Add This offers statistical data so you can track how many times your site  was referred using their tool, but you will have to sign up for an account to be able to use that feature… After all, they need to know who to give the tally to

The list of networking sites seems to be growing at an unbelievable rate, and it’s great that someone is keeping up with all the js/api links that can connect stories or web items to their ‘circle of friends’ or colleagues.

Another one that has caught my attention is , “Share This“.  Share this seems to have a few more dynamic elements – a smoother presentation, but the number of services it can ‘share to’ are probably equal to any other like-service. One thing that seperates Share This apart is the application method – you’re able to literally download the plugin within a ‘format’ (e.g. wordpress, typePad, or generic script for any regular coding website).

As mentioned earlier, there are a few user-centric web applications starting to come to the forefront. One of the most significant is Threadsy.  At first I wasn’t sold on the all-in-one web tool idea, but after using it for a month, it’s become an essential tool.  It’s so easy to twitter, and if it’s appropriate, I can simultaneously post to Facebook.  It keeps all my email in one place (my tens of throw away/ sole-purpose email addresses [that i would never check otherwise?]).  The irony is I like Threadsy for the very reasons that I thought I would ever like an application like this… It has a vertical bar (as small as I want it to be) that can show me my twitter account/facebook notices without getting an email… if something scrolls by & I happen to want to reply – it’s a matter of clicking a button after typing my response.  At any given time, I used to have up to 20 browser window/tabs open. With Threadsy, it’s reduced to 5.

Regardless which one of these mash-up tools you use, be sure to share your findings in the comments.  We appreciate the comments and participation.

Thanks,

Greg

If you liked this post, please follow me on Twitter

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TemplateBlocks & LIME:VC appear to be the two latest entries on the block.  TemplateBlocks uses a segmented design that holds the “pieces” of each design template in a set/template so that a collection of objects are the template (e.g. CSS, JS, HTML bits and pieces).  It greatly speeds things up by allowing the user to merely naming a page, adding some content, then selecting which template to use (template being used in the appearance realm).  The only difficulty that I’ve noticed is implementing customized script, but the basic items are included and it works fine as long as you are familiar with .htaccess or not maintaining many virtual instances on your apache install.

The TemplateBlocks Admin Panel is probably the strongest element to the application.  It is well organized and very simple to use.  The only criticism I have is that the template sets are all displayed together – if you have a set named “Default” – when you go to the blocks page, ALL of the objects from every template set are thrown in the mix.  It would be helpful if the assigned attributes were marked or sorted by which template they’re associated with.

I’ve emailed with Makis (the developer of TemplateBlocks) on several occasions, he is always willing to listen and assist – which is a great asset to the application.

LIME:VC is a very new development that works along the same lines, but the goal was to provide an extremely light-weight framework that would help the back-end developer create front-end content quickly.  It’s not CMS-oriented like TemplateBlocks, it’s slightly more manual, but it’s equally as easy to setup and use.

Louis Stowasser (developer) is the primary on the project, and has been working to implement plug-ins – a CMS plug-in exists at the moment.   By developing the add-on components as plug-ins, it frees up the developer to “customize” an install instance so that each instance isn’t dragging around dead weight or utilizing/committing server-resources that are not needed to make the application run. It’s programming  follows the Model-View-Controller design pattern to ensure clean code & reduce redundancy.

Keep an eye on LIME:VC in the future, it appears to be an upcoming trend as far as how applications may be made in the future using 3.0 technology (instance/object-based functionality that encompasses only the required applications to build out an instance of the LIME).

Products like WordPress, Joomla, etc… have been used for years as a make-shift framework to help expedite website production, but along with all the dead weight/luggage, comes an entire array of site variables.  Variables as which plugins are compatible with which version of the product (as it upgrades frequently), and how will upgrades effect customizations of the current instance.

If you can, download and try both TemplateBlocks & LIME:VC, and install them.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised how easy they both are to work with.   Using a framework will free up time to focus on the code more than the orchestration of building the actual pages.  More importantly, a framework will only effect the items that are implemented – separating the business layer logic – and not jeopardizing functionality during an upgrade/update.

