment. ServiceUptime.com instantly alerts you in case of problem detection and provides you with web-based access to real-time reports for performance and availability analysis.

Website: http://www.serviceuptime.com/

Key Features

• Monitors every 30 minutes
• Sends alerts by email and sms
• Free and Paid at  $4.95, $9.95 and $52.95
• No Free trial
• Detailed reports

Host-Tracker

Not to be confused with Microsoft’s prototype software HostTracker, Host-Tracker is another site monitoring service. The service has 91 nodes and multuple monitor points from all over the world. Host-Tracker is special as it comes in several different language package, including French, English, Spanish, and Greek.

Website: http://host-tracker.com/

Key Features

• Monitors every 30 mins
• Sends alerts by email, ICQ, Gtalk or SMS
• Free and paid service
• Uptime reporting
• 30 day free trial

BasicState

BasicState is another website monitoring service that make sure your homepage is running properly. The service is totally free for unlimited number of sites and users can get alert from BasicState via n email or text message.

Website: http://basicstate.com/

Key Features

• Monitors every 15 mins
• Sends alerts by email or sms
• Free service on unlimited Sites
• Reporting features are not as nice as other two above
• Have to use exactstate for paid pro version which monitors every 1 minute

What’s next if you found your site is down?

So your site is down, now what? In case you notice that your site is going down at odd hours of the day and for extended periods of time. There are a number of things that could be causing it and a few things you can do short term are:

• The scripts you are running on your site can add increased strain on servers and usually are responsible for down time
• Contact your web host and make them aware that you know this is going on as you have reports to show. See what they will do about it. Don’t leap to the assumption that they are aware of it, they may have 1 server and are piling too many people on that server causing added strain or one person on that server could be using a script that is affecting the server and in turn going to cause issues with other sites on that server.
• Visit DownForEveryoneOrJustMe.com (awesome web tool) and check if your ISP is having connection problem with your name server. If so, contact your ISP to rectify the problem.

For long term solution, switching web host might be a good solution if your web host is the one causing the outage.

What can you do to avoid downtime?

• Be sure to use a website monitoring service that offers checking your site at least every 15 mins
• Do you homework, read at least a few web hosting reviews to know your choices before you get decided.
• If you plan on running a service, membership site or store, consider getting a dedicated server as that way you will be the only one on the server and there will be less strain placed on it.
• Have someone manage your dedicated server – many hosting companies, in fact, offer website monitoring as part of their hosting package (but then again, you gotta make sure that they are trustworthy).

The time elapsed from the moment of the request of a certain URL until the requested page is fully displayed is defined as response time. This process consists of 3 units – transmission, processing and rendering.

• Transmission is the time necessary to transmit the user’s request and receive the server’s response.
• Processing describes the period during which the server has to process the request and generate the response.
• Rendering is a client-side operation and includes the time needed by the client machine to display the response.

There are several ways to measure the website’s response – client-side testing, server-side measurement and remote website monitoring from different locations. All of these methods have their advantages, but the choice is up to you.

Server-side Measurement

Server-side measurement is reliable, but can sometimes be difficult when there are proxy servers, which are quite common today. Being a server-side application, there can be a lot of issues with the configuration and in some of the cases it will go down with your site and there may not be much else that you can do. Server-side measurement is a good approach for collecting visitor information, but does not have the full functionality of the remote monitoring.

Client-side Testing

Client-side testing is the best way through which you can get the most accurate perception of what your users are experiencing. However, it is limited to your network or geographical location and, more often than not, it does not reflect the universal experience that the average Internet user has with your site. There are several tools which can help you measure your website’s response time. Some are simple client-side scripts and others are more advanced (e.g. Yslow from Yahoo! and Page Speed from Google). The latter two tools are best used with Firefox and are mostly used as additions to Firebug.

Although client-side testing is a great way to gain first-hand information about the users’ experience, it can be time consuming and it only provides you with details for your site’s visibility from only one location. This may not be an issue if your business is local, but it is not sufficient for online retailers and service providers with clients all over the world.

Remote Website Monitoring

Remote monitoring is a recurring test that is performed by one or more remote locations at the same time. You can run various tests from different geographical locations, effectively simulate user’s experience from the different checking points and get accurate information about your website’s response time. It is accurate, easy to implement and its applications are backed up with a flexible reporting system and emergency 24/7 live support.

