Reactions have been mixed on the new ReTweet functionality that’s recently been rolled out by Twitter. Some think it’s an elegant solution, others think it’s going to suck the life out of ReTweeting altogether. But no matter how you slice it, ReTweeting is going to change drastically in the very near future.

We all know that Twitter is a powerful marketing tool. (A good indicator of this is seeing how much spam has cropped up in the Twittersphere lately. Yikes.) ReTweets have provided a way for Twitter users to quickly share interesting tweets and links quickly, and nearly all Twitter clients have accommodated this unofficial feature.

But more importantly, site owners like you and I have enjoyed great exposure in the way our articles have been spread throughout Twitter with ReTweets. (Some of the articles on Web Jackalope have seen more than 100 ReTweets.) But as Bob Dylan sang, the times they are a changin’.

Twitter’s new ReTweet functionality could be even more powerful than before, adding more authority to your tweets and brand.

A Quick Word About Twitter “Marketers”

Ok, I know this is going to be controversial, but I’m going to roll with it anyway. When I use the term “Twitter Marketer”, I don’t mean the guy spamming your stream with 147 surefire ways to gain a gazillion Twitter followers. Those are spammers, not marketers. They’re gaming the Twitter ecosystem to hock their wares. They’re bad, bad people. There’s a major difference between “marketing” and “spamming”.

That said, I would add that anyone wanting to

• add more followers
• become more influential in the Twitter sphere
• or find new audiences for your site

are all Twitter marketers. We’re all Twitter marketers, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Gaining more friends and followers (in legitimate, non-spammy ways) is great for everybody within the Twittersphere. That means we’re tweeting more interesting, useful, and relevant tweets. We’re adding to the conversation, not adding to the noise.

Ok, enough of that. Back to more about the old ReTweet functionality.

The Old ReTweet Meant Flexibility

The way the old Retweet worked was pretty simple. Twitter clients typically had a built-in function that allowed for creating RT’s with a single click. You could then add text before the RT, like so:

RT @glenstansberry Thinking the new ReTweet on Twitter proper could change quite a few things.

Or you could even leave off the RT @username altogether and add a “via @username” at the end of the tweet.

Thinking the new ReTweet on Twitter proper could change quite a few things. (via @glenstansberry)

The core feature of the ReTweet up to this point was functionality. You could do whatever to the original tweet, as long as it had attribution.

If anything, ReTweets are going to become an even more powerful currency than they already are. Before I get to why, we need a little background on some important changes Twitter has made recently.

Twitter Wants to Help You Find Better Tweets and Tweeters

With the addition of lists, the Twitter team also snuck in a nifty feature: you can now see how many times each person has been added to other users’ lists.

With the new ReTweet functionality on the Twitter site, you can now also see how many times each tweet has been ReTweeted.

Twitter has silently added a few key features that show “social proof”. By showing how many times a user has been added to lists adds a quick way to gauge how influential a user is. By showing how many times a tweet has been ReTweeted, it shows what everyone else thinks of the tweet as well (lots of RT’s = awesome tweet).

Suddenly, it appears as though Twitter has made it very clear that they’re going to help you find and measure influential Tweeters and tweets. Not only that, they’re trying to protect attribution of original tweets. Twitter is trying to stop spammers and unoriginal Twitter users from taking over streams.

The New RT Brings Much More Potential For Site Marketing

The biggest challenge for Twitter marketers today is getting their tweets seen. The streams are getting crowded, and people don’t always attribute the tweet to the original poster. The new ReTweet functionality tries to eliminate some of that worthless noise in Twitter streams. If you have 5 friends who all ReTweet the same thing, you’ll end up seeing that original tweet five times.

The new RT feature eliminates all of that noise. When someone does a ReTweet, adds little avatars of people who have ReTweeted, and instead shows the original tweet. But here’s where it gets interesting. Every time you’re ReTweeted by a follower, your tweet with your avatar shows in their Twitter streams. Not only are you getting awesome attribution, your tweets are showing in a myriad of new twitter streams.

The viral potential of the new ReTweet is fantastic for Twitter marketers. Instead of having just a “RT @username” or “(via @username)” as attribution to you, you now get your shiny avatar and prominent Twitter handle displayed when you have a ReTweet.

The New ReTweet Means More Exposure

In a recent article on his personal blog, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams defends the new ReTweet functionality. In the heart of the article he adds an interesting little tidbit on the direction of Twitter (emphasis added by me).

Part of the beauty of Twitter is that you can follow your friends, organizations, public figures, or strangers you find interesting. But no matter how carefully you’ve groomed your following list, out of the millions of tweets written today, are you seeing the absolute most relevant ones to you? Or are you getting some good stuff, some stuff you don’t care about, and likely missing a whole lot of other killer tweetage you don’t even know is there?

I would argue it’s the latter. The perfect Twitter would show you only the stuff you care about—relevant, timely, local, funny, whatever you’re most interested in—even if you don’t follow the person who wrote it.

Twitter is all about discovery, and is going to keep moving in that direction. Evan, Biz and the gang at Twitter are going to keep innovating in a way that fosters more discovery of news, ideas and articles. For site owners, this can be a very good thing. There are going to be more and more opportunities for your content to be found on Twitter, and reach more people.

So What Does it MEAN for Site Marketing?

The mass-adoption of the new ReTweet functionality means one thing: Every word is crucial.

I’ll say it again.

Every. word. is. crucial.

People will be making snap decisions on your words more than ever. Previously, you might be able to get away with mediocre tweet text and an awesome link. Why? Because somebody after you changed the way the tweeted link read.

Original Tweet

“Awesome Post http://bit.ly/1cVlNw”

1st ReTweet:

“60 Resources for the Frugal Web Developer (via @glenstansberry)”

The new ReTweet functionality shows your original, unchanged tweet, and that’s it. There’s no flexibility.

This major change will separate “meh” tweets from killer tweets. Now there’s nothing for your tweet to stand on except what you originally wrote.

But the potential upside is major: now your Twitter avatar is front and center in a potential new follower’s stream every time you’re ReTweeted.

Preparations

If you haven’t read the Science of ReTweets Report (free PDF download), do it. It’s a great way to learn what makes people ReTweet, and might even challenge your assumption of the tweets you’ve been sending. Here are a few things that make tweets more likely to be ReTweeted:

• Word novelty
• Links
• Higher reading levels
• Punctuation(!)
• Time of Day (nobody ReTweets in the morning)

Also, because your Twitter avatar is going to be in front of new audiences, you’ll want to make sure you have a photo that accurately depicts who you or your site is, not necessarily a logo. (A very informal but Twitter poll confirms this.)

And lastly, a word of caution. For all the science presented in the ebook and ideas presented in this post, it’s important to remember that Twitter is first and foremost a personal platform. If you try and turn your tweets into a marketing channel and try to quantify and scientize your Tweeting, you’ll lose. People can smell a science experiment a mile away. Just tweet in such a way that helps everyone, and everybody wins.

If you’re creating stellar content on your blog and on Twitter, people will ReTweet you.

The best thing you can do is focus on creating killer content everywhere you write.

This post is part of the Blog Action Day 2009 over climate change.

Green web hosting is something that has started to become quite popular among many web hosting companies. Even some of the big players are starting to turn to alternative energy sources to power their servers, or to try show that they don’t have a negative impact on the environment.

Why does this matter? It matters because of a little study on server energy usage conducted by Stanford in 2007. Thanks to the explosion of video, VOIP and an increase of broadband Internet services, energy consumed by data centers from 2000 to 2005 doubled. And it’s only been getting worse over the past 4+ years since the study.

Every effort web hosts can make to consume less energy and become more environmentally friendly is a very important thing as we use more and more energy to power our websites.

How Does Green Hosting Work?

There are a few ways that web hosting companies and server farms have figured out how to become more environmentally friendly in how they power their servers.

Carbon Offsetting

Because changing to a more eco-friendly setup is expensive for web hosts, the most popular way to become more eco-friendly is to do carbon offsetting to reduce (or eliminate) their carbon footprint. Companies will do things like plant trees for new accounts and do general energy conservation.

Carbon Credits

Buying carbon credits means that the company is purchasing credits to fund another eco-friendly project, which in theory cancels out their carbon usage.

Renewable Energy Certificates

Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs or Green Tags) show that the energy used by the web host is from a natural source like solar energy or wind energy.

