MakeUseOf Directory » Webmasters

PageSpeed: Improve Website Performance & Speed

abhijeet — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:25:52 +0000

Page Speed is a new Firefox/Firebug add-on by Google that helps to improve website performance by reducing their load time. When you run Page Speed, it provides valuable suggestions on issues such as improvement of CSS, optimization of images, minimize DNS lookups, minimize cookie size and many more that are helpful in enhancing the web page’s performance.

Webmasters who run Page Speed on their pages get a set of scores for each page, as well as helpful suggestions on how to improve its performance.

Features :

Improve site speed.
Enhance your web page’s performance.
Reduce your bandwidth and hosting costs.
Get a set of scores for each web page.

Check out Page Speed@ www.code.google.com/speed/page-speed (By Abhijeet from Jeet Blog)

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
PageSpeed: Improve Website Performance & Speed

Related posts

NotifyMee: Online Uptime Monitor

abhijeet — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:28:51 +0000

NotifyMee is an online uptime monitor tool that can alert you when downed site comes back up to the internet. This can be very helpful in case a site or a blog you want to visit crashes due to some unknown reason and you are left wondering when you could access it again. It also outputs a tweet from its twitter account to notify other people when the site comes back up.

Feature overview :

Site uptime meter which informs you when a site which is down and when it returns back online.
No need to create an account.
Uses email and Twitter to notify others when the site comes back up.
Easy to use. Just enter the site url and your email and you’re done.
Similar sites: AreMySitesUp, BasicState, Montastic, MrUptime and Pingability.

Check out NotifyMee@ www.notifymee.com (by Abhijeet from Jeet Blog)

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
NotifyMee: Online Uptime Monitor

Related posts

Domain Clock: Get Domain Name Ideas From Current Time

abhijeet — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:47:01 +0000

If you are one of those who has a huge portfolio of domains and is always on the lookout for new domain names then this cool domain name idea generator is definitely for you. Powered by the Google App Engine, Domain Clock generates domain name ideas by the current time. And it does that pretty well. I would have never imagined there can be so many permutations and combination of domain names for every minute on the clock!

The clock based domain idea tool has a simple interface and updates automatically with time. When you hover your mouse over the main domain name, it also gives an option to buy the domain which then directs to sedo.com. The default domain name extension is .com but you can always change that in one click.

You may also want to check other domain tools we have profiled over time. These are DomTXT, Suggest.Name and BustaName. Plus check out previously posted 6 Domain Generators To Find That Killer Domain Name.

Check out DomainClock @ domainclock.caughtandloose.com ( by Abhijeet from Jeet Blog )

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Domain Clock: Get Domain Name Ideas From Current Time

Related posts

AreMySitesUp: Website Uptime Tracker with SMS Alerts

kaly — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:25:09 +0000

Here is another website uptime tracking tool that keeps an eye on your sites and notifies you via email or SMS when any one of them goes down. You can monitor as many site as you like and the process of adding sites is really easy.

After quick registration click on the “Add Site” button and start adding your sites one by one. If you want to get SMS notifications then go to “Settings” tab and add your mobile phone number.

Features:

Website uptime tracking app.
Keep an eye on as many sites as you like.
Get email and SMS alerts when the site goes down.
SMS alerts available for almost all major networks worldwide.
Similar sites: BasicState, Montastic, MrUptime and Pingability

Check out AreMySiteUp @ www.aremysitesup.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
AreMySitesUp: Website Uptime Tracker with SMS Alerts

Related posts

Domainr: Generate Cool Non-Dot-Com Domain Names

kaly — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:33:35 +0000

Are you having trouble finding good domain name that is easy to remember? Check out Domainr – cool domain name generator that can help you come up with some excellent Non-Dot-Com domain names like to jish.nu, burri.to, del.icio.us and so on. It then also lets you check if the domain is available.

Features:

Find cool and easy to remember Non-Dot-Com domain names.
Generate as many names as you like and check their availability .
Additional information about international TLDs (Third Level Domains) also included.
See where the domain is based (which country), who controls it, and how to register one.
No signup needed.

Check out Domainr @ www.domai.nr (via Lifehacker)

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Domainr: Generate Cool Non-Dot-Com Domain Names

Related posts

Sikbox: Live Search Box For Your Blog or Website

kaly — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 00:28:03 +0000

Sixbox offers probably the easiest way to create fancy and slick live search box for your blog or website. It’s highly customizabe and best part of all takes not more then 2-3 minutes to implement.

As you can see from the screenshot above you can choose search backgound and specify how many results i should display. Here is another screenshot showing it in action.