About The Author: Boyana Peeva

Boqna Peeva is currently a marketing specialist at WebSite Pulse and a PR specialist at the International University College. She enjoys both jobs equally as shee the opportunity to communicate with a lot of people, to write and to further explore how to optimize the Internet for any purpose. WebSite Pulse offers web server and services that have helped thousands of customers to save a lot of money and to save their e- businesses through increasing their websites’ efficiency.

In this article, I am going to show you 11 unusual uses of WordPress.

1. Sending Invoice and Billing statements

The plug-in for invoices and billing is one of the less often used, but very useful, in WordPress. 

Take WebInvoice for example, the plugin allows WordPress users to send itemized invoices to their clients. It’s an ideal for web developers, SEO consultants, general contractors, or anyone with a WordPress blog and clients to bill. The plugin ties into WP’s user management database to keep track of your clients and their information. Businessmen find it easy and convenient to send invoices online while recipient of your invoices can and may receive it fast and hassle-free and this is what I love most.

Plugin/Theme Suggestion: WP-Invoice, WebInvoice.

2. Creating Job Boards in your WordPress

A successful and popular WordPress blog may also encounter readers who may want to advertise possible job openings in their company.  Or if you are running a professional site, then you can post jobs for your company and often, this is a plug-in that many businesses regularly use. 

Plugin/Theme Suggestion: JobRoller, Job Listing, Job Manager.

3. Building and Setting-Up Your Portfolio

Seriously, how can a web designer survive without having an online portfolio? In case you not know, WordPress is also a great tool to setup your personal gallery/portfolio. There are plenty of themes and plugins around to get the job done but for your reference, I have listed a few below.

Plugin/Theme Suggestion: Graphix, Polaris, Discovery, ViewPort, Simple Portfolio, WP Portfolio.

4. Creating the Useful Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) portion

As the name implies, it is where questions often asked by your clienteles are located and drafted in simple, easy to understand format of question and answer.  Building a WordPress blog with this feature will also enable you to receive questions from your clienteles while you also can post your answers in the FAQs corner. 

Plugin/Theme Suggestion: Q and A Plugin, FAQ Builder, FAQ Manager, Tribulant’s WP FAQ.

5. Building a Knowledge Base (Wiki)

Installing a Wiki in your WordPress is actually customizing plug-in for the FAQs. It can help you with SEO since you can regularly post articles or answer FAQs.  The good thing about having a Wiki-WordPress blog is that this enables the readers to link articles related to your posts, rate the contents, etc.    

Plugin/Theme Suggestion: Wiki Embed.

6. Building a Business Directory

This is another very useful feature for your business WordPress Web site.  You can invite your marketing affiliates, members of your site and basically anyone interested to submit interesting but short ads.  The ads can further help your blog establish itself in the online community; it could help attract more readers or followers.

Plugin/Theme Suggestion: DirectoryPress, Business Directory Plugin.

7. Creating a Digital Business Card

Bump into someone and realized that you don’t have a business card with you? Well that’s where a digital business card kicks in. At times like now, where everything goes digital, I am not surprise to see more and more business people are starting to create digital business cards. You can simply write down your domain name on a napkin (or any sort of object) and there, your friends/business associates get your business card instantly.

Plugin/Theme Suggestion: Digital Business Card WP Theme.

8. Emailing and Newsletter Features

Part of online marketing strategy is the use of emails or electronic newsletters.  Good thing, WordPress also has a plug-in that caters to this business need. 

Plugin/Theme Suggestion: ALO Easy Mail Newsletter, WP Auto Responder.

9. Building a Web site for Membership Subscription Only

Let’s say you are an online research company with a good pool of research papers, academic studies and researches. You can then transform WordPress into a subscription only Web site; readers can access full and complete researches and articles if they become members of your site. 

Plugin/Theme Suggestion: WP-Member, WordPress e-Member, Digital Access Pass, WishList Member.

10. Creating a Review Blog Site

Since you can do many things with WordPress, one use that could generate income opportunities is by turning your site into a review site.  You can also rate your blog reviews. 

Plugin/Theme Suggestion: WP Review Site.

11. WordPress For Social Networking Site

Since social networking is the brouhaha nowadays, it is no wonder that WordPress can also function as a site where bloggers may and can send social messages and enhance relationships. Surprise? Check out BuddyPress and you’ll see how WordPress can be transformed into a Digg-alike social networking site in just 6 minutes!

