I’ve been developing websites for a relatively long time. There are several misconceptions about the use of the term web developer, and even those hobbyist website designers don’t understand the multitude of skills it takes to be a full service web developer in today’s market. The tools of the trade, the need to know programming languages, the resource websites and the premiere communities change yearly, so even if you were a grade A developer last year, it doesn’t mean you’re going to be among the best next year. A good developer constantly learns and improves.
Even though I’ve been pretty good about staying up with mainstream evolutions, there are always tools you miss. Here are a few of the best resources available, bar none. No matter what your level of involvement with web development, marketing or design, you need to know about these tools if you wish to be considered in the know.
Domain Name Search
I use a wide variety of applications to hunt for open domain names. I use the domain name checker on both the Go Daddy and Yahoo! small business websites for their unique advantages, and a few other proprietary tools that help me get the best domains on the market. One of the most valuable tools is the Lean Domain Search, which finds available domains with the keywords you’re targeting. It’s almost impossible to find relevant domains that aren’t a mile long or are made up of alternate spellings (a terrible waste of money unless you’re branding that alternate spelling), but the Lean Domain Search engine finds an available domain that will fit your needs in almost every instance.
Firebug
When I first started designing websites the biggest part of my learning came from reverse engineering the source code of other websites. All websites were coded in HTML and most were coded by hand so the HTML was neatly formatted. Soon designers were using tools like FrontPage and Dreamweaver that made the coding a jumbled mess, and later moved on to CSS and PHP, which made the regular source code pretty much useless when it came to learning from design. Enter the FireBug add on for Firefox and Chrome. Firebug allows you to select objects on a website and it collates all the CSS, required PHP and JavaScript files, and gives you the relevant coding to help make edits to the page. I was ignorant to this tool until recently when Tim Brand recommended it to me, and this one tool has increased my productivity over 1,000% and made edits that formerly took me a couple days take just a couple hours, or minutes in some cases. If you aren’t very skilled at editing the CSS on your WordPress blog, Firebug is the first step in learning, much like the view source command allowed me to learn HTML back in the day.
Mail Chimp
I know you guys are hip to social media, but the truth is that it’s very much a fad. Technology experts agree that the current social media scene will change drastically in the next couple of years, and the stationary you printed with a link to your Twitter feed may become obsolete. The safest bet for a medium that will allow you to contact your followers 10 years from now is e-mail. It has the type of staying power that other communication just don’t have (think ICQ, MySpace or AOL). If you think that your favorite social networks, even Facebook, are impervious to the same fate that ICQ or MySpace suffered, you’re what the pundits call naïve. Safeguard your hard work in online marketing by developing a mailing list.
Aweber is a popular option and is widely held as one of the best list management services, but it costs nearly 20$ per month (over 10 years you’re looking at $2,500). Mail chimp offers a free alternative that meets the needs of most online marketers, and is by far the best free list management service. Your free account can accumulate up to 2,000 subscribers and send 12,000 e-mails per month before you’re forced to upgrade. You can always export your entire list and take it with you if you decide to use another service, but I think you’ll be plenty satisfied with the chimp if you can get your widget’s appearance edited to suit you. Use this link and you’ll get $30 in Monkey Rewards which can be used for purchases above and beyond the free account if you ever decide you need more.
Gimp
Gimp is a Freeware image editing program whose development is crowd sourced like Wikipedia or the Linux platform. The Gimp application is capable of meeting most basic image editing needs, and has been adopted by a number of graphic designers already. I recently had a discussion with a computer science professor and he was under the impression that the only reason Gimp hasn’t become the industry standard is because teenagers can easily get pirated copies of Adobe Photoshop. I haven’t used Gimp much, but I don’t use Photoshop much either. I have been managing to make due with an obsolete version of Macromedia Fireworks for years, just to show you that you don’t need Photoshop to make visually stunning graphics or re-touch photos. Gimp is available for free download here. Since you have nothing to lose, I highly suggest checking it out.
WP Greet Box
As I write this blog post, I realize the primary use of it is to educate the readers, and provide content that potential readers may find valuable. The quality of the content will dictate whether or not you take any further action, so I try to offer sharing buttons and subscribe features to meet every need you would have as a reader. I don’t know where my next readers will come from, but WP Greet Box does. At the top of this post it welcomes you from the social network you came from (Stumbleupon, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), offers you the opportunity to share back to that network or reminds you to subscribe via RSS.
If you found my post on Twitter, then you will be asked by the plugin to tweet it to your friends. If you came from Stumbleupon, it will ask you to give this post a thumbs up. This is effective because if you found my blog post on a certain network, you are more likely to share it on that specific network. As for those who visit directly or through a link not associated with a social network, my RSS subscribers have increased 30 percent since I got the plugin installed. It isn’t as intrusive as a pop-up, so I consider WP Greet Box the best of both worlds! The plugin has 32 default greetings for referrers programmed, but you can easily program your own greetings if you’d like.
BONUS: Comment Luv
If you run a self hosted wordpress Blog, I would recommend a supplemental commenting plugin. In my experience, Comment Luv Premium has increased the comments on my blog by several hundred percent, and it draws me in to commenting on blogs where I see it. For commenting on this blog you get to link back to a recent post on your WordPress blog, and if you share this post on a Social Network through the Comment Luv plugin, you can unlock extra features. So not only does the plugin drive engagement, it promotes sharing by allowing users to choose from a wider variety of posts. You can set it up so it only allows commenters that tweet your post to have the Do Follow link if you’d like, or any other combination of incentives for engagement.