To get started, simply click “Get The Code” and then customize the search to your liking, once satisfied grab the code and embed it onto your blog. It will work everywhere, blogger wordpress etc.

Features:

Generate Embeddable life search box for your blog.
Customize: number of results to display, select your theme etc.
Easy to use. No programming skills required.

Check out SikBox @ www.sikbox.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Sikbox: Live Search Box For Your Blog or Website

Related posts

CopyrightSpot: Search Web for Copies of Your Blog Content

kaly — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 22:13:34 +0000

CopyrightSpot is a website that lets you search the web and find sites that are reusing your original content with or without your permission. Enter the address of the blog, webpage or even an RSS feed, click “Search” and wait for CopyrightSpot to crawl the web for duplicates.

Once it’s finished scanning the web it will present you with a list of the websites that have copied your content. You can further clock on the individual result to see the copied text. Quite handy.

Features:

Type in the URL or blog feed and see if it was republished elsewhere.
Search as much as you like. No registration required.
Number of copied words is also shown.
Similar website: Copyscape

Visit CopyrightSpot @ www.copyrightspot.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
CopyrightSpot: Search Web for Copies of Your Blog Content

Related posts

TextSnip: Easily Share Formatted Text or Code with Others

kaly — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:46:38 +0000

Web based utility that lets you share your text or code online without loosing original formatting. Simply copy and paste your text into provided field, click “get my url” and then share that url with anyone.

Your clean, tabbed formating will stay in place. Who ever visits the link will be able to view, print and copy the contents to clipboard.

Features:

Quickly share formatted text or code online with others.
Preserve clean, tabbed formatting when sharing.
People can view, copy to clipboard and print out the shared text.
Change formatting style to text, html, css, xml, javascript, php, sql, ruby, python etc.
No registration required.

Check out TextSnip @ www.textsnip.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
TextSnip: Easily Share Formatted Text or Code with Others

Related posts

AddThis: Add Social Bookmarking Links to your Blog

Aibek — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:46:39 +0000

Social bookmarking and sharing button for your website. With over 30 billion impressions per month AddThis is by far the most popular service for integrating quick link bookmark functionality to your blog or website. It enables readers to email or bookmark the page without leaving the website.

It has become the standard button for bookmarking and sharing. Major websites like TIME, Oracle, TechCrunch, Freewebs, Lonely Planet, MySpace, Zappos, FOX, ABC, CBS, Glamour, ReadWriteWeb and now MakeUseOf all use AddThis.

Integrating AddThis is extremely easy, simply select the button style you like and copy and paste the generated code into your site’s template file. Additionally, WordPress users can install the AddThis plugin – it will insert the bookmarking button at the end of each article automatically. You can see it in action at the end of this post.

Features:

Add quick and comprehensive bookmarking button to your blog or website.
Supports all major social bookmarking services including Digg, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon etc.
Customize the style and apperance of the button.
Analytics: See which of your articles is shared/emailed most.
Get bookmarking trends over time, geographic breakdown, etc.
Wordpress Plugins: Fully automated plugin for Wordpress users.

Get AddThis Button @ www.addthis.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
AddThis: Add Social Bookmarking Links to your Blog

Related posts

Feed Analysis: Estimate Feedburner Stats 12 Month from Now

kaly — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:54:13 +0000

Feed Analysis lets you take any blog feed and get detailed subscriber reports including visual charts and graphs. Get stats on feed subscriptions, traffic data and the approximate value of the banner ads in your feed. No registration required, just copy and paste the feed address to the provided field and press “Go”. Then Feed Analysis will show you:

an estimated number of subscriber count for the coming months.
a pie chart with the best/worst days of the week.
a number of feed views and clicks for every day.
an estimated value of the website based on the number of subscribers.

If necessary feed Analysis reports can also be shared with others and embedded onto your website.

Check out FeedAnalysis @ www.blogperfume.com/feed-analysis

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Feed Analysis: Estimate Feedburner Stats 12 Month from Now

Related posts

JS-Kit: Comments, Reviews, Ratings, Polls for your Website

Aibek — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 12:48:58 +0000

JS-Kit is a free service that offers a number of really useful features for your website, i.e. polls, commenting system, ratings, and more. The integration is really easy and all it takes is a simple copy and paste. Just copy two lines of code to the place where you want the item to appear and done. There are no signups or costs. JS-Kit services include:

1. Navigator

2. JS-Kit Score – Allow your readers to score pages with thumbs up & down icons

3. JS-Kit Comments – The Comments feature allows you to add a full-featured commenting engine to your web site and discover what are the most popular pages on your website. There is absolutely nothing to configure.

