There are a lot of tools out there to help you identify your SEO strengths and weaknesses, from services that monitor your keyword rankings on popular search engines (SERP, or Search Engine Results Page) to more complete, premium solutions that tell you exactly what you should change to make your site rank better.

DIYSEO

DIYSEO claims to be a “web-based solution for small businesses to get search engine traffic at a fraction of the cost.” It’s basically a tool that allows you to coordinate and plan your SEO strategy, act on it based on their suggestions and finally measure and analyze the results. It costs either $49/mo or $499/yr if paid in advance, both options with a 7-day free trial.

GinzaMetrics

GinzaMetrics is a new YC-backed company that allows you to “monitor search engine rankings, track conversions and improve your SEO.” It’s geared towards larger companies and agencies by providing enterprise-grade SEO/SEM solutions. Prices vary depending on the amount of keywords you need to use, ranging from a free plan to $999/mo for their most expensive option.

SheerSEO

SheerSEO is an SEO software to track and analyze your SEO campaign that also helps you with link building. This is one of the more feature-rich applications that tracks a load of information, from keywords to rankings to social media relevance. It’s a powerful tool that’s priced pretty reasonably, with plans starting at $7/mo and going up to $199/mo for agencies.

SEO Rank Monitor

SEO Rank Monitor is all about tracking keywords – how your website ranks for multiple keywords, how your competitors rank and understanding organic search growth. They offer two plans, a basic that tracks 1 website and 100 keywords ($19/mo) and a pro plan that tracks 10 websites and up to 2500 keywords ($39/mo).

AuthorityLabs

Another SERP/keyword monitoring service similar to SEO Rank Monitor but even simpler (more bare-bones). Their pricing is also similar however they seem to offer a better bang for the buck in terms of number of sites you can watch, and they even have a live demo which is nice.

SEMRush

I’ve been playing with this site for the past couple of days but I’m already a fan – you can test it out by going to their site and entering any domain name to find how that site ranks for many keywords. It’s highly useful for finding relevant keywords to build on, however they limit the free results to the top 10 keywords. Their premium plans start at $59/mo and allow up to 10,000 results per report, plus they give you API access, which is very cool.

Raven

Raven Tools is another full-fledged SEO service that helps you monitor keywords, social media buzz and even integrates with Google Analytics to generate custom reports based on your traffic. Their base plan starts at $19/mo and provides 100 keyword ranking results, however all plans come with a 30-day trial.

SEOMoz Tools

The guys (and gals) at SEOMoz have created a number of free and paid tools that help you view backlinks, identify keywords and a “geotargeting detector” that tells you how well your website is targeted towards a certain geographic area.

SEORush

SEORush provides a quick overview of how well your site is indexed, traffic rankings and the number of social media bookmarks it has for a few popular networks. I would suggest using this tool together with something like QuarkBase to get a quick overview of the popularity of a site, and to get some quick ideas for keyword generation.

KeywordEnvy

Keyword Envy is just a quick and dirty tool to check how a website ranks for up to 5 keywords on several search engines. They also offer paid plans that offer more keywords and a few additional features.

Conclusion

Do you have any other tools you use to monitor and check the SEO status of your websites? If so suggest them in the comments and I’ll add them to the list!

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• 12 Ways to Market Your Website For Free

When to Create a Mobile Site

Having a mobile-friendly website can be absolutely critical for businesses in certain markets. Sites that feature a stream of user-generated content are likely targets by their mobile-savvy users. An e-commerce business can increase sales and conversions by making sure their storefront is mobile-friendly. Even a web design studio or graphic designer can benefit from a mobile site, as it can provide an easy way to show off your portfolio to a potential client in impromptu situations.

That said, the majority of websites can probably still get by without a mobile version of their site. Just like how you should cater your website to your audience, until the percentage of mobile traffic for your site nears 2-10%, depending on number of visitors, it’s probably not worth investing the time and resources to create a mobile version of it yet. You should still keep it on your list of website to-dos, just don’t prioritize it over more critical tasks until it’s worthwhile to do so.

