WebDev3000 » Web based

QuoteURL

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:45:49 +0000

Still using Twitter? To be honest, I discovered a few interesting people using it so far, and more than enough spammers – or simply people I have nothing in common with. Should I start taking it seriously? Nope, no way, but as long as it may help some of you, I’ll get back to it from time to time, and today’s the right moment to talk about QuoteURL, an interesting replacement to the original script allowing interactive tweet embedding, but this time a Web-based solution (no coding required, so it surely works for me!).

If you missed the script from Twitter I just mentioned, you could take a look here, while a detailed article about using it can be found on Mashable, but if you’re really in a hurry, I think you should jump straight to QuoteURL and get busy!

The official mumbo-jumbo goes like this: “QuoteURL helps you group different Twitter updates from different people into a single page that has a permanent URL. So you can put it on your blog or send interesting conversations to friends.” Demo is available here, and… I guess that’s all, folks!

Compatibility: all major browsers, obviously

GTmetrix

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 11 May 2010 07:49:55 +0000

Remember Load Impact? It doesn’t really matter if you don’t, but if you do, you can forget about it! The reason is today’s topic, another free Web-based speed analyzer for your site. As you probably know, it’s official – Google is taking speed into account when awarding search rankings, so… you must know where’s your site spinning, right?

GTMetrix uses two analyzing engines from the big ones in the industry, namely Google Page Speed and Yahoo YSlow, providing enough information to know how’s your site moving when compared to the average values. All you have to do is enter the name of your site and press the “Go” button, but…

… only after you’ll get a free account you’ll gain access to all the goodies, including scheduling of daily/weekly/monthly automated checks, reporting capabilities, tests history and more. These being said… I have nothing more to add but the usual compatibility check part.

Comparability: all major browsers, including Chrome, Opera, IE8 and Firefox (please drop a comment below if you face any kind of problems with any Web browser, no matter how exotic it may be)

Find Jobs Via Twitter

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:14:31 +0000

Jobless? Oh, well, you’re probably not the only one in this situation, since I happen to know quite a few people who lost their jobs recently. Anyway, you shouldn’t bother too much about that; after all, there’s always room for good people somewhere… and today, the time has come to tell you about a Twitter-powered job search engine!

I know, I know – this may not have too much to do with Web development, but I think it could be pretty useful to all you into the industry out there, especially since most jobs I found were related to Web development and programming. Anyway, I still think Twitter is, basically, useless, but this time, TwitJobSearch made it just a bit more interesting…

Using TwitJobSearch is a trivial task – just open the page, type in the kind of job you’re looking for, and hope for the best! Unfortunately, there are only about 150 jobs available as we speak, but let’s finish this article with a funny fact about Twitter and Twitter-related, Web-based tools…

… did you know that IsTwitterDown, a site that should show you Twitter’s status, simply answering to the question “Is Twitter down?” was (and it still is)… down?

Colorhat

Adrian — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:27:37 +0000

Time tracking software helps you increase an employee’s time management abilities and provide employees direct feedback on their targets versus productivity. If you have a small business or you are developer or an engineer or a student you should use a free application.

Colorhat is a free time management and time tracking software. At this time Colorhat is a single user system but soon it will also be available a multiuser functionality via friend and sharing functions. If you want to see what is all about, you can try Colorhat without registering. If you like it, you can signup here.

The first step after logging in, you should read the Colorhat introduction section. There you will learn how to use Colorhat and where you will find all the answers to your questions. Also you can post all the bugs you will find (if you will find one ).

If you use often combinations, Colorhat offers you Favorites. Also with Colorhat you can categorize things using lists. When you are in the Customers, Projects or Services overview, click “New List”. Give your new list a name eg. Personal, Work etc. Then press enter. You have now created a New List and need to populate it. Click “edit”, select all the entries you want in the List – then click “Save”.

phpMyBackup Pro

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:20:24 +0000

No matter if your important stuff is located on some server in a datacenter or on your own computer, saving backups to some external device is always a good idea. Same thing is true for your databases, and no matter how reliable your own server/paid hosting service may be, using a tool like phpMyBackupPro can’t be anything else but a very clever move.

According to the official page, “phpMyBackup Pro is a very easy to use, free, web-based MySQL backup application,” and I really hope the app has been programmed really carefully… because the content on that page doesn’t really blow me away – some screenshots are not loading, while the description of the program starts with “Here on the offcial homepage,” but other than that, everything seems to be fine. After all, sometimes it’s not about the packaging, it’s all about the product, right?

phpMyBackup Pro comes covered by the terms of the GPL license and offers excellent backup facilities, such as scheduled tasks and multiple database/server support (only MySQL databases are supported). The backups can be sent to email addresses or remote FTP servers, and you can even download them to be saved on your own computer or some external device.

Having support for multiple languages (10 currently available and more to come in the future), phpMyBackup Pro is a tool that any Web developer should keep close, especially when having to perform maintenance on the sites previously completed.