4. JS-Kit Reviews – Integrate review system and enable your readers to rate and leave reviews.

5. JS-Kit Polls – As you may have already guessed, this one integrates polls.

6. JS-Kit Ratings – Integrate rating system and allow your users to rate objects on your website. The service is based on a 5-star rating system.

Check out JS-Kit @ www.js-kit.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
JS-Kit: Comments, Reviews, Ratings, Polls for your Website

Related posts

FeedValidator : Validate RSS and Atom Feeds

Aibek — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 14:57:58 +0000

FeedValidator is one of the most popular online utilities for validating RSS and Atom feeds. Not only does it tell you if there are any errors in your feed but it also suggests how to ensure that your feed is compatible with the widest range of feed readers. It’s quite useful both for bloggers and developers … Enter the address of your feed or blog and see if your RSS feed is working/valid.

If you are a developer you might also find useful their recommendations for how to create RSS 2.0 documents that works with all software that supports this format.

Check out FeedValidator @ www.feedvalidator.org

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
FeedValidator : Validate RSS and Atom Feeds

Related posts

SocialScan: Measure your Site’s Popularity on Social Media Sites

Aibek — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:40:24 +0000

SocialScan is a website that lets you enter the URL of a websit and check the number of bookmarks it has on well known social bookmarking sites like Digg and Del.icio.us. SocialScan interface is powered by Ajax so the results are returned quickly and your browser doesn’t have to refresh to show them.

The popular social sites that SocialScan checks are Delicious, Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Myweb, Technorati, Shadows, Bloglines, Simpy, Blinklist, Diigo and Furl. So if you ever want to find out how popular is your website on Digg or any of the other social websites that SocialScan supports then head over to SocialScan. No registration required.

The only problem I noticed with it is that it doesn’t pull any info from Reddit, Technorati and Shadows. As you can see in the screenshot above it shows that MakeUseOf has no links at the respective networks, which is obviously not the case. Other than that it’s a handy service. For some other services to measure your sites popularity check out this MUO article.

Visit SocialScan @ www.SocialScan.com

Cpntributed by: Wez is a student studying computers who also does programming and video tutorials, and writes about interesting software and websites, check out his blog @ www.TheTutorialBlog.com.

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
SocialScan: Measure your Site’s Popularity on Social Media Sites

Related posts

ValidChecker : CSS, HTML and RSS Validator

Aibek — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:01:17 +0000

ValidChecker is an HTML, RSS and CSS validation service that monitors your website’s pages for consistency. All you need to do is enter the pages you want it to monitor and specify how you want to be notified. As soon as there is something wrong, it will send you an email outlining the problem. The service is still in beta stage and allows only 10 documents per user.

Additional Features

Follow-up on errors via email or using your feedreader.
Monitor up to 10 documents/URLs at the same time.
Free. No registration required.

Check out ValidChecker @ www.validchecker.com [via bildirgec.org]

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
ValidChecker : CSS, HTML and RSS Validator

Related posts

.htaccess Editor : Online .htaccess Generator

Aibek — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 03:16:47 +0000

Having trouble editing your .htaccess file ? Enter htaccessEditor – simple online utility that can automatically generate a properly formatted .htaccess file for your website. You simply select the configurations you want and it instantly generates the code. All you need to do is copy and paste that code into your .htaccess file and you’re good to go.

If you have no idea what .htaccess is, it’s better if you skip this post. Even though .htaccess editor is fully automated you still need a fairly good knowledge about it.

Features

Deny all access to files: Allow/Deny
Error page: Create custom error pages.
Default page: Specify default page for your domain (index.htm, index.php, start.htm etc.)
Setup WWW: Force all domain requests to www version.
Redirect directives: Setup 301/302 page redirects.
Access restriction: Deny access to certain directories.

Check out .htaccess Editor @ www.htaccesseditor.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
.htaccess Editor : Online .htaccess Generator

Related posts

SocialMarker: Submit your Posts to Mutliple Social Bookmarking Sites

Aibek — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 16:41:55 +0000

Do you have a website? Do you find yourself staying up until the wee hours of the morning promoting your content on a multitude of networks like Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, or Propeller?

If you answered yes to both of the above questions then you have found yourself in the right place. Your friendly neighborhood Admin brings you Social Marker which aggregates all the best social sites together and tries to auto-populate the fields for your submissions. This adds consistency to your keywords and descriptions across the board and the search engines really like that. Lots of time is wasted every day entering and re-entering submission forms for your content

Seeing that you read Make Use Of I am sure you have tried various work-a-rounds like using Notepad to cut and paste (or something similar) But you couldn’t drag and drop that text into the right place and it still made it rather cumbersome. Social Marker helps you help yourself. Lets see how it works.

