Tag Archives: Tools

Great Free Screen Casting Site

Allows you to upload your videos directly to YouTube.

http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/

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A great tutorial on adding Social Media to your site

It specifically talks about WordPress – but you can apply these tips to other types of sites as well – http://wp.smashingmagazine.com/2012/01/19/facebook-twitter-google-wordpress/

And a great tutorial on using HTML5 and CSS to style a form – http://line25.com/tutorials/create-a-stylish-contact-form-with-html5-css3

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Crossbrowser and device compatibility made easy

This great tool checks what device or browser is viewing your site and will access styles based on that. Ties right in with Media Queries for Responsive Design.

http://www.modernizr.com/

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Test Your Site’s Responsive Design On Mobile Devices

http://mattkersley.com/responsive/

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Where is my site in Google Results?

Here’s a great tool that searches the first 10 pages live – http://whatpageofsearchamion.com

Also, of course, SEM Rush is a favorite tool of internet marketers – http://www.semrush.com/

And Google Analytics has just upgraded their reports to show the first position of a link to your site http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1308626

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Create Page Specific Widget in WordPress

Easiest way to do this is: “Display Widgets” Plugin, “Simply hide widgets on specified pages. Adds checkboxes to each widget to either show or hide it on every site page.”

Alternatively, you can create a custom page template for each page where you want a special widget (e.g. “category-blog.php” or “page-blog.php”) – assign the page or posts to this template, then create a call for that widget in the template:

<?php get_sidebar('blog'); ?>

And duplicate the “sidebar.php” file and call it something custom like, “sidebar-blog.php”, ditch the “aside” code, change dynamic sidebar to say:

<?php if ( ! dynamic_sidebar( 'blog' ) ) : ?>

and then register it in the functions file:

register_sidebar( array(
        'name' => __( 'Home Sidebar', 'homecarex' ),
        'id' => 'home',
        'description' => 'Widgets in this area will be shown in the home sidebar.',
        'before_widget' => '<aside id="%1$s">',
        'after_widget' => "</aside>",
        'before_title' => '<h3>',
        'after_title' => '</h3>',
    ) );

This would create a widget holder like this, “blog”:

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Multi-Step Forms in WordPress

I  normally use http://contactform7.com – but it doesn’t seem to have the option for multi-step forms. So I’ve found two other solutions (haven’t tried either yet, but I’ll post an update when I do):

Free – http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin/
$25 – http://codecanyon.net/item/dynamic-step-process-panels-for-wordpress/125748

 

 

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Tools to Test Your Website’s Loading Speed

http://tools.pingdom.com/ –  this one also helps you identify graphics and scripts that are slowing it down.

http://proxify.com/ – load your page through another connection

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Comparing External Flashes

Here’s a great website for it — http://speedlights.net/compare-speedlight-specs/

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Dynamic 301 Redirect

This is a solution to a very niche, but annoying problem. For SEO purposes, I was creating new URLs on an old-school dynamically generated site. So I needed a way to redirect from one dynamic url to another. The traditional .htaccess 301 redirect method doesn’t work in this situation. I found the solution here: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=659415

Here it is, for your htaccess file, after, of course, “RewriteEngine On”:

Instead of saying:
redirect 301 /old-directory/filename.php?item=old-page-name http://mysite.org/new-directory/filename.php?item=new-page-namethat doesn’t work

Say:
Option 1 (php file and directory stay the same):
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} item=old-page-name
RewriteRule ^directory/filename.php$ /directory/filename.php?item=new-page-name [R=301,L]

Option 2 (directory and php file change, but page file name stays the same):
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} item=page-name
RewriteRule ^directory/filename.php$ /new-directory/new-filename.php?item=page-name [R=301,L]

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