Energy-friendly Servers

There are lots of different types of servers that can potentially cut down on power and resources used. “Speed stepping” is a technology for servers that reduces the amount of voltage and heat a server uses.

Better Data Center Layouts

Data center makers have figured out ways to optimize their server farms so that the least amount of energy is used. The less air conditioning a server needs, the more eco-friendly it is.

Other Eco-Friendly Options

Some companies use propane instead of diesel gases for backup resources. In some cases windmills power the servers, or there are paperless offices. There are any number of ways that a web hosting company can make their company more environmentally friendly.

Now that we’ve got a bit more knowledge about how web hosts can become more green, here are some hosts that are doing their part to make a more environmentally-friendly hosting company.

Major Players

While typically greener initiatives are for smaller hosting companies, there are a handful of the major players in the hosting industry that are “going green”.

A2

A2 has started with an initiative called FutureServe, that utilizes carbon offsets, eco-friendly employment practices (renewable office supplies, telecommuting, etc.), and energy efficient servers.

Dreamhost

Much like A2, Dreamhost has become a carbon neutral company (with a carbon neutral certificate. Dreamhost uses eco-friendly office products, employees who telecommute, and they purchase Renewable Energy Credits.

Hostgator

Hostgator prides itself in using 130% wind energy by purchasing Renewable Energy Credits and using wind-powered servers. In theory, they’re actually reversing their environmental impact.

1&1

1&1 relies solely on renewable energy to power all of their servers, and utilizes renewable energy to power two of their large office buildings. 1&1 also uses highly-efficient power supplies with less than 20% heat loss.

Rackspace

Major hosting company and reseller Rackspace has partnered with NativeEnergy to become a greener company. Also, they’re helping customers become more environmentally-conscious by providing a carbon calculator that lets business learn their carbon footprint and gives information on how to reduce it.

Here are some lesser-known web hosts who are doing their part to reduce their impact on the environment.

Ecological Hosting

Ecological Hosting is an environmentally-friendly and ethical hosting provider. They use their own solar energy to power their data centers in the UK.

Acornhost

Acorn is powered by green energy and and is carbon neutral. The servers are low-voltage servers and recycle their hardware equipment.

Aiso

Aiso is an incredibly innovative company that has tons of green initiatives within the company. The company’s cooling is done with collected rain water, and the office and data center has a “green roof”, or a roof with grasses on top that cools the buildings by 20 degrees. The offices use solar lighting, and the servers are powered by solar energy. If that weren’t enough, they also use alternative air conditioning that doesn’t rely on fossil fuels to cool the servers and offices.

ecoSKY

ecoSKY uses wind and solar energy to power their servers.

Solar Energy Host

Solar Energy Host is a “beyond carbon neutral” web host. Instead of buying carbon credits, Solar Energy Host’s servers produce zero emissions.

Green WebHost

Green WebHost plants a tree for every new account, and also utilizes solar power to run their data centers.

HostPapa

HostPapa is a Canadian web hosting company that is powered by green renewable energy sources.

Ilisys

Ilisys is a green-powered company based out of Australia. The energy they used is created from water, wind and waste, in order to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

iMountain

iMountain powers their servers with the solar panels on the roof of their data centers and office.

Lightbeing Creations

Lightbeing Creations is a web host that uses solar energy instead of Renewable Energy Certificates.

Planetmind

Planetmind uses solar-powered energy from a grid to power their Colorado-based servers.

Sustainable Websites

Sustainable Websites run their sites from a green data center in Atlanta, and the electricity is generated by wind power. On top of that Sustainable Websites purchases RECs.

ThinkHost

ThinkHost uses wind and solar power to manage their data centers, and each of their plans is covered under their carbon neutral green program. Also, they’ll plant a tree for each hosting account.

WebHostingBuzz

WebHostingBuzz is a carbon-neutral host that runs energy-efficient servers and computers in their company. They’ve also partnered with the International Tree Foundation to help plant trees in developing countries.

GreenGeeks

GreenGeeks bills itself as the “World’s #1 Green Webhost”. They won the Best Green Hosting award in 2009 and 2008. They use energy efficient servers, carbon-neutral energy and they buy back 3x the amount of energy they pull in RECs.

Treecentric

Treecentric is a Green e-certified program that purchases Renewable Energy Credits to offset their energy usage.

Super Green Hosting

Super Green Hosing uses “Green” Dell servers that produce 20% less CO2 than the average server. Super Green Hosting also provides ways for customers to purchase RECs and plant trees.

Taproot Hosting

Taproot Hosting uses only wind power to run their servers out of Portland, Oregon. The employees all telecommute, and for every new customer they’ll plant a tree with the Plant a Billion Trees project.

Beanstalk Solar Hosting

As the name implies, Beanstalk Solar Hosting uses solar power from the roof of the servers.

Sustainable Hosting

Sustainable Hosting is a carbon neutral web host, and they go well beyond common in their quest for sustainability. Sustainable Hosting uses e-certified renewable energy certificates, the office is paperless, and they even use a socially responsible bank.

Fat Cow

Fat Cow uses only wind energy RECs to power their servers and office.

Integritive

Integritive web hosting has solar-powred hosting plans that run their green data centers and offices. Integritive also utilizes AMD Opteron servers that use 60% less energy and generate 50% less heat.

Green Web Hosting by Lush

Lushtech servers are powered by clean, renewable energy. They recycle computers and computer parts, and participate in many other green practices, like using bamboo flooring in their offices.

With the economy reeling and VC’s spending less and less on startups, developers have had to adapt how they create sites. Because of the world’s economic state, we’ve had to change how we develop.

Some may see this shift as a grim prospect. Change is hard, and change is essential to staying alive in these conditions. However, if you can cut expenses in your development process without cutting quality by using free methods and tools, then you may be able to develop without using any extra money.

“Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.” – H.G. Wells

The first step to becoming a frugal web developer is cutting back on expenses. If you’re looking to buy new software for your project, try and see if there are any freeware or open source alternatives instead. Oftentimes the free versions of software are just as effective as the paid versions. Here are a few free tools that are just as good (some better!) than the paid versions.

Text Editors

If you’re wanting to bypass buying robust text editors like Textmate, BBEdit, or E Text Editor, try some of these free products instead.

Emacs
Emacs is a robust text editor that can edit just about any language with the help of extensions. Many serious programmers exclusively use Emacs or Vim.

Vim
Vim extends the powerful Unix editor Vi, and is much like Emacs in that programmers tend to use Vim, and the Vim site boasts that “many consider it an entire IDE”.

Text Wrangler

Text Wrangler

Text Wrangler is an editor that may not have as many bells and whistles as it’s older brother BBEdit, but it has enough features for any programmer. It can be used as a general purpose text editor, a programming editor, a Unix and server Admin tool, and other things. Mac only.

Notepad++
Notepad++ is a free text editor for Windows users. It provides all of the useful editing features that programmers need, like syntax highlighting, multiple tabs and views, bookmarking, and other features.

Version Control Clients

The main types of version control systems are all free (Subversion and Git), and can be used for free by anyone. They’re a huge help for keeping versions of code, and picking the right version control system is crucial for your project.

Many programmers use the command line to deal with version control, but others sometimes like a user interface with working with things like commits, diff and other critical features of version control. Here are some free clients to use with your favorite type of version control.

SVN

Versions

Versions is a beautiful Mac-only SVN client. The software won the Apple Design Award for 2009.

Subclipse
Subclipse is a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE.

TortoiseSVN
TortoiseSVN is easily one of the best Subversion clients for Windows. It’s implemented as a Windows shell extension, which allows it to behave like a Windows explorer.

Git

git-gui
Git-gui is a graphical interface for Git. It’s cross-platform and works on all popular UNIX systems.

GitX
GitX is a Git GUI built specifically for Mac users.

Meld
Meld is an open source visual diff editing tool that can be used in nearly any version control system (CVS, Subversion, Bazaar-ng and Mercurial).

FTP

There are quite a few open source FTP clients out there that work nearly as well, (and sometimes better), than their paid colleagues. Here are a few of the best.

FileZilla
FileZilla has been around forever, and has consistently been one of the best free FTP programs. Multiplatform.

WinSCP

WinSCP is a solid FTP client for Windows that can also handle SFTP transfers.

Cyberduck
Cyberduck is one the most popular FTP clients on the Mac platform. The client also allows you to transfer files through Amazon S3 and Rackspace’s Cloud Files.

