I have been looking for a website up-time monitoring solution for awhile now. I have used a couple of website monitoring services in the past and have been fairly pleased with them. However, this never stops me from continuing to look around for a better option. Fortunately for myself, I recently stumbled across a new service called UptimeRobot. I have been using UptimeRobot for about a month now and am ready to recommend the service.

There are five main items that sold me on the service:

• There is no cost; the service is totally free. The entire feature set is available to you at no cost with no hidden fees. Their blog talks about their commitment to keeping the service free.
• Your websites are monitored in 5 minute intervals. Most website monitoring services offer monitoring in 30 minute intervals for free and only offer more frequent checks at a price.
• You can monitor up to 50 websites. It goes without saying that 50 is plenty of monitors. Who could expect more for free?
• Instant notification of down-time and subsequent up-time with alerts through e-mail, SMS, twitter, and RSS. There is also a feature which allows you to have more than one person receive an alert.
• Standard (http) and secure (https) protocols are supported.

Have you tried UptimeRobot yet? If so, let us know what you think in the comments.

Sams Teach Yourself books are great resources in a large array of topics. They have released Sams Teach Yourself Ajax, JavaScript, and PHP All in One in paperback version on July 12, 2008. This book is great for webmasters because it includes three of the most popular technologies used on the web.

Like all the rest of the "Sams Teach Yourself" line of books, this one is easy to follow, easy to understand, and takes you from a beginner to an intermediate and beyond. There are a number of visual aids including screenshots and diagrams to help you understand what you have read. Another great help is the amount of code examples used throughout the book; there are examples for most of the topics covered.

The book starts with a general overview at the beginning and works towards a more detailed explanation at the end. In chapter one, you will learn the basics of the web, HTML, CSS, and Ajax. By the end of chapter nine, you will understand JavaScript, using it to manipulate the DOM and add usability to your site. By chapter thirteen you will be using Ajax and by the end of chapter eighteen, you will be using Object Oriented PHP to make your site dynamic. Once you have taken all of that in, you can learn about XML responses, web services (REST and SOAP), and gain a basic understanding about a few popular Ajax tools and libraries that are available.

An added feature with this book is beyond the pages of helpful information. There is a CD provided with the book that includes all of the software needed to get a basic web server up and running. It includes XAMPP, jEdit, Prototype, Scriptaculous, Rico, XOAD, searchable PDF tutorials, and source code for the examples in the book. Most of these are freely available for download on the web, but it is nice to have them all in one place, especially for a beginner that doesn't know what to look for.

This book is well worth your time to read, especially if you are a beginner looking to get not only introduced to these web technologies, but also get started using them. You can pick up your copy at Amazon.com and get started building dynamic websites using Ajax, JavaScript, and PHP.

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Installation

FreeBSD provides a very easy installation process; it uses Sysinstall as an automated installation package to do it for you. All you have to do is answer some questions to create users and tell it which software to install and you are on your way to being up and running in a matter of minutes. The full installation takes longer that a few minutes to complete, but using Sysinstall to set the installation parameters is very quick. This installer takes care of everything needed to have FreeBSD installed and functioning correctly on your system, including user creation, software/application installations, network and peripheral setup, and much more.

Security

FreeBSD is one of the most secure operating systems available. There are a number of security features built into the system that deal with user and file system security. There are also a number of applications compatible with FreeBSD that offer added security beyond the default features. Besides the basic user permissions modified through CHMOD, FreeBSD offers the ability to use ACL and MAC. These options allow user permissions on a more specific level than the basic Unix permissions. You can also use a firewall to secure your system. FreeBSD has two options built in, altq and dummynet, as well as a number of applications available for install like IPFILTER (IPF), IPFIREWALL (IPF), and PacketFilter (PF). Another way to secure your system is change the default password hash from md5 to blowfish in login.conf.

Another great security feature that comes with FreeBSD is the ability to jail a process. This allows for separate environments for processes that are completely locked off from others. These jails function as almost a separate installation of FreeBSD allowing for its own user processes, user accounts, and files. Using a jail helps for testing software and often used by web hosts to give their users control over a virtual server.

Compatibility

There are numerous hardware compatibilities listed on the hardware notice for each release of FreeBSD. It is compatible with all the major processors the most popular being Intel and AMD. There are also thousands of applications available for installation on a FreeBSD system. As well as having all of those application ports available, you can run Linux applications on FreeBSD with the Linux Binary Compatibility system. This allows you "to run about 90% of all Linux applications without modification" (Linux Binary Compatibility).

