Resources I Relied On When Creating My Blog

Well, it may be obvious to most, but to those who aren’t aware, this blog runs on the WordPress blogging platform. When designing and coding the site it was sometimes a chore to locate the tools I needed to get the job done. That being said, I thought it would be useful to create a list of the resources I used in going from concept to finished site.

Wordpress and Plugins

• Google XML Sitemaps (this is excellent for automatically generating a sitemap and notifying Google each time you update your blog. )
• Akismet (this comes packaged with WordPress but you must activate it to keep comment spam at bay.)
• Filosofo Gravatars (for displaying a commenter’s gravatar when applicable, although I may soon be switching to something using mybloglog instead.)
• Similar Posts (For automatically recommending posts that are similar to the one being viewed - obviously not very useful to me right now as there isn’t much content.)
• Subscribe to comments (To allow visitors to be notified via email when someone posts a comment on an article they have commented on.)
• Commentluv (Automatically attempts to find a commenter’s RSS feed if applicable and display their latest headline with any comments they leave.)
• PHP Exec (To execute PHP code within WordPress posts.

There are quite a few more plugins I have tried out any may implement in the future. I may use a flickr plugin and a last.fm plugin to display my latest submissions to those sites.

Firefox Plugins

Firefox is my browser of choice for many reasons, its extensibility is one of them.

• Firebug (this extenstion is amazing when you are designing and need to make small tweaks to get your css just right, it cut down on tons of debug time for me.)
• IETab (Enables a tab to render pages using your installed Internet Explorer engine, useful for cross browser testing - doesn’t work in tandem with FireBug though.)
• MeasureIt (Allows you to click on an icon and measure anything you see in your browser window, also great for small tweaks to css.)
• ColorZilla (use a color picker to find out what any color on any web page is and even copy it in hex format if you want)
• Super DragAndGo (While not really a web developer extension, this allows me to click and hold a link and drag it to open it in a new tab - it’s like “throwing” a link to open a new tab for it.)

Online Resources

• Browsershots (tool for generating screenshots in a ridiculous number of browsers you probably don’t have access to. Wait times can be painful though.)
• W3Schools (a simple, straightforward css reference)
• Colourlovers (great idea generator for color palettes)
• Smashing Magazine (awesome repository of resources for both web and graphic designers)

Software

• Notepad++ (Great for editing many files, recently became my editor of choice over editplus)
• FlashFXP (Also a new program for me, up until recently I used SmartFTP)
• xampp (enabled me to install wordpress locally on a Windows machine, great for a fast testing environment)
• iTunes (for keeping the music rolling without a hitch - also see my last.fm profile)
• multiple IE (allows standalone installations of Internet Explorer back to version 3 for testing layouts - essential after I realized browsershots was taking way too long for my liking)

More to come…