Weebly, a very easy-to-use, popular & web-based website-builder service has just opened its theme gallery to all designers.

And, to celebrate this, they launched a design contest with $13,000 in prizes which the entries will be judged by well-known designers:

• Michael Cronan (acknowledged with the naming and identities of Tivo and Verio and naming the Amazon Kindle)
• Scott Thomas (former design director of Obama for America)
• Jason Putorti (former lead designer of Mint.com)
• Andrew Wilkinson (Founder, MetaLab)
• Dustin Curtis
• Rob Martin

Prizes are $10,000 for the winner, $2000 for the 2nd & $1000 for the 3rd position.

Creating a theme for Weebly is very easy as you don't have to worry for the HTML-CSS. Just focus on the creativity, design a layered PSD & Weebly team will convert it for you.

If the design created is not one of the winners, it may still be added to the themes database by Weebly & designers will be credited.

Deadline for submitting designs is April 30th, 2010 & it is open to everyone.

To read more and join the contest, check the contest page.

P.S. This post is a sponsored review.

E-mails are one of the key elements of a website/web application. They are used in contact forms, sign-ups, notifications, newsletters, etc.

It is a common experience that sometimes e-mails sent from websites go to the junk folders or never reach.

Although it is not always possible to detect the reasons for this, there are several things that we can do to minimize the risk. Here they are:

Send E-mails Through A Valid E-mail Server With Authentication

This is the most important one which you may be automatically offering all the tips below.

It is mostly a good idea to send website e-mails through the e-mail server that will require authentication rather than the web server's SMTP server. Servers that are specifically set to send e-mails generally have Reverse DNS & SPF records, support greylisting ,etc.

Every scripting language offers methods to send e-mails with authentication.

On the other hand, sometimes, using e-mail servers are not enough as you may need to send lots of e-mails but the hosting provider may be applying limits, etc. In such cases, if you'll be sending e-mails through your web server, make sure to check these all:

Reverse DNS (rDNS)

As every domain resolves to an IP address, optionally, IPs can resolve to domain names which is called reverse DNS.

Many spammers use non-existing or dynamic e-mails without reverse DNS records. E-mail servers generally check if the sender IP has a reverse DNS record or not.

How to add reverse DNS records?: reverse resolving uses the pointer DNS record type (PTR record) which you should be asking your hosting provider to create it (check if it exists).

Read the rest of this entry »

For a website, gaining RSS subscribers requires hard work as visitors prefer to subscribe websites with fresh/quality content & expect this to be continious.

On the other hand, RSS subscribers are very valuable loyal readers which follow the website regularly.

So, for a website, it is very important to analyze "how visitors become RSS readers" like:

• from which websites do they reach to yours
• which page of yours is the one that gains you most subscribers, etc.

Google Analytics, besides all the simplicity it offers, has a very functional event tracking method for analyzing custom events which we will be using to track new RSS subscriptions and see how to analyzing them deeper.

Part 1 – Applying Event Tracking Code

There are currently 2 different versions of Google Analytics tracking code used:

• The standard tracking (gaJsHost)
• Asynchronous tracking – beta (_gaq)

The asynchronous tracking code has a major advantage over the standard version's event tracking which is: it will be able to track the clicks even if tha page is not fully loaded.

Codes for both versions will be mentioned.

Read the rest of this entry »

Google Analytics has recently announced a new asynchronous tracking code that can "optionally" be replaced with the old one.

The new code does not block the website while it loads which will improve the loading times.

It also aims to provide more accurate results as it can be installed inside <head></head> tags (rather than before the </body> tag) and will be able to collect data from visitors that quit the webpage before it loads fully. This way, "any possible tracking errors from dependencies when the JavaScript not being fully loaded" are also eliminated.

More information can be found in the official announcement & the "Asynchronous Tracking Usage Guide".

Web applications are offering an almost desktop-like functionality parallel to the increase in the connectivity speeds, wider usage of the cloud (easier scalability) & improvements in JavaScript/RIA development.

Also, moving to the cloud is no more a fantasy, it is the "current & future trend" considering the popularity of applications like Google Docs, Adobe Acrobat Online or web-based OSs.

As a web designer/developer, it is possible not to use any desktop softwares & work 100% web-based.

There are several tools that we use daily & has vital importance:

• IDE (code editor)
• Image editor
• Database manager
• FTP application
• Storage

Although desktop environment, clearly, has many advantages over web, web has an important one like working from any computer (even it is a weak one) & staying synchronized.

Here are free web applications that you can use to create your own web-based design/development environment:

Code Editing

PHPanywhere

This web application offers a desktop-like coding environment with features like:

• multiple projects
• built-in FTP explorer
• syntax highlighting
• undo-redo support
• & more.

There are also features like tabs, find-replace or auto-completion that we could expect from a desktop IDE.

Read the rest of this entry »

Adobe used to have individual Cookbooks applications for Flex, AIR & Mobile that presented code snippets created by the community.

Now, they have combined all, with new additions, under a single Adobe Cookbooks application.

The website is a great place for finding ready-to-use code samples for Adobe products, specially ActionScript & Flex.

Besides adding new snippets, users can request for the ones that they can not find & other users can create/share them.

The new Adobe Cookbooks also offers a better search/browsing experience with titles like "related recipes" & "contributor lists".

jQuery, being one of the most popular & powerful JavaScript frameworks around, is offering a slick experience to users at every level.

Its website is a huge resource of documentation, examples & tutorials for anyone who is into it.

Besides the documentation jQuery offers, following other jQuery users is a great way to learn more & get inspired to discover new ways for taking advantage of this library.

Here are 15+ blogs to follow for jQuery fans that frequently create jQuery-oriented content:

John Resig

Besides being the creator of jQuery, he has other creative JavaScript-related projects like:

• Processing.js
• Sizzle.js
• FireUnit & more

Not only for jQuery users but for anyone into JavaScript, his blog is a great source of information & inspiration.

Official jQuery Blog

The blog covers any type of updates related to jQuery from new versions to jQuery-related posts in the blogosphere, events & more.

Read the rest of this entry »

It is easy to guess that most of the web designers/developers are not the fans of Microsoft.

On the other hand, lately, they are frequently creating interesting stuff for the community like the Web Platform, Expression Web SuperPreview & now WebsiteSpark.

WebsiteSpark is not a software, rather, it is a program that targets small web design companies & offers them valuable softwares to ignite their businesses.

The program has no upfront costs for 3 years & requires various amounts of payments depending on the products you want to use after that period. Also, you can quit the program anytime by only paying a $100 fee which is still acceptible.

The softwares included are:

Few days ago, the JavaScript Framework Matrix, which enables you to make a detailed comparison of JS frameworks, was shared at WRD.

Bestwebframeworks has a wider look with less detail & makes comparing PHP, JavaScript, Ruby & CSS frameworks easier.

Frameworks are listed very clearly and shows:

• their licenses
• requirements
• features
• compatibility

depending on the category viewed.

Also, it is possible to hide any framework & sort titles for a quicker comparison.

The JavaScript Framework Matrix, by Mathias Schütz, is a well-presented comparison of the popular JavaScript frameworks.

It shows examples for most of the functions which gives a strong idea on the coding principles of every framework.

The libraries included are:

• jQuery
• MooTools
• The Dojo Toolkit
• Prototype
• Script.aculo.us
• Ext.JS
• Adobe Spry
• BBC Glow
• Yahoo UI! Library

Every function/snippet provided links to the original documentation which is nice for reading more on the resource.