Reviews

Web Hosting Providers for Common Backend Languages

June 25, 2013 By Jake Rocheleau

Building your own website does not usually require a backend programming language. Simple HTML/CSS files are enough to get your content online. But in the modern era of web design it is more typical for webmasters to launch a project using some type of CMS(Content Management System). These are built on a number of popular backend languages such as Ruby, PHP, or ASP.

In this guide I want to present some helpful resources to determine web hosting for these various languages. PHP has been a really popular solution around the world for many years now. But the open source Ruby on Rails has been gaining a massive following. It is important to distinguish between these different server environments and why you may consider choose one over another.

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Review: Logomyway

June 15, 2010 By Lorraine

You need a logo. As a designer, I’m of the opinion that nearly everything needs a logo- from a multimillion-dollar company to a cookie-baking business. It’s one of the most essential elements of branding.

Which brings me to my review today: Logomyway is a service that

“connects business that need logo designs, t-shirt design, business cards and print ads to a community of more than 5000 designers in over 100 countries who compete to win contests with winnings ranging from $200 to $1000.”

Here’s how it works:

Client posts his design needs in a “contest” form.
Designers submit designs based on those needs.
Client selects a design from the submissions.
The Designer of the winning submission earns from $200 to $1000 depending on what the budget of the Client was. Logomyway earns 10% of the winnings.

Clients are able to rate and comment on submissions as they come in, to help clarify things for participating Designers.

A new section on the site is the Marketplace, featuring ready-made logos for Clients to select from and receive, complete with their company name, in 24 hours.

The setup is simple, and familiar- and yes, it does seem a lot like “spec-work”, which is something I personally am strongly against. Designers, especially web designers, are already too undervalued.

That said, I do think Logomyway does its best to protect the interests of both its Clients and its Designers- they provide codes of conduct for both. At the end of the day, it’s clear to me why it’s such a popular service:

It’s popular for Clients, especially those with a limited budget. A professionally designed logo- and yes, I’ve seen quite a few good ones here- for $200 is a bargain. There’s no need to hire a design studio, and there are multiple designers working on your logo at once, which may be a good thing for Clients who don’t know what style they want until they see it.

It’s also popular for Designers, especially those starting out without a proper portfolio. Submitting designs is a way to get extra exposure, and if your submission wins, then you get paid at least $200 (minus the 10% commission fee, of course). There’s no fee for participating- and spending several hours on design submissions is certainly more productive than spending it playing Farmville. Isn’t it?

Review: BrowserSeal Cross-Browser Screenshot Tool

May 18, 2010 By Lorraine

It’s the part of a web development project I like the least: the testing and retesting, tweaking and retweaking before going live. And yet it’s one of- if not the– most important things to do: making sure that every element on every page looks as correct as possible to as many visitors as possible.

Which is why I was excited to try out BrowserSeal for this review. The makers of BrowserSeal describe it as “the fastest multi browser website screenshot tool available today”. Now, these kinds of services have been around for a while now- BrowserCam, BrowserShots, and Adobe’s BrowserLab for example, are three that I’ve used previously- and I was expecting something similar to these.

From the get-go, though, BrowserSeal is different. It’s a stand-alone program, first of all- which means you download and install it on your PC (no Mac version right now). It’s important to know that it’s a Java program, so you’ll need to have Java installed- and the file you’re downloading is in .jar format.

Installation is pretty painless, although it does take some time. That’s because BrowserSeal has all the major browsers built-in – as you’ll see from this screenshot:

Now here’s the main window of BrowserSeal. Simply type in the URL to begin the test.

It took around 3-5 minutes total for BrowserSeal to open my website in each browser, and take a screenshot of it…

… after which it presents me with all of the screenshots all at once, in separate tabs.

And that, basically, is how BrowserSeal works. See why it’s so neat? No need to install all browsers and keep them running while you test and tweak- the program does it for you automatically. At a glance, I can tell if my site looks awful in IE6, if something’s off in Opera, and so on. It also handles pages with vertical and horizontal scrollbars well, supports authentication and screenshot delay (for example, if you need give that Flash slideshow time to load).

The application is not perfect- I wish the interface design was slicker, smoother and more user-friendly. I also got a few “Time Out” errors, with no specific explanation for the timeouts. Oh, and of course- no Mac version.

