Here’s a list of Open Source/GNU alternatives to all those programs that us poor people just can’t afford to buy but that we desperatly need… If you know of better open source alternatives please let me know. Leave a comment below.
OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. It is currently version: 2.3.1. The version 2.4 will be released in March 2008. Download Here.
KompoZer – Dreamweaver alternative
KompoZer - Finally, a top-notch WYSIWYG web page program for the rest of us! Now there’s no need to pay a little fortune for a program to create and edit great-looking web pages, including powerful and easy to use CSS capabilities.
KompoZer is a complete Web Authoring System that combines web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing capabilities found in Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe DreamWeaver and other high end programs.
KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive professional-looking web site without needing to know HTML or web coding. Download Here.
NVU – Opensource Web Authoring Alternative
NVU is a complete Web Authoring System for people who are new to web design. FrontPage and Dreamweaver Alternative.
Nvu (pronounced N-view, for a “new view”) makes managing a web site a snap. Now anyone can create web pages and manage a website with no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML. Linux, Windows and Mac OSX users. Download Here.
Inkscape -Illustrator alternative
Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
Inkscape supports many advanced SVG features (markers, clones, alpha blending, etc.) and great care is taken in designing a streamlined interface. It is very easy to edit nodes, perform complex path operations, trace bitmaps and much more. We also aim to maintain a thriving user and developer community by using open, community-oriented development. Download Here.
Synfig is a powerful, industrial-strength vector-based 2D animation software package, designed from the ground-up for producing feature-film quality animation with fewer people and resources. While there are many other programs currently on the market to aid with the efficient production of 2D animation, we are currently unaware of any other software that can do what our software can. Download Here.
Blender – 3D Modeler Alternative
Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU (General Public License). Download Here.
gMax – 3D Modeler Alternative
Ofcourse Blender is seen as world’s best free 3d modeler but it doesn’t even comes near to how 3ds max looks like. So if you want it to look like 3ds max you should try gmax, howhever it’s more for creating game models.
Virtual Dub – Video Editor Alternative
Open Source Video Editing Software
Virtual Dub A powerful freeware video editor with lots of features, including a choice of compression codecs, splitting, addition of audio tracks. Excellent. Video capture/processing utility for 32-bit Windows platforms (95/98/ME/NT4/2000/XP). VirtualDub is mainly geared toward processing AVI files, although it can read (not write) MPEG-1 files. Download Here.
FREE Video Editing Software List
Zwei-Stein
Zwei-Stein 3.01 is a freeware non-linear, non-destructive video compositing and editing system which offers many advanced features unavailable elsewhere. With Zwei-Stein you can edit up to 256 video, audio and still image clips, each with up to 64 effects chained serially. Cropping, panning and custom effects are easy with automatic key frames. Download Here.
Avedit
It is a great tool to work with .AVI files. Regardless of small executable size, this avi editor offers you unlimited power of digital video processing. AVIedit allows you to join and split avi files, extract frames and do whatever you want… You can capture video by number of ways, including one-frame-per-minute (web camera) option, workaround annoying 2 Gb file size limit, send your videos to printer, heavy compress it and post to your webpage. You can change framerate, duration, frame size, color depth of your videos and other properties, even without recompression and without loss of video quality. AVIedit allows you to convert avi clips to bmp and bmp to avi, animated GIFs etc…. Download here.
SolveigMM AVI Trimmer
SolveigMM AVI Trimmer is a free video editor to allow you to AVI movie cut extremely fast and lossless. This freeware AVI editor software is small, smart, easy to use and involves no encoding/decoding processes. Video enthusiasts use AVI Trimmer to cut commercials, cut video files or edit video for YouTube. AVI Trimmer solves annoying out of sync problem. It operates with all known types of AVI including DV AVI type 1 and 2. Download Here.
I’ve recently started taking on some freelance jobs and really just learning more about what is involved in being a freelance designer. It’s been interesting to say the least. I’ve found some really useful tools online that I wanted to share with my readers. I know a lot of designers visit this site looking for themes and social networking icons so hopefully these tools will be useful to some of you.
OIO Publisher is a very user-friendly and easy to use Wordpress plugin that lets advertisers buy space on your site without you having to lift a finger. All you have to do is set the plugin up by setting the types of spaces you want to sell, for example, banners, text-links, or inline ads in each of your front page posts and setting the price for each. You’ll also have to fill in a few other details, such as how long an advertiser can rent the space and your Paypal ID. That’s basically it. Now all you’ll have to do is click the “approve” button anytime someone submits their link / banner to the site.
This is basically the same concept as the publisher program , except, OIO Publisher has one major advantage… no middle-man. Text-Link-Ads has this nasty habit of taking 50% of the money you earn for themselves, those greedy bastards… With OIO Publisher, all the money that you earn goes directly into your Paypal account, it’s great. ForTheLose.org has already sold two banner slots and one text-link slot. If you want to advertise your site / product here, just check under “Advertise Here” on the sidebar to see what we have open.