FireFTP
FireFTP is an FTP client for Firefox. The nice thing about FireFTP is that it’s a cross-platform client that is open whenever your browser is open. The popular extension has been downloaded an impressive 11.7 Million times over the past few years.

IDEs

IDE’s are a great way to improve your programming habits, as well speed up your production time. Unfortunately, many IDE’s are only commercial software, and expensive software at that. However, there are some exceptional IDE’s that are free to use across many different platforms. Here are a few of the best.

Aptana
Aptana is one of the more powerful and popular IDEs on the Net. In fact, many would argue that it’s just as good or better than some of the commercial IDEs. (Aptana Studio has been downloaded 4,600,000 at the time of this writing, if you needed social proof.) Aptana supports Ruby, Python, PHP, Rails, Javascript, Java, Desktop Ajax and others. It’s robust, widely-used, and free.

Komodo Edit

Komodo Edit is the little brother of Komodo IDE. While Komodo Edit may not have as many features as the commercial sibling, it’s still a powerful IDE. It even has some integrated extensions to help.

Amaya
Amaya is a cross-platform web editor by the good people at W3C.

Xcode
Xcode is Apple’s powerful IDE that comes free with your Mac’s operating system. It’s just as fully featured as many of the top IDEs, and as a bonus you can create and edit iPhone applications with the IDE.

KompoZer
While it may not be as robust as some other IDEs, Kompozer is built for those who are less developer-savvy. Powered by Mozilla technology, Kompozer is a great little WYSIWYG editor that can create and edit HTML and CSS, and can FTP the code onto a server. Cross platform.

Bluefish
Bluefish is an open source multi-platform IDE that is much more lightweight than other major IDE software. Bluefish supports nearly all languages, and uses FTP, SFTP and WebDAV to upload files and changes.

Database Tools

Database management can be a tricky endeavor. It’s always nice to have tools that can take some of the pain away from wrestling with databases. Here are some free tools that can help.

phpMyAdmin
phpMyAdmin is one of the most popular database tools on the web. It’s written in PHP, and comes as a standard install with many web hosts.

HeidiSQL
HeidiSQL is a MySQL database tool written for Windows and Linux. Easily create, and edit databases, database tables, and other data inside of MySQL databases.

Open Office Base
BASE is a desktop database management tool by OpenOffice. BASE allows you to edit multiple types of databases, and integrates seamlessly with the OpenOffice.org suites.

Sequel Pro

Sequel Pro is a MySQL database manager for Mac. Written entirely in Cocoa, it takes the pain out of modifying and creating MySQL databases.

MySQL Workbench
MySQL Workbench is a cross-platform visual database design tool, created by the creators of MySQL.

SQL Buddy
SQL Buddy is a web-based MySQL editor, much like phpMyAdmin. It’s a small, simple and open source solution for managing MySQL online.

Video Editing

As the world increasingly embraces web video, developers need video editors and tools to create stunning video to promote or sell products. Here are some of the best free video editors out there.

Virtual Dub
Virtual Dub is an open source video editing tool for Windows, geared towards processing AVI files (but can also handle sets of BMP images).

Avidemux

avidemux is an open source, cross-platform video editor. The editor supports many different file formats, and has a simple UI that nearly anyone can understand. Perfect for beginners.

Cinelerra
Cinelerra is an incredibly robust piece of UNIX software that allows you to capture, compose and edit video and audio. As the Cinelerra homepage says, “It’s a movie studio in a box”.

Local Environments

It’s nice to be able to develop on your own computer, as opposed to a slower remote server. Instead of installing PHP, MySQL and Apache separately on your computer, (which can be a daunting task in itself), try using one of these free environments.

MAMP

MAMP (Macintosh, Apple, MySQL and PHP) is a local environment for Mac. The program quickly installs Apache, MySQL and PHP on your Mac.

WAMP
WAMP is the same as MAMP (installs Apache, MySQL and PHP), except for Windows.

XAMPP
XAMPP is a multi-platform distribution that also includes Perl.

Focus Apps

Here are a few apps that can help with the ADD and that we’ve all developed, thanks to our twitchy online habits.

Think

Think is a free application that blocks everything on your desktop except for what you’re working on. You can adjust things like brightness levels and others Mac only.

Isolator
Isolator is another Mac-only application that brings the single application that you’re working on into the foreground and hides everything else.

Jedi Concentrate
Jedi Concentrate is the Windows equivalent to Isolator and Think. The application dims all other applications once “concentrate” mode has been activated.

Dropcloth
Dropcloth allows you to blank out other applications, as well as adjust the opacity of the background. Windows only.

Support

Instead of hiring some support, sometimes it makes more sense to just fix the problem yourself. Aside from individual project’s forums and support, here are some forums and sites that are excellent for asking general programming questions.

StackOverflow

StackOverflow is the newest in the group of sites that allow you to ask any development question. The community is set up a little bit differently than a forum, where top-rated responses are shown first. Also, the StackOverflow community is very active, with questions answered quickly (and usually with multiple responses).

Webmaster World
Webmaster World has long been the go-to site for general development questions. The Webmaster World forums are some of the oldest and most-trafficked, and the help is superb.

DevShed
The DevShed Forums are also very popular and also have a lot of user activity.

SitePoint Forums
The SitePoint forums are also excellent, but typically offer more general development questions.

Communication

As more teams are becoming de-centralized and global, great communication tools are a must. Here are some free and open source tools that can come in handy.

Skype
In case you’ve been living under a rock, Skype offers offers free chatting, talk and video. It’s the de facto communication standard outside of IM.

Adium
Adium is a free instant messaging client for Mac that can connect to AIM, GTalk, MSN, Jabber, Yahoo and others.

Trillian
The Windows IM client Trillian is an exceptional piece of software. Aside from it’s Windows version, it also has a web interface that syncs your contacts. You can connect to multiple chat accounts (like Adium), and if that weren’t enough, an iPhone and Mac chat application are coming soon.

Pidgin
Pidgin is a cross-platform version of Trillian, with the ability to connect to multiple chat platforms (even IRC), and can easily be extended with plugins and skins.

Meebo
Meebo is a web-based chat application that can connect to multiple chat accounts. The really cool thing about Meebo is that it has rooms where multiple people can join in a conversation, without having to download any software.

Thunderbird
Looking for a Outlook replacement for email? Look no further than the open source Thunderbird. Aside from being open source, the software comes with extensions that add extra functionality on top of the initial offering. It’ powered by Mozilla and is cross-platform.

Free Hosting: Google App Engine

There are lots of free web hosts out there, you can utilize the Google App Engine platform to host your applications for free, up to around 2 Million pageviews a month. This, I would imagine, would cover the hosting for 99% of the apps made by the people who read this site. (No offense meant by this statement, it’s just a stinkin’ huge amount of free bandwidth!)

Photo Editors

Photo editors are another expensive component to design. Fortunately, there are some pretty incredible open source photo editors out there. Photoshop isn’t your only option.

Gimp

Gimp is a very robust image manipulation program that could easily be compared to Photoshop in terms of functionality. Gimp offers advanced image editing capabilities and best of all: is open source.

GimpShop
Gimpshop is an even closer replica of Photoshop. GimpShop is a modification of Gimp that intends to specifically mimic the feel of Photoshop.

Seashore
Seashore is a lightweight image editor that only touches on the most common image editing functionality. Mac only.

CinePaint
CinePaint is another fully-featured image editor that is similar to Gimp. Linux, Mac and BSD only.

Outsourced Work

Most of us can’t do 100% of the work that’s needed on an in-depth project. Sometimes we need design help, other times we need a hand with the programming side, or marketing, or copywriting, etc. Oftentimes it’s cheaper to outsource some of this work. Here are a few sites that could potentially save you money on outsourcing work.

One Caveat: While you may be able to save some money by outsourcing your work, many times the quality suffers and you’ll have to pay more in the long run for updates to broken code, etc. You should be careful as to what you’re outsourcing so you don’t pay more in the long run.

99 Designs

If you’re strictly a developer and need a bit of design help from time to time, then sometimes it’s easiest to just use a site like 99 Designs. 99 Designs has over 47,000 designers that regularly compete for design jobs posted on the site. How it works is you submit a design brief, then the designers will submit concepts that you choose from. Once you choose a favorite, than that designer gets the bid. Usually you can post work here for much cheaper than using a freelance or in-house designer.

Elance
Elance is a place where you can hire experts to do just about any sort of work: Writing, development, design, sales, administrative, legal, and much more. Elance tends to be more expensive than the other outsourcing sites, but they also tend to have the most competent workers too.

