This post isn't much of a resource I guess, but it is well worth the read. This is a joke/skit of the great comedy legends Abbott & Costello. The basic storyline is that Costello is looking to buy a new computer and he calls a computer store where Abbott answers. I included a short excerpt of the conversation, but follow the link below to read the whole thing.
Abbott: Super Duper computer store. Can I help you?
Costello: Thanks. I'm setting up an office in my den and I'm thinking about buying a computer.
Abbott: Mac?
Costello: No, the name's Lou.
Abbott: Your computer?
Costello: I don't own a computer. I want to buy one.
Abbott: Mac?
Costello: I told you, my name's Lou.
Abbott: What about Windows?
Costello: Why? Will it get stuffy in here?
Abbott: Do you want a computer with Windows?
Costello: I don't know. What will I see when I look at the windows?
Abbott: Wallpaper.
Techotopia offers free online books that cover a number of subjects including programming languages, security, and Linux. The books are hosted on their wiki and are available to read online. The four main books that brought me to this site are:
As the website states that the "IT Essentials series of books are designed to provide detailed information that is accessible to both experienced and novice readers" (Techotopia). The books are clear and concise, providing detailed explanations and examples to help you understand the content. Each book is made up of multiple chapters in a logical and easy to follow order. You can access the table of contents from every page which makes it easy to skip around quickly and easily to look at what you find interesting and useful.
As well as the four books mentioned above, you can find books on these topics:
The Free HTML Form Template Gallery offers 75+ HTML form templates to fit a wide array of needs. They have form templates for registration, mailing lists, surveys, order forms, and much more. These templates can be downloaded as a zip file or customized to fit a more specific need you may have (requires a free account). The zip files come complete with all CSS, HTML, images, and JavaScript needed to get the forms functioning.
The Free CSS Form Template Gallery offers 50+ CSS form themes freely available for you to use on your site. All forms can be downloaded as a zip file they way they are or customized to your liking (requires a free account). The zip files come complete with all CSS, HTML, images, and JavaScript needed to get the forms functioning.
All HTML templates and CSS themes are available under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which means you have the right to copy, distribute, and adapt them as long as you attribute the original work to Wufoo.com. There is a readme file included in each zip file that includes the license terms and conditions.
phpMyVisites is an open source web analytics application written in PHP an MySQL. This offers similar features to AWStats and Webalizer. It is currently released in version 2.3 stable and under a GNU/GPL license. Originally created in 2002, this application has come along way to support the necessary requirements to provide useful web stats. As described on the phpMyVisites wiki, "phpMyVisites was created to address an important need for an Open Source (and free) program that offers features available in professional, “for-purchase-only” software" (About phpMyVisites).
There are a number of great features offered, which you can read about in more detail on their features page. The bulk of the features are contained within seven major sections of stats:
Major Features
- Visitors
- Pages viewed
- Follow-up of visitors
- Visitor movement
- Source of visitors
- Hardware/software of visitors
- Referrals
Other Features
- Track multiple websites
- Multiple users
- Clean user interface
- Strong security
- Graphics to help you visualize the numbers
- Multi-language support
- Search engine detection
- Get site stats in email and RSS format
Be sure to check out phpMyVisites and give it a try. It is easy to install and configure and has documentation for you to follow.
What do you use to track your site statistics? Do you use a hosted service or host your own application? Let us know in the comments.
Quarkbase is a website offering a mashup of information pertaining to websites. Information is gathered showing you information about a website's traffic, company, social popularity, technical specs, and more. The information is gathered from a number of sources including Zoominfo, 
CrunchBase, Bloglines, Dmoz and Dealipedia. There is a bookmarklet available to allow you to easily get information about websites while you browse by auto loading the website you are viewing into the quarkbase website and opening the available information in a new tab (tested in Firefox).