Plugin/Theme Suggestion: BuddyPress, P2P Social Networker.

Final Words: Get Started With WordPress Today!

As I confessed previously: I am a big fan of WordPress and I strongly believe WordPress is the best (and most popular) CMS/blogging platform for any beginners who wish to start a new website. In fact, I run all my websites in WordPress nowadays. “How do I start a website?” – This is the most common question I get from my friends and relatives. Back in old times, in order to answer the question, I need to explain about HTML, FTP, database,  WYSISYG software like Dreamweaver, and so on.

Not now anymore.

Want to start a website? “Go with WordPress.” – That’s my standard short-and-sweet answer for all. For those who need beginner guides, check out the long article about Getting Started With WordPress I wrote in June 2009. You might also want to check out some other related artciles such as: Best WordPress Hosting, 25 Most Wanted WordPress Hacks and Tricks, Top 10 Ways To Speed Up Your WordPress Blogs, and 40 Free Magazine Style WordPress Themes.

Disclaimer: Plugins and themes suggestions are solely for your references. I am not affiliated to (nor in any other type of relationships) with the owners of plugins/themes mentioned in this post.

I know some of you will question why ‘LightBox’ series wasn’t in the list – but since they are already so popular I believe you don’t need me to tell you more about it. So here we go, the list of 24 handy jQuery plugins for gallery- and portfolio-style websites.

1. jSquares for jQuery

Developed by Jordan Boesch, jSquares is a beautiful plugin that pops up an image and a paragraph of text on hover. It’s basically identical to the image grid found on www.ted.com. (Sidenote: Also check out the developer’s another interesting project named ‘Keystrokes‘ – it’s not included in the list because it’s unrelated to our topic today.)

jSquares – Demo & Documentation

2. SpaceGallery

SpaceGallery helps create a web gallery instantly with zero coding work and cost. Check out the developer’s website for complete code downloads and demo.

SpaceGallery – Demo & Documentation

3. LazyLoader

Lazy Loader is a jQuery plugin written in JavaScript. It delays loading of images in (long) web pages. Images outside of viewport (visible part of web page) wont be loaded before user scrolls to them. At first look LazyLoader seems unrelated to our topic today; but mind you, a well-designed web gallery need more than just being beautiful. User experience, too, is a very important factor (and the Lazy Loader simply improve that, a lot).

LazyLoader – Demo & Documentation

4. Ad Gallery

Ad Gallery is a great jQuery plugin that helps organize images into a gallery with nice transition effects. The plugin comes with dozen of great features (ie. auto scaling your images into the container) and is compatible with most latest version of web browsers.

Ad Gallery – Demo & Documentation

5. Nivo Slider

Nivo Slider is not the kind of regular jQuery image slider you see else where. It’s a powerful plugin has nine unique transition effects built in along and works perfectly with most latest version of web browsers.

Nivo Slider – Demo & Documentation

6. GalleryView

GalleryView is a content-gallery plugin capable of displaying any HTML content in an animated gallery view. The plugin requires jQuery Timers to facilitate timing events plus the developer also recommend using jQuery Easing for smoother transition. Check out this demo page to see this plugin in action.

GalleryView – Demo & Documentation

7. SlideViewer Pro

slideViewerPro is a fully customizable jQuery image gallery engine wich allows to create sliding image galleries. Each gallery generates a user-defined number of thumbnails wich can slide automatically; as with slideViewer, everthing is generated by writing just few lines of HTML such as an unordered list of images.

SlideViewer Pro – Demo & Documentation

8. QuickSand

Ever seen how CoreAnimation creates those useful and eye-pleasing animation effects? Well that’s what the developer of this plugin aimed to achieve – QuickSand is a jQuery plugin that helps reorder and filter items with a nice shuffling animation on your website. There’s a nice demo on the developer’s website and I think everyone should go check it out.

QuickSand – Demo & Documentation

9. Captify

Captify is a plugin for jQuery written by Brian Reavis to display simple, pretty image captions that appear on rollover. It has been tested on Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and the wretched Internet Explorer. According to the developer, this plugin was inspired by ImageCaptions, another jQuery plugin for displaying captions like these.