Rent a Coder
Rent a Coder may have the worst site design of any major site I’ve seen in a while, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find some cheap work. The workers typically aren’t as high-quality as Elance, but if you’re on a tight budget it’s great.

Amazon Mechanical Turk
Amazon Mechanical Turk is one of the cheapest places to find mundane labor work. If you have some highly-repetitious work that you’d like to outsource, you can do it very cheaply with Mechanical Turk. You essentially set up a “template” for Mechanical Turk workers to go off of, and then set a budget and a per task payment.

Bartering
This should really be an article in itself, but bartering is a great way to save some money while developing your project. If you have friends who have different skill sets than you, offer to trade work. This is hands-down the best way to save money on a project.

Marketing

Many people think that you need really expensive ad campaigns to really market a good product.

Wrong. Save your money.

The best marketing that can be done online these days doesn’t really have to do with money, just a little creativity.

Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is the attempt to create an ad of some sort that becomes “viral” and spreads throughout the Internet. Many of these types of campaigns are done with videos and other tools.

Word of Mouth
Word of mouth is a great way for you to generate publicity, both online and off. Here’s an article with 5 tips to generate word of mouth marketing.

Pitching to Bloggers

Pitching your project to bloggers is something that is free and fairly easy to do. However, you must remember that bloggers get tons of emails about products to pitch, so here are somethings that you have to do to make the blogger take notice.

1. Offer something. A free pass, a coupon code for their readers, anything other than “hey, check this out”. Bloggers need incentive, just like everyone else.
2. Personalize the message. “Dear Sir or Madam” letters go straight into my Junk mail folder, just like everyone elses. If you’re going to pitch a blogger, write her a personalized email.
3. Be brief. Longer emails don’t get read because they’re picked up by spam filters, or the reader just loses interest. Be short and to the point, without wasting any time.

A blogger can send you good traffic, positive reviews and incoming links, which will be very successful in marketing your product.

Linkbait
Linkbait is creating a tool, article, or some other resource that people will want to link to. Usually the goal for linkbaits is to get onto the homepage of Digg, Delicious, or some other social news site. Linkbait is most effective when the medium used is easy to share (pdfs, websites, blog posts, etc.) in digital format.

Here’s a great article on the four characteristics of success for linkbaits.

I’ve been noticing some buzz about the newly-launched photo sharing service DailyBooth, and can’t help but notice a trend that seems to happen with nearly every new web service. All newly-released websites seem to have an cycle of innovation that looks something like this:

1. Release product to early adopters
2. Early adopters sign up on a whim, not knowing how to utilize the product
3. More people sign up because of early adopters
4. API is relased
5. New, better uses are found
6. Product starts to refine itself

Now in case you weren’t paying attention here, the key part of this cycle was API being released. Why? Because API’s mean innovation. And innovation is the key to winning the web app game.

So let’s go back to the original example of DailyBooth. They are at the “release product to early adopters” stage. If you check out some of the suggested users, you’ll see that all they do is post profile pictures of themselves.

Is this wrong? No. Is it the best use of the system? I doubt it. But this is a natural cycle of a product: people are just starting to become aware of it.

DailyBooth isn’t going to become a true powerhouse until it lets innovation (and an API) into the product’s picture.

A lesson in history: Twitter

Photo by Paul Snelling

Let’s go back in time and look at how Twitter started. It began as a pet project for the founders Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams and Biz Stone. They didn’t release it with a specific goal in mind, other than as a microblogging service. They wanted to change the way information was shared in a more concise way, much like a text message.

They received a huge bump in usage at the SXSW conference in 2007, and early adopters started to use the service. Initially the early adopters used the service as a way to update what they were doing (ie. “I’m writing this rad article for Web Jackalope”), as many still do today. Not a lot of innovation, and certainly not that much use. It left many wondering if Twitter was ever going to really become popular, or even useful to the public as a whole.

But the real uptick in innovation (and traffic) came when Twitter released their API. The API has allowed countless mobile, desktop and web applications to utilize Twitter to spread information farther and wider than the founders could have ever imagined. Here are some of the creative applications that use Twitter:

• StockTwits – A service for stock traders to find and share breaking stock news.
• Tweets on Tees – Vote, submit and create T-Shirts from tweets/
• Trazzler – Tracks tweets around travel sites.
• Twestival – Find the nearest Twitter festival around you.
• ExecTweets – Find and follow top business executives on Twitter.
• … and many, many more.

This list doesn’t even include the slew of mobile and desktop applications that you can use to update your Twitter status, as well as the countless services who have integrated Twitter into their site (Facebook, Posterous, Tumblr, and many more).

Now that we’ve seen what an API can do for innovation and overall success of a service, let’s take a look what happens when a company doesn’t release an API or encourage innovation.

A lesson in history: Plurk

Photo by hellfroze

When Twitter was experiencing some major downtimes last year, Plurk entered like a White Knight into the microblogging scene. It featured a fresh timeline setup of microblogging, and many started to jump Twitter’s ship and moved over to Plurk. It seemed like the stars were aligning for Plurk to possibly be the “Twitter Killer”; the new de facto microblogging service.

Unfortunately, Plurk never had an API released with it, and interest waned once Twitter regained uptime. The team behind Plurk didn’t encourage innovation, and their product has essentially died.

When DailyBooth is going to get interesting as a service is when they start to become as ubiquitous as TwitPic in the mobile picture space. This means integration with services like Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook.

Conclusions

The Internet has changed greatly over the past few years. The web browser isn’t the only way to access web data, and mobile phones are becoming an increasingly popular way to browse the web. It’s imperative that you make it easy as possible for innovation to happen with your web service.

Release that API!

Think how powerful a service could be with hundreds or even thousands of developers making interesting applications and furthering your brand. Make it ridiculously easy to access your data.

Drupal is an excellent choice for a content management system (CMS). However, many people only see it as a simple CMS, a site to build a landing page or two. But Drupal is much more than that. Not only is Drupal easy to theme, it’s got a wide range of built in functionality and a large community powering the popular CMS.

One of the great things about Drupal is that you can build almost any sort of site that you can imagine, with the help of a couple modules. Want to go beyond the basics of a simple CMS? Drupal has an excellent API that allows you to extent nearly any aspect of the software. In fact, many people have started to talk about using Drupal as a framework, as it’s robust, well written, handles lots of traffic, and has a large and helpful community.

So, if you’re thinking about building your next big site, here are a few ways that you can take existing modules and turn a project quickly, without needing to make any custom modules.

A quick note: I don’t think it’s a great idea to make exact clones of existing sites and slap a new name on them. Clones hardly become as popular as the original site. This article is merely to show the power of Drupal and what can be done with limited time and no development budget.

1. Digg Clone

There’s plenty of Digg clone software out there, but it’s pretty simple to make a site that allows users to submit links to content, vote, comment and moderate the submitted links. It’s even easier when that functionality is all wrapped up into a single module. Drigg creates an identical voting site that allows users to add web links, vote on them, share stories, and many more features.

2. Blog

This is one of the most obvious and common uses for Drupal, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. Drupal comes primed for blogging straight out of the box, and there are many modules available that can enhance the commenting and overall blogging functionality.

3. News Portal

For those of you wanting a site that can showcase lots of information like Yahoo! or some of the other news portals, Drupal has you covered. Thanks to an excellent module called Views and some custom categories, you can quickly create many different types of content and display them in different ways on the homepage. Views is an indispensable module for a Drupal site. It’s a rare occasion that I’m not using the module on a site that I’m developing.

4. Robust user site

Here is where I think Drupal shines brighter than most (if not all) content management systems. Drupal has an excellent user management system, user profiles and even OpenID right out of the box. It also has modules that can connect to Twitter, Facebook, and it’s easy to connect to other authentication gateways with the use of custom modules.

Drupal also has a stellar module called Organic Groups that allows users to “organize” themselves into groups. Each group can have it’s own homepage, blocks, themes, taxonomy and more.

5. Awareness site

If you’re wanting to build a site specifically for a cause or organization, Drupal makes that easy as well. Aside from the Organic Groups plugin and other community-friendly features, there’s a donation module that accepts payments from Paypal, and shows the donating users on a donation page.

CiviCRM (demo) is a constituent relationship management solution module that was specifically created for advocacy and non-profit groups. Over 5,000 organizations use CiviCRM, and it’s well-supported and has many sub-modules for more specific advocacy needs.