If any of the following are true, you should probably consider making a mobile version of your site:

• at least 5-10% of the visitors are coming from mobile devices
• you sell a product that users might buy when they’re on the go (tickets, music, games, etc)
• your site is powered by user generated content (why not let them produce content from anywhere?)
• your site relates to the mobile industry in any way, shape or form

The last one seems pretty obvious but I’ve come across many iPhone app review sites and even mobile app developer sites that look terrible (or require years of scrolling) in mobile browsers.

Technologies Available

Fortunately for web developers, there are a lot of tools and technologies available to help you create a mobile-friendly version of your site. The easiest solution is to use a custom stylesheet for mobile browsers, however that may be a hit or miss depending on which OS and browser the visitor is actually using. Personally, I prefer using the a bit of PHP code to determine if the visitor is using a mobile browser and if so, display a custom stylesheet.

Rich Mobile Applications

If you’re interested in creating a custom, interactive mobile application for your users, there are a few options to consider. Rich applications are more than just custom stylesheets, they offer a whole new level of interactivity and make use of asynchronous technology to make the overall experience seamless for the user. Good examples of this are the Facebook app and West Virginia University’s mobile page. The latter makes use of jQTouch, a highly extensible jQuery plugin that makes developing asynchronous mobile applications much easier than it should be.

The jQuery team also recently announced jQuery Mobile, their own framework for developing rich mobile applications that are compatible with the majority of mobile web browsers and devices. This project has stirred a lot of excitement and controversy, as the fate of jQTouch and similar competitors will most likely be impacted by this official plugin. For developers, it’s probably a safe bet to stick with jQTouch for now, as jQuery Mobile isn’t scheduled for release until late 2010. Even after it’s initial release, it’s probably wiser to wait a few months until a fully stable version is released and all the major bugs are ironed out.

Plugins

There are several plugins and extensions that can make it easy to create mobile websites as well, especially for blogs. The WordPress plugin directory is a great place to start:

• WordPress Mobile Edition
• Mobilize by Mippin wordpress plugin
• WordPress Mobile Pack
• WordPress Mobile Admin

Also worthy of mention is PadPressed, a new plugin that automatically generates a great looking iPad version of your blog.

Conclusion

As I mentioned above, the need to develop a mobile-friendly website is dependent on the demographics of your audience. If you receive a lot of mobile traffic, it is crucial for you to make sure their experience is enjoyable. If this is not the case, you can push the task further down your list of to-do’s however I advise against taking it off your list completely. As more and more people start browsing on the go, the need for a mobile site is only going to increase.

For most websites, a mobile version can be as simple as a custom stylesheet or activating a plugin, both of which can be done in a day or less. Even if only a handful of visitors benefit from this, in terms of opportunity costs it is completely worth it (especially if you plan on monetizing your visitors now or in the future). On the other hand, rich applications require time and possibly money to develop, so commit only when it makes sense to.

Further Reading

• Introduction to W3C’s Mobile Web Best Practices
• Mobile 1: Introduction to the mobile web by Opera
• Mobile Web Design: Is it Worth It?
• A Beginner’s Guide to Mobile Web Development

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• 15 Awesome New WordPress Plugins
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• How to Migrate Your WordPress Blog Between Hosting Providers

After The Deadline For Comments by Otto

If you’re not using it, I highly recommend the After the Deadline plugin, which provides contextual spell checking and grammar checking to your blog posts. This plugin extends that functionality to comments (demo).

DukaPress by DukaPress.org

DukaPress is open source software that can be used to build online shops quickly and easily. DukaPress is built on top of WordPress, a world class content management system. DukaPress is built to be both simple and elegant yet powerful and scalable.

Page Template Thumbnails by C. Tullos

This plugin creates a thumbnail list of the available page templates. Clicking a thumbnail updates the Page Attributes -> Templates drop down to the corresponding page template.

Basic Authentication by Klaas Cuvelier

With this plugin, you can ask users to authenticate before they can see your WordPress site. You can either use the WordPress logins to authenticate, or a given password. This plugin can be useful when your website is still under construction or in beta.