Captify – Demo & Documentation

10. jqFancyTransitions

jqFancyTransitions is easy-to-use jQuery plugin for displaying your photos as slideshow with fancy transition effects, including Wave, Zipper, Curtain, Fountain Top, Random Top, and so on. The plugin is fully tested and is compatible and fully tested with Safari 2+, Internet Explorer 6+, Firefox 2+, Google Chrome 3+, Opera 9+. Personally I love the ‘Wave’ effect and think it’s a sin not to visit the website and check out the demo.

jqFancyTransitions – Demo & Documentation

11. jQuery Roundabout

Roundabout is a jQuery plugin that converts a structure of static HTML elements into a highly customizable interactive area. The simplicity and the animation effect of this plugin is simply mind blowing. At this time of writing, the graphic movement comes in 11 different styles – including the classic Turntable-alike, Figure 8, Square, Water Wheel, Conveyor Belt, etc. A demo of all these movement style can be found here.

jQuery Roundabout – Demo & Documentation

12. YoxView

YoxView is a free Lightbox-type media and image viewer jQuery plugin. Okay, I admit YoxView is not ground-breaking but you have to give credit to its user-friendliness (and yet, feature-rich).

YoxView – Demo & Documentation

13. JCrop

jCrop provides an easy way for onpage image-cropping. At first look this feature seems a little… unnecessary. But on a second thought (and after some detail investigation on its demo), I started to appreciate what the plugin does and believe certain webmasters (for example, photography website owners) will appreciate it very, very much.

JCrop – Demo & Documentation

14. JQzoom

jQzoom is a great and a really easy to use script to magnify what you want. The plugin works on most modern web browsers, namely Internet Explorer version 6+, FireFox version 2+, Chrome version 1.0, Opera version 9+ as well as Safari version 2+.

JQzoom – Demo & Documentation

15. Agile Carousel

Agile Carousel is a jQuery plugin that allows you to easily create a custom carousel. Call Jquery UI to enable many different additional transition types and easing methods. Uses PHP to draw images from the folder you specify. Configure many different options including controls, slide timer length, easing type, transition type and more!

Agile Carousel – Demo & Documentation

16. InnerFade with JQuery

InnerFade is a small plugin for the jQuery-JavaScript-Library. It’s designed to fade you any element inside a container in and out. These elements could be anything you want, e.g. images, list-items, divs. You can simply produce your own slideshow for your gallery or even create a newsticker or do an animation.

InnerFade – Demo & Documentation

17. PickAChoose

Pikachoose is a (very popular) lightweight Jquery plugin that allows easy presentation of photos with options for slideshows, navigation buttons, and auto play. Pikachoose is designed to be easily installed, easy to setup, and well… all around easy.

PickAChoose – Demo & Documentation

18. Galleriffic

Galleriffic is a jQuery plugin that provides a rich, post-back free experience optimized to handle high volumes of photos while conserving bandwidth. One funny fact: The developer of this plugin actually wanted the name ‘Gallerific’ or ‘Gallerrific’ but it was eventually mis-spelled as ‘Galleriffic’. Moral of the story: You don’t need to be good at spelling to be a good coder

Galleriffic – Demo & Documentation

19. jQuery MB Gallery

If you want a full featured photo gallery with comprehensive navigation functions such as navigation toolbar, thumbnails, autosize frame – jQuery MB Gallery would be it! The plugin is a huge stunner when first released during late 2009 and the latest version MB Gallery even support demostration of Flickr photo sets!

jQuery MB Gallery – Demo & Documentation

20. Trip Tracker

The TripTracker slideshow is a lightweight JavaScript image viewer with an animated slideshow feature.

TripTracker – Demo & Documentation

21. CrossSlide

CrossSlide is a jQuery plugin implementing in 2kB1 of Javascript code some common slide-show animations, traditionally only available via Adobe Flash. Internally CrossSlide does not rely on lookup tables, building instead a “chain” of functions. Each function starts a linear phase of the animation through jQuery, setting the next function in the chain as a complete callback. After all the functions are prepared and the animation is started, no other calculations are made. This setup reduces runtime overhead to the absolute minimum, making CrossSlide the most optimized implementation of these effects.