Another great Drupal module for developing an awareness site is the Connect module. Connect allows you to easily create petitions, emails or fax campaigns.

6. Twitter Clone

Yeah, yeah… the world doesn’t need another Twitter clone, right? Well, I tend to disagree. The concept of sites and communities built around short, cross-platform messaging systems are a phenomena that just aren’t going away any time soon. With Drupal, it could be just as easy. Drupal’s Microblog module copies most of the features of Twitter. Micro-messaging, following users and public timelines.

7. File Storage Site

File storage sites like Drop.io or Box.net could be created with Drupal and the help of a module like Media Mover. Media Mover allows you to take uploaded files and copy them over to Amazon S3, the highly-scalable data storage system.

8. Flickr Clone

Photo sites like Flickr and Photobucket could also be created with the Image module and Views. The Image module gives users the ability to upload images, and then creates thumbnails and galleries from the uploads. Users could also comment on the photos using the built-in commenting functionality.

9. Delicious Clone

It turns out that making a bookmarking site like Delicious is fairly trivial in Drupal. There are several options for modules that give users the ability to post bookmarks to their Drupal account.

10. YouTube Clone

If you’re wanting to build a video sharing site like YouTube, Drupal has some modules that can greatly help with that. FlashVideo adds functionality to convert uploaded files to flash, and then moves them over to Amazon S3 if desired. FlashVideo also provides the ability to embed the videos, just like the big boys.

11. Amazon Clone

Trying to recreate the powerhouse’s ecommerce dominance is a tall order, but if any CMS is capable of it, Drupal is. Drupal has a few stellar ecommerce modules like Ecommerce and Ubercart. Both of these modules have an extensive feature list that make it easier to create an ecommerce powerhouse.

12. Tumblr Clone

Creating a social aggregation site with Drupal is easy enough with the excellent Activity Stream module. Activity Steam allows you to pull in user’s activity on social sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Qik, StumbleUpon and many others.

13. Blogger Clone

If you’re wanting to start a blog host like Blogger or Wordpress.com, Drupal is easily equipped to do that. Drupal has a blog module that comes shipped with the package, and it allows every site member the ability to have a blog.

14. Blog network

Blog networks like Performancing and WiseBread rely on Drupal to power their networks. This requires the use of the built-in blog module. Member’s blog posts all end up on the homepage of the site by default, and you could modify how the member’s blogs looked with the help of the Views module.

15. News Aggregator

I built the LifeRemix network site with Drupal and a single module to aggregate all of our blogger’s posts. The site updates itself without any monitoring from me.

16. Friendfeed

By utilizing the excellent Activity Stream module, it would be quite easy to build a FriendFeed clone. As Drupal already comes shipped with an awesome set of user and profile modules, a quick Friendfeed clone could be made in a matter of hours, depending on your design skills.

Use your imagination! These are by no means the only uses for the popular CMS. I’d love to hear more examples of sites built with Drupal, or possible sites that I’ve left off the list.

Signup forms have long irked the casual visitor. During the process of discovery, nobody wants to stop and fill out details before they can “unlock” the rest of the site’s potential. As web users become more and more fickle, signup forms are becoming an increasingly large barrier that repels many prospective visitors from great sites.

Fortunately there’s a new signup system in town that is making it much easier for the visitor to interact with the site and it increases signups. I give you: Lazy Registration.

Lazy Registration

Helping the web visitor only helps your site. One great trend that we’re starting to see in web development that helps visitors is “lazy” registration. Lazy registration is a process that allows the prospective user to test out many of the core features, save her sessions and data, and then when she’s ready to sign up everything is ported to her “new” account. Lazy registration is a way to allow users to try the site out before they sign up, no strings attached. Really clever sites have even found a way to bypass the signup form altogether. They slowly ask for data along the visitor’s path of discovery, and pretty soon she’s a member of the site, without having to fill out a form!

The Old System

So let’s contrast the lazy registration system with the crufty old signup forms most sites use today. Using the traditional method, users have to fill out a form (most of the time with too many fields), check their email, verify their email address, and only then are they allowed to start using the web site. The process creates a wall between the visitor and the user. You’re either in or you’re out, as the movies say.

Contrast the antiquated signup form method with lazy registration. Lazy registration almost always bypasses the traditional signup form and instead takes the data in other methods, without making the user fill out a long, unwieldy form. Lazy registration removes the barrier of entry into the site, as registered and non-registered are able to do the same things.

Increasing Engagement and Trust

Think about what kind of engagement sites would get if the user could get his hands dirty playing with the site’s features, and then later ask for his registration details? Or even better, the user just provides information sporadically, and the smart registration system figures out how to keep him into the system.

Also, when a site has a registration wall that the user can’t see over, it creates a level of distrust. How do you know that it’s worth your time to sign up? What is it like? What will they do with my data?

If the site allows users to easily start using the site, the trust barrier instantly topples. People will more than likely sign up for a product or site that they trust, and a great way to add trust is to drop a cumbersome registration barrier.

Great Examples of Registration Systems

Some sites have already implemented systems like this, and have definitely increased engagement. Here are 12 awesome examples of innovative registration systems that are leading the way in terms of usability for the visitor.

1. StackOverflow

StackOverflow is bar-none the best question/answer site for web developers. What’s amazing about StackOverflow is that new visitors are able to answer a question right away, without having to deal with a pesky signup form. StackOverflow relies on the community to report spam or irrelevant questions. Engagment = +1.

2. Magdex

The makers of the Magdex (used by The Guardian, The Times & about 150 other sites worldwide) have actually shared a video on how they used lazy registration in their job boards. Essentially, whenever a user fills out a job application, they take the information and create an account with it when the user clicks a checkbox that says “save my data”. All of the data is there in the first place, it only makes sense to store it without requesting the user to fill out a redundant form.

3. Picnik

Picnik is a wonderful online image editor that requires no registration to start using their editing tools. It’s only at the very end of the editing process is the user asked to save his edited picture by creating an account. It’s brilliant, and Picnik gives compelling reasons why the user should save the picture which undoubtedly increases signups.

4. Netvibes

Netvibes has long since been the pioneer in allowing people to try their product before registering. You can create a start page, and your information is saved in a session until you register. The Netvibes mindset is that if you keep exploring the product, you’ll eventually find value and want to register with the site.

5. Picamatic

While Picamatic might not be the most well-known site in the world, it is an excellent and simple image hosting site that allows you to upload your images without having to create an account. You can even opt to have your persistent image link emailed to you, but you never register for an account. It’s a simple and non-intrusive way to quickly share images.

6. Blummy

Blummy is another dead-simple application that allows you to make a quick bookmarklet to your favorite web services, consolidating them into one bookmark. While it isn’t the most complicated application, Blummy does a great job of not asking for user information when it doesn’t need it. You can always sign up for an account, but most people don’t need that kind of “commitment” from a bookmark manager, and Blummy has recognized that.

7. Kayak

Kayak is one of the cleanest lazy registration systems around. When you search for vacation, car or flight prices, it saves your data and always keeps your recent searches on the right-side of the page, until you login or register.

8. Drop.io

My favorite file sharing site is Drop.io because of the clean interface and because I never have to register to use the full features of the site. In fact, they really don’t even have a user registration system until you decide to pay for an extended feature set (that most normal users wouldn’t need). The fact that Drop.io gets out of the way and lets users user their product unhindered only increases their brand and encourages referrals.

9. Doodle

Doodle is easily the best way to schedule an event with a bunch of people. It kind of fuses a poll with a calendar application to allow prospective event attenders to pick the best dates/times for them to attend. Then it smartly decides the best time to host the event, based on the polling. But the best part about Doodle is that you don’t have to register, even to administer the polling results. Another great example of unfettered access for the user.

10. Fusecal

And last, but certainly not least, is Fusecal. You can find, add, update, modify calendars and export them to your calendar system of choice, all without having to register. The site keeps you coming back because it gives so much away. Once you create an account, your session data is automagically ported into your account.

Other Registration Resources

If you’re wanting to see a real example of an ajax cart that utilizes the lazy registration system, Ajax Patterns has created a demo shopping cart that stores data without users creating an account. It’s a great way to look under the hood to see what kind of resources it takes to start user data in sessions with ajax.

If you’re wanting more information about how to create better webforms, we highly recommend Luke Wrobleski’s book Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks. The book goes into much detail about how to get the most out of signup forms, and other best practices.