Flexible
install OIOpublisher as a Wordpress plugin or a stand alone platform
sell all forms of text ads, banner ads, and paid reviews
custom purchases also allow you to sell digital products
display ads on any website you like using php or javascript
click and impression tracking, plus weekly ad reports emailed to advertisers
break ads into zones, display ads easily over multiple sites
no empty spaces, show your own default ads until slots are purchased
convert website visitors to sales staff using the inbuilt affiliate program
developers can easily add more functionality using modules
use the ad manager on an unlimited number of sites (providing you own them)
submit an unlimited number of your sites to our ad marketplace
earn 50% commission on all sales of OIOpublisher, via our affiliate program
Where can I get it?
Even if you aren’t sure if you want the plugin, check out the homepage of it anyway for more info. It does cost you a one-time payment of $47 for unlimited use of the plugin. You can use it on all the sites you want. BUT…and this is a big “but”… if you buy it now and use the coupon code “INDIGO-BLOGGER”, you get $10 off of the full price, meaning you only pay $37! Trust me, OIO Publisher will pay for itself in just a few days.. I’m not sure when this coupon code expires, so even if you can’t use the OIO Publisher right now, get it anyway for the future before the coupon goes bad or even worse – if the price goes up.
To get $10 off this plugin (and buy it for only $37.00), use the following coupon code when purchasing: INDIGO-BLOGGER.
So what are you waiting for? Go use one of these coupons on OIO Publisherright now before they expire!
Now lets talk about Apture and how damn cool it is. You must check it out. At least test it on your blog and see how crazy cool it is.
Apture a wordpress plugin that allows you to search for and embed various media into your blog posts just integrated Slideshare. This means that you can directly search for and integrate presentations into your blog post without leaving your blog editing window.
The eBay plugin is very simple but effective. Once installed you input your EbayNetwork Campaign number into the settings, and how many ads you want to appear on each post.
Place the code <?php cybersebay(); ?> within the Wordpress loop and you are set.
The first time you use the plugin you will add a Custom Field to your post with the Key name, ebay. And use the value to hold the keyword for this post to import eBay ads. From here on out, whenever you write a post, you can select the custom field key, ebay from the pulldown list and add the keyword you wish to show listings for.
Below is an example from another site. The article is titled “Fun Stocking Stuffers” and the keyword for eBay is “Christmas Stocking Stuffers”
Click for full size screenshot
During my testing of the plugin I received a $27 click, and that is certainly the highest valued click I have ever received !
And it is ONLY $9.95 !!
High Roller Black Theme
Release Date: March 30, 2009
Latest version: 1.0
Wordpress Version Up To: WP 2.7.1
Features:
The High Roller Theme for wordpress is a highly customized theme for your gambling affiliate website.
Here are some of the features:
Custom top casino/poker room table
Customize index page images and posts in seconds
Hide affiliate links and track outgoing hits
Custom banner management system with click tracking
Managing web content has always been tricky, but with WordPress, any web designer can have a flexible, free and powerful CMS to use not just on blogging projects, but on all sorts of websites. In How To Be a Rockstar WordPress Designer you will learn step by step how to take a straight HTML site and power it with WordPress.During the course of the book you’ll build THREE WordPress themes, a blog, a portfolio site and a general site with menus and submenus. Each theme demonstrates different aspects of WordPress theming and all three are packaged with the book so you’ll have Photoshop, HTML, CSS and WordPress PHP files to refer to..
The book is aimed at anyone with a solid understanding of HTML/CSS. You don’t need to know PHP, you don’t need to have ever even touched WordPress before. The examples begin from scratch and build on each other, while basic PHP principles that are used are explained in an easy to understand manner.If you’ve ever wanted to get started with WordPress theming, or you’re looking to take your skills to the next level with advanced theming concepts, this is the book for you!
Price: 29.00 USD
You are buying this product directly from Rockable Press. Please contact Rockable Press for ANY questions related to this product or purchase.
212 Pages of Expert
Freelancing Advice
Covering everything from getting started to expanding your business, How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer is the official Freelance Switch book. Written by Collis & Cyan Ta’eed – the founders of the site – it’s packed with new information, advice and insights not covered on the blog.
If you want to start your freelance career the right way, then How to Be a Rockstar Freelancer will give you everything you need to become the best freelancer in town!
Easily add and rotate banners in your wordpress blog anywhere you like without editing any themes or touching any codes
Normally adding banners will need you to edit your wordpress theme, mess with lots of codes and even then you won’t have the result as you want.
But what if you had the power to easily place your banners in any position you want to on your blog? What if you could also track your banners, find out how good they really are doing? Above all what if you didn’t even have to worry about editing your Wordpress theme to do all of this?
What if all of this could be done with one powerful and easy plugin? That is where Max Banner Ads comes into play. Adding, controlling, and tracking the banners on your blog has never been more easier or more powerful with the Max Banner Ads plugin.
