Web Start Today is a web-based site builder service that simplifies creating websites that look and behave good.

The service has 1000s of templates where each of them has versions with different color schemes.

Besides any standard templates, there is an increasing list of responsive ones which guarantee that the website will work fine on screen sizes from mobile-to-desktop.

And, they are all categorized per industry which simplifies locating the right template quickly.

Any number of pages can be added, they can be customized live (while browsing) and any type of media can be used (image, video, audio).

Sites created with Web Start Today are SEO-friendly and they come with robust hosting.

Also, they provide an “Hire a Pro” feature which can design the site, write the content and SEO-optimize it for you (all or any).

The service is free when used with a sub-domain and gets paid when you prefer to use your own domain.

The giveaway

Web Start Today is giving away 5 * annual plans to WRD readers and, in order to join, you can choose one of the methods below or do both to increase your chances;

• comment to this post
• tweet this post (click to tweet easily)

Winners will be selected randomly a week later (5 Jun 2013) and announced in this post:

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=4143 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 5

Good luck to all.

The winners

Here they are:

• Guennadi (comment #1266114)
• eus (comment #1266137)
• Abdou (comment #1266113)
• Alexandre (comment #1266128)
• vu huynh (comment #1266124)

Congratulations and thanks very much for joining.

Today, many designers/developers and web agencies choose WordPress as the platform to create any type of client or personal websites.

As the number of WordPress sites owned/managed grow within time, it gets complicated to control all of them: their updates, backups, lots of login information, etc.

InfiniteWP is a free and self-hosted application (PHP-MySQL) that allows managing any number of WordPress installations from a single interface.

Under a single login, you can add all your WordPress sites  and perform plugin/version updates, backup/restores and manage themes for a single site or for all of them.

Besides these standard functions, new features can be added with premium add-ons like post or comment management, scheduling backups, generating client reports, Google Analytics integration, uptime monitoring and much more.

For easier management, sites can also be categorized into groups (actions can be triggered on the group level too).

The application has a modern and easy-to-use interface which makes the usage a joy.

Huge discount for WordPress’ 10th birthday

InfiniteWP, for a limited time, is offering a heavily discounted “lifetime subscription” to its all premium addons + support to celebrate the 10th birthday of WordPress.

Any current and future add-ons + support for the lifetime is offered for $699 (which is normally valued for $5000+). If you plan to integrate InfiniteWP into your business, that’s  good deal.

The giveaway

Also, they are giving away “a preferred premium add-on” to 5 WRD readers.

In order to join, just comment to this post. Winners will be selected with the query below 1 week later (3 June 2013) and announced inside this post.

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=4133 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 5

Good luck to all.

The winners

• mr (comment #1266057)
• dotcompals (comment #1266034)
• Tim (comment #1266015)
• Robert (comment #1265984)
• Bruno França (comment #1265980)

Congratulations and thanks very much for joining.

When building websites with scripting languages that require compiling (Sass, Less, Stylus..), compiling them manually (or via refreshing the page) is usually an extra step.

Prepros is an open source application for Windows OS that can do that automatically for Less, Sass, Scss, Stylus, Jade, Coffeescript, Haml and Markdown.

It auto-compiles the source and injects the CSS (also HTML and JS) to the browser so that no refresh is needed.

There are options for the compiling process like the output format or its style (compressed, nested..).

Prepros also has a built-in + static HTTP server for testing any ajax requests.

GoodUI is a website that regularly shares handy tips for creating “converting and easy-to-use” user interfaces.

The tips are described in detail, visualized nicely and usually easy to apply.

Some of the tips in the list include: “try recommending instead of showing equal choices” or “try undos instead of prompting for confirmation”.

New tips are being added regularly and they a mailing list to update you about these fresh items.

For any dynamic website, if it is not the performance of the network/server, database queries are usually the source of performance issues.

They should be optimized for sure and minimized with the help of caching.

phpFastCache is an open source PHP caching library that comes as a single-file and can be integrated so quickly.

It has support for multiple caching methods (apc, memcache, memcached, wincache, files, pdo and mpdo), the period of caching can be defined and has a very simplified API.

Drawing anything using modern web technologies is possible, however, the default APIs are not that user-friendly.

Two.js is an exciting JavaScript library that provides a 2-dimensional and single drawing API for SVG, Canvas And WebGL.

The library has only (currently) support for shapes (no text or images) and allows importing SVG data.

It can group multiple elements which is useful when transforming them together.

There is a built-in animation loop, methods to draw well-known shapes and lots of options to customize them.

Web apps are taking the places of desktop apps and the same is happening to our development tools as well.

ICEcoder is an open source and web-based IDE that is built with PHP and works fast.

It works by simply dropping its app folder to anywhere we prefer and any files there (and inside subfolders) are ready to be edited.

The syntax of the code is highlighted, broken tags and HTML structure are displayed + allows selecting them easily.

There is support for Emmet and comes bundled with Adminer (for managing MySQL).

ICEcoder has a powerful JavaScript API for easily interacting with it and it works with many popular languages (PHP, JS, CSS, LESS, Ruby, etc.).

IM Creator is a very easy to use and hosted website builder that allows anyone to create good-looking websites without diving into any HTML-CSS or JavaScript.

There are many creative templates to choose from where all of them are optimized for search engines and looking good on mobile too.

Once the template is picked from a well-categorized list (it is also possible to start with a blank template), the site can be edited live with drag ‘n’ drops.

Inserting new galleries, slideshows, contact forms or menus is just a click away. All of them presented nicely and user-friendly.

One of the most frequent jobs while creating a website, editing images are also handled within IM Creator. There is a built-in image editor for resizing or cropping images.

Also, there are lots of widgets to enhance the website like Google Maps, Twitter timeline, SoundVCloud, Vimeo, Facebook and more.

Websites can integrate with any Google Analytics account, come with free e-mail accounts and new templates are introduced regularly.

How to join the giveaway?

3 lifetime subscriptions (valued $95/year) are being given away. In order to join:

• Leave a comment below telling us what your favorite template from IM Creator is (view their collection and please share the link)
• “Like” IM Creator page on facebook.com/imcreator

Winners will be announced a week later (13 May 2013) and announced here. Good luck to all.

The winners

Here they are:

• Ciril Trcek (comment #1264273)
• Firebit (comment #1264343)
• Lukas Janda (comment #1264236)

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everyone for being a part of this giveaway.

When working on a web project, many of us usually keep a scratch document open to copy/cut/paste code snippets without losing them.

Capsule is a free WordPress theme that is specifically built to replace that scratch document.

It comes with a built-in code editor and supports Markdown Extra syntax + GitHub-style fenced code blocks.

The code editor has support for syntax highlighting of many languages, tags can be added quickly with metadata and they can be filtered.

Any number of entries can be added, they are listed with their creation dates and quick links exist for locating them faster (tags or adding to favorites).

Also, there is Capsule Server which makes “team collaboration” possible by replicating selecting entries with other Capsule installs.

A beautiful font can easily turn a standard text into a good-looking title, logo, etc..

Solomon Font Family is definitely one of the most exciting font packs out there with 6 decorative fonts in 6 different weights (12 fonts total).

It has a well-finished geometric design with optimized kerning and looks elegant without being too much flowery.

The fonts have support for characters of 50+ languages so they can easily be used in multilanguage projects.

They are normally priced $279 but discounted for $9 at MightDeals. You can choose to get the desktop version or the web font version for the price (or get both for $18).