CrossSlide – Demo & Documentation

22. prettyPhoto

prettyPhoto is a jQuery based lightbox clone. Not only does it support images, it also add support for videos, flash, YouTube, iFrames. It’s a full blown media lightbox. The setup is easy and quick, plus the script is compatible in every major browser.

prettyPhoto – Demo & Documentation

23. Galleria

Galleria is a JavaScript image gallery take a simple list of images and turn it into a foundation of multiple intelligent gallery designs, suitable for any project. The current version of Galleria *(version 1.2) is still in beta and the stable release is set to september 2010.

Galleria – Demo & Documentation

24. jQuery Multimedia Portfolio

jQuery Multimedia Portfolio is a plugin that will automatically detect the extension of each media and apply the adapted player. This piece of plugin was released quite some time ago but it was revised and a newer version was released early this year.

MultiMedia Portfolio – Demo & Documentation

25. TN3 Gallery

TN3 Gallery is a full fledged HTML based customizable image gallery with slideshow, transitions and multiple album options. Compatible with all modern desktop and mobile browsers. Powered by jQuery.

TN3 Gallery – Demo & Documentation

Source: Freebie: hpv24 WordPress 3.0 Cheat Sheet – Teil 1 Templates & Tags.

If you have to develop websites or blog themes regularly then I am sure that you too have a list of web tools like me. It’s no secret that web developers seldom build things up from scratch nowadays. From web icons to graphical chart, CSS menu to random dummy texts, from web traffics analysis to financial bookkeeping – there’s a web tool for (almost) every web development related job.

In this blogpost, I am going to share a great list of useful online tool that will save you a lot of time when developing a website. Some of these tools are free of charge, some are not – either way, I hope you can find something new for your tool list.

1. GoingUp!

GoingUp! is a free web-based web analytic tool that comes with powerful SEO features. The web application tracks (almost) every activity on your website and presents data nicely with charts, heatmaps, flags (for countries), etc in an Ajaxed interface. Besides, the web app also comes with several free SEO features including keyword position tracking, Alexa Rank tracking, as well as keyword density tool. You need to signup before using some of these features but registration is completely free.

Visit GoingUp! online, click here.

2. Icon Finder

It’s no secret that web desginers nowadays do not create all icons from scratch. There are infinite amount of free icons available on Internet and it’s a waste not to leverage these free resources. But with billions of these free icons comes another problem – searching and sorting these tiny images become a time-consuming job. Luckily we have tool like Icon Finder – an icon search engine that helps collect and categorize various icons. At this time of writing, Icon Finder keeps more than 150,000 icons in their database – which is not a lot but I am sure the figures will keep growing.

Visit Icon Finder online, click here.

3. IE NetRender

IE NetRenderer allows you to check how a website is rendered by Internet Explorer 7, 6 or 5.5, as seen from a high speed datacenter located in Germany. Just type in a URL in the field above and you can check your webpage deisgn compatibility for free!

Visit IE NetRender online, click here.

4. Eric’s Color Blender

What Eric’s Color Blender does is exactly like the name refers – it blends two colors together in various proportions and creates up to ten different colors shades. I like the simplicity and efficiency of the tool and it’s definitely one of biggest time-saver for me.

Visit Eric’s Color Blender online, click here.

5. Google Chart Tools

Google is everywhere on the Internet nowadays and this include charting tool. The Google Chart Tools allows you dynamically generate charts with a URL string, where it can be embed in a web page. A chart gallery was recently included in the Google website and users who are interested with this tool should take a look.

Visit Google Chart Tools online, click here.

6. TraceWatch

Looking for free web statistic tool but don’t want Google Analytics? Well then you should check out TraceWatch. TraceWatch is a free website analytics tool that works in real-time. The application has everything for in-depth web stats analysis including real time details on Unique Visitors, New Visitors, Sessions, Page Views, Hourly and Weekday Distribution, Robot Page Views, Average Pview/Visitor, Average UVisitor/Day, Average PView/Day, Average UVisitor/Hour, Average PView/Hour, Robots Hits, Browser Types, Locations, etc etc.

Visit TraceWatch online, click here.

7. DIY Chart

DIY Chart is a simple but yet powerful online tool that helps create interactive charts and graphs. Some webmasters might be turned-off by the needs of registering an account but I believe the rich features of this web tool deserve every second you spend on filling up the registration form. At this time of writing, DIY Chart offers a wide range of chart types including Coulmn, Stacked Column, Bar, Stacked Bar, Area, Stacked Area, Pie, Doughnut, Pyramid, Funnel, Point, Bubble, Line, Range, Combination, CandleStick, Stock, Radar and Polar (isn’t that massive?).