Ports

The port system is a collection of software that is packaged and ready for installation on a FreeBSD system. You can download the source and install them very quickly and easily. Ports are available from the installation disc, online at the ports collection, or at FreshPorts. Once you have chosen a port to install and have followed the installation procedures, you can stay up to date with the ability to download and compile the updates easily from within the ports system. There are currently over 19,000 ports within 63 categories available for download and use (FreshPorts Stats).

Documentation

FreeBSD has many different options for documentation. They offer eight different kinds of documentation on their website including FAQ, Manual Pages, and the FreeBSD Handbook. There is also a web resources section, a for newbies section, and books and articles. The handbook is in my opinion the the best resource available and can be viewed online in multiple formats and downloaded as a local copy. There are a number of books dedicated to FreeBSD as well; a search on Amazon.com will demonstrate this. You won't have to browse the web for basic command questions; you can use the man pages on your installation of FreeBSD so you can have general command help locally whenever needed.

As a developer I have often wanted to be able to test query speeds among other things. The problem is I didn't always have a usable data set sitting around that could meet the requirements of my test cases. To make a long story short, I wish I had GenerateData.com a long time ago. This is a great tool and has a lot of potential. It can save a lot of time when you are trying to create your own test data set to work with.

GenerateData.com is currently in version 2.1 (released July 25, 2008) and offers a nice set of features. You can generate data in many different data types like addresses, numbers, lorem ipsum text, email addresses, phone numbers, and more. Once you have chosen what kind of data you would like to generate, you can choose from five different export options. You are able to export the data in XML, Excel, HTML, CSV and SQL formats. The SQL export options gives you the choice of MySQL or Oracle syntax. You can generate up to 200 records at a time, unless you donate $20 or more, which allows you to generate up to 5000 records at a time.

The generator is written using PHP, MySQL, and JavaScript. You can use the online version or download a copy of the script for use on your own server. The downloadable version is licensed under GNU. The website has requirements and installation instructions to follow if needed.

PrototypeXtensions adds additional components to Prototype.js and Script.aculo.us, two of the most popular and widely used JavaScript frameworks/libraries available. While these are extremely useful tools for creating visual effects, UI improvements, and Ajax methods, the creators of PrototypeXtensions realized a need for additional components. The library is currently at version 0.1.2 and is released under MIT License. There are three main categories of additions, or extensions, that are added by this library with specific features within each category. I have listed a basic feature overview below.

Features

There are detailed explanations and examples for each feature available so be sure to check out the website for more detailed features and information. You can download the current release in the original uncompressed form or download the smalled Minified and Gzipped version.

HTML Dog offers HTML and CSS tutorials for a beginner, intermediate, and advanced web designer/developer. The website is very well designed and easy to navigate. The information in the tutorials is clear, concise, informative, very useful, and overall well written. You can also get information from additional references including HTML tags and CSS properties. There are articles available that build on the tutorials providing a more detailed understanding of certain topics. If you would like to see what you have been reading about in the tutorials in action, you can view a large number of examples spread across seven different categories.

The tutorials, articles, and examples from HTML Dog are written with a strict adherence to the Web Standards created by the W3C. The information was created by Patrick Griffiths who has been a front-end web developer using HTML and CSS since 1999. He has contributed to well known and credible sites like A List Apart and the CSS Zen Garden.

If you find the information useful and would like to have a copy of it, you can purchase a copy of the HTML Dog book which includes information similar to the tutorials and articles. You can get your copy at Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Amazon.com.

dhtmlxGrid is an open source (GPL) "spreadsheet" using Ajax to create DHTML tables that look amazing and function beautifully. dhtmlxGrid can bind data from many different types of data sources, including XML, CSV, JavaScript arrays, and HTML Tables. Large datasets are no problem either. The data is called using Ajax to load only the data that is visible. This allows for very large datasets (50,000+ records) to be loaded easily without slowing the page load time. The grid is available for IE 5.0 and above, Firefox 0.9 and and above, Safari 2.0 and above, and Opera 9.0 and above. DHTMLX boasts many big name customers including FedEx, HP, Oracle, IBM, Texas Instruments, and many more.

The best way to see why dhtmlxGrid is so great is to see it, so here is an example.

Now that you have seen it, you may be wondering what some of the specifics are. I have listed many of the great features here, but there are a lot more so be sure to check out their website for all of the features.

Features

• Easy installation and usage
• Smart Rendersing (Loading large datasets)
• Search, filter, sort, and group
• Drag-and-Drop
• Load data from multiple sources
• Edit cells within the grid
• Math formulas in cells
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Skinning through CSS
• Multiline headers and footers

Some features are not available in the open source version and requires buying the professional edition. You can download your copy of dhtmlxGrid 1.6 and view the documentation from DHTMLX's website.

