Category Archives: Website Building

Good Free Software Tools for Web Development

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If you’re like me, you don’t really have the means to purchase every piece of software that you’ve like to have. I spend a fair amount on software, but I could probably spend three times what I do in order to get most of what I’d like to have.

Here’s a few freebies that I ran across on the XStiePro forum. They’re especially useful if you’re setting up a Website. I’ve got more irons in the fire than I can keep going, but these products are helping immensley.

ColorPic by Iconico. This is a great little program for finding color values. It comes in real handy when you’re trying to match colors in Adsense ads to what you’ve used on a Website. They also have several other programs on their site that you may find useful, some paid, some free.

Colorzilla – This is a FireFox pluging that is very similar to ColorPic. It’s very useful if you see a color scheme that you’d like to save. You can quickly select the ‘eyedropper’, click on the colors you’re after, and you’ve got the values to use on your own site…quick and easy.

WordWeb – This is a fantastic program for free. It’s a ‘one-click’ English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows. It gives you definitions, synonyms, proper nouns, related words and has a 150,000 dictionary, with 120,000 synonym sets. It also includes pronunciations and usage examples, and has helpful spelling and sounds-like links.You can also opt to have Windows speech synth. ‘say’ the word for you. This program is truly a ‘Word Web’…for example, if you click on the word ‘Tree’, and then click ‘Types’…it will give you a long list of types of trees. If you click on ‘Part of’, the program will display things like ‘Forest’ and ‘Wood’. This one is really worth getting. There is also a paid version, WordWeb Pro, but I can’t ever imagine the free version not being enough for me.

Jing by TechSmith Corporation. You’ve probably heard of TechSmith Corporation, or at least their Camtasia Studio screen recording software, or possibly SnagIt, their other well known screen capture software. Jing is a neat little program also. As worded on TechSmith’s site, Jing ‘is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.’

I haven’t played with it a great deal up to this point, but I will say that I love it, and I can see where it’s going to be used here often. You can add text, arrows, etc. to images, but not video. The video (limited to 5 minutes) can, however, have an audio narration track. There could be a few other bells and whistles, but it is FREE remember. I think you’ll like it. Also, there’s a video tour on the site that will show you exactly what it’s all about. Oh, you can also store everything on Screencast.com (2 gigs. free) if you like.

HTTrack – This program is awesome!! It can be used in lots of helpful ways, but remember, with great power, comes great responsibilty. :) Obviously being able to copy a complete Website to your hard drive can be very useful, but someone that has bad intentions could use this software in a criminal manner. Just because you’re able to do something, obviously doesn’t mean that it’s ok. Please use it responsibly.

FireFTP – This is a FireFox addon. If you’re setting up Websites, you’re likely using FTP a lot. I normally use Filezilla, which I really like, but FireFTP is already there in your browser window. I have it installed, but have yet to use it. I’ll give it try the next time I need to use FTP.

MeasureIt – This is another FireFox addon. It’s a simple little program, but it can come in very handy. As the name implies, it’s a ruler for measuring on screen distances. It displays the height and width in pixels.

If you need a ruler that can display in pixels, as well as inches, picas, and centimeters, then JRuler might be what you need. It’s not a FF pluging, but it is very useful. It has an option to immediately find the center of the distance being measured, and with a single click, can ‘flip’ from horizontal to vertical and vice versa.

TreePad Plus – This post is ‘free’ software, and this one is tecnically free, but only for a 21-day trial. I thought I’d list it however, as it looks to be extremely useful. I’ve heard good things about it also. I have it installed now, but can’t recommend it from experience yet. I do plan on playing with it later tonight. It should at least be worth the quick download to try it and see if it’s something that may help you.

I like the fact that it can be run from pretty much any external device (thumb drive, flash drive, memory stick, USB disk, etc.), without the need of an installation. TreePad is advertised as ‘Organizer, Word Processor, Photo Album, Web site Generator, Personal Information Manager, PIM, Database program, and much more!’ You store everything related to your project, hyperlinks, notes, emails, word processing documents, images, everything, in an ‘article’. The articles are then store in ‘nodes’. The nodes are part of the larger ‘tree’ structure. Having everything related to your project in one location would have to be a good thing. Especially with the many drag ‘n drop features.

I should also note that there is a ‘lite’ version of TreePad that is totally free. TreePad Lite can be found here.

Lastly, although not free, if you’re building Websites and want the ease of use that a WYSIWYG program offers, but don’t want the learning curve of Dreamweaver (or the price), have a look at XSitePro.

I had seen ads around the Web for some time before I decided to see what all the hype was about. After having a look, I was hooked. When I bought XSitePro 2, I wasn’t looking to buy ANY software at the time. I was getting by with a free program (Kompozer), but looking back, it was awful compared to XSitePro.

If you’re considering, or will be considering buying Web development software in the future, please have a look at XSP first. You will be glad you did. It’s a fantastic piece of software. Click here for an XSitePro demo video.

Making Your WordPress Blog Look Like a Store

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Personally, I don’t really like just having a WordPress blog that looks like a WordPress blog with ads in every post, and in every inch of the sidebar(s). I know, I know, that’s what this one looks like now, but it’s going to be changed, hopefully soon. I’ve just been concentrating on other things lately.