( it looks like this –>

2. Now enter your URL, title, description and keywords – be creative and original!

3. Next check off the boxes of the sites you want to submit to, hit enter and let the app do its magic. By magic I mean Social Marker will open up each of the sites you selected in a framed. The information you filled out follows you along and sometimes even auto-populates. When it doesn’t, as I said above, it allows you to select the text from the bottom of the page and drag it to the correct field.

This is really a huge time saver for me. I am helplessly addicted to these networks and have learned their ins and outs. All the sites included in SocialMarker allow your content to be submitted this way and does not violate any TOS. Some sites have been added and removed over the 6 months or so that I have been using it and it even introduced me to some new ones.

Check out SocialMarker @ www.socialmarker.com [ By Karl L. Gechlik from AskTheAdmin.com ]

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
SocialMarker: Submit your Posts to Mutliple Social Bookmarking Sites

Related posts

BustaName : The best Domain Name Lookup tool so far

kaly — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 04:12:36 +0000

BustaName helps you find available domain names based on the entered keywords. Enter the keywords that best describe your future website and BustaName will bring back all available domain names using these keywords. You can extend the search further by adding synonyms, adding suffixes/prefixes, dropping vowels, etc. Once you get a list of available domain names you can sort them alphabetically, rank by quality and add potential candidates to your watch list.

Features:

Generate and search for available domains.
Word Combiner : Enter keywords that describe your website and it’ll generate all available domain names using 2 or more of these words.
Instantly lookup keyword synonyms and add them to ‘Word Combiner’ to extend the keyword pool.
if you don’t want certain keywords to be considered together then you can separate them into groups.
Bookmark domains you like for later.
Extend search: Add suffix / prefix, drop vowels, pluralize nouns etc.
Includes the option to quickly check who owns the domain name.
Free. No emai or registration required.

[Video] Find Domains with Bust A Name

Check out BustaName @ [ www.bustaname.com ]

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
BustaName : The best Domain Name Lookup tool so far

Related posts

Copyscape : See Who is Stealing your Blog Content

kaly — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 01:44:04 +0000

Copyscape is a service that lets you easily locate the websites that are stealing your content. Simply type in the URL of your webpage and Copyscape will crawl the web for duplicates and present you with a list of websites that have copied your content with or without your permission. The best way to benefit from this tool would be to use it for posts that bring you most traffic. This way you can focus your limited time and resources on the websites that harm your search engine rankings most.

Features:

Type in the URL and see if was published elsewhere.
Get a word-to-word comparison with the original content.
Option to highlight matching text blocks.
Get a website WhoIS info to confront the owner with the copyrighted content .
Get advice on how to fight plagiarism online.
Free account is limited to 10 searches (for each website) per month.
Premium accounts (with additional options) available.

Check out CopyScape @ [ www.copyscape.com ]

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Copyscape : See Who is Stealing your Blog Content

Related posts

Rotatee : Rotate Banners on your Website

Aibek — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 21:55:39 +0000

If you have a website and sell your ad space directly then Rotatee is for you. Rotatee lets you create different ad campaigns to manage different advertising spots on your website. Each campaign targets certain ad spot (ex. sidebar) and lets you specify how many ads should be shown there and how often you want each ad to appear. The implementation is very simple, simply setup your campaigns and copy’n paste provided code to your site’s template files. Sit back and watch your banners rotate.

Features

Rotate different banners in a certain area of your website.
Free account users are limited to 5 ad campaigns. That should be enough for most of the websites.
There is no restriction on the number of banners you can rotate in each campaign.
Make some banners appear more often by assigning to them higher ‘weight’ values.
Option to display multiple ads simultaneously at a random order. Quite useful for blogs with several 125 x 125 px ads.
Customize ads: change the background color, margins, etc.
Get number of views for each ad unit and campaign.
Visualize ad stats on a Pie Chart.
Premium accounts: Create as many campaigns as you need. Plus some additional features.

Note: Rotatee is still in closed beta and available by invitation only. If you want to signup you can use ‘makeuseof for invite code.

Check out Rotatee @ www.rotatee.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Rotatee : Rotate Banners on your Website

Related posts

Anyclient : Web-based FTP Client

Aibek — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 05:55:38 +0000

AnyClient is the ~~first and only~~ web-based FTP client. That’s right, an online service aimed to provide users with a simple and easy file transfer client that works on any browser and operating system, and requires no installation. Similar to desktop FTP cleints, AnyClient comes with a profile manager that lets you store site profiles locally. This way the next time you load AnyClient you can connect to any saved site without filling login and server details all over.