| Progress Bar | |
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Although this feature isn't much more than eye-candy, there is a nice progress bar that indicates how much information has been compiled and how much is left. |
| Summary | |
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The summary section displays a screenshot of the website entered as well as a general summary of information regarding pertinent information from the categories detailed below. |
| Introduction | |
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The introduction section gives a picture of the website logo and general information about the website. You can read a description of the website, see tags about the website, get links to the official about and contact pages, and see basic domain registration information. You can also see a list of websites that contain similar information and content. |
| Social Popularity | |
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The social popularity section provides information from social websites including Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Technorati, and StumbleUpon. There are counts for how many times the website entered shows up on each of these social websites. You can see some specifics like how many diggs it has received on digg, how many comments it has received on StumbleUpon, etc. The final subsection includes information about any feeds available. |
| Traffic | |
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The traffic section details what is available from Alexa. There isn't a mashup of information provided here, but it still includes useful and important information from Alexa. |
| People | |
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The people sections lists the people associated, both directly and inderectly, with the website entered. |
| Spotlight | |
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The spotlight section shows blog entries and other websites that reference the website entered. Some sources include twitter, Google news, Technorati, and many others depending on who is linking to the website. |
| Company | |
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The company section provides information regarding who the company is, where it is located, the number of employees, when it was founded, any merger/acquisition information, and job openings available. |
| Technical | |
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The technical section lists information about who hosts the website, where the hosting is located, and what type of platform the website is using (ex: wordpress blog) |
ColorMixers.com helps you pick a color scheme/palette from a single color. There are many of these websites out there now, but this is one of the first sites (available since 2003) to offer color mixing. The website is easy to use and understand, thanks to it's clean and intuitive design and interface. There are a ton of features but enough to get the job done. I've listed the major features below.
Features
- Color scheme of 9 similar colors (8 colors and black)
- Sample preview for viewing the scheme with content
- Color slider to pick a color based on RGB values.
- Create scheme from Hex code
- Load predefined themes
- Ability to bookmark your theme
- Export your theme for Photoshop, Illustrator, or as a text file
There are also a few downloads available that you can host on your own site. One version uses PHP & MySQL, which allows for the export functions, while the other includes no PHP which allows you to run in on any webserver. The second download is basically all JavaScript.
Adobe Dreamweaver CS3
I use Dreamweaver for all of my coding needs. I use it to write (X)HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript for my sites. There are many free options available to do what I need, like HTML-Kit, but I'm hooked on the code editor in Dreamweaver. I don't ever use the visual design aspect of Dreamweaver, so I don't actually use everything that Dreamweaver offers. Maybe I'll choose a free option next time instead of upgrading to CS4. For now though, I love what Dreamweaver has to offer and highly recommend it to anyone looking for an editor they are willing to pay for.
Adobe Photoshop CS3
I use Photoshop for everything graphics. i have been using it for a long time now and you just can't beat it. There are some other programs out there that offer great features like GIMP, but for me it just doesn't compare. Photoshop is easy to use, easy to understand, and offers an amazing number of features that can be used to create incredibly unique images. Beyond the basics, there are a ton of tutorials available to get the most out of what Photoshop can do. If you want to use Photoshop, but can't drop that much money into it, you can try Photoshop Elements which is a watered down version that includes most of the core functionality needed, as well as the new free online Photoshop Express.
WordPress
I use WordPress to publish this blog and although I'm not able to publish a new post everyday, I am writing drafts and working on posts everyday. I love WordPress because of all the available plugins, themes, as well as the updates to security and features. This is a huge time-saver. I am able to manage the whole blog from an easy administration module of the blog. Maintainance is also really easy because it requires very little coding in the backend; most things can be done with a plugin. Of all the available blog systems, WordPress is my favorite and I plan to stick with it.
FileZilla
I use FileZilla as my main FTP client. To be honest it isn't my favorite though. I used SmartFTP for as long as I can remember, but as of recent I have been using FileZilla because SmartFTP is no longer free. I have thought about purchasing the new SmartFTP, but haven't yet because FileZilla is growing on me. FileZilla is fast, easy and although not the greatest looking, it works very well all the time. If you are looking for free FTP clients, check out the 5 Best Free FTP Program, which includes FileZilla.
phpMyAdmin
I use phpMyAdmin for managing all of my MySQL databases. I have been using this tool for as long as I have been using MySQL and have yet to consider a new option. There are other tools out there, but this one has so many great features. I love the import/export options, the ability to create, insert, delete, and update rows visually, and view query output in a nice table form. Although writing SQL isn't that hard after a few times, it is nice to be able to just click the red X and delete a row or update multiple rows without having to write and update statement for each. I find that some things are a little slow to load and I wish there was some Ajax worked in to speed things up. Hopefully that is on the way in a future release, but even without it, I love this tool.
dotProject
I use dotProject to manage my tasks and projects, both big and small. There are some other options out there for managing tasks like Remember The Milk, but I found myself using dotProejct for the little things because I had already been in the habit of going to dotProject on a regular basis to check and update my progress. There are a number of great features that keep me hooked on dotProject. There is a Gantt chart, a number of prebuilt reports for tracking projects or tasks or people, and an easy to use interface. I have been very pleased with this app and will continue to use it and recommend it.
