If you have (or somehow controlling) multiple websites built with WordPress, than you know the difficulty of managing all of them.

WordPress releases a new version regularly and websites built with it needs to be up-to-date to stay secure, the same goes with the plugins and the need to remember all passwords.

ManageWP is a hosted service that offers a platform for managing any number of WordPress blogs under the same admin interface.

About the giveaway: They are giving away 2 annual Business accounts to WRD readers and details can be found at the bottom of the post.

Besides the ability to switch between websites with a click, the service can bulk update the sites with the new WordPress versions, plugins and themes.

Also, it is possible to install new plugins or themes to multiple websites at the same time.

There is a good chance that each website gets a hosting switch every few years which is a time-consuming process. What if we need to move many WordPress blogs to this new account? Ouch! But, as you guess, ManageWP can also handle this; it can clone a website from one domain to another.

One of the best features is its integrated backup. You can schedule backups to make sure that all your websites have recent copies when needed. It also monitors the uptime of your websites via the integration with the free uptime monitoring service: Uptime Robot.

The service brings a similar beauty for the publishing part: you can post an entry to multiple sites, manage the blogroll links or add users, all in bulk.

ManageWP has a free plan that allow controlling up to 3 websites and bigger packages exist (which would be a good fit for anyone/web agency with many WP websites).

How to join the giveaway?

2 annual Business accounts are being given away and, in order to get a chance to win one:

• suggest a new feature for ManageWP in the comments
  

and winners will be selected by ManageWP from the 2 best entries on 17 Feb 2012 (8 days later).

Good luck to all.

bgStretcher is a jQuery plugin that proportionally resizes the background-image to fill the entire viewport.

It can be used with a single image just for the resizing feature or multiple images as a slideshow.

The slideshow can be browsed with pagination and prev-next buttons besides the autoplay and there are multiple transition types offered.

Further customization is possible by defining the slideshow speed, delay between each item and sequence mode (in an order or randomly).

Also, methods exist for playing and pausing it from any custom events.

As people who are designing/developing and/or managing web projects, we usually pay a lot of importance to metrics and their trends -website statistics, Twitter follower numbers, the number of sales of a product and so- to better analyze if things are performing as expected.

All these data are usually behind different applications/interfaces; Google Analytics keeps the stats, the number of comments are in the WordPress admin, leads can be viewed from SalesForce or invoices are in Freshbooks. And, there can be some others like the data in custom apps.

Logging into each of them to get a snapshot of everything usually takes a lot of time. And, this is what Cyfe is about.

Cyfe is a hosted dashboard with a simple and good-looking interface that allows us to view any data from a single place.

It has a pretty good number of ready-to-use widgets that can pull data from popular applications like Google products (Analytics, Adsense, FeedBurner, Gmail), MailChimp, Twitter, Facebook, SeoMOZ, Alexa, Zendesk, SalesForce and more.

Also, it has support for data from custom sources including a CSV file (hosted in a URL or uploaded directly), HTML, image or RSS.

Such an ability is so good as we can easily auto-generate CSV files with the data to be visualized using the scripting language we prefer (like "sales from the project x" and "new sign-ups from the project y") and let Cyfe grab + display the data. Or, we can provide the URL of the chart image generated in our own web application and it is displayed like an iframe.

The application has multiple charting options (line, area, bar, pie) so it is possible to view each custom metric with the one that fits the best.

Cyfe is not a single dashboard app and any number of tabs can be created which is handy for creating groups and collecting the widgets of each project under its own dashboard  which is good if you are viewing a pretty high number of widgets.

Widgets can be positioned by drag 'n' drops just like iGoogle to create the order we want. And, we can upload our own logo for a more custom look.

Also, the application can be reached from any device (desktop, tablet, mobile) and things will work smoothly.

It comes with a free plan that includes 5 widgets that will be enough for many and plans with more widgets exist.

IconShock, the icon design company behind many popular icon sets, is now sharing a huge set for Android designers/developers.

Android Icons Set consists of 15,000 items styled with the Android's design guidelines and probably the most complete set for the platform.

There are 600 completely unique items while the rest are the addons (like "add file, edit file, delete file") which is great to have the necessary action icons when needed.

It is free to be used in personal projects (free version includes 3 sizes: 24*24px, 32*32px, 48*48px).

P.S. They also have a similar iPhone icons set.

WordPress, as most of us experience, is so strong and flexible. It is hard to think of a website that can't be brought to life with it.

Besides this power, it is still simple which is great. This simplicity sometimes ends up in some non-existing features which would actually be nice if they were available when needed -seems like the definition of plugins: )-.

As a designer/developer who spend lots of time with WordPress, I want to share a list of plugins which I use for almost every WordPress setup and they end up saving lots of time.

First of all, of course, I'll begin with a shameless self-promotion. The first plugin (Reporteur) is developed by me but I assure you that it fits the title of this post perfectly (else, I'm sure that the editor would probably remove it without even me knowing).

Oh, I'm also going to include the author's names, especially for avoiding mix-ups. There are many plugins so closely named but so far apart on features, usefulness and quality.