Disclaimer: Anyclient is a web-based FTP client, thus there is a possibility that your account/login details may be viewed by third party individuals. Use it at your own risk.

Additional Features

Save site profiles for regular access.
Zip upload: Compress and upload file to FTP server with a single click.
All site profiles are saved on your computer and cannot be seen by anyone but yourself.
Download and install Anyclient on your computer (Windows, Mac OSX, Linux/Solaris). It’s free.
Supports several secure protocols: FTPS (FTP over SSL), SFTP/SSH and secure WebDAV via HTTPS.
Requirement: The only requirement is Java (most probably you already have it)
No registration. No email. No fees.

Check out Anyclient @ www.anyclient.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Anyclient : Web-based FTP Client

Related posts

Seo-Browser : Find out How Search Engines See your Site

kaly — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:56:22 +0000

Want to find out how Google and other search bots see your website? Check out Seo-Browser, a little tool that can show you how search engines see your website. Find out what parts of the website appear more important, what elements are excluded, how long it takes for the website to load and some other factors. No sign-up required, simply enter your URL and it will present you with the info search bots see when they crawl your website.

There are a number of ways you can benefit from Seo-Browser. For instance, it can help you find out whether your current blog theme or website template is in SEO friendly format. There is also an advanced mode that analyzes even more factors, such as meta tags, page size and load times, text to page weight ratio and so on.

Another similar service is WebsiteGrader. I actually like it even more. Not only it gives a thorugh site report but also explains the logic behind each element.

Visit Seo-Browser @ seo-browser.com [via DailyBlogTips]

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Seo-Browser : Find out How Search Engines See your Site

Related posts

BasicState : Monitor Uptime Status of Your Website

kaly — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 19:48:31 +0000

BasicState is a free service that monitors your website for availability 24/7. If for some reason the website doesn’t or takes too long to respond, BasicState instantly alerts you via email or SMS message. Unlike most of the free uptime monitoring services which run checks every 30-60 min, this one does it every 15 minutes. So if there is a short outage it has a better chance to record it.

Features

Monitor uptime of your website at 15 minute intervals.
Receive notification email or sms alert if the site goes down.
Monitor multiple sites at the same time.
When the website fails to respond BasicState continues to check it every minute until the failure is resolved.
Receive daily uptime reports and performance charts on your email.
View site’s performance over extended period of time.

Visit BasicState @ [ www.basicstate.com ]

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
BasicState : Monitor Uptime Status of Your Website

Related posts

MyIpNeighbors: Lookup Neighboring Websites on a Shared Host

kaly — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 01:08:30 +0000

Ever wondered which other websites are hosted on the same server as yours? MyIpNeighbors is a web-based application that lets you find out what are your neighboring websites on a shared hosting. Not only can it give you a good idea idea about how crowded (reliable) your server is, but also explore the overall quality of ‘neighboring’ websites.

Check out MyIpNeighbors @ www.myipneighbors.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
MyIpNeighbors: Lookup Neighboring Websites on a Shared Host

Related posts

WhoIsTheOwner : Who is the Owner of the Website ?

Aibek — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 02:59:32 +0000

Recently we posted about WhoIsHostingThis, a quick tool that lets you lookup the hosting company behind any website. WhoIsTheOwner on the other hand, tells you who is the owner of the website. Such services also known as WhoIS lookup tools.

WHOIS – Wikipedia

“TCP-based query/response protocol which is widely used for querying an official database in order to determine the owner of a domain name, an IP address, or … “

Simply type-in any domain name and it will get you contact details (full name, address, phone nr., …) of the owner.

Extras

- Scans over 350 whois servers in the world.
- Unlimited: Run as many WhoIs checks as you want.

Check out WhoIsTheOwner @ www.whoistheowner.net

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
WhoIsTheOwner : Who is the Owner of the Website ?

Related posts

WhoIsHostingThis: Find Out Who Hosts your Favorite Websites

kaly — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:27:45 +0000

Finding a good hosting company can be a major headache. Even when you go to what seems to be a reliable forum, you may be presented with lots of manipulated stats promoting one or the other hosting provider.

The best way to find a reliable hosting service is to check who hosts popular websites. And WhoIsHostingThis is a free no-registration app that can help you with this. Enter the website adress and it will get you a link to its hosting company.

WhoIsHostingThis: “We’ve found that the best way to find good web hosting is to check out what your favorite web sites are using. This tool makes it very easy to do”.