This one is a no-brainer. I use Google dozens of times a day. Any time I need to find something out, I look to Google to recommend some answers. Thankfully there are websites out there that offer a plethera of information that I refer to time and time again, but Google is there to help me continue to learn new things. I often look for code examples, web standards, tutorials, news, and so much more related to web development and web design. This one does't need much explanation, so I will stop here.
Contribute: What's in your development/design toolbox? Please share in the comments what you find helpful enough to use everyday (or at least close to everyday).
The .htaccess Editor allows you to easily create .htaccess files online. This is a great service for beginners just starting out or a seasoned developer looking to save some time. .htaccess files are not only very useful and helpful, but they are often essential for websites hosted on a shared host. Unfortunately they are somewhat cumbersome to understand. There are a lot of websites and references available to help you understand the files and syntax and available features, but this website makes it east by creating the syntax for you. I have listed the features available below.
Features
- Deny all access to files
- Basic authentication
- Error page
- Default page
- Setup WWW
- Redirect directives
- Access restriction
The form is very easy to understand, which allows you to get started right away. Once you fill in the form, it will write the appropriate entry you will need in your .htaccess file. Not only is it easy to use, but it is a learning resource as well. You can gain an understanding for .htaccess files by simply looking at what is created by the form based on your parameters. Once you have created a few of these files, you won't need a lot of help in creating future files. But for now, take advantage of this great tool.
Zend Technologies held their fourth ZendCon conference, ZendCon 08, in Santa Clara, CA from September 15-18. In case you weren't able to attend (like me) or just want to see them again, the presentations from the conference are available online. You can view the ZendCon 08 Slides from the Zend Developer Zone website.
There are 60 different presentations available currently with a possibility of more on the way. They cover a wide range of topics including MySQL (Jay Pipes), Facebook development (Brett Harris), PECL (Elizabeth M Smith), scaling PHP applications (Shahar Evron), and many more. The presentations are broken down by the day they were presented and show you the speaker and session name. Here are a few of the presentations that I'll be checking out this weekend.
What is CHMOD?
CHMOD is a Unix shell command, short for change mode, that can change the permissions of a file or directory. CHMOD uses references (or classes), operators, and modes to assign permissions for users to files. CHMOD can be used in a string notation and octal notation, which is represented in numbers instead of a string.
How can I see the permissions?
The Unix File System Permissions are easily viewable by a directory listing, using a command like ls. This listing will show the current file permissions in the string or symbolic notation of 10 characters. The first character displays the file type and the next three sets of three characters represent the file permissions per class (owner, group, others respectively). You can see an example ls listing below:
$ ls -l test drw-rw---- 2 testuser testuser 96 Dec 8 12:53 testdir -rw-rw---- 2 testuser testuser 96 Dec 8 12:53 testfile
How can I change the permissions?
You can use CHMOD two different ways (different syntaxes as noted above) to change the permissions. A string notation and octal notation are available, one being a symbolic syntax and the other being a numerical syntax. String notation uses "r", "w", and "x" to change the permissions while octal notation uses 4 for "r", 2 for "w", and 1 for "x". These numbers are added together to get the appropriate permissions (For example: 6 = 4+2 = rw). You can check out a simple CHMOD JavaScript calculator that calculates the octal notation for the permissions you choose. You can also see some example uses of both notations below:
String Notation
chmod u=+rw,go=r testfile - Add read/write to the user, read to group/others chmod o= testfile - Remove all permissions for others chmod -w testfile - Remove write permissions for all
Octal Notation
chmod 0644 testfile - Read/write for the user, read for group/others chmod 0660 testfile - No permissions for others chmod 0444 testfile - No write permissions for all
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