Reporteur

It is a simple Google Analytics reporting tool.

If you want to get your information right in the WordPress admin instead of going to the Google Analytics website, this is for you.

The plugin gives a basic information about your website (which were useful enough for my family and friends who forced and tortured me to create this plugin).
Author: stildv

Google Analytics for WordPress

This is a stable Google Analytics code including plugin.

We all know that, things work by just copy-pasting the Analytics code to the footer. Or was it better to the header? And how do we track outgoing link clicks or downloads?

Well, with this plugin, you don't need to worry about all that.
Author: Joost de Valk

Read the rest of this entry »

Mimicking the interactions offline is always popular in the world of computers.

Page-flips are one of the most popular ones of them in web design. They are implemented very successfully in Flash, many websites, documents, magazines are being created/published each day.

With the capabilities of new web technologies, we can also expect them to be accomplished using only HTML, CSS and JavaScript (remember "20 Things I Learned"? It is also open source).

There are several easy-to-use jQuery plugins that offer a good page-flip experience and help creating book-like interfaces. Here they are:

Turn.js

A jQuery plugin that has lovely and smooth page flip transitions.

The first page acts as the cover and the rest can be browsed by simply turning the pages from any desired corner.

Turn.js is only 15kb, works on mobile & tablet browsers as well and makes use hardware acceleration.

jPageFlip

jPageFlip is a highly customizable jQuery plugin for book-like interfaces.

It can -optionally- flip pages on mouse clicks and has support for transparent + semi-transparent image files.

P.S. The plugin performs better on WebKit browsers.

Read the rest of this entry »

If you already use it, then you know that LESS is a "time and byte-saver" when creating + serving stylesheets (if not, you should definitely check it).

You either use the .less files directly (via less.js or on the server with Node.js) or compile them into CSS from command-line and use only the CSS.

Crunch is a free Adobe AIR application that eases the compiling part without the need of command-line but via a user-friendly interface.

It is a simple CSS/LESS editor with syntax highlighting and multi-tab support.

Once a LESS file is saved, the CSS version is created automatically (which is handy for anyone willing to develop with LESS but don't want to rely on JavaScript on the client-side).

Flotr2 is an open source library for HTML5 canvas charts and graphs which is a fork of the popular flotr without the dependency of Prototype JS framework and has many improvements.

The library is framework independent and has support for line, bar, candle, pie and bubble charts.

There are lots of customization options offered like the ability to define titles, subtitles, colors, labels on/off and so many others for each and every possible variable.

Flotr2 outputs are interactive, they can be set to respond to the actions of the user. And, they can be extended with plugins (there are already several ones that can add interactions, new decorations, etc.).

Charts and graphs work in all major browsers (including IE6) and they are mobile compatible.

Almost every website needs a form. Whether it is for asking visitors to contact you, an online job application or an event registration.

Also, forms need to be secure, user-friendly and the data collected must be reachable for analyzing/responding easily.

Ajax Form Pro, a professional and downloadable PHP application, which was featured before, now has a new version with more features and they are giving away 3 Developer licenses ($67/each) and offering a 20% discount to WRD readers.

Joining the giveaway is so easy, details are mentioned at the bottom of this and here is more information about the app:

The application has an administration panel for creating a form with:

• any input types (including file uploads)
• settings like the text to be displayed (or redirection to any URL) after submission, if the contents of the form will be e-mailed to anyone..
• custom styling and layout
• captcha enabled or not

and allows us to integrate it into web pages either with the generated PHP code or via an iframe.

Form can be styled either with the settings provided or using a custom CSS for advanced/complete styling.

It is created with usability in mind; the validator is real-time, works as-you-type, forms degrade gracefully for users without JavaScript and an option exists for displaying them inside a lighbox (so you can provide a link to anything which will display the form without leaving the page).

To sum up, Ajax Form Pro is a so useful application not only for creating secure forms but also for keeping/reaching the data collected in a single, organized interface.

A discount for WRD Readers

Ajax Form Pro is offering a 20% discount to WRD readers with the coupon code AFPWRD (which is valid for the next 2 weeks).

Here are the shortcuts to the pages for using the coupon codes:

• Single License
• Developer License
• Extended License

How to join the giveaway?

In order to get a chance win one of the 3 Developer Licenses, simply comment to this post and winners will be selected randomly with the query below on 8 February 2012 (1 week later):

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=2779 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck to everyone.

The winners

Here they are:

• Kunule (comment #506883)
• Leon (comment #506936)
• chromus (comment #506748)

Congratulations and thanks very much for joining.

App Icon Template is an icon design toolkit for creating iOS application icons faster.

The kit includes a .PSD + .ATN (Adobe Photoshop Action) file where the .PSD comes with useful layers like the rounded corners, gradients and even various background textures.

Smart objects are used to automate the generation of multiple sizes and, once the design is saved, the template instantly displays the same icon in multiple sizes.

The PS actions included generate every needed file, both in squared (no transparency, to be used in the app) and in rounded versions (for other design uses). The files are automatically named after the Apple HIG so they’ll be good to deliver instantly.