The bottom line, though, is that BrowserSeal does what it says: it takes screenshots of your website on multiple browsers, and does this fast. And when you’re chasing a deadline, speed is good.

*Update: I forgot to mention that BrowserSeal also has a BrowserSeal.Robot version, which features a command-line interface and automatic batch mode multiple URL processing. Which translates into even more speed for you. Here’s a screenshot of it in action (learn more here):

BrowserSeal .Robot in action

Disclosure: We were provided a copy of BrowserSeal to use for review purposes. Standard version is $49, .Robot version is $199, and there’s also a trial version available.

Monetize Your Site by Reviewing Products You Already Use

March 10, 2009 By Dee Barizo

If you want to make some extra money from your site, an effective monetization method is reviewing products that help you with your web work.

Make a list of products you use in your work and see if there is an affiliate program for that product. Then, write in-depth reviews of those products. Here are some ideas to get you started.

If you’re a web developer, you may have read some books that helped you learn how to code.
Are you satisfied with your web hosting? If you are, check to see if your host has an affiliate program.
If you’re a freelancer, you probably use software to help you run your business. Many web apps have an affiliate program and you can sell off-the-shelf software through Amazon.com.

SEO Tip

Don’t get too creative with your titles. State the product and then add the word review. This will help you attract traffic from internet users searching for the product name.

So don’t use a title like Here is a Great Time Management Book. Instead, try Getting Things Done Book Review.

High Quality Traffic

Reviews may not get you a lot of traffic. However, the traffic that comes from reviews is high quality traffic. People searching for reviews are usually more likely to buy than the average internet searcher. Search terms related to product reviews show an intent to buy whereas most other search terms are used by people only looking for information.

Compare tv american idol schedule guide with tv american idol dvd review. The person using the first keyword just wants to know when American Idol comes on TV while the person using the second keyword is thinking about buying.

This is why I like to call the phrases related to products “money keywords.” Even if you don’t get a lot of traffic to your reviews, you’ll earn more money per visitor from that traffic than your other traffic.

How Much Traffic Can You Expect?

The success of this monetization strategy depends largely on two things: (1) how popular the product is and (2) how much authority your site has.

Reviewing a popular product should lead to more traffic. However, if a product is very popular, many people will review it so you’ll have a lot of competition on the search results pages.

This is where your site’s authority comes into play. Authority is basically how much the search engines like your site. Sites with more authority will rank higher than sites with lower authority. The main way to increase your authority is to get links from quality sites.

Over to You

What products could you review and recommend to other web workers?

Friday Focus #51

October 26, 2007 By Devlounge

We are now just one week out from the first anniversary of Friday Focus. It’s kind of weird to be sitting here thinking how quickly a year has really gone by…but I’ll get into all this reflection stuff next week. Enjoy the upcoming weekend everyone. Next weekend is November.

Sites of the Week

DreamsDrive is the personal portfolio of Roy Ng. Small and compact is the best way to describe this baby. It could definitely qualify as one of the smallest portfolios as ever seen. What do you think?

Second this week is FutureFabric. Cool name, even cooler work. FutureFabric is the portfolio of Guy Moorhouse, who also works at Airside.

Wrapping up this week is the portfolio of Marius Roosendaal. This site makes the list because of its two themed designs. Based on what time of day it is, it will either show a day (light colored) or night (dark colored) version of the site. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Hot Spot: Jobberbase

Check out this cool piece of script I came across this week. Jobberbase is an open source Job board application that will give you the ability to run your own job board. I know there are already plenty of paid job boards out there, so why would I be encouraging you to start your own? Well, Jobberbase seems like a great solution for anyone who may be looking to add a job board to their own site specifically for their visitors and a specific category. If anyone has used or starts using this, let me know how it is.

Jobberbase

Digg Weekly

Design – 99 Useful Resources for Graphic Designers
From the Digg description: I have used every one of these resources as a graphic designer and website developer and have hand picked all of these resources based on their usefulness and overall quality.

Programming – Protecting Your PHP/MySQL Applications from SQL Injection
From the Digg description: SQL injection is a serious concern for webmasters, as an experienced attacker can use this hacking technique to gain access to sensitive data and/or potentially cripple your database. Are you safe?