RegEx Builders

Need a little help in building your Regular Expressions?  Check out the following tools, one is online while the other can be downloaded.

http://gskinner.com/RegExr/

http://www.ultrapico.com/ExpressoDownload.htm

Resources for Learning About Grid Based Web Design

http://www.noupe.com/design/ultimate-guide-to-grid-based-web-design.html

http://www.designbygrid.com/

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/resources-grid-based-design/

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/settingtypeontheweb

CSS and PSD Grids

http://960.gs/

http://www.1kbgrid.com/

Setting up Your Computer For WordPress Development

When developing a new WordPress website, or any PHP work for that matter, it is important to have a localhost installation of PHP, MySQL, and Apache. These can all be handled very easily using the Uniform Server, or alternatively using XAMPP. I prefer the interface and lower footprint that Uniform Server offers, and have used it without any problem for many years now.

Just got my Dreamweaver CS4 ACE Certification

Today I successfully sat for the Adobe Dreamweaver Certified Expert exam, provided by Adobe, the developers of Dreamweaver CS4. It was a very challenging exam and requires you to know the software inside out. Many of the questions (multiple choice) require knowledge of the menus and panel of Dreamweaver, as they will ask you how actions can be performed through the menus or even keyboard shortcuts. I’ve been using Dreamweaver for around 10 years now and I still had to brush up on those areas of the package which I don’t use very often, such as templates and the dynamic data wizards (recordsets and the like).

I would therefore only recommend this exam to seasoned web developers who have been using Dreamweaver for quite some time. In my opinion this is overkill for a newcomer to web development, the Adobe Certified Associate would be much better suited for that level.

To pass the exam I used a combination of practicing with the software itself, reading the user manual as well as Adobe’s own Classroom in a Book, plus some practice tests from www.examaids.com. The questions in these practice tests are similar to the actual test, although I didn’t find any exact questions, which makes them different from the brain dump pdfs one can also find on other sites.

All in all I am satisfied with my new certification, it has certainly spurred me on to learn some new tricks with Dreamweaver, which I can now count on when developing new websites, as well as having another important certification to help promote my web development skills.

Automated CPanel Backups for multiple sites

I’ve just discovered a very useful tool for all website owners and hosting resellers, read on…

Someone has finally made it easy to backup your website files and databases without needing to log into your cPanel control panel every single time.

Backup Smart is the name of this incredible time saver, check out the free fully-functional 7 day trial and see for yourself why this is one essential tool you should have.

Gone are the days when you forget to backup or run out of time to backup your precious data.

Think about this for a moment…

What happens when your web host has a failure and your account get’s damaged or worse case scenario, the web host loses everything.?

Do you rely on your web host to take backups for you? Check the fine print of most web hosts terms of service and they will state that they are not responsible for your data, even if it’s their fault. Great isn’t it.

So what’s the solution. Simple. Backup your data regularly.

Let me tell you how to do it on cPanel web servers, it’s quite labour intensive.

a) Go to your http://yourwebsite.com:2082 and enter in your login credentials.
b) Go to the Backup icon (will look different depending on your cPanel theme)
c) Click on the link to download the home directory backup (this will take all your files)
d) Click on the links to download your databases
e) Click on the links to download your email filters or email aliases

Now do that once a week or month for your home directory (files) and everyday for your databases like WordPress, Forums, Shopping Carts, Email Lists.

No thanks I have better things to do with my time.

That’s where Backup Smart comes in. It’s a desktop software application that runs on Windows and MAC OSX. It automates the whole backup process I’ve just outlined for you.

You just set it and forget it. Backups are done on a schedule set by you, it’s just so easy.

If you even have just one website with a database then you need this software to protect your assests. But if you have more than one website on different servers with multiple databases then this software is a huge time saver and you’ll wonder how you ever did without it.

Check out all the details at www.backup-smart.com

Hope you find this useful!