ColorJack offers three tools for easily creating color schemes. The front page shows new and popular schemes that have been created as well as linking to the three main tools, Color Galaxy, Color Sphere, and Color Studio. Along with providing these tools, there are links to other useful sites and tools, a blog, other software created by ColorJack, and articles that have some pretty cool information.

The Front Page

The front page displays the new and popular color schemes that have been created by other users. You can hover over each of the colors to see the whole scheme that was designed. It is a little confusing to understand at first, but the white spaces are breaks in between different color schemes. So when you hover over a color, it shows you the colors to the left and right of it as well (before the next and after the previous white space) to see what the colors look like together.

Color Galaxy

Color Galaxy allows you to pick from 27 color schemes and look at the makeup of that color. Some of the color schemes include crayola, mozilla, IE, Netscape, and Windows. Once you choose a color scheme it gets loaded into a "galaxy" arrangement and you can then pick one of the colors to examine. Clicking on a color will then load information describing it's makeup on the right. Personally I like the ven diagram that gets created to show the colors mixed together.

Color Sphere

Color Sphere offers color schemes based on a number of variables. It is displayed in a color picker format on the left as well as a list format on the right. You can apply a number of rules/filters to the colors to end up with your desired color scheme. Colors can be adjusted from the sphere on the left or the list on the right and new color schemes will be created dynamically. Some of the filters available are analogous, complimentary, triadic, and tetradic. You can also choose to see all colors in the spectrum, websmart colors, or websafe colors. You are also given the ability to export the color scheme for Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

Color Studio

Color Studio is in my opinion the best part of the site. It offers information about a color selected as well as a palette for a color scheme. You can start with a color by entering the HEX code or picking one from a color picker. Once you have a color selected, you can start to apply filters and functions similar to those previously mentioned in the two apps above. You can also darken/lighten the color scheme, adjust the hue, saturation, and value of the colors, as well as add and remove additional colors to or from the palette. Like the Color Sphere, you can export the color scheme to Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. You can also save it to Delicious, bookmark it in your browser, and get the direct link as a URL.

All three of these apps from ColorJack are worth checking out. If you like what they have to offer, you can check out more from their software page and read up on some color theory at their article and blog pages.

Galleria is a clean and easy to implement image gallery based on jQuery. This is a great tool if you need to add an image gallery to your site and don't want to use a flash based gallery. I prefer JavaScript and CSS galleries over flash galleries because they are usually smaller and slightly easier to implement. This is a small (4K) script that doesn't add a lot of overhead to your page load time and is completely customizable to your taste. The images are preloaded individually. Some other features to note are the ability to your custom thumbnails, add a caption from image anchor title, and call events from the image onLoad event.

Implementing this gallery is, as noted earlier, very easy. You can have the whole thing up and running in only four lines of code. You need to add the CSS and JavaScript files to the header and then add the unsorted list that gets converted into the gallery. I have displayed the code that needs to be inserted into your header below. You can also get more help, checkout Demo1 or Demo2, and download the script.

 
<link href="galleria.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="screen">
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="jquery.galleria.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(function($) { $('ul.gallery').galleria(); });
</script>
 

More information about usage available at the Galleria website.

The HTML Playground offers XHTML and CSS references by example. The site is still in beta at version 0.4, but offers an easy to use interface that makes digesting all the information displayed simple. It is a fast loading application and I have just found it to be overall a great tool for learning the basics of HTML and CSS.

The concept is pretty easy and follows an intuitive design and interface. The initial information is loaded from the left top pane and allows you to make a selection. Once you have chosen what you want to learn about, it loads more information into the panel directly to the right. Additional information, if available, is loaded underneath the initial pane. The last pane to load contains the examples and a way for you to try it out yourself. The design follows the logical left to right, top to bottom reading layout so you don't miss a beat when you start using it. Although this seems like a no brainer, think of how many blogs out there, like mine, have the menu on the right, which took some time to get used to when it first started showing up. This simple design principle makes the app very easy to use.

The examples pane includes code highlighting to make reading and learning the code easier. The attributes pane in the bottom left contains a color picker of basic/common colors so you can start to learn the Hex codes for colors (for example: white = #FFFFFF). There are also basic choices for other attributes like align and border to help you learn what is available to customize those tags. The search function works well in allowing you to quickly search and find a specific tag to learn.

This is a free website and a good one to bookmark. I'm not sure how much recent activity there has been in development because the last blog entry was back in December of 2006. However, there has been some activity in the community section of the site as recently as July of 2008, so there may be some continued development taking place. Either way, the website is very useful in its current condition. I hope that there will be more features and information continually added, but for now, check out what's there.