The AdSense Manager Wordpress plug-in is a great plug-in which makes it easier than ever to place and maintain Google AdSense ads on your blog. The plug-in is great because it automatically generates AdSense code for your blog and allows you to use widgets to position ads on your blog. Another great feature is the ability to limit the number of ads so you do not violate any TOS.
This plug-in works great to keep readers interested in the content of your blog. It provides readers with links to other posts with similar keywords. When you use this plug-in, a list will appear at the end of each of your blog posts with a list of related posts. A similar plug-in is the Similar Posts plug-in.
Top 10 SEO Related WordPress Plugins
WordPress has some pretty good functions built in to help you with SEO (Search Engine Optimization), however you might find you need some plugins to help you along the way. Here are ten of my favorite WordPress plugins that have to do with making your web site work better with the various search engines out there.
All in One SEO Pack – The All in One SEO Pack plugin does exactly what its name implies – it allows you to customize and automate adding title tags, descriptions, keywords and meta tags to every page and post published on your blog. The All In One SEO Pack allows you to optimize each individual post on your website and users have reported a noticeable increase in traffic to their blogs from Google searches after installing and using the All in One SEO Pack plugin.
Redirection – Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections and keep track of 404 errors without requiring knowledge.
Search Everything – Increases Wordpress’ default search functionality through an options panel.
HeadSpace2 – Controls almost every aspect of your site’s meta-data, including advanced tagging, Analytics, and dozens of plugins. The best WordPress SEO solution!
Robots Meta – This plugin makes it easy to add the appropriate meta robots tags to your pages, disable unused archives, nofollow unnecessary links and more.
Add to Any Share/Save/Bookmark Button – Helps readers share, save, bookmark, and email your posts and pages using any service, such as Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Twitter, and over 100 more.
SEO Smart Links – SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.
SEO Title Tag – Search engine optimize your blog’s title tags. Mass edit the title tags of posts, pages, category pages, tag pages – indeed, any URL!
Optimal Title – Optimal Title mirrors the function of wp_title() exactly, but moves the position of the ’separator’ to after the title rather than before.
SEO Friendly Images – SEO Friendly Images automatically adds alt and title attributes to all your images. Improves traffic from search results and makes the tags w3c/xHTML.
Have a favorite of your own that didn’t make it onto the list? Please feel free to share via the comments!
In order for any person to
make money blogging you need to advertise, promote
affiliate marketing, and generate interest in products that will make you money. Smart Ads is a great plugin that helps place advertisements on your blog without having to constantly input the html code. The Smart Ads Wordpress plugin will allow you to automatically place ads before and after your blog posts. There are additional options to remove ads for subscribers, showing ads on posts older then a certain amount of time, and to disable the top ad if the top of the post contains an image. One of the nicer features of the SmartAds Wordpress plug-in is the ability to create a “SmartAd” which is a custom ad that you can add to your blog.
The Feedburner Feedsmith plug-in automatically redirects to your Feedburner feed regardless of how various users access it. Taking a couple of minutes to setup a feedburner account allows you to combine this plug-in with the feedburner subscribe by email option. As you see on my blog (its the subscribe to my blog form). This means you’ll give subscribers multiple options of subscribing, whether by RSS feed, email, or ShareThis.
If you use the “more” tag in
your blog posts (meaning, you just show a short amount of
your blog posts on your home page with a “Continue Reading” or similar link leading the reader to the full post), then only the part of your post before the “more” tag (before the “Continue Reading” or similar link) is visible in your feed to subscribers. If you want your subscribers to see your full posts in their feed readers, then the Full Text Feed plug-in is for you.
With this plug-in, your full posts will show up to subscribers in their feed readers at all times.
This is a great plugin for people who want to maximize the ad space on their blogs. Using text files that you create, the plugin automatically rotates between the ads you specify to appear in a particular space on your blog.
This is a light-weight and easy to use plugin which allows you to add any text and/or HTML/CSS code to your posts and/or pages as prefix (top / beginning), middle and/or suffix (bottom /end). (That includes even any new or old posts and pages and even your feed)
Websiteoutlook.com - is the perfect place to evaluate any website. When choosing to buy or sell a website having the proper information about your investment can be crucial to your success. Websiteoutlook is dedicated to finding all pertinent information that may pertain to your personal interest. And it’s FREE!
Google Webmaster Tools - Probably one of the best free tool sites for webmaster. It is Google after all. Free website analytics and tutorials.
scrubtheweb.com – ScrubTheWeb.com™ has been helping Website owners and search engine optimization services worldwide achieve top search engine rankings since 1996! Offers FREE tools such as Meta Tag Builder, Meta Tag Analyzer, Easy Submit and SEO tips and tutorials.
Copyright Generator – free online tool will generate a copyright notice that will automatically update when the year changes! No more having to change the date manually.
Viewstep.com - offer thousands of