Features

Note: Results are accurate in over 98% of the querries.
Browser bookmarklet: Lookup the hosting company of the website you’re currently on with a single click.
Search plugin (Firefox 2 , Internet Explorer 7) : Search WhoIsHostingThis from the browser toolbar.

Check out Who Is Hosting This @ [ www.whoishostingthis.com ]

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
WhoIsHostingThis: Find Out Who Hosts your Favorite Websites

Related posts

Andanza : Make Your Blog Mobile Friendly

kaly — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 22:54:07 +0000

Want to make your website mobile friendly? Andanza is a fully automated service that can mobilize any type of blog that offers RSS or Atom feeds. It takes about a minute and consists of three easy steps: Type in the URL, personalize the site’s look and feel and validate. Once finished, make sure to add the URL to your mobile bookmarks, OR if you’re a blooger then add it to your website.

Feature List:

Mobilize yours or any other blog so that it can be accessed from any web-enabled mobile device.
Personalize your blog by adding your logo, header, titles, fonts, colors, etc.
Free and doesn’t require any signup.
For more details see Andanze FAQ page.

Another similar service is Mofuse. Mofuse offers pretty much everything you get with Andanza plus ad revenue sharing and an option to automatically redirect mobile users to mobile-friendly version of the website.

Check out Andanza @ [ www.andanza.com ]

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Andanza : Make Your Blog Mobile Friendly

Related posts

Site24×7 : Website Performance Tracker

kaly — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:55:40 +0000

Site24×7 continuously monitors your site’s status and alerts you in case it goes down. Downtime alerts can be sent to your email, feedreader (via RSS), or mobile phone. Apart from that, it also provides you with weekly reports of server performance. With free account you are allowed to monitor upto two websites and setup tracker to check them once every 60 minutes. While this may be sufficient for low trafficked websites, larger sites should probably go with something better.

Feature List (Free account)

Receive email or SMS (10 free) alerts when site goes offline.
Receive weekly and daily performance reports via email.
Donwloand and save reports as CSV (Excel).
Note: Premium accounts (more features) available and start from $ 0.50 / month.

Note: When you first sign up, you are given a fully functional, 15-day free trial of the Professional account. At the end of this trial, your account will be downgraded to Free Basic account.

Check out Site24×7 @ [ www.site24x7.com ]

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Site24×7 : Website Performance Tracker

Related posts

BitNami : Open Source Packages. Simplified.

Aibek — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:26:54 +0000

BitNami makes it easier to download and install Open Source software packages (i.e. Wordpress, SugarCRM, Drupal, phpBB…) by bundling each package into preconfigured 1-click setup file. No need to deal with configuration settings or dependencies. Just download a package you need, run installation wizard, and that’s it. Once done, you will have a fully-functional and configured copy on your system.

“The BitNami Project was created to help spread the adoption of freely available, high quality Open Source web applications.”

Advanced search: browse and search open source packages by category (Blogging, CMS, Collaboration, CRM, Wiki, Photo Sharing, etc.), technology (ASP.NET, Java, MySQL, Python, Ruby on Rails, etc.), license type (Apache, Creative commeons, EPL, GPL, …) or tags.
Recommend and vote on the next to be stacked apps on Bitnami polls.
BitNami forums: Get help and provide feedback on the BitNami stacks.

Check out BitNami @ www.bitnami.org

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
BitNami : Open Source Packages. Simplified.

Related posts

AdGridWork : Free Web Advertising Network

Aibek — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 21:32:30 +0000

AdGridWork is an open web advertising network that lets anyone promote their websites for free. The idea is quite simple, you show network ads on your website and in return get free exposure on other AdGridWork websites. It’s very similar to previously profiled BlogRush.

Feature Overview

Choose between different ad blocks and text links. Ads are simple and appealing.
Targeting: Option to define exactly what types of websites you want your website ad to appear on.
Monitor ad activity: number of earned impression credits, received impressions, received clicks, etc.
Check out real-time network activity viaadSpy.
For additional info go to service FAQ page.

Check out AdGridWork @ www.adgridwork.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
AdGridWork : Free Web Advertising Network

Related posts

WebSnapr: Free Website Thumbnail Screenshots

Aibek — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:11:23 +0000

WebSnapr is a free website thumbnail generator that lets you capture and display screenshots for almost any website.

Feature Overview

Choose between different thumbnails sizes: micro (90×70), small (202×152), medium (400×300), or large (640×480).
WebSnapr Addons / Plugins: Wordpress plugins, browser addons, browser bookmarklet, windows live writer plugin, Drupal modules, and PostNuke plugins. Very simple to implement.
Over 300 million generated thumbnails (according to Websnapr).