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Google Sitemap Generator
This plugin generates a XML-Sitemap compliant sitemap of your WordPress blog. This format is supported by Ask.com, Google, YAHOO and MSN Search. If you have any intention of using the webmaster tools – you should get this plugin so you can keep your sitemaps current & prevent any hold ups from your site not being current with current tags/etc…

Digg-Digg
This is another program that gives your blog visitor’s the opportunity to make it accessible to share a post in a network that can potentially drive more traffic to your site. The integrate “Digg Button” , “Reddit Me Button” , “Dzone Button” and “Yahoo Buzz Button” Into WordPress Content. Setup screen provided to let user choose where user want to display Digg , Reddit , Dzone and Yahoo Buzz buttons.

Awesomepixgallery
Let’s face it… there isn’t a perfect gallery out there. If it looks good, it’s slow – if it’s ugly is fast and no one wants it anyway. APG is a good compromise between all the features out there. APG does have a superior intergration interface (after you upload pics you have quite a bit of control immediately to place/shape the image).

Email-Users
A plugin for wordpress which allows you to send an email to the registered blog users. Users can send personal emails to each other. Power users can email groups of users and even notify group of users of posts. The best part about this plugin is that you can specify mailing by group, so you only hit the publishers, subscribers/etc…

All in One SEO Pack

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/

http://semperfiwebdesign.com/ I keep going back between this and the headspace2 plugin, both have their advantages. Even though I’m currently on headspace, this is still worth checking out.

Simpler-Contact-Page
Are you tired of all the “bells and whistles” of most WordPress contact forms? Are you exhausted from modifying CSS for hours just to get a contact plugin to display with your theme?
WP-Cache

WP-Cache is an extremely efficient WordPress page caching system to make your site much faster and responsive. It works by caching Worpress pages and storing them in a static file for serving future requests directly from the file rather than loading and compiling the whole PHP code and then building the page from the database. WP-Cache allows to serve hundred of times more pages per second, and to reduce the response time from several tenths of seconds to, supposedly, less than a millisecond.
Google Analytic Plugin

• Google Analyticator supports the following features:
• Standard Google Analytics tracking support
• Provides a widget that can be used to display visitor stat information on the front-end
• External link tracking of all links on the page, including links not managed by WordPress
• Download link tracking
• Support for hiding Administrator visits without effecting Google Analytics’ site overlay feature
• Support for any advanced tracking code Google provides
• Easily installable only requiring the user knows their UID
• Allows code to be placed in the footer to ensure faster load times
• Complete control over options; disable any feature if needed

Socialble Bookmarking Plugin
Social bookmarking sites allow your blog visitors to save, catalog, and share interesting pages they find on your website. The Sociable plugin appends links for your readers to use those sites to the end of each of your blog’s posts – making each post as accessible as possible. I’m currently using Digg Digg, but it doesn’t hurt to stay familiar with updates to the social networking sites. Sometimes what one plugin misses – the other will catch.

*Edited on 01October 2010:

A must see plugin for WordPress:

After the Deadline, you will wonder how you’ve lived without it (seriously)… it’s not just a real-time spell checker, it checks language specific usage, grammer and language syntax (comparative dynamics).

Don’t believe me? Give it a try now!

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Step 1 – Upload
Ok, firstly you need to unzip the file you have downloaded.
It should extract into the following file archive (roughly)

• ./templates
• ./templates/templatename
• ./templates/templatename/templatename.template.php
• ./templates/templatename/snippetname.snippet.php
• ./templates/templatename/chunkname.chunk.php

This will all need to be uploaded (keeping the directory structure in tact) to the root of your Etomite install.
So, to repeat, you need to upload the folder templatename into your templates folder within your webspace.