Google Web Toolkit is a monumental project for Java developers. Java is a language that isn’t usually associated with web development. PHP, Ruby, Python and others are typically seen as the languages of choice when building web applications. At least until recently. Google’s steady development and improvement of the GWT is a major step towards bridging the gap between ajax-driven web applications and Java. And it works well.

GWT: Three Years in the Making

Google Web Toolkit was released in 2006 at the Java One conference, and since then has shaken both the Java world and web development worlds. GWT is an open source Java development framework that essentially allows Java developers to quickly build JavaScript apps in Java. Essentially, GWT makes developing Ajax applications much easier. No more stressing over browser differences and other quirks that developers have to deal with. These quirks are compounded when you’re trying to wield AJAX applications. Just like the GWT official description states, developers spend 90% of their time working around these browser-specific issues.

So now that Google Web Toolkit has hit it’s stride with the latest release of 1.5, it might be time for you to check out GWT as a platform for your next rich Internet application. Here’s a roundup of resources that will help you get on your way to quickly developing in the GWT environment.

Official Google Web Toolkit Resources

GWT Blog
The latest news and updates about GWT as provided by the Google team.

Official Google Web Toolkit Discussion Group
If you’re wanting to find answers to specific GWT questions, this should be your first stop. It’s a fairly large community, and the questions are monitored by the GWT team.

GWT Product Overview
Learn how the toolkit works, the development workflow and the features of the toolkit.

GWT Quick Start
Ready to try your hand at a quick GWT application? Here’s a guide from the official documentation on starting the GWT application environment and creating your first demo app.

GWT API Reference
Roll under the Google Web Toolkit hood. Functions and calls galore.

GWT Showcase of Features
Google provides a demo application that allows you to play with GWT functionality and look at the source code so you can implement the features in your own app. Quite handy for learning the basics.

Official GWT Tutorials

Photo by Alain Bachellier.

Google offers (at the time of this writing) 4 tutorials related to GWT development.

DOM Events, Memory Leaks, and You
How GWT prevents Ajax memory leaks in their applications.

Security for GWT Applications
Different attacks your application might expect, and how to combat them.

Using GWT for JSON Mashups
Different ways to interoperate JSON data to build mashups and other JSON services.

Put Your GWT Application on Facebook
A few easy steps and your GWT app is now interfacing with Facebook.

Google Web Toolkit Books

Google Web Toolkit: Taking the Pain Out of Ajax

Google Web Toolkit Applications

Pro Web 2.0 Application Development with GWT (Expert’s Voice in Web Development)

GWT in Action: Easy Ajax with the Google Web Toolkit

Google Web Toolkit Solutions: More Cool & Useful Stuff

Accelerated GWT: Building Enterprise Google Web Toolkit Applications

GWT in Practice

Google™ Web Toolkit Solutions (Digital Short Cut): Cool & Useful Stuff

Google Web Toolkit Tools

Google Web Toolkit Hacks
A large collection of Ajax applets, games, plugins and widgets for use in blogs, CMS, and more.

GWT Components
Collection of components that add extra functionality to GWT like drag-n-drop, as well as interfacing with existing Javascript libraries.

GWT Component Library
Autocompletion, rounded corners, Scriptaculous integration, and more.

GWT Widget Library
An entire library of widgets to use with the Google Web Toolkit platform.

IDE Plugins

Photo by Nano Taboada.

Already using an IDE for development? Here are a list of plugins for working with GWT.

GWT Designer
Plugin for the IDE Eclipse.

GWT4NB
A Netbeans plugin on web applications.

GWT-Java
Another Eclipse plugin for GWT.

GWT Resources and Reference

Stack Overflow: GWT Tags
Stackoverflow is an amazing resource for developers, and many questions about GWT have already been asked. If not, there’s a huge community to help with you find your answer.

gwt site
A collection of GWT links, libraries and resources.

GWT Blog
The most frequently updated of the GWT blogs.

An Unofficial GWT Blog
Blog written by some of the GWT engineers.

GWT Articles

Photo by Thomas Hawk.

Odds are there are plenty of people smarter than us writing about GWT. (A quick Google search confirms this.)Learn from other people smarter than us with these articles on GWT.

Ajax for Java developers: Exploring the Google Web Toolkit
An extensive article from the IBM developerWorks showcasing some sample code that can be used with GWT.
http://ajaxworld.com/node/609633

Supercharge your Ajax development with Google Web Toolkit (GWT)
A quick overview on how the toolkit can help with your application development.

Hands-On Google Web Toolkit
An excellent 5-part tutorial on how to create a Flickr photo album mashup.

Working with the Google Web Toolkit
Another 5-part intro intro with many code examples and applications.

Online Sample Applications built with GWT
An extensive list of applications built with the toolkit. Lots of functionality is explored in these applications.

Developing Web 2.0 Apps with the Google Web Toolkit
A nice, comprehensive tutorial on how to build Ajax apps without tearing your hair out. From the article:

Ajax development hurts, and is not recommended without a bottle of analgesics by your side. Luckily for us there are tools that can make developing Web 2.0 apps a breeze.

Chords of Dissension

Photo by k is for kristina.

No resource list should be complete without a few chords of dissonance. Here are a few of the naysayers of the Google Web Toolkit framework.

Why Google Web Toolkit Rots Your Brain
Ryan Doherty goes into extensive detail as to why he thinks GWT isn’t all that fantastic. He believes that the toolkit is too bloated, doesn’t handle browser sniffing correctly, and many other details. His follow up to the post is a tad more forgiving.

Why I Dumped GWT
Pieter goes into details as to why he doesn’t develop with the Google Web Toolkit after one and a half years with the toolkit. He goes over reasons like SEO, Adsense customization, and others.

Social media websites have made a huge splash on the Internet as we know it. No longer do editors dictate what is news, and what is important. The power belongs to the masses on social news sites, which is a huge reason for their traction and loyal users.

It’s no surprise that developing a niche social media site is a popular job request for web developers. When I first learned about brand new social site for financial news, ideas, and tips Tip’d, I was immediately impressed with the clean, sophisticated design and impressive functionality. Yet what was truly amazing about Tip’d was how fast the site was assembled by it’s rockstar development team.

Quick Turnarounds

Most developers know that sites involving social media features are hard to do right. Features like voting, comments, account creation and moderation take a long time to get right. The Tip’d team bypassed a lot of that coding and used a CMS specifically for social news sites, Social Web CMS, which had many of the features that they needed right out of the box.

Here’s an interview with the Tip’d team of Andy Hagans, Chris Pearson and Jimmy (”Jimbeaux”) Atkins.

Planning: Interview with Andy Hagans, Tip’d Founder

WJ: What sparked the idea behind Tipd?

AH: A couple weeks ago, I was reviewing all of the ‘niche social media sites’ (Ballhype for sports, Lipstick for celeb news, etc). I simply couldn’t believe (2 years after social news hit it big) that there still wasn’t a financial social news site with some real presence. So I ran the idea by Jimbo, and that night, around 2 AM, we got the first (very ugly) version of the site up and running.

WJ: What were planning meetings like to get everyone together and organized? Just email, or did you use something like Basecamp to get organized?

AH: Email, Basecamp, and IM, depending on what needed communicated. We work virtually as we all live in different areas.

WJ: Do you have any goals or expectations of the site? Big future plans?

AH: Goals- We want to have 2,000 members by the time we move out of beta in early December. Long term, we want to be THE place people set as their homepage for financial news. We want to have 50,000 members and get 5 million pageviews per month. I think it’s do-able–not because I’m a genius or anything, but because our team is so good at what they do, and because so many bloggers and finance junkies have been craving a more social place to find and comment on financial content.

Development: Interview with Jimmy Atkinson, Tip’d Developer

WJ: What was the total time taken to get the site from concept to launch? Can you kind of give a general idea of the breakdown of time spent?

JA: Andy and I first discussed the concept of Tip’d on September 24. We purchased the domain name and began working on the site that day. Our beta launch occurred just three weeks later, on October 14. Here’s how we got there: The first steps we took was to install Pligg to our server on day 1, September 24. After a few days of customizing it as best we could, we decided on October 1 to contact Ash, the a former Pligg developer and current lead developer on the SWCMS team, to see if he would be interested in working with us. He began working with us later that day, and this gave our development productivity a much needed shot in the arm. It was on this day that we made the change from Pligg to SWCMS. Since then, we’ve constantly been tweaking and adding new features on an almost daily basis. This will likely continue for a few more weeks until we reach a stable point.

