free tools for your website AND about a great blog design - article reviews

Someone actually put that effort in to compiling 99 Plus Free Tools For Your Website - thanks to wildlysuccessfulmarketing - This list of 100 free tools to track everything on your Web site will get you though until you can get an IT guy on the phone.

• Web Site Statistics and Counters(Ritecounter, GoStatis, Who’s.Amung.Us, eWebCounter, etc)
• Surveys, Blog Tools and Web Site Communication Gadgets(Feedburner, Woopra, Enquisite, 4Q, etc)
• Technical Web Site Stuff for Smart People(Web Page Analyzer, Netcraft, DNS Stuff, JAWStats, etc)
• Analytic Programs for Web Sites(blvd, Google Analytics, Slimstat, etc)
• Help for the SEO Impaired(Majestic SEO, Google Trends, Search Engine Position, Spider View, etc)

Continue to read this article - 99 Plus Free Tools For Your Website - online.

On the other hand, there are some characteristics of a great blog design - 10 Important Traits of a Great Blog Design(ten essential characteristics of a solid weblog design).

1. Good readability
2. A strong focus on the content
3. High findability
4. A great comment section design
5. Tight integration with social networking/media sites
6. A memorable header
7. The use of effective visuals in the content
8. A semantic HTML structure
9. Logically and coherently organized content
10. A good headline/post title design
    

Read more about each of these traits online - 10 Important Traits of a Great Blog Design.

Web design checklists & questionaires AND Nice flash websites to see - article reviews

Not just creating a website - also making sure it is a good one, checking it with the existing standards - 45 Incredibly Useful Web Design Checklists and Questionnaires. And, thanks to 1stwebdesigner, there is a nice list of 50 Gorgeous Flash Websites You Definitely Should See(out of which we list only the 1st 20).

45 Incredibly Useful Web Design Checklists and Questionnaires
Below are 45 checklists to make your design process easier and more organized in 8 categories. Consider using these checklists as a jumping off point for creating your own customized list, based on your own needs.

1. Client-Focused Checklists and Questionnaires
2. Pre-Launch Checklists
3. General Web Design Checklists
4. Usability Checklists
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklists
6. Marketing Checklists
7. WordPress Checklists
8. Ultimate Web Design Checklists
   

Continue to read this article online - 45 Incredibly Useful Web Design Checklists and Questionnaires.

50 Gorgeous Flash Websites You Definitely Should See
- we list here only the 1st 20 of them -

1. Saizen Media Studios
2. DrawingArt – WebDesign and Development Studio
3. Section Seven
4. Semisture Webdesign
5. Fl-2 Interactive Agency
6. Lecaid Design Studio
7. Esj * Com * AU
8. Recom CGI
9. Millice – Cyril Louis
10. HYPR – Interactive and Creative Design Studio
11. TwistCube
12. Go For Change
13. John Wright Photo
14. Timothy Hogan Photography
15. LS5 Design Agency
16. SoyTuaire Labuat
17. Mattthias Dittrich – Interaction Design Portfolio
18. Museum of Science and Industry
19. Parasol Island – Film Animation Interactive
20. Unouplus
    

Continue to read this article, which also contains previews of these gorgeous flash websites - 50 Gorgeous Flash Websites You Definitely Should See!

Web Design & SEO: Illustrator Text Effect AND SEO Infographics - article reviews

Article reviews - some interesting articles in both the Web Design and SEO - search engine optimization - found online: The Best Adobe Illustrator Text Effect Tutorials and 4 Essential SEO Infographics. See below what these articles talk about:

The Best Adobe Illustrator Text Effect Tutorials

1. How to Make a Cartoon Style Cereal Box Logo in Adobe Illustrator CS3
2. Quick Tutorial: Gradient Strokes
3. How to Create a Trendy Retro Type Treatment
4. Create a Vibrant 3D Pixel Type Treatment
5. Illustrator Tutorial - 3D lighted text effect
6. New Year Creating a New Typeface in Illustrator
7. Old School Type – Line Gradients
8. Create a Dream Design with 3D Typography
9. Ornate Lettering Process
10. Tutorial : Create a cool water effect
11. Quick Tutorial: Adding Gradients to Text
12. How to Create a Smokin’ Western Type Treatment in Illustrator
13. Creating a crazy cool logo
14. Working With Type In Illustrator
15. Create a Spectacular Flaming Meteor Effect on Text
16. Design Soft Stylized 3D Type
17. Illustrator Tutorial: Bling Bling Text Effect
18. Blueprint-Style Text in Adobe Illustrator
19. Creating an Environmentally Friendly Green Type Treatment
20. Illustrator Quick Tips #2 - Scatter Brushes

Read the full article online - The Best Adobe Illustrator Text Effect Tutorials.

4 Essential SEO Infographics

1. Pie Chart of SEO Time Expenditure (how SEOs spend their time)
2. Hat Color vs. Value Scatterplot of SEO Tactics (scatterplot of SEO tactics)
3. Flowchart of SEO-Friendliness (order of operations to make a site SEO-friendly)
4. Venn Diagram of Internet Marketing Professions (professions at the intersection of Technology, Marketing and statistics)

This article is quite an insightful and interesting one, though it is composed of mainly some graphs.... read more about the "4 Essential SEO Infographics" online.

SEO tips and jQuery code snippets for everyone - article reviews

This is not much of a review, but at least a short listing of the main bullet points of these articles, and you decide whether to visit them or not. I would recommend them especially for the web developers and web designers.

20 SEO tips that every web developer should follow

1. Write Semantic and Valid Markup
2. Optimize your Title and Meta Tags the Correct Way
3. Always Use alt and title Attributes
4. Maintain your CSS and JavaScript files Externally
5. Use Google Webmasters Tools
6. Keep your HTML Simple
7. Avoid Frames
8. Use JavaScript Only for Progressive Enhancement
9. Be Careful When Using Flash
10. Create a sitemap.xml file for Google
11. Make a Site Map
12. Add a robots.txt File to Your Root Directory
13. Check for Broken Links and Images
14. Avoid Duplicate Content
15. Create an Informative Error Page
16. Keep a Flat Structure Directory
17. Use Search Engine Friendly url Names
18. Design an Effective Footer
19. Use Breadcrumb Navigation
20. Write Good Content

read this article online here.

7 jQuery code snippets a programmer need daily

1. Form validation plugin
2. Drag and Drop functionality using jQuery
3. Pagination using jquery
4. Embed flash using jQuery
5. Creating tag cloud via jQuery
6. Insert Simple ajax effects using jquery
7. Creating tips with jQuery

for the ardent programmer, here's the article.

about the article lists on stefanm on wordpress.com

I truly apologize for not writing on this blog for a while, but "I'be been busy", as they say. Check out the Cool Articles and the Social Media Article series on my other blog! Though I dodged the twitter thinggie for a while, eventually I gave in to so many of my friends who use it, and I'm on twitter also, writing every day about stuff, especially about website design, website programming, SEO, internet marketing, interesting stuff....(I hope).

Now about the collection of the articles in my link collection(there's also an archive of cool articles/twitter-facebook related ones): There are so many sites out there that write about interesting things related to different niches, and I was thinking to compile them, even to express an opinion about them, and list them! This becomes a more difficult task as the list of such sites increases. Some of them are:

• techcrunch, mashable, smashingapps, readwriteweb,
• engadget, thenextweb, smashingmagazine; sbwire; tech blorge;
• programmable web; seo scoop; webdesign booth; search engine journal; css reflex;shoemoney; 1st web designer; instant shift; blog oh blog; graph paper press; web design dev; design reviver; noupe; doshdosh; seosmarty; creative SEO; outlaw design blog; SEO design solutions;

and many others! Anyways, since so many other people on twitter and their blogs mention these articles, I was thinking even to introduce the most interesting ones of them here, on this blog, with a few words, at least with their main topics. Believe me, some of them are really interesting!

So, in conclusion, follow me on twitter here, or the business account, or the account where u'll get some spiritual nourishment.