Top Contributors by Robin Dalton

Give your loyal visitors and contributors some recognition by adding a list of your top commenters to your blog.

Auto Twitter by Unreal Media

Auto Twitter is a wordpress plugin that automatically tweets each new blog post to the twitter account you specify. There really isn’t anything more to it than that.

WP-IssueTracker by Mahmoud Sakr

WP-IssueTracker is a full (yet basic) issue tracking system powered by WordPress. Currently WP-IT can operate one tracker per blog, however the back-end was designed to allow as many trackers as you might want. This will be targeted in a later release.

WordPress 3 Invoices by Elliot Condon

This plugin lets you generate great looking invoices directly from your WordPress admin panel. Great for freelancers and web designers, definitely worth checking out!

WP ImageHost by Hauke Leweling

The WordPress Plugin WP ImageHost is a simple and easy to configurable plugin to host your images inside your blogposts on a separate subdomain to reduce the number of requests.

Registration-Login by Md. Jamal Hossain Khan

Add a JavaScript loaded widget to your WordPress theme so user can login, registers without leaving the current page.

Remove WordPress to WordPress by Tom Lany

WordPress introduced a new filter called capital_P_dangit that changes all instances of WordPress to WordPress, stirring controversy in the WP community. This plugin removes that filter.

Tabs in Post Editor by Aaron Harun

This simple plugin allows you to use the tab-key inside the post editor to indent code or paragraphs.

Index Press by GrandSlambert

Provides a standard index of content in your site using a short code. Sorts results into alphabetical listings.

WP Chat by Abhinav Singh

WP Chat plugin embeds Jaxl IM (Instant Messenger for the web) for wordpress blogs. Jaxl IM is a hosted solution provided by Jaxl Inc. and requires no additional plugins from your site servers.

BM Shots by BinaryMoon

So this one isn’t that new but very worthy of being in the list. BM Shots is a plugin that makes use of WordPress.com mShots API for automatically creating screenshots of any website.

Conclusion

I try to visit the new plugins section at least once a week to get an idea of what people are working on, the kinds of problems people are trying to solve and to see if there’s anything I can use on my own sites. I’m always amazed at the sheer amount of creativity that people have when it comes to plugins, it’s often very entertaining to browse through.

Have you started using a new plugin that you’ve fallen in love with? Share it in the comments!

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• Sharebar WordPress Plugin
• How to Migrate Your WordPress Blog Between Hosting Providers
• An Introduction to Mobile Web Development

The following is a compilation of the top 5 free, web-based screencasting apps available right now:

1. Screencast-O-Matic

Screencast-O-Matic offers a free and paid service, with the free service allowing you to record watermarked videos of 15 mins in length (or 10 mins if exporting to YouTube). The paid service has a one-time $5 fee, bumps record time to 1 hour and removes the pesky watermark (not a bad deal!).

2. Screentoaster

Screentoaster is another 1-click recording service that is completely free and provides the user registration so you can access/manage your screencasts from any computer. I found their new capture tool fantastic – it worked fast and effectively, plus the preset size options were very convenient.

3. ScreenCastle

This one is dead-simple – on the homepage you’re greeted with a giant red button that, when clicked, loads the Java applet to record any portion of your screen. Once you’re done recording, the video is uploaded to their servers and you’re given an array of links, including one to view the video and another to the FLV file (in case you need to download it). There are no user accounts or paid plans, this app follows the KISS principle to the T.

4. ScreenJelly

ScreenJelly is another 1-click service that also gives you the option to create an account and manage all of your recordings. Once you’ve recorded a video, you can easily share it on Twitter or Facebook for maximum exposure. This service is pretty useful for quick recordings, however there is a 3-minute time limit.

5. Screenr

This one is probably my favorite of the bunch, not because of it’s feature set or recording, but rather the complete experience it provides. Screenr makes it easy and more importantly worthwhile to share your screencasts using Twitter, leveraging your own network of friends for maximum exposure.