Visit DIY Chart online, click here.

8. Feng Office

Feng Office (formerly known as OpenGoo) is a web office that helps manage, collaborate, and organize your web projects online. What’s special about it is that this web tool comes with its own email functionality and the GUI is very responsive. Unfortunately good things don’t come free – Feng Office is quite pricey but you can always sign up for a free trial.

Visit Feng Office online, click here.

9. FreshBooks

Most web developers are not good (or simply not interested) at managing business finances and tracking down payments. In fact, who likes boring book keeping jobs? Fortunately, there are plenty of online tools that can help. FreshBooks, for instance, is a very popular web application for book keeping (eg. invoicing, expenses tracking, quotations, etc). This tool is free for those who are managing less than 3 clients but anything above that will cost you $14 to $149 per month.

Visit FreshBooks online, click here.

10. Color Hunter

Color Hunter is a handy tool that helps find and make color palettes created from images (via URL or a simple search term).

Visit FreshBooks online, click here.

11. TYNT (Tracer)

TYNT (perviously known as Tracer) is a free web-based service that tracks what’s being copied from your website. Tracer is a cool tool to fight copycats and would recommend it if there’re a lot of competitors stealing your web content.

Visit TYNT online, click here.

12. BrowserShots

BrowserShots is a popular tool that allows you to preview your web page in more than 70 versions of browsers.

Visit BrowserShots online, click here.

13. FormSite

FormSite is one of the earliest HTML form builder online. The website was established in 1998 and there are over 100 pre-built forms intheir database. FormSite is quite generous to their free account users – you can create up to 5 forms with 50 items and 10 results in each of the forms for free.

Visit FormSite online, click here.

14. WuFoo

WuFoo is a HTML form builder helps you create contact forms, online surveys, and invitations so you can collect the data, registrations and online payments you need without writing a single line of code. WuFoo is a little pricey compare to the other two form builder tools listed here – The free account allows only one form, and the paid package starts at $14.95/mo.

Visit WuFoo online, click here.

15. Picnik

(Do you really need me to introduce Picknik? Well okay.) Picnik is a popular, easy to use, and powerful set of photo editing tools for editing, sharing and printing images. The free tool is integrated with a wide variety of websites like Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, Flickr, Yahoo! Mail and Photobucket. The website has just been acquired by Google recently (read official blogpost on March 1st, 2010).

Visit Picnik online, click here.

16. Variable Grid System

The variable grid system is a quick way to generate an underlying CSS grid (based on 960 Grid System) for your site.

Visit Variable Grid System online, click here.

17. FontStruct

Building or tweaking a font style is sometimes part of the web designing job. If you do not have a proper font-building software installed, it’s time for you to have a look at FontStruct. FontStruct is a free font-building tool that lets you quickly and easily create fonts constructed out of geometrical shapes, which are arranged in a grid pattern.

Visit FontStruct online, click here.

18. CSS Menu Builder

CSS Menu Builder helps build (well?) CSS Menu. The free tool comes with more than 1,000 pre-designed menu combinations and I believe anyone who wish to build a CSS menu instantly should check them out.

Visit CSS Menu Builder online, click here.

19. STC Font Browser

STC Font Browser is a free tool that enables you to preview font styles in your browser. The tool is simple to use and it’s very helpful when you need to choose a font style.

Visit STC Font Browser online, click here.

20. Form Style Web 2.0 Generator

Form Style Web 2.0 Generator is a easy to use, poweful, and yet completely free of chrage. It generates stylish CSS forms instantly and definitely belongs in your bookmark list. It’s such a shame that I missed out this tool in my previos post about web generators (30 Must See Web Generator For Lazy Webmasters).

Visit Form Style Web 2.0 Generator online, click here.

21. Make Text

Okay, Make Text is not a must-have but it’s definitely a fun tool to use. MakeText does only one thing – it generates random texts (where web designers will often use it to preview and test their designs).

Visit Make Text online, click here.

22. IceBrrg

Icebrrg helps make all kind of forms – contact forms, registration Forms, surveys, application forms and personal inventoriestracking forms. All you need to do is to signup, create a form using their wizards, and the tool will work everything out on the programming side. Cool isn’t? However note that the you need to pay if you wish to create 3 forms (price starting from $9/mo).

