BpWebNews Tool Box - Resources

Personally, I find these links most useful for maintaining BPWebNews. Putting the links on this page makes it easier to revisit! I updated the menu bar to link to this page. I list only the ones which I've personally used at one time or another.

I hope you use my favorites and sample some on these comprehensive lists:

• Blogging With Success - "101.5 Free Tools and Services for Bloggers"
  covers major areas of Advertising, Comments, Contacts, Content, Design, Feeds, Html, Images, Monetization, Offline Editors, SEO, and Stats.
  
  
• One Cool Site - "Resources"
  covering Polls, Surveys, Tools, Browsers, Color, CSS, Html, Images, and Stat programs,
  
  

What's in my toolbox?

1. Images
   
   
   
   • Zemanta - I use Zemanta's tool bar on my browser. The tools integrates with the Blogger (or WordPress) Editor for adding photos to posts. Images are Creative Commons license or free to share. Zemanta adds attrition along with the image. I also use it for my Gmail!
     
     
   • Flickr - My favorite source for Creative common images. I add a note at the bottom of posts linking to the owner's album.
     
     
   • Photobucket - Great place to store images you want to appear on other blogs, like the grab my button.
     
     
   • MS Image Composer - A staple in my image creation and manipulation. This free software lets you create image properly sized for the web. You can combine images, add text in various fonts and save as gif, jpg or png.
     
     
   • Resizr - Online software to resize images and save copy on your pc for use. You can also crop and rotate pictures.
     
     
     
2. Design Developer Tools (color, CSS, Html)
   
   
   
   • ColorZilla A must have color picker to get hex codes for any color on any web page. I wrote about it on Blogging with Success.
     
     
   • List of Online Color Tools - extensive list for developers and anyone who wants to match colors of find the right color code to customize a template design.
     
     
   • 35 Useful Firefox Plugins for Designers - includes many that I use frequently, like WebDeveloper.
     
     
   • Screenshots - use any one of these to capture a page or thumbnail of your blog:
     Thumbalizr
     SuperScreenShot
     BrowserShots
     FireShot
     
     
   • WebDeveloper - lots of tools to analyze any web page. Marks-up the page to show Id and Class details, and lets you edit CSS or html to see the effect of any changes - Great for testing before you change your template.
     
     
   • Firebug --- similar to Web Developer, lets you debug css or html or javascript of any blog or web page. With both tools you can add and execute new code.
     
   
   
3. Stats/SEO
   
   
   
   • Google Analytics -must have to analyzed traffic volume and source.
     
     
   • Statcounter - similar in visitor monitoring to Analytics but breaks down Search Engine keywords with more detail. More for current look, not trends. I use both.
     
     
   • MetaTag Analyzer - SEOCentro is a handy tool. Key in a specific post url and see keyword density, meta descriptions, etc.
     
     
   • Website Grader - good overview of your search engine optimization.
     
     
   • SeoSiteCheckup - used alongside Website Grader, this give you more insight and recommendation for improving your blog. [thanks Sayz ]
     
     
   • SearchStatus - puts icons on Firefox to easily display any page's Google PageRank, Alexa rank, and more ...
     
     
4. Twitter
   
   
   • TwitterBar (Firefox addon) - lets you type a tweet in the address bar and click the TwitterBar icon to send it to Twitter.
     
     
   • TwitterFox (Firefox addon) - notifies you of your friends' status on Twitter. Uses a popup icon in lower bar. Window has a small text input field to send a Tweet.
     
     
     
5. Misc
   
   
   
   • Html Escape - for tutorials, converts the html to characters for display version.
     
   • Code Converter - does the html escape and vice-versa!
   • Yet another converter - for escaped code. It filters, converts and colorizes.
     
   • PollDaddy - nifty poll management; embed in post or put in sidebar.
     
   • BlogThis! - Read my post on creating a Blogger draft post from anywhere on the internet. - "Quick Tip: Post While Browsing - Use BlogThis!
   • IconJ - generate animated icons and host your own icons online.
     
     
6. Blogger Help - how to use Blogger
   
   These are useful help pages (a rarity!)
   
   
   • Dashboard - How can I use the Blogger Layouts features?
   • New Post Editor - very good overview of features and how to make this your default editor.
     
   • (more to be added!)
   
   

Check back often for updates! Leave a question or comment if you use any of these tools.



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image by ladyada

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