The recording tool is great, the commenting system (via Twitter) is awesome and overall the site feels trendy and complete. The public stream is also fun to browse and actually has screencasts you may just find interesting. My only gripe with this otherwise excellent service is their 5-min limit.

Conclusion

If you need to record a screencast, try out one of the above services – they’re often just as good (in terms of quality) as a downloadable application and remove one step from the video tutorial process: uploading. Most allow you to manage your videos from a central location and at least a couple have great sharing features to get your videos some immediate exposure.

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• Tweet
• Share
• Email

Note: I’m moving support for this plugin from the comments to the Discussion Forum in hopes of keeping things more organized. Please post your support questions and requests there.

My first ever WordPress plugin! Sharebar adds a dynamic and fully customizable vertical box to the left of a blog post that contains links/buttons to popular social networking sites. For wide blogs, a vertical bar with popular sharing icons appears on the left of your post. If the page is resized, the vertical bar disappears and a horizontal sharebar appears under the post title.

This Sharebar isn’t a new idea at all, in fact the plugin is meant to mimic Mashable’s bar almost exactly. I most recently saw the effect on Inc. Magazine and after trying to find a plugin for it without success, I decided to make one myself. As with all of my plugins, I tried to keep things simple but customizable, so some effects were sacrificed for performance gains.

Try it Out!

I’ve enabled the plugin on this page so you can try it out – it should appear to the left of the post. If you resize the browser to less than 1000px, the sharebar should disappear from the left and a horizontal Sharebar will appear beneath the post title.

Download

You can view the plugin details at WordPress.org or view a simple demo.

Usage Instructions

WordPress makes the process pretty painless: download the plugin, upload it to your plugins directory and activate it in the WordPress admin panel. The plugin is enabled automatically when you activate it so that’s really all there is to it.

Settings and Customization

You can change nearly everything about the plugin from the Sharebar settings page (in the WordPress admin under Settings). The main page displays all of the active plugins – from here you can change their order, edit the button code or delete them. You can also add new buttons or reset them to the default configuration, which features TweetMeme, Facebook, Google Buzz, Digg and a standard e-mail button.

The Settings page allows you to disable the plugin from automatically adding the sharebars – this is useful if you’d like to position them somewhere other than before the post content. You might need to do this if your template or theme uses the overflow CSS position, as that may sometimes prevent the Sharebar from being visible outside of it’s container element. You can also disable the horizontal share bar that appears beneath the post title, change the location of the main vertical Sharebar (left or right) or adjust the offset/margin of the Sharebar element.

Lastly, you can also change the way the Sharebar element itself looks by modifying the CSS file found in the plugin folder. The design of the bar is meant to generic, feel free to customize it to fit your needs.

Compatability

I’ve tested the plugin on Firefox 3, IE7, Safari, Chrome and Opera – it seems to work fine in all of them. How it looks on your blog can depend on your theme and CSS files, however, so check those files first to identify the problem (the overflow:hidden; CSS declaration can hide the bar at times).

Final Remarks

Since this is my first WordPress plugin, please let me know what you think and if it’s useful to you. I’d love to hear suggestions on how to improve it. This is my first public foray into WordPress development but I’ve also been making a lot of progress on my custom themes framework, I think a lot of you will like them once they’re released as well. Also, all of the files are on Github, so feel free to fork away!

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• 15 Awesome New WordPress Plugins
• Simple Threaded Comments with jCollapsible (new jQuery Plugin)
• Griddy: Simple Grid Overlay Plugin for jQuery

The plugin has been tested (and works fine) on Firefox 3, Chrome 5, IE7+, Safari 4 and Opera 10. It should work on older browsers too though the CSS may need to be fiddled with.

Example

This page actually has the plugin enabled – you can see it in action on the following list or in the comments section!

• Test Parent
  • Test Child
  • Test Child 2
• Test Parent 2 (childless)
• Test Parent 3
  • Test Child
    • Child Level 3
  • Test Child 2

Download

You can download the full source, minified version or view the example online.