Step 2 – Install Snippets, Chunks & Templates
If you have a look within your templatename folder that you’ve just uploaded, there is a snippets file.
Any unique snippets that are needed (and not shipped with a full Etomite install), will be located there, each with their own file.
Open your first snippet file. Copy the text.
Open the Etomite manager. Click Manage Resources, then click the snippets tab.
Paste in the text you copied before into the big text area.
Switch back to your folder that you opened the snippet from before. Take a look at the file name. It will be in the format snippetname.snippet.php (it IS case-sensitive). Copy the bit that says snippetname into the first text area above where you copied the snippet into before.

Do the same for the templates (but use the template tab instead); if you want to use it as your new default template, don’t create a new template – edit the Default one that’s already installed by copying and pasting the templatename.template.php file in there.

Do the same for the chunks (but use the chunk tab instead).

You should be all set to go now

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Here are my picks for the most versatile PHP gallery scripts.  You may be surprised at the findings here as my values are different than the average person who wants to share their pictures. My value is based more-so on the flexibility and adaptability of a gallery script rather than being locked out from customizing it.  Gallery scripts are a good asset if you want to show items in a pre-established website/web application and do not want to have to write from scratch.  Reusing this code can help deliver an application expediently, but being able to have it resemble the host site is critical – it must be flexible if it is going to be used as “part of another website”.

Server Test Environment: These were tested these on  Ubuntu Server (LAMP install) – latest version. Approach to install:  Every click and drool wizard feature was attempted – no manual configurations were attempted to ensure the ‘as advertised’ feature would be accurate.

Flexible and adaptable come at a price. Sometimes the only method to add a photo is to ftp it up to the folder (that’s raw/flexible),  but it is considered flexible because a script can be written for exisisting application to control how/where a photo is uploaded.  So while reading these, keep this in mind.  So look for “stand-alone” if having an upload mechnism is a must for you.

You’ll find that most gallery scripts will boast of these features – comments will be limited to the most noticable of these features for each source in this post:

Features:

• On-the-fly Thumbnail/Low resolution picture generation
• Unlimited Categories and Sub-categories (it uses directories)
• Integrated fast text database mode (MySQL also supported if prefered)
• Users comments
• Rating system
• Web/FTP picture upload
• Top Rated/Last Commented/Last added pictures pages
• Slideshow mode
• User level support to protect pictures/directories from unwanted people
• EXIF/IPTC metadata support (hot!) (Only found in phpGraphy)
• Multilingual support (See TranslatorPage for complete list and status)
• Web interface management
• Lossless jpeg rotation support (via exiftran/jpegtran)
• Video, sound and text files support
• Layout/Text very easy to change
• Highly configurable (Themes/Templates)
• Installation Wizard

phpGraphy

http://www.phpgraphy.org/demo/index.php

phpGraphy did everything it boasted of, and was a snap to setup.  This will be one that will be kept around to help the next person that asks for a “quick gallery” install.  It’s lightweight, easy to modify (theme/css) – logic was easy to follow, and painless (which is a key feature).

———————————————————————-

Plogger

http://www.plogger.org/demo/

Looks great, hard to integrate into an exisisting site, and install was less than bulletproof, but it worked after the 2nd try. Theme’s were not easy, but for a stand-alone, it’s useful.

———————————————————————-

Simple Picture Gallery Manager

http://spgm.sourceforge.net/spgm/index.php?

As most do, it generates it own thumbnails and has a stripped down – very modern look.  Makes this script easy to include into another project if a sub-folder install will work for your circumstance.  Ironically, it’s more full-featured than it appears to be (looking at the demo had me believing that this was going to be a very light script).  Even has a few themes made specifically for the application available through the SPGM website making it intended to be a stand-alone gallery script.

———————————————————————-

Qdig

http://qdig.sourceforge.net/qdig/qdig-demo2/index-Dark.php

It’s a one-pager script, but it’s quite details for being one page.  I’m always leary when a script says, “it will adapt to any server environment, but some settings….  http://qdig.sourceforge.net/Qdig/AboutQdig (details of setup).  In my case, setup was a breeze, and it shows well – easily themed, and the flash-like thumbnailing across the bottom made it appear to be more of an application.  Regardless, it worked well as promised.