Testing WebSnappr

You should see a “400×300″ screenshot of MakeUseOf.com.

Check out WebSnapr @ www.websnapr.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
WebSnapr: Free Website Thumbnail Screenshots

Related posts

Vozme: Online Text to Speech Converter

kaly — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 01:00:36 +0000

Vozme is a simple online ‘text to speech’ program that lets you type-in any English or Spanish text and then play it as an audio stream. Streams also can be downloaded and saved as standard MP3 files.

Feature Overview

Instantly convert desired text to MP3 file.
Supported languages: English and Spanish.
Download and Save converted text as an MP3 file.
Add Vozme to your website and let your readers download/listen to posts as an audio stream. Learn more here.
No registration required.

Check out Vozme @ www.vozme.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Vozme: Online Text to Speech Converter

Related posts

MoFuse – Mobilize Any Website

Aibek — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 13:53:09 +0000

Mofuse lets you instantly create mobile version for any blog or RSS-enabled website. Everyone can use MoFuse, not just bloggers. General readers can use it to create mini mobile websites using only RSS feeds. Blogger can take it even further by setting up mobile version for their blogs.

Feature Overview

Choose custom sub-domain URL: http://makeuseof.mofuse.mobi
Add custom top-level pages: About, Contact, Blog, etc.
Track Visitor stats: in the last 24 hours, last 30 days, or all time (both for pageviews and uniques visits).
Brand your mobile website: add custom image header/logo, background color, etc.
Automatic Redirect: Auto detect and redirect your mobile visitors to your mobile site.
Enroll in MoFuse revenue sharing program and earn 50% from ads on your mobile version.

MoFuse Screencast

Check out MoFuse @ www.mofuse.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
MoFuse – Mobilize Any Website

Related posts

Picoshot: Instant Thumbnail For Any Website

Aibek — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 23:58:41 +0000

PicoShot Thumbnails provides webmasters with an easy and quick way to generate and display homepage thumbnails for any website. PicoShot: “… perfect for directory sites & search result pages, site bookmarks or anywhere a quick visual picture of another site is needed.” FREE.

Implementation is fairly straightforward and doesn’t require any registration. There are two ways to generate thumbnails:

Quick Overview

Extremely easy and fast to implement.
Supports only top level domains (www.website1.com, www.website2.net).
Thumbnail Dimensions (in pixels): 120 (height) by 90 (width).
If some thumbnail requested for the first time, it may take some time before Picoshot generates it.
For more details go to service FAQ page.

Testing Picoshot

gets

Check out Picoshot @ www.picoshot.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Picoshot: Instant Thumbnail For Any Website

Related posts

Montastic: Free Website Uptime Monitoring Tool

kaly — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:03:54 +0000

Montastic is a quick to setup and completely free website uptime checker and monitoring tool. Track up-to 100 different websites simultaneously.

Feature Overview

Track your website 24/7. Note: Provides rather low ping frequency (At most once in 10 minutes).
Websites checked from at least 2 different locations.
Get an alert email when your site goes down and when it’s up.
Monitors uptime status via RSS feeds.
Track up to 100 websites simultaneously.
Yahoo Widget: Track Uptime status right from your desktop.

Check out Montastic @ www.montastic.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Montastic: Free Website Uptime Monitoring Tool

Related posts

WebsiteGrader: SEO Report for Your Website

Aibek — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 05:48:09 +0000

WebsiteGrader is a quick all-in-one SEO (Search Engine Optimization) check-up tool for bloggers. It takes around a minute to generate your custom report and covers dozens of SEO aspects (indexing, incoming link counts, Digg report, etc.). No-registration required.

Report Overview

Instantly get detailed report for any website.
View site’s ranking for relevant keywords.
Compare your website against competitor website/s.
General info: Google Page Rank, Alexa Rank, Technorati, Google Inbound Links, Yahoo Inbound Links, nr. of Delicious Saves, Google Indexed Pages, etc.
Web Page Structure: Title, Description and Meta tags overview.
Domain Info: redirect check, registrar info, domain age, etc
Seach Engines: Google/Yahoo Index reports, Inbound Link counts, etc
Digg.com Submission Summary: Number of submissions, Total nr. of Digg counts, and nr. Home page stories.