Usage Instructions

SliderNav is super easy to use, but first you have to load JQuery, the plugin and the relevant CSS file in order to use it:

Simple enough – just include JQuery (1.3.2 and up), the jCollapsible file and then call the function with your settings.

Customize the Icon or Use Images Instead

While I did try to keep the plugin lightweight, I also wanted to make it somewhat extensible by adding a few different options, including:

• defaulthide – hide all children by default (default: true)
• symbolhide – symbol to hide child elements (default: -)
• symbolshow – symbol to show child elements (default: +)
• imagehide – image to hide child elements (default: null)
• imageshow – image to show child elements (default: null)
• xoffset – amount pixels to move symbol/image horizontally (default: -15)
• yoffset – amount pixels to move symbol/image vertically (default: 0)

Please note that the image values are null by default (using symbol instead) and the offset values are there to fine-tune the location of the image/symbol.

The Code

For those who are curious, here is the source for the code:

I wasn’t exaggerating when I said this plugin was simple! It first few lines initialize the plugin/function and set the default values. The each function creates the actual expand/collapse icons and the last function (click) just toggles the child elements.

Final Thoughts

This plugin actually comes from a function I wrote for one of my personal projects, I just thought some of you guys may find it useful so I’ve wrapped it up as a plugin. If you do use it (or like it), please leave some feedback, good or bad – it’s highly appreciated and helps me produce better work.

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• Griddy: Simple Grid Overlay Plugin for jQuery
• SliderNav: iPhone Style Contact Lists Using jQuery and CSS
• Sharebar WordPress Plugin

Visualize Your Thoughts

The easiest way to do this is to write everything about your idea down on a piece of paper. It’s important to plan ahead during the brainstorming process, as chances are your time is valuable and should be spent wisely. Try to ask yourself:

• Why am I making this? Does it solve a need?
• Is it worth the effort? How?
• Can it be monetized? Does it need to be?
• How much will it cost to do this, in terms of time and money? Can I afford this?
• What does it need to have? What do I ultimately want from it?

Mind Maps

Wikipedia defines a mind map as “a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged around a central key word or idea.” Simply put, a mind map the visualization of your idea and concepts using a diagram. Mind maps can be a valuable asset in brainstorming and planning ahead, as they can offer an overview of what you are trying to achieve and how each element interacts with each other.

Mind maps can be used for anything you can think of – from class presentations to database schemas, they are perfect for understanding relationships between objects. I’ve found that at times of frustration, looking back at my notes and mind maps can help to focus my thought process and even boost moral, as I can see a visual representation of the end-product or goal.

The following are some tools that can help you visualize your thoughts using mind maps:

FreeMind

A Java-based, open-source tool that is cross-platform and has an active community of developers.

Mindomo

Mindomo is a web-based tool that has an interface similar to Microsoft Word (complete with an extensive ribbon). Being web-based, you can access your mind maps from any computer with internet access. Their paid plans also allow multiple people to make edits or comment on existing mind maps.

XMind

XMind claims it is the “world’s coolest brainstorming and mind mapping software and the best way to share your ideas” and while I wouldn’t go that far, their software is pretty excellent. They are open source and provide a host of features, the coolest (in my opinion) being that you can easily export maps as HTML, images or just plain text. You can also share your work online, or check out maps that others have shared.

MindMeister

Similar to Mindomo, MindMeister is another web-based tool that lets you create and collaborate on mind maps. This is probably the simplest and most user-friendly of the bunch – in fact, it’s so easy a caveman could do it. Their premium/paid plans have the added bonus of file uploads, offline editing capabilities and custom branding.

No related posts.

Griddy is a small JQuery plugin thats creates a simple, customizable grid overlay on top of any element. It can also calculate row heights and column widths automatically based on the number of rows/columns and gutter space. Initially the plugin was pretty limited and did only what I needed to, however after deciding to make it public I added a few options, including:

• rows (#, default = 10, use 0 to disable)
• rowheight (px, default = 0 [auto])
• rowgutter (px, default = 20)
• columns (#, default = 4, use 0 to disable)
• columnwidth (px, default = 0 [auto])
• columngutter (px, default = 20)
• color (hex, default = #ccc)
• opacity (0-100, default = 30)

You can see the default values in the plugin code itself (all sizes in pixels). All of the styling is done inline (yuck!) to avoid linking to an external CSS file or having to use images. The numbers on top are column widths, the numbers running along the left side are row heights.