———————————————————————-

bolGallery

http://bolgallery.free.fr/

With some hesitation this was added, but there are just times you need this.  If you need something that you can just put a pile of jpeg’s into a folder, and send someone a link – this is the ticket….  There are many times where this is the perfect tool.  Want to show someone 340 proofs that you have to individually upload? (No one does!) .   Integration was quite easy, but I probably wouldn’t use this as an end user application, but the concept is great for the times you just need to show someone images quickly.

The quantity of findings were unending while searching for opensource gallery scripts.  Going through all of these gallery scripts will take time, and the task will be split up into parts.  These 5, that I felt were worth mentioning,  were the result of going through 50 scripts.  Please comment on any other projects you would like to suggest.  Part 2 will be coming in the near future.

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I have found an easy way to get around this (my site is hosted on an IIS server) and thought it would only be fair to share it with the world.

Before you begin you need to be able to choose a custom 404 error message as all URL requests are routed through this page as the file does not actually exist.

Download this file by right clicking and choosing “save target as” then filing it somewhere safe. Rename the file to a .php extension, put it in the root of your wordpress site and set your custom 404 error page to that file.

You can now set the permalink structure on your site e.g. “/%category%/%postname%/” – the custom file you have downloaded looks up the content and displays it!

If you need help implementing this contact me and I will do my best to help.

Original article.

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• The Top 10 Open Source Content Management Systems

The Top 10 Open Source Content Management Systems:

1. Drupal
2. WordPress
3. Joomla
4. Media Wiki
5. Liferay
6. TYPO3
7. Moodle
8. Dolphin
9. Pligg
10. Movable Type

Honorable Mention:
Xoops, Geeklog, e107, Mambo, Nucleus

We gave the top spot to Drupal because of its ease of use, vast number of modules, great user, developer, and support community. WordPress is really a close second, but is best for single blog websites and personal publishing, lacking many of the social networking functions, ecommerce facilities, forums, wikis, etc. used on more expansive sites. Joomla has one of the largest user communities of any CMS, and everything you need to develop social networks, ecommerce, & archive sites, but includes too many commercial products for Open Source development, and is more difficult to learn than the top two.

After the top three, the list includes more specialized CMS platforms, like Media Wiki for collaborative document authoring, Moodle for education, and Pligg for social bookmarking. TYPO3, Dolphin, and Liferay all offer unique feature sets and a distinct design that sets them apart from other platforms. Movable Type is a questionable choice for the last spot, and will face strong competition from other blog platforms such as XOOPS, Geeklog, and Nucleus.

For more information or to see the full review and discuss the rankings, visit webdevnews.net.

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While not all the details are known about Carbon, the release is essentially an “installation profile” that combines the core Drupal code base with a set of popular and reliable contributed modules. Views 2, CCK, a WYSISYG editor named Kupu, Voting API & Fivestar, Tagadelic, PathAuto, and Organic Groups are just some of the popular modules that will be included in the release package. Other new features will include Mollom, an anti-spam module developed by Acquia, and Spokes, an auto-update module. There is also a “to be determined” social bookmarking integration slated. Carbon is sure to breathe a new inspiration into the Drupal development and design community. Some worry that it could threaten its Open Source development model, but that has been actively dismissed by Dries himself. Following this example, other design firms may move to build and release installation profiles with paid support that combine upon the core Drupal system and contributed modules with new themes and customizations.

A good discussion on this issue is found on webdevnews.net, and there are also some interesting posts on the Drupal site, such as:

http://drupal.org/node/282254

More information on the release of Carbon can be found on the Acquia website.

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A WYSIWYG editor has a user interface that allows the web designer to see a result very similar to what their website will look like on a web browser. Often, they also include tools that allows a web designer to create a webpage with little or no HTML knowledge, using visual tools. While this can be a good way to put together a page quickly, the code that is produced is often bloated, does not validate, and on some tools, is all table based.

