Today’s Pro Tip comes from the distant past: 1986. At the sagacious age of 7, I was already unleashing some of my tip bombs on my fellow friends and colleagues. A true gem, my sister found this masterpiece while we were cleaning out a 30+ year old scholastic garbage pile we had amassed in my parent’s home.
Pantene Pro Tip: You can has shower
This brazen prose titled “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” relays a few juicy pro tips I had gleaned from the subversive yet enlightening movie “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off“. For those of you unfamiliar with the plot of this movie, it is best described by postmodernbarney.com as “Amoral narcissist makes world dance for his amusement.” By following these tips you can have the wold dance for you!
Friends will notice that my handwriting and spelling has not changed a single iota since second grade. They will also notice that I still lick my pams[sic] when I want to get out of any unpleasant situation. Sure it’s babyish. But so is school.
masterstroke
Firefox has been around for 7 years. If that browser was a child, you could have a conversation with it and help it with its homework. It’s been around awhile! Still, people still don’t seem to take advantage of the one feature that put it on the map- plugins.
Most major browsers have since begun supporting these extensions, and it’s about time you did too. Make your computer work for YOU!.
There are a seemingly endless number of extensions that offer a variety of services for many obscure needs, but there are a few that everyone should have installed right now. They’re free, so get to it!
AdBlock Plus
This one should be the first plugin you install. It blows my mind that people to this day put up with the constant pestering of random advertisements (which have only gotten worse over the years). Stop it. Turn the web into a peaceful and enjoyable environment with AdBlock Plus. There are many reasons to install Adblock, but once you install it, you will never want to go back. It is fully customizable so you can control which pages can be blocked, and much more. It uses a blacklist of servers that are customized to region, so all you have to do is pick your region (and that’s it). AdBlock is available for Firefox, Google Chrome, Firefox Mobile (Fennec), Thunderbird, and a few other browsers.
Lazarus: Form Recovery
As most of our work these days resides within the browser, just about everyone can relate to losing hours of their work from freak browser crashes, accidentally closing tabs, power failures, or plain absentmindedness. Sometimes you simply don’t want to fill out entire forms over and over again! This is where Lazarus comes in- Lazarus quietly remembers all the things you type out in those text boxes, and saves them for when disaster strikes. Much like biblical zombie Lazarus, your work will rise from the dead! Lazarus is available for Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.
NoScript
Worried about all the bad stuff on the web that can mess your computer up? Unfortunately, just browsing websites can leave you vulnerable to attacks. The same technology that brings you interesting content can also be used maliciously. This is where NoScript can help. NoScript only lets trusted webpages run Java, JavaScript, Flash, and other plugins. All the other strange and scary webpages are left powerless. There are some growing pains, however- since much of the internet needs scripts to offer you the cool services you enjoy, you will have to choose the sites you trust. This can be annoying to some at first, but the initial period of creating your trust-list will be appreciated the next time you accidentally click on that Facebook link that has been infecting all of your friends. Because it blocks scripts, it also blocks many annoying ads and flash items that are just annoying. NoScript is available for Firefox, Seamonkey and other Mozilla-based browsers.
WebMail Notifier
In today’s world, most of our communication happens online. The problem is that we treat or internet communications like we live in the last century! Going to a website to check our mail is like walking to a mailbox to see if any mail is there. Why not let our browser notify us? WebMail Notifier does just that. To be honest, there are many plugins that offer similar services and I have not tried them all. I did however choose WebMail for its ability to track several email accounts simultaneously, its large range of supported email services such as gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, pop3/imap, as well as its script feature that expands its support for even more messaging services such as Facebook, deviantArt, eBay, Twitter, just to name a few. Hopefully this will save your precious time for more important endeavors, like looking at pictures of cute animals. WebMail Notifier is available on Firefox. There are similar extensions like X-notifier available on Chrome and Opera.
Thumbnail zoom
This one isn’t as seemingly critical as the others. Yet once you start using it, you will quickly find yourself cursing browsers that don’t have it installed. Quite simply, it shows a large version of any thumbnail you mouse over. It’s very simple, but seems to make surfing the web so much easier and quicker. Why bother clicking, browsing, scrolling, going back to the previous page, just to see what that tiny picture was? Unfortunately, this Firefox plugin only works for certain supported sites, but hopefully it will support many more soon. Hoverzoom is very similar for Chrome, and seems to offer better image link support from my experience.
Hopefully these 5 plugins will increase your web experience tenfold, and you will begin web browsing like a pro. There are plenty more extensions out there that you might find useful, too- make sure to check out your browser’s extension library! What extensions can’t you live without?
I used to make a few websites early on in my freelance career. And boy was it hard! I was constantly studying to keep up with a never ending tide of new technologies just to stay relevant. Boring! Of course this amount of work always paid well, which kept me going for a while. But it was never my passion. I did learn that few people recognize the amount of work that goes into making a website from the ground up. It’s pretty common for clients to get a case of sticker shock when they receive a quote for a custom built website. It’s not cheap! Luckily, times have changed and there is a solution for us smalls guys too! In fact, you’re looking at it right now!
That’s right. Blogs! WordPress to be precise. You might have heard of this open source blogging platform; it’s been around for a while. But it’s much more than that. Over the years, it has been customized as a very capable content management system too. Why re-invent the wheel when you don’t have to? And did I mention it is free? Yup, $0. I needed a new site for my portfolio, and I didn’t want to spend my valuable time toiling away in a code dungeon. And neither should you!
WordPress comes in two different flavors. WordPress.org is where you can find a copy to host on your own server, and WordPress.com which will host your blog for you. I went with the first, as I personally like to be able to make certain tweaks under the hood. Plus I didn’t want any ads on my page that comes with WordPress.com. Still, if you need an absolutely free website, WordPress.com is a great way to go!
Of course websites are more than content management systems. They have to look nice, and keep your audience happy. We aren’t in the 90′s anymore, so forget about those flashing letters, and glitter gif backgrounds. Don’t fret because WordPress has a large community of designers that have made many great free themes which can be applied to your site with the click of a button. Easy! Still, sometimes you need a little more. With a little CSS know-how you can alter a theme to your liking. But why bother when there are so many über great designers out there who have already done the work for you?
This is where premium theme designers come in. Kapow! I found my theme on themeforest.net, a market place for themes. There are many great designs and almost all for only $35. This theme is developed by a designer named Denoizzed, and maintained by a very attentive staff. Even before I bought the theme, I wrote them an email with a few of my concerns, and received a response and solutions in minutes. I was sold. Since my purchase, they have already released an update. Good job guys! If this site brings me one client, my investment will have already paid itself off several times! Not bad.
The theme can contain much more than a design, and sometimes offer certain features that go beyond simple blogging. Thanks to the built in WordPress plugin system, you can install many these features independently. One plugin I have on this page is a slideshow feature that loads images from my Flickr page. There are so many different types of plugins that perhaps this list might be a better place to find ones that are right for you. I am usually amazed by the amount of plugins that exist that I didn’t know I needed until I found them!
Now that you have your WordPress, theme, and plugins all working together, all you need to do is start laying out your page structure and start writing. This actually might be the hardest part in making your website.
Don’t forget that a great site needs some great pictures, and I just might be able to help you with that! For more info on how I can help you, feel free to check out my services page, and check out my portfolio.
I know that building a site might not be for everyone, and some of you need more than WordPress can offer. I would like to recommend to you a great designer who is more than happy to help you out! Check out Megan Coleman Web designs! She is the best, and will get your project on track and noticed!
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