WJ: Caching/Performance- What hardware do you guys use to host the site?

JA: Currently the site is hosted on a Media Temple grid server. We use a caching plugin designed specifically for Pligg/SWCMS.

WJ: I hear that you guys had a doozy of a time hacking the socialwebcms. Can you give us a little background about this? What were you changing from the source code?

JA: As I explained in the first question, we did spend a few days configuring (I’m not sure I would quite call it hacking) Pligg after we first installed it on September 24. A few days later, we reached the point where we decided we needed some outside expert help on the system. That is when we decided to reach out to Ash. And since October 1, Ash has been handling all of the really complex stuff (i.e. adding new features and working out bugs).

WJ: I noticed that you guys use a redirect script to track outgoing clicks, as opposed to just linking to the story normally. Are you going to be providing any statistics or analytics in the future?

JA: We are not planning on providing any stats at this point; although this could be something we’ll discuss in the future.

WJ: What tools did you guys use to speed up your development process? Any IDE’s, collaboration tools, etc.?

JA: No IDEs, but we did use NotePad, PsPad, WinMerge, and Windows Grep in development. We love using 37signals’ Basecamp as our collaboration tool.

WJ: 6. Any tips for developers wanting to hack a CMS and create a social news site?

JA: If you’re going to hack a CMS, don’t hesitate to talk to the developer if possible. Doing this has worked out great for us so far. If you’re going to create a social news site, remember that the most important thing is the community. You can have a fantastic CMS with all sorts of great features, but if no one is using it, what’s the use? The community is the most important aspect of any good social news site. The fact that we recognized this before we began work on the project is one of the main reasons for the success of Tip’d so far.

Design: Interview with Chris Pearson, Designer for Tip’d

WJ: Designing a community site is much, much different than designing a website like a blog. Can you explain some of the ways that the Tip’d design is different than a typical blog or website?

CP: Sites like Tip’d exist primarily to steer people in the direction of articles that they want to read, and because of this, the design/usability goal is simply to get people the information they need as clearly and as quickly as possible. In environments like this, users tend to process information in visual chunks, and this means that certain details (headlines, submission data, usernames, links, etc.) must be both obvious and quickly discernable.

On a community site like Tip’d, it’s extremely important to give users the context they need to process information and then to get the hell out of their way. Unlike a blog, people tend to use community sites over and over again in search of new and rewarding content, and this places an even higher premium on usability (which is really the hallmark of any great community site).

WJ: The Tip’d’s theme is very nice, clean, and reeks of Chris Pearson’s excellent design work Did you guys create a theme from scratch, or did you just modify an existing socialwebcms theme?

CP: In order to reduce development time, we simply used the HTML from an existing SocialWebCMS template to build the site. In truth, the existing code was so bad that we had to make lots of little customizations, but when you look at the big picture, most of the HTML is stuff that was there before I got my hands dirty with the styles.

The CSS is a completely different story, though. I rewrote everything from the ground-up and basically breathed new life into an HTML structure that makes me want to pull out my hair. As a result, I don’t really know what to call this… I guess it’s sort of a hybrid re-design, and even though we started with an existing template, the final product looks, feels, and behaves differently than the original.

WJ: What features in the design did you try to do differently than other major social news sites, like Digg or Reddit?

CP: Not that it’s all that “different” from other major social news sites, but with Tip’d, I simply tried to guide users directly to the meat of the site. In this case, the “meat” consists of three main things—article headlines, article summaries, and vote buttons. These are the three most important elements users rely on when scanning, and I wanted to make sure that they didn’t have to put forth any effort whatsoever to locate them.

To accomplish this, I employed some very basic typographical conventions in combination with a limited color scheme to emphasize both important elements and visual breaks. The end result is a layout that is almost devoid of visual fluff, and this makes scanning a more intuitive, less confusing process. The idea is that you want to avoid forcing users to learn a proprietary navigation system or new usability conventions when they visit your site—just give ‘em the keys and let ‘em drive.

WJ: Were there any restrictions designing the theme of a CMS as opposed to a blog or a regular website?

CP: CMS platforms like Pligg exist because they run a very particular type of Website, and naturally, there are little nuances that are unique to each type of site. Aside from that, though, most sites share common elements that constitute a vast majority of both the design and functionality. For instance, the primary content column of Tip’d really isn’t that much different from a stream of blog posts; it’s just been adapted to display the specific blurbs and meta data that are important to this type of site.

WJ: Do you have any tips/advice for anyone wanting to design a killer social news site?

CP: The biggest thing to watch for with any type of site built on a CMS is the core template system that you use as a foundation. Before you get started, make sure you’ve got a sensible markup structure and a stylesheet setup that isn’t overly complicated—it’ll make your life MUCH easier as you trudge through the intricacies of the design process!

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With Thanksgiving only a couple days away, it’s appropriate to look back on the things that we appreciate best about our jobs. Let’s face it: Web Developers have the best jobs around, right? We’re incredibly lucky to have the professions we do.

Here are 15 things that we all should be thankful for. These are the technologies that we couldn’t live without, or that have previously paved the way and allowed us to be web developers.

1. Mosaic

Graphic designers everywhere should reserve a day in November to give thanks to the software that’s enabled our careers. Without Mosaic’s picture support, the Internet doesn’t need good design. The 1993 launch of this web browsing software opened up a brand new world to web developers and web browsers alike.

Photo by Marc_Smith.

2. Firefox

Firefox ended the long tyranny of IE oppression for experienced web users. The extension-enabled browser has forced IE to play catch up and improve their lukewarm browser, which hadn’t seen an update for 5 years.

Aside from pushing a standards-based browsing initiative, the ability to extend Firefox has made the developers life much easier. There are oodles of extensions that are nearly essential to the developer.

Photo by psd.

3. Browsershots.org

Every web developer knows the awful pain that is making designs constant across different browsers. Thanks to Browsershots, we can easily see a screenshot of any page across a multitude of different browsers, showing potential problems that might arise across different browsers, and giving new reason to invent curses for legacy IE versions.

4. Firebug

Thanks to Firefox, we now have a browser that is also an important tool for the web developer. Firebug is a must-have extension for the web developer. With this nifty little extension you can view just about any aspect of the web page, visible or behind the scenes, and modify it real-time. It’s incredibly useful for designers and programmers alike.

Photo by zeroK.

5. Google Code

If you’re trying to find a useful snippet of code, there’s no place better than Google Code. Not only is it a great place to search for entire libraries, you can find useful bits of code that might be hard to find otherwise. If you’re wanting to house a project, you’ll be especially thankful for G Code, as it’s a free and easy way to have a working community for a project without hosting costs.

Also, with Google Code you can use Google’s bandwidth for the javascript libraries included in your projects. Using jQuery? Just call Google’s hosted version and be on your way. No need to slow your own server down with Google’s gracious offer.

6. Frameworks

Frameworks have given developers a major reason to be thankful. Gone are the days of building websites around repetitive code. Using frameworks like Rails, Django or CakePHP on websites needing database interaction and user permissions takes a major burden off of the programmer. They can spend less time on common, tedious code and more on the interesting and unique. It’s a powerful paradigm shift in programming.

Here are some of the major frameworks used today, in no particular order.

• Ruby on Rails (Ruby)
• CakePHP (PHP)
• Django (Python)
• Zend (PHP)
• CodeIgnitor (PHP)
• Symfony (PHP)

Photo by Nathan Borror.

7. Open Source projects

Mad props should be bestowed upon the Open Source Initiative and all the software it promotes. It is a fact that we wouldn’t have a) the Internet or b) much of the technology that it runs on without open source projects. Most of the biggest and best projects are open sourced software, and they all run on the basis that the people building and contributing to them are doing it for free. Granted, these folks might make a hefty profit on consulting services and other opportunities around the projects, they’re still opening up the code base for developers to modify and improve, as they see fit.

Open Source is the Internet’s best contribution yet. The free exchange of ideas encouraged by Open Source is the best thing that’s happened to the web, especially for web developers. Show of hands: Who hasn’t ever used open source software to build a site or project? I’m guessing none of us. That is plenty to be thankful for.

Photo by Josh Parrish.

8. Creative Commons

On the heels of Open Source is Creative Commons licensing. You can modify, reuse and redistribute Creative Commons-licensed material, in exchange for (at the most) attribution. Ultimately, Creative Commons protects the original work, but allows people to modify and reuse at will.

