tools

Domain name suggestions

So, you’ve decided you want to have your own web site – either for a personal blog, interest site, or some business venture (or whatever else) and now you need to decide on the domain name that you want. Unfortunately, there’s quite a lot of other people that have had exactly the same idea and there’s increasing competition for the best web names out there. 

Even if you’ve decided on a really cool name, it may already have been taken by someone else that has launched their own web site – or could have been secured by a cyber-squatter, who’s going to try and charge an exorbitant amount to allow you to take it…. so, what’s the alternative?

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Good plugin: WordPress Socializer

I’ve come across another good plugin that I like and have decided to add to my site(s) – it’s called the WP Socializer.

It’s an all-in-one plugin that includes links to all of the popular social networking / media web sites, but importantly, it allows a fair amount of customisation too. If you click on the full version of this post, you can see the plugin in effect, with the email, print, facebook, linkedin and twitter icons appearing rather faintly just at the top of the post. 

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Free picture resize tool

I came across this picture resize tool the other day and thought I’d share it, since it’s actually quite handy. Not everyone fancies setting up Batch processes in Photoshop to resize multiple images, so this should certainly help in that instance.

http://www.picresize.com/

Use temporary email addresses to beat spam

Temporary email addresses are free services available online that allow you to set up and use a temporary email address. They’re all pretty easy to use, but one of the ones I’ve used and would recommend is 10 Minute Mail (link here: http://10minutemail.com).

Why use a temporary email address? – Well, for one thing, it can be really handy when signing up to some web sites or forums that insist on you registering before accessing all the content, or submitting any of your own questions. It’s also great at avoiding spam – because if your temporary email address has expired, there’s nowhere for the email to go!

Signing up with 10 minute mail gives you a temporary email address for 10 minutes (you can keep extending the 10 minute window though, but only so long as you are on the site). The interesting part of this disposable email service though, is that it allows you to receive, read and respond to any emails received whilst your address is currently live. This means you can sign up to web services or forums, for example, and click on the confirmation email request as and when it comes through.

It’s definitely going to be added to my favourites, and will certainly be a tool I’ll use again.