Visit IceBrrg online, click here.

23. CopyPaste Character

Lazy to code a special character in HTML code? Well, you should. Because with CopyPaste Character the only key that you need to type is “ctrl + c” and “ctrl + v”.

Visit CopyPaste Character online, click here.

1. QuickRibbon

QuickRibbon helps generate custom site ribbon. Input your link details and styles selections; and the tool will take care of the necessary Javascript coding. This great tool is best for lazy webmasters who wish to attract users attention to some important update/message.

Make some ribbon today at www.QuickRibbon.com

2. TabsGenerator

Need some cool tabs in seconds? Well, then you need TabsGenerator. TabsGenerator is a convenient design tool that allows users to create highly-customizable tabs (tweak size, colors, corners and borders) in CSS.

Generate some cool tabs now!

3. Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator

Okay, I admit Bullshit Generator is not that useful; but, I am sure we have time for some web 2.0 humor. Let’s “integrate undefined synergies”, anyone?

Start bullshiting.

4. UNIQUE

Gender, face features, wearings, skin colors… UNIQUE is a free web tool that allows users to create highly-customizable, human-like, avatars. Mind you, this web tool is kinda addictive – I spent more than 30 minutes playing non-stop with the features while writing this post.

Create your unique avatar at Unique.RasterBoy.com.

5. Stripe Generator 2.0

Stripe Generator 2.0 is a free design tool supported by Pop Minds Web & New Techs Studio (long name huh?). It helps generate (almost) any kinds of stripe you want for web background.

Try generate some stripes now!

6. Web 2.0 Badges

Web 2.0 Badges is a very popular badge generator (mainly because of their beautiful pre-designed badges, I guess). Any webmaster who is too lazy to design their own badges should check them out.

Let’s put on some badges for Web 2.0!

7. FreshGenerator

FreshGenerator is a pretty cool web design tool which helps to create small design elements like boxes or tabbed menus of different sizes, styles and colors.

Visit www.FreshGenerator.com

8. Loader Generator

Equipped with a set of pre-designed loading icons, Loader Generator allows you to customize and generate your own loading ‘spinner’ in a fraction of second.

Visit www.LoadInfo.net

9. FavIcon Generator

DynamicDrive’s FavIcon Generator is perhaps the most popular favicon maker. This tool allows you to create various sizes of favicon (as well as icon) based on the your own image.

Try create your own Favicon now.

10. Button Maker

Button Maker is a free tool provided by Adam Kalsey that creates simple square-shaped site sticker. The sticker designs is pretty fixed; however the tool does allow users to tweak several design parameters (such as text margin, border color and background).

Visit: www.Kalsey.com/tools/buttonmaker.

11. AjaxLoad

Like Loader Generator, AjaxLoad is another free tool that generates cool loading icons. What’s good about AjaxLoad is that the tool comes with a huge set of indicators in different shapes and designs.

Check out AjaxLoad now!

12. RoundedCornr

RoundedCornr is another web design tool that auto-generates CSS codes for a box with rounded corners and a color gradient.

Click here to visit RoundedCornr.com.

13. 3D Pack

3D Package is a great tool for e-book and web templates sellers. It lets you instantly create 3d-box images online for free. Simply upload pictures (JPG, GIF, orPNG) for cover andyou’ll get a 3d-box in your favorite image format.

Check out 3D Pack, click here.

14. LogoCreator

Not good with logo designs? Try LogoCreator for some quick logo design works. This free web tool comes with 7 preset logo designs and allow users to customize various design parameters.

Care for some logos? Visit Creatr.cc.

15. CoolText

CoolText is another logo design tool that transforms texts to graphics. A point worth noting is that CoolText had been running online for a very long time – the free tool is online since year 1998 and it has rendered over 300 million of free images.

Check out this antique and make some ‘CoolText’.

16. FreeFooter

FreeFooter is an easy and fast tool that simplifies how you personalize your web site / blog page footer – definitely a great tool for lazy blog designers.

Visit FreeFooter.com.

17. ThemeRoller

Want some cool jQuery features on your site but not good with programming? Check out ThemeRoller – a free jQuery generator that allows you to create custom themes for jQuery components. Change font properties, colors, borders, hover variations, etc all very easily. It will show you a preview of what your settings would like like when applied to jQuery’s accordion, tabs, slider, date picker, and dialog box.