Compatibility: since we’re talking about a PHP Web-based application, phpMyBackup Pro works well with virtually all browsers you can think of, but if you bump into any kind of trouble, be sure to let us know!

WordPress Theme Generator

Codrut Nistor — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 09:41:40 +0000

One of the most painful parts of setting up a WordPress blog – at least for me – is choosing the theme. There are plenty of awesome free themes, as well as commercial ones, but it still feels the best when you do it yourself. The problem is that most theme generators don’t come for free, so finding a free online tool for creating WordPress themes really made my day!

WordPress Theme Generator allows you to create your own WordPress theme without even having to know what HTML, JS, PHP or CSS are, not to mention any kind of serious knowledge!

With WordPress Theme Generator, all you have to do is mess with the settings in the left side of the page, like site name, menu layout, sidebar location, overall scheme setup, text scheme, and a few others, and then press Preview at the end. If you’re happy with what you see in the preview area, you can Save the theme (ZIP file and individual theme files available) or change those settings some more, if you don’t.

Offering support from WP 2.1 up to 2.8 and being able to generate themes with widgets and tags support, WordPress Theme Generator is one of those online resources you must not miss… as long as you’re one of those working with WordPress, of course!

Compatibility: I had a sudden crash in IE8, but WordPress Theme Generator is supposed to work with all major browser, and since I wasn’t able to make it crash once again, I guess we’re talking about a pretty solid tool

Open Atrium

Codrut Nistor — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:27:34 +0000

Working with people who are not in the same room with you can be a blessing, or a curse, depends a lot on the tasks you have to accomplish, the people you work with, and your own style of work. Speaking for myself, I usually enjoy working on my own, but when I have to team up with someone, I would rather do this remotely, and so I started my quest for the best online collaboration tool…

While Open Atrium may not be the best tool for the job, it’s surely one worth checking out, so here it is! After all, you don’t find open source web applications able to create an intranet for teamwork around every corner… and since Open Atrium also gives you the chance to extend its features by adding your own modules, what else there is to say?

Oh, yeah, let’s point out the most important features, shall we? Open Atrium is built using the Drupal framework and offers blogs for each group, Twitter-like shoutbox for fast info sharing, group dashboard, good document collaboration features, as well as a full ticketing system for better project tracking/management.

Anything else? Oh, yeah, support for multiple languages, and about the same requirements as Drupal – PHP 5.2+ with GD enabled, MySQL 5+, and Mod_Rewrite.

Compatibility: all major browsers are supported, except IE6 (could anyone help with info about IE7/8 compatibility? thanks in advance!)

Wix

Codrut Nistor — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 13:36:32 +0000

Any serious designer shouldn’t mess with Web-based site creation tools… or at least that’s what I was almost sure of some years ago. Now, I think that using online resources like Wix can’t hurt, at least in the early stages of a site’s development. Even more, you can come up with quick low-budget designs that won’t look low-budget at all, but let’s see what’s so special about today’s pick, shall we?

With Wix, there’s no need to download anything or learn to use some cryptic programming language – everything is straightforward, with drag and drop site building that should be easy even for my grandmother. Too bad she has hearing problems, so adding sounds and various multimedia elements may be a real issue to her… but I am sure you’ll enjoy doing that!

Other than the above, Wix comes with a feature called “Areas,” allowing easy layout building, and the list of elements that you can include in your site also has Twitter feeds available! (yes, I still can’t understand what’s so special about Twitter, but I am sure a lot of people will appreciate this feature)

To take a look at what can be done with Wix, you should take a look here. Other than that… Basically, Wix is free, but upgrading to a Premium account will give you a lot of additional features, as professional hosting, premium support, the ability to use your own domain, and no Wix ads.

Compatibility: any major browser running on a computer with Adobe Flash Player properly installed (you should also be careful about content blocking plugins you may have)

Zoho CRM

Codrut Nistor — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:16:28 +0000

Finding a cost-effective CRM is really gold, and I know what I am saying, because I know a few guys selling such solutions… While some may say this isn’t actually a developer’s job, I have to disagree with it, at least partially, because I think he should also suggest best solutions to use, apart from working on his own parts. In this case, here’s a tip for those who need a CRM for only three cliens or less…

… and its name is Zoho CRM! This award-winning CRM solution has all one company needs, offering sales & marketing tools, together with customer support & service, inventory management, and various reports.

If you happen to need to be able to handle more than just three clients, you can easily upgrade, with the 4th user starting at $12/month. Even better, no matter if you’re running the free version or the paid one, Zoho CRM is hosted on its producer’s servers.

Sweet… or not, depends on what you really need, but I think Zoho CRM is a pretty good choice for little companies who only start with a client or two.

Compatibility: any major browser should handle Zoho CRM well, since I tried the demo on Internet Explorer, Opera, Firefox and Google Chrome without having a single problem