Try It Out

Click on the ‘Toggle Griddy‘ button on the top right. I’ve tested it in Safari, Chrome, IE7 and FF3, all seem to work fine. You can apply Griddy to multiple elements – it seems to work fine so far though I haven’t done a lot of testing with it.

The Code

You’ll find the code below but if you prefer, you can download it as well (and include it like any other JQuery plugin). You can also check out the example page if you’d like.

Final Words

The plugin started out pretty bare-bones and I tried to add a few features without taking away from the main utility. If you have any improvements or suggestions for it, please leave them in the comments. If there’s interest in this plugin I’ll add a summary box somewhere on the grid that displays the basic info for each Griddy box. Your feedback is appreciated!

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• New Features in jQuery UI 1.8 That Designers Will Love

Absolute Necessities

Firebug

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.

Web Developer

The Web Developer extension adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools that allow you to manage display settings and edit a number of things, including: cookies, CSS, forms, images, outlines and site validation.

Greasemonkey

Greasemonkey is a Firefox add-on that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function with any of the scripts found at UserScripts.org, or using one you create yourself.

Screengrab!

Screengrab! saves webpages as images. It will capture what you can see in the window, the entire page, just a selection, a particular frame… basically it saves webpages as images – either to a file, or to the clipboard. It captures Flash too!

IE Tab 2

This extension allows you to render a website using Internet Explorer in a tab within Firefox. This is useful for developers who want to check their site in IE but prefer to switch right back to Firefox.

FireFTP

FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

ColorZilla

Apparently this add-on is still experimental, although I use it anyways. ColorZilla is both simple and useful – it provides an easy way to identify any color on the screen using an eyedropper.

GridFox

This add-on allows you to place a customizable grid on top of any website. You have full control over the grid – everything from number of columns and rows to varied column widths.

MeasureIt

Super useful for designers – this add-on lets you draw out a ruler to get the pixel width and height of any elements on a webpage.

SenSEO

SenSEO is an extension checking the most important on-page-SEO-criteria and calculating a grade of how good your site fulfills these criteria.

FirePHP

FirePHP enables you to log to your Firebug Console using a simple PHP method call. (you need to have Firebug 1.5+ installed to use this plugin)

Session Manager

Session Manager saves and restores the state of all windows – either when you want it or automatically at startup and after crashes. Additionally it offers you to reopen (accidentally) closed windows and tabs.

Highly Recommended

All-in-One Sidebar

Lets you open various windows as sidebar panels, and quickly switch between them. In addition to bookmarks and history it opens dialogues such as downloads, add-ons and more in the sidebar.

AdBlock Plus

Just as the name suggests, AdBlock Plus allows you to block any ad on any webpage selectively, or use one of the preset filters to block a whole range of ads (and networks).

Tab Mix Plus

Tab Mix Plus enhances Firefox’s tab browsing capabilities. It includes such features as duplicating tabs, controlling tab focus, tab clicking options, undo closed tabs and windows, plus much more. It also includes a full-featured session manager.

NoScript

Allow active content to run only from sites you trust, and protect yourself against XSS and Clickjacking attacks.

Flagfox

This add-on displays a country flag depicting the location of the current website’s server in the address bar. It also provides other tools, such as: site safety checks, whois, translation, similar sites, validation and URL shortening.

Xmarks

Keeps your bookmarks, passwords and open tabs backed up and synchronized across computers and browsers. Also shows website ratings and reviews in your search results.

Still Useful

DownloadThemAll!

An awesome download manager that lets you mass download links from any site.

Fox Splitter

This add-on allows you to split the content area of the browser window in anyway you like. It can be useful with a couple of splits – anything more can get confusing and drain a lot of memory.