Check out WebsiteGrader @ www.websitegrader.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
WebsiteGrader: SEO Report for Your Website

Related posts

BritePic: Add Ads to the Photos on Your Website

Aibek — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:11:19 +0000

BritePic “Adds interactivity and ads (if you want them) to the photos on your website”. While it makes in-page images look more interactive it also provides a quick way to integrate non-obtrusive ads to the very top of the image and make some money. Extremely easy to use and requires no technical knowledge. Check ‘before’ and ‘after’ pics below.

BritePic adds the following features to the images on your website:

Integrates non-obtrusive ads.
Options for reader to email image, link to it, embed it on his/her webpage, zoom in/out, rate it (coming soon), captions, etc.
Add ‘Subscribe to RSS’ to the image menu.
and more …

Video intro and demo:

Go to BritePic [www.britepic.com]

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
BritePic: Add Ads to the Photos on Your Website

Related posts

DemoFuse: Create Website Tours and Demos

kaly — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 21:59:08 +0000

DemoFuse enables website owners to create guided tours and individual feature demos for their websites. Guide visitors through the website or specific pages (i.e. forms) using overview tours, area highlights, emulated cursor movements, form filling hints, and more.

Feature Overview

Create guided tours and integrate them into the website.
Opiton to specify screen location where tour window should appear.
Highlight specific page elements (buttons, links forms, etc.). Choose between different highlight colors and borders.
Display emulated ‘call-to-action’ cursor.

Check out DemoFuse @ www.demofuse.com

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
DemoFuse: Create Website Tours and Demos

Related posts

URLsplit: Link to Multiple Sources Simultaneously

Aibek — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 13:10:18 +0000

URLsplit lets you create a link which (unlike traditional links) can be linked to several web destinations at once. Every time someone clicks on the link s/he is taken to one of the provided web URLs. URLsplit allows to associate up to 7 different web URLs to a single link.

Makes no sense? Check out this example link (click more than once). Every click should take you to a different makeuseof.com page (3 pages in total).

I can’t think of any particular use for it, but I am sure there are plenty of things you can do with it. If you got any tips or suggestions let us know in comments.

Go to URLsplit [www.urlsplit.com]

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
URLsplit: Link to Multiple Sources Simultaneously

Related posts

PubMatic: Make Most of Your Advertising Space

Aibek — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 16:24:57 +0000

PubMatic helps bloggers and other website owners to make maximum off their website’s advertising space by automatically placing highest performing ad units on each page. It scans multiple ad networks at the same time (Google Adsense, YPN, etc.), diggs into performance reports and shows ad unit with highest payout and performance. PubMatic is completely free, there are no charges or commissions.

“PubMatic automates and optimizes all aspects of decision making for how we sell our ad inventory. We no longer have to monitor multiple ad networks and rely on A/B or other testing frameworks.”

PubMatic Features

Supports several ad networks: Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, ValueClick, Komli, and more.
Create different ad unit types (based on the ad size and competing ad networks).
Automatic ad color optimization for maximum CTR (Click Through Rate).
Consolidated Reporting: View detailed performance reports from all networks in one place.
Desktop Widget (Yahoo Widgets): Get consolidated reports right on your desktop (revenue, CPM, click-through rate, impression counts, etc).
Takes less then 10 minutes to sign-up.

Video Introduction and Demo

Visit PubMatic [www.pubmatic.com]

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
PubMatic: Make Most of Your Advertising Space

Related posts

Google Analytics: Free Traffic Monitoring Tool

Aibek — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 16:25:55 +0000

Google Analytics is an extremely comprehensive, quick-to-setup, easy-to-use, and totally free traffic analytics service from Google. It’s a powerful tool that can help you better understand your traffic/visitors, measure performance of individual pages (or even ad units), identify low performing webpages, and more. (Note: If your website receives less than 50-100 K pageviews/monthly than any simpler analytics tool should be sufficient as well.)

Quick Feature Overview

Find out where your visitors come from, how long they stay, how many of the come back, what browser / operating system they use, etc.
Visualize visitors on pie charts, bar graphs and more.
View visitors by source: search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc.), website referral, advertising, etc.
Compare traffic over different time periods (select any date range you want).
Site Overlay: Excellent features that lets you visualize importance/activity on every link on your website/blog. (no download required).
Conversion Tracking: Measure the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns and identify top performing webpages.
Complete integration with Google Adwords.
Schedule personalized email reports.
Multi-Lingual: available in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Portuguese, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Russian
and lots more …

Google Analytics: Introduction

Google Analytics – Context and Actionability

Check out Google Analytics @ [www.google.com/analytics/]

Got Tech Questions? Ask Them on MakeUseOf Answers!
Google Analytics: Free Traffic Monitoring Tool

Related posts