Full Disclosure: I am a paid affiliate of Comment Luv and Aweber, both being tools that I highly recommend and would endorse regardless of affiliation. I am a partner with Mail Chimp, and while I do not get paid for referrals directly, I get a credit for any future purchases. Since I use the free version, I am unlikely to ever use the credit. I am in no way affiliated with Lean Domain Search, WP Greet Box, Firebug or Gimp, I just find their applications to be very valuable and hope you do too! I support Freeware.
Great tips! Did know about all of them… but totally forgot these are so useful!
But I must say, I totally missed the top WP Greet Box Message on your blog. Maybe you should try to make this more obvious… make it stand out a bit more!?
By the way, got here thanks to Empire Avenue
Twitter: Humorforiphone
Arne, that’s an awesome tip. Good looking out, I’ll work on designing a way to get it to jump out at you next time! Hit me up on Empire Avenue too, I’ll pick up a few shares of your stock!
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Exactly. I had to scroll all the way back up after noticing your comment Arne.
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Thanks Adam, those are some very helpful resources, and I was not aware of a few of them
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Fantastic tips Adam! My favorite is the one featuring WP Greet Box. Its a great way to greet my visitors. Thank you very much. Dyane
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Adam,
Great post! Firebug is a phenomenal resource and I appreciate you sharing that! I am all about repurposing code and this is a gem! Thanks for that!
Jim
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Hey, Adam! Right on time! I am just looking for a mail list management tool. And Greet Box is kinda neat..
Thank you!
Twitter: azmushko
Awesome Alex! Mail Chimp is full featured, and versatile. It is hard to believe that it’s free to use! I have only heard positive reviews as well, which is a very rare occurence. I’ve only sent out 1 newsletter so far myself, but everything has been working perfectly since the day I signed up.
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Instead of GIMP I use Paint.Net, another freeware picture tool. Right now, I have a problem, maybe you can help me: I’ve installed GIMP, but I don’t have an icon on desktop and I don’t find it in All Programs.
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Elena,
You should check in the control panel under Add or Remove Programs. If Gimp is installed, uninstall it and try installing it again. I just installed it on my work computer (Windows XP) and it put a shortcut on the Desktop as well as a folder under all programs called GIMP.
If you just downloaded the program, you still need to go through installation. If you’re not sure where you’re at in the process, the installation will register under your control panel so you can figure out if GIMP is actually installed or not.
I hope this helps. If you have any further questions, I’ll try and help you with them. Thanks for reading my blog!
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All great tools. Like Elena I find Paint.Net is easier than GIMP
and if you are looking for short domain names e.g. instead of bit.ly check out http://domai.nr/
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I have tried domai.nr , but they seem to bring back too many dead results, and the domains are usually 75$ (overseas, sub-par registration companies)/ When it works it is awesome, but it will tell you that very obviously taken domain names are available.
Most image editing programs are a little complicated, however GIMP is relatively simple. You can also download plugins that make the interface more like Photoshop if that’s your preference.
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Firebug = The number 1 tool in the web developers tool chest for a long time now. I’d also add a good IDE (Zend is my PHP favorite) and a solid framework (CodeIgniter is my PHP favorite – very minimal and powerful.)
I will also verify that an email service provider is necessary to take your website / business to the next level. It will add a sense of security to every mailing you send.
Imagine how terrible it was to make all CSS edits by hand through control panel and refreshing a preview. I knew I was missing something important there, and Firebug was it. Another great add on is Code Cola. It works similar to Firebug but has a more lavish interface, allows you to make and edit previews in the browser, and generally has a higher user rating that Firebug (I don’t have extensive experience with either yet, so I like Firebug myself for its simplicity, and the fact that I’m partial to coding as opposed to drag and drop WYSIWYG applications.
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Brilliant post Adam.. you sure have done justice here! I’m going to implement the WP-GreetBox as soon as I’m done with this comment..
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Awesome Siddarth! It has definitely helped with social sharing and RSS subscribers on all of my sites. It’s non-invasive, and it applies no matter what tool you’re using to promote your articles. WHen someone uses Stumbleupon frequently they’re more receptive to doing actions on there (and more likely to find your content there) so the personalized greeting is a nice touch, a trigger almost.
Twitter: etelligence
Amazing! I had no clue about the first tool, but so far I had been using it’s alternative. Instant Domain Search and PCNames. They are similar, but now I guess it’s time to shift to LD!
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If you use WordPress for client websites and you’d rather not have them know that’s what you’re using, or even if you just want to reinforce your own brand, White Label CMS might be just the right solution. It lets you add your logo to the WP Dashboard, configure more than one welcome dashboard, add custom CSS to the login page, and more.
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One of the best ways to drive traffic to a WordPress website and build a more solid community around it is by taking advantage of social media. There are plenty of social bookmarking and social networking websites available for WordPress webmasters to take advantage of. In order to do that, you are going to have to make your website more social media friendly. That’s where WordPress social media plugins come into play. There are a ton of them around and let you add all kinds of services to your WordPress website quickly.
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