Firesizer

This add-on allows you to resize the window to specific dimensions – very useful if you need to develop while keeping certain resolutions in mind.

Speed Dial

This feature has been popping up in several browsers, including Chrome and Safari. Until Mozilla decides to add it to Firefox natively, this add-on will have to suffice.

ReminderFox

ReminderFox displays and manages lists of reminders and ToDo’s. ReminderFox makes sure you remember all of your important dates via easy-to-use lists, alerts, and alarms, right in your browser without the need for a separate calendar program.

Dummy Lipsum

Tired of having to go to Lipsum.com for dummy content? This add-on makes it a breeze to generate fake text without having to go to any site – just launch the tool and click generate!

FireShot

FireShot is a Firefox extension that creates screenshots of web pages (entirely or just visible part). Unlike other extensions, this plugin provides a set of editing and annotation tools, which let users quickly modify web captures and insert text annotations and graphical annotations. Such functionality will be especially useful for web designers, testers and content reviewers.

SmoothWheel

Scrolls the page smoothly when scrolling the mouse wheel (or keyboard arrows if enabled).

BetterPrivacy

Ever wondered why you are still tracked though you tried everything to prevent it? BetterPrivacy is a safeguard which protects from usually not deletable LSO’s on Google, YouTube, Ebay, etc.

Alexa Sparky

Sparky is Alexa Internet’s free Firefox status bar plugin. It displays the Alexa rank in the bottom right corner of the browser on all websites, something I tend to often look up anyways.

Conclusion

I hope you guys are able to use some of these plugins. While I don’t use them all at once, I have tried them all out and the results have been worthwhile (enough that I can recommend them). That said, I am sure I missed several great plugins. If you have any other recommendations, please leave them in the comments!

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• Sharebar WordPress Plugin
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• 15 Awesome New WordPress Plugins

Project Management

You may think that the plethora of project management apps are made for teams of developers, and while they certainly do help when working in teams, they can be a valuable asset to the freelancer as well. Most offer great organizational tools, including calendars, task lists and time-tracking.

Basecamp

The most well-established of project management apps, Basecamp is a solid piece of software that allows you to manage contacts, projects and milestones. Their free plan is quite limited but if you can afford their premium plans, it is well worth the money (and is brandable to boot!).

Action Method

Presents a unique way of managing your projects by reducing them to their basic elements:

• Action Steps – Tasks
• References – Notes, files, sketches, links
• Backburners – Ideas (not yet tasks)
• Discussions – Messaging
• Events – Milestones and due dates

Unfuddle

This is probably my favorite of the bunch, as they provide project management, bug tracking and SVN/Git repository hosting in an all-in-one package. They have a stellar free plan too, with 200MB of storage space and nearly all premium features.

Billing and Invoicing

While it’s fine to send clients a PayPal payment request for your work, a professional looking invoice adds a bit of credibility to your business. Smart accounting can also make life much easier during tax season. The following web apps allow you to send digital invoices (or snail mail), collect payments and manage your finances:

Freshbooks

This Toronto-based service lets you easily track time and send invoices to clients, then collect payments using a number of payment gateways. They can also send snail mail invoices if you prefer for $1-2, depending on volume sent (return envelopes included).

Ballpark

Made by the popular design studio MetaLab, Ballpark allows you to send gorgeous estimates and invoices. Your clients can comment on estimates or accept them, with the ability to make the initial payment using PayPal.

Blinksale

Blinksale allows you to send custom designed invoices and even supports recurring payment templates, which is great for charging clients for hosting or domain fees. Unfortunately, Blinksale doesn’t have a free plan, only a 30-day trial.

Free Agent

Packed with a ton of features, Free Agent is the big-daddy of invoicing and accounting web apps. You can send estimates, track time, invoice clients, manage your business financials (by uploading bank statements) and create country-specific tax reports. They don’t have a free plan but do have a 30-day free trial (no credit-card required).