Anyway, if you trying Affiliate Marketing, but you’re having a rough time setting up a shopping cart or store type of site, then just keep using WordPress, except a modified theme version.

WordPress is a great piece of work, the developers keep updates coming regularly, there’s tons of plugins for it, the search engines love blogs, and IT’S FREE!! What else could you want ?

For the measly cost of some good web hosting, I use both Bluehost and HostGator, the phpBay WordPress plugin, a domain name, some of your time and effort, and you can get a great looking WordPress store online very cheaply.

If you have a look at this guitar site that I put up, you’ll see how easy it is. I will say however regarding this site, it isn’t a flashy, graphic-filled, animated site, mainly because this was my first effort at modifying a WordPress (theme) this much.

I also wanted something simple, but functional. This site has served me pretty well considering I’ve added very little content to it. It has however, dropped to very little traffic because I didn’t keep adding fresh content to it.

After you modify a WP theme, add some ‘text widgets’ in the sidebar(s) as I’ve done, naming them of course to whatever is relative to your store. Then, instead of just writing and displaying posts like a standard blog, you can set up pages instead. Using the phpBay plugin to insert your auctions, and you’ve got a great little store set up with very little work, and not much money.

About the only HTML you’ll need to know is how to add (and display) the link to your page (where the auctions are).

It’s similar to the following:

<a href=”http://ThisIsMyDomain.com/widgets-auctions-page”>Buy My Widgets Here!</a>

Of course you’ll then have the link ‘Buy My Widgets Here!’ being displayed in the text widget of your sidebar.

If you look at ‘The-Guitar-Store‘, that’s exactly what I’ve done. All the items for sale are eBay auction listings. I do need to add a better header, a touch more graphics, and to do a few tweaks, but it wouldn’t take much to make that site very professional looking.

If I average the cost of the phpBay plugin, my hosting and domain registrations over a year, I’m paying probably less than .75 cents per day (figuring just 1 web host). It actually gets cheaper as I add more sites because BlueHost and HostGator allow unlimited domains on my hosting services, and the phpBay plugin can be used on as many sites as you feel like setting up.

I’ve paid for everything and then some already. The rest is pure profit for the first year!!

If anyone has any questions on how to set up a WordPress/phpBay auction site, just click the ‘Contact Us’ link on The Guitar Store site, or this blog.

Fantastic Header Creation Software – XHeader – FREE!!

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I’ve mentioned XSitePro here before, but in case there’s anyone that isn’t exactly sure what it is, I’ll just touch on it before I say anything about XHeader.

XSitePro is simply (in my opinion) the best possible option available if you’re wanting to create Websites. It’s a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) program. I haven’t used Dreamweaver so I won’t say that it’s better. However, from what I’ve heard and read, I seriously doubt there’s any where near the learning curve for XSitePro as there is for Dreamweaver. Of the people that have used both, XSitePro seems to be the overwhelming choice, so that should speak for itself.

XSP is not a minimum features program either. It has virtually everything you could ask for in this type of software. I used to use a free program called Kompozer, which in it’s own right was a pretty good choice for a (free) WYSIWYG program, but it had very limited features.

I do realize that Dreamweaver has a few more features than XSP, but you also pay for those added features. When I bought XSitePro it was $197.00 and I believe it’s still one of the best buys that I’ve ever made on a software package…bar none.

If you’re wanting to put up a quality, nice looking site quickly, it’s a good choice. If you’re ready to do a major site that has to be as good as you can possibly make it, it’s also a good choice. Just need a quick sales page ? XSitePro is an excellent choice.

It comes with a fantastic selection of templates with many different themes, that you can use exactly as they are. Of course you can also modify them to your liking, so there’s no chance that anyone else will have the exact look that your site does. There’s also blank templates that you can customize to your exact design.

With all the page analysis, widgets, and more options than I could hope to cover here, XSitePro is a program that you really need to have a look at before you buy Dreamweaver or any other WYSIWYG Web creation software package. Here’s a 6 page brochure that highlights the features very well, xsitepro2productguide.

This was about XHeader though. In case you haven’t figured it out by the name, XHeaderPro is by the same Company, Intellimon, Ltd. (Paul Smithson), and is as feature rich as XSitePro. It’s extremely easy to use and allows you to make awesome headers. I won’t go into details about it though, because it’s so easy to use, you can download it and have a beautiful header created in just a few minutes. There’s a video to show you how to use it, but you wouldn’t even need it to figure the software out.

I just about bought another highly regarded header creation piece of software (for $97.00) before finding out about XHeaderPro. It also does a wonderful job, but it doesn’t look to have a thing on XHeaderPro. As I mentioned in the title…the software is completely free also!!

With just XSitePro and XHeader, you would have pretty much everything you could ask for to create top quality, fantastic Websites. Realistically a good graphics program would come in handy also, but a quick download of Gimp, which is everything (and more) most users would ever need, would give you a complete arsenal to designing sites that you can be extremely proud of.

If you’re into, or just getting into Affiliate Marketing, XSitePro is geared for for you, having built in options for adding Google AdSense ads, as well as other advertising, and other convenient options for marketing.

Consider XSitePro and XHeader to build your Website(s). I think you’ll find that there’s no better options available, regardless of how much money you spend.

The XHeader software is a full release version (version 1), it’s not a beta release.