NOTE: Why YWSIWYG editors often have their own rendering engines for displaying your website, be sure to still check it in actual web browsers, to see how the page actually renders. There are times when WYSIWYG editors can be horribly off.

Free WYSIWYG Editors?

For many years, in order to get a good WYSIWYG editor, a web designer would have to buy one of the many commercial packages on the market. In 2005, Daniel Glazman released NVU Version 1. NVU is an open-soruce WYSIWYG editor that is based on the Mozilla Composer source code. It has many of the same features of the popular commercial products, and based on my own personal tests, seems to generate more standard compliant code than Dreamweaver or Expression Web. NVU is a popular choice for web designers and developers looking for a powerful tool for free. As great of a tool as NVU is, it has been discontinued with some bugs going unresolved. For some users, these bugs are a deal breaker, and prevented them from using NVU as their primary development tool.
After NVU was discontinued, Kompozer was created. it uses NVU as a code base, and aims to improve and fix NVU. If you are deciding between one of these two products, you should pick Kompozer, as it is more up-to-date, and has not been officially discontinued (as of this writing), which means there can and probably will still be more future versions released.
If you are new to web design, or just want to try a new tool, I suggest checking out Kompozer (and perhaps NVU). It’s a pretty good tool for HTML and CSS, though doesn’t always play as well with server-side scripting as some commercial products.

Feel free to share your experiences with NVU, Kompozer, or another open-source WYSIWYG editor.

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• Is it crawling your way into the Technorati Top 100 and becoming an A-Lister?
• Is it making money from your blog and becoming a professional blogger?
• Is it having thousands of loyal readers who keep coming back time and time again?

While all of these things could be classed as a making a successful blog it depends on how you measure your success or who is measuring your success. Quite simply, if you are happy with your blog, it is a success and you shouldn’t let anyone tell you any different. Set yourself realistic achievable goals and work towards them. When you reach them, set the next. If you don’t reach them concentrate on your successes and learn from your failures. If it doesn’t work, try something new, but above all keep trying.

I know that, that is a simplistic view but so many people give up blogging after just a short time. I believe that part of this is due to the fact that in the early days of a blog the blogger is talking to themselves and nobody seems to be listening. It is quite easy to become disillusioned and think you have failed when nobody visits. Of course, maybe they weren’t cut out to be bloggers.

So, my first tip for creating a successful blog is perseverance and a good measure of patience. Not many blogs become popular overnight. Yes there are the exceptions but they usually have some other angle that boosts their popularity. For instance how many popular bloggers command an audience because of who they work for or for the project that they contribute to – quite a few I bet.  A readership takes time to build, so you better be in it for the long run.

Once you  start to get a few readers, you’ll want to keep them, so you need to write the best content you can. This is much easier if you know and like the subject you are writing about. I know this sounds obvious, but I have read blogs where the writer appears to know nothing about the subject. I think the key here is that you need to write with authority and build a good reputation with your readers. You can only do this if you know what you are writing about.

Be yourself and write sincerely. There are successful fictional blogs but you need to be good and know the subject extremely well. What I am trying to say here is don’t adopt a false persona and create a fictional being who writes your blog unless you are a very good writer and can pull it off. Don’t pretend to be something you are not.  If you are yourself, you will sound sincere and that will come through in your writing. 

How often you post is always one of those questions that will get different answers depending on who you talk to and depends on what you are writing about. It also depends on how much time you want to commit. Some subjects need to be posted about several times a day, news sites for instance, where others may be fine twice a week. I think you need to work this out for yourself but I visit my favourite blogs once a day. I’m always disappointed if there isn’t a new post so once a day seems a good idea.

For me, that the most important aspects of creating a successful blog. Perseverance, posting good, sincere content and posted often enough to keep your readers interested.

I have only touched on a fraction of what could be said about creating a successful blog and there has been masses written on the subject. I would suggest you take a look at the blogs I linked to earlier if you want some more.

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