Pulse

This app isn’t for invoicing or billing clients, but rather to help manage and organize your business financial data, primarily your cash flow. It is a powerful tool with a lot of great features that lets you get an overview of exactly how your business is doing financially over time.

Mockups and Creative Process

If you’re a freelance web designer you know all about the significance of mockups. While you’re almost certainly going to have to make several high-quality, full mockups in Photoshop (or the like), it can help to make a quick wireframe mockup to find the perfect content layout your client wants. The following tools can help with that:

Mockingbird

This free (while in beta) tool lets you create mockups directly in your browser and share them with others. It loads quickly and has a wide range of objects you can import into the main view, including working links and support for multiple hierarchal pages.

Balsamiq

Balsamiq is a highly extensible mockup builder with a web client, desktop client and plugins for several other enterprise collaboration applications. Both their product and support are stellar, however they don’t offer a free version (only a limited demo).

Mockflow

Mockflow is similar to the others but allows real-time collaboration between users and online-offline syncing, so you can work from the desktop app or the web client. They also have a MockStore, where users can share their custom elements.

Hosted Content Management Systems

Clients absolutely love to be able to manage their content without external help, and installing a CMS will make life easier for them and for you. Sometimes, you might not want to use WordPress or write your own custom backend, in which case you can consider using one of these hosted solutions:

LightCMS

LightCMS is a really a lot more than just a content management system, with support for client management, e-commerce and billing, packaged with the default CMS features like blogging, calendars and basic SEO. Their plans can get slightly expensive but the convenience of having everything handled by one source makes up for it.

Traffik

Similar to LightCMS, Traffik allows you to manage all aspects of your site (or your clients), giving you the ability to create blogs, forums or restricted members sections. Traffik also provides a basic e-commerce solution so your clients can manage and sell their products.

CushyCMS

This free app lets you manage any website by entering the FTP information for your server and adding snippets of Cushy code to the HTML of the site. Clients can then login to the CushyCMS site and manage the content you’ve marked as editable. This is probably the simplest and easiest solution out of the three, though it lacks in features.

Browser Compatability

Any good web designer knows the importance of browser compatability but frankly, it can be a pain to deal with. The process involves testing designs on numerous browsers to make sure they look the same. To help with this process, several sites now offer screen shots in various browsers so you don’t have to install a gazillion browsers on your local machine.

Litmus

Certainly the best looking site of the three, Litmus is the Basecamp of the browser compatability world. They offer a free plan that allows you to conduct 50 tests a month, however it’s limited to only 2 browsers (IE7 and FF2). Their premium plans are pretty stellar – if you can afford them.

BrowserShots

BrowserShots is a free, open-source service that takes screenshots on more than 75 different browsers. The only catch is that you have to wait in a queue for your results, or you can pay to get priority processing.

BrowserCam

BrowserCam does what the other services do but adds one killer additional feature: support for mobile browsers and desktop/web-based e-mail clients. They only have paid plans but there is a 24 hour free trial that supports 200 screen captures.

Support Systems

While most freelancers can get away with providing client support through e-mail, people with a large number of clients may opt to use a dedicated support system. The following tools can help you manage support requests easily and professionally:

Zendesk

This is probably one of my favorite ‘new’ web app. Zendesk is a complete support system that can be fully integrated with your site. It includes a customer forum, support tickets and documentation. They have a 30-day free trial, with their cheapest plan costing $9 per month (and well worth it!).

Tender

Made by the creative minds at entp, Tender is another complete support system, providing support forums, ticketing and knowledge base. They have a 30-day free trial and are a little more expensive than Zendesk.

Grasshopper

What better way to provide professional support to your clients than a toll-free 1-800 number? Grasshopper allows you to get a custom toll-free number for a flat monthly rate, with unlimited extensions that can be routed to any land or cell line.

Conclusion

Organization can make freelancing a lot easier and more profitable, and using the above web apps can help with that goal. The more professional you are (or appear), the more you are able to charge for your services, granted you maintain a high level of quality as well.

Do you use any of the tools listed? Are there other tool you would recommend for freelancers?

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