Find out how ThemeRoller works here.

18. jQuery Function Builder

jQuery Function Builder is a handy tool to quickly build up a collection of jQuery functions. While using this tool might need some basic knowledge in jQuery; it is, nevertheless, a great way to reduce programmers’ work time.

Build jQuery functions on the fly here!

19. TartanMaker

Fancy some Tartan-stripes background? Check out TartanMaker – a free design tool that helps create Tartan designs instantly.

Visit www.TartanMaker.com, click here.

20. ColorWizard – ver 3.0

Lack of good color? Use color wizard to do color-matching for you. The color wizard lets you submit your own base color, and it automatically returns matching colors for the one you selected. It returns a set of hue, saturation and tint/shade variations of your color, as well as suggests color schemets to you, based on your color’s complementary color, split complementary colors, analogous colors and other variations.

Check out ColorWizard.

21. Color Scheme Designer

The Color Scheme Designer is a brilliant color-matching tool for those who are selecting colors for their designs.

Try this design tool at ColorSchemeDesigner.com.

22. Post-It Note Generator

Fans of sticky note? Embbed it into your web design using Post-It Note Generator. Post-It Note Generator helps create eye-catching Post-It Note with customizable text designs, message color, and paper styles.

Make some Post-It note right away!

23. Genfavicon

Genfavicon is another favicon maker that helps generate favorite icon on the fly.

Visit www.GenFavIcon.com/

24. Gradient Texture Maker

Gradient Texture Maker is a free web tool that allows you to generate a graphics with gradient colors. This design tool is highly recommended for those who need to create website background with gradient color.

Check out Gradient Texture Maker.

25. Favicon CC

Favicon CC is not exactly a web generator tool. However, it enables you to draw and create favicon easily online – which I think most of y’all would be interested to look at.

Let’s draw some favicon at Favicon.cc.

26. SimWebSol Logo Generator

SimWebSol Logo Generator is another simple logo generator.

Visit online: www.SimWebSol.com/ImageTool/

27. Textorizer

Textorizer is a nice piece of web application that allows you to create cool graphics using text of your choice. The tool takes jpeg, png, gif, or xpm file less than 128K in length and produces an SVG file which reconstructs the original image using parts of the text scattered around.

Check out Textorizer.WhatFettle.com/

28. Buttonator

I used to spend hours working on Flash and Fireworks for web buttons. Well I wouldn’t do the same if I heard about Buttonator back then. Buttonator is a great button generator that helps create stylish buttons instantly – a great tool for lazy web designers and webmasters.

Make some buttons with Buttonator now.

29. Idee’s Multicolr Search Lab

Searching for the right images on Flickr to match your web design or blogpost? Try Multicolr Search Lab, a free web tool that helps you to sort out Flickr creative common images based on color.

Try out Multicolr Search Lab now!

30. BgPatterns

BgPatterns helps create classy background (see image). There are dozens of cool patterns to choose from and it’s a must see tool for all web designers.

Visit BgPatterns.com.

Well that’s all for the list. If there is a web generator or tool that you think should be listed here, feel free to shout in the comment box.

Push Notifications on Pingdom iPhone app 2.0

Here’s the quick print screen to show how the iPhone app works.

Uptime in graphical view

Also, the new Pingdom iPhone apps added a couple of graphical tweaks. Users (both free and paid accounts) can now examine website uptime and response time trend directly from their iPhones. As you can see from figures below, graphs are shown in various date range.

How much does Pingdom iPhone app cost?

This application is totally free if you have a Pingdom account (which can be created for free as well).

However, the free account allows you to monitor one website only. To go further, you will need to purchase a Basic or Business Account. The Basic membership allows you to monitoring five websites concurrently at the cost of $9.95/mo; while for Business Account, users get to monitor 30 websites and receive up to 200 sms alerts for a price of $39.95/mo.

Sidenote: What exactly Pingdom does?

In layman term, Pingdom is like a watchdog for your website. The service monitors websites and servers from multiple locations on the Internet to make sure that they are working fine. Pingdom are often used to monitor uptime for websites, FTP servers, mail servers, as well as any other kind of services that should be accessible from the Internet.

Do note that I do not receive any credits from Pingdom writing this post. It’s just because that I am very impressed with their service and think you should at least give the free account a try.

Get the Pingdom iPhone app (App Store link).