Creative Commons is a very big benefit for designers and bloggers alike. The pictures seen in posts on this blog? Creative Commons licensed. There is absolutely nothing better for content producers than free media that can be reused and remixed.

9. Paypal

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, Paypal and other payment gateways have made collecting payments a much friendlier task on the web. Sure, there are horror stories and bad experiences using their product, but Paypal has revolutionized the way money is exchanged on the Internet. They have an easy to use API, and if you’re wanting something even simpler, they offer a painless web interface to receive money from.

If Paypal has done you wrong in the past and you’re looking for a better alternative to send and receive money, you might check out a CNN article on five Paypal alternatives. Definitely worth the read.

10. Javascript Libraries

Javascript is always one of the most popular aspects of web development, and a big reason for that is the advent of Javascript libraries. Javascript libraries, (like frameworks), have eliminated the much of the need for custom Javascript programming. Aside from the fact that the core files in the Javascript libraries do a great many functions themselves, the ability to use custom plugins gives even more functionality to the library.

Not having to do custom Javascript programming for specific effects has given me a much greater respect for Javascript libs this holiday season. Here are some of the more popular Javascript libraries:

• jQuery
• Dojo
• Scriptaculous
• Prototype
• MooTools
• MochiKit

11. Amazon S3 and EC2

Amazon’s on demand services S3 and EC2 have developer’s lives a lot simpler. Not only do they not have to worry about traffic influxes and scaling headaches, they don’t have to spend buckets of cash on reserve servers. The pay-what-you-use business model to web hosting and file serving is a godsend for developers.

The launch of these “cloud” services has also spawn the change of many hosts to move to the pay-as-you-go model. Amazon’s innovation has helped spurn change for the betterment of web development.

Photo by Nicholas T.

12. Anti-RSI software

There is no friend like RSI-preventing software. RSI (or Repetitive Strain Injury) is typically in the form of carpal tunnel for web developers and typing zealots. Because the typical developer or designer spends at least 8 hours sitting in front of a computer screen all day, there is a likelyhood that RSI will creep into the wrists, hands, forearms, elbows, shoulders, back… and the list can go on and on.

Thanks goodness for RSI software that forces you to take breaks on a regular basis. Many times I’ll find myself fixated at the computer until I finish xyz, and consequently it’s over 50 minutes before I’ve gotten out of my chair away from the computer. With RSI software, you can have a reminder flash on your computer at set intervals that ensures you’re moving your limbs and warding off RSI. If you’re on a Mac, try AntiRSI, Windows and Linux users can try Workrave.

Photo by Dave Parker.

13. Advanced Text Editors

Advanced text editors have sped up the development time by adding a myriad of useful features that can benefit nearly anyone who writes in code, blogger to advanced programmer. Whether you prefer Textmate, Emacs, Vim or some other editor, text editors can save plenty of time on the development cycle.

Photo by D’Arcy Norman.

14. CSS

CSS seems to be one of those technologies that is taken for granted. Can anyone remember what the pre-CSS days were like? It wasn’t pretty. Modifying a web layout’s design meant going through each page and changing each inline style. Ugh. Thanks to the wonderment that is CSS, we can make one change in a single file, and Poof!, it’s reflected across the entire site. Simple, clean, and much less involved.

There are times when I’m not that thankful for CSS (see: Internet Explorer), but for the most part it’s a technology that we’re much better off having.

CSS editor CSSEdit.

15. Coffee

Ah, coffee. I don’t think I’m in the minority when I say that coffee is a staple to my day. Web workers in general crave the bean, and without it the day doesn’t go as well. There’s something about the smell of a fresh pot of coffee that makes the senses come alive. Many a cup of joe has sustained me through long nights of writing and coding deadlines. I doubt I would have made many of those deadlines without the aide of our caffeinated friend.

Photo by Chris Owens.

Bonus: Laptops

Laptops can completely change the effectiveness of a developer. Instead of being confined to the same room, chair, keyboard and monitor each day, the laptop allows for a much-needed change. While the screen real estate may not be as big as your office setup, it offers one thing the other can’t: Variety. Laptops enable you to work from anywhere.

I’ve found that since switching to a laptop, my RSI (see #12) has essentially gone away. I’m constantly working in different chairs and have my hands resting in different positions, which in turn is continuously working different muscle groups. I’m extra thankful for laptops.

Photo by Johan Larsson.

How About You?

What are you thankful for? What should be included on this list? Reply below!

Widgets are excellent for adding unique functionality to a web site. However, as the we becomes more “widgetized”, it’s starting to add strain on the web browsing experience for our users. The more widgets we add to our web pages, the worse it makes the web.

Widget Blindness

Banner blindness was discovered in the late nineties, and it shocked many people that users weren’t actually focusing on ads when a website was teeming with ad banners. Yet 10 years later, the problem isn’t so much with banners (that problem will always be around), but with web designers and site owners going out of control with adding widgets to their pages.

A widget for everything

These days you can find a widget for just about anything. Literally. It seems that every community website or interactive website has a goal to create widgets for their users, and users in turn place all of them on their blogs or personal websites.

Photo by manoellemos

In theory, widgets are awesome additions to websites. They add relevant information and showcase what the community or blog is doing. It’s not like a stale ‘ol banner asking you to hit a target for a prize. However, the problem doesn’t lie with the widget makers. The problem lies with website owners who try to add too many to their layouts. Just like banner blindness, users are starting to not notice widgets. And even worse: Widget blindness might even turn visitors away from your site.

6 Reasons widgets are worse than banners

The negative effects of adding too many widgets to your layouts and pages can have an even worse effect than banners for multiple reason.

1. Slow loading pages

Typically banners are a fraction of the size of widgets. Depending on the type of banner you’re using, they’re typically smaller than the average widget. usually jpegs or animated gifs, and some like adsense use small javascript. Widgets on the other hand typically use larger javascript files or flash.

2. It only takes one bad widget…

While widgets will slow down the rendering of the page in the browser, a slow or unresponsive widget can drastically increase the page load time, if it even finishes loading at all. Popular blog TechCrunch had to remove widgets due to them crashing the site.

It only takes one unresponsive widget to bring a site to its knees. The more widgets you have on your site, the more places you rely on to keep your site’s speed and response times fast.

3. Widgets take attention away from the most important part: Content

You need to ask yourself a fundamental question: Why are users coming to your Web site? Is it because of the widgets in your sidebar? Hopefully, users are coming to your site because of the stellar content.

Content is still king on the web. However, when page has 28 widgets in the layout all begging for your attention, it takes the user’s focus away from the hard-worked content and places it on content that someone else has created.

4. They take up ad space

Most site owners want a part of their layout to be designated for ads. If you’re trying to sell ads, the best spots are above the fold. If you’ve got widgets everywhere, you’re taking up crucial ad space. There is only so much space in your layout that you can devote to things other than your content. Adding a bunch of widgets to your pages only makes less space for the ads that make you money.

5. They can frustrate users

If the page doesn’t load quickly (or at all), and is crowded with cheesy widgets, the user will be prone to leave the site quickly. Unappealing site designs add to the user experience, and bad experiences can turn users away. Overcrowding a site with widgets is an easy way to add to a negative site experience for a visitor.

6. Does anyone still look at them?!

Now that the initial hype of widgets has died down, there seems to be less interest in people looking at widgets. When MyBlogLog rose to popularity and were acquired by Yahoo!, it seemed that people couldn’t get enough of widgets. Now that nearly every online community or similar website offers widgets to their users, the space has become crowded and widgets are everywhere. People have developed widget blindness.

Note: The excitement certainly hasn’t died down for widget makers and web developers. Just the people use them on the web sites.

Widget self-control

There is a temptation to add every widget you come across to your website. There are plenty of great widgets out there, and the possibilities are endless.

So how do we know how many widgets are too many? That’s ultimately a personal decision, based on the type of site you have and how your audience interacts with your site. Widgets can be great compliments to your site. There is one hard-and-fast rule that I use when deciding whether or not to add or remove a widget on any of my sites.

As long as the widget is improving the user’s experience, keep it. Otherwise dump any widgets that don’t achieve that goal.

This method usually separates the separates the wheat from the chaff. The widgets have to “prove themselves” before they can stay on the site.

You can be very critical when deciding what stays and goes. Always remove the widget if you’re wavering between keeping or dropping it. If it’s not instantly clear as to why it’s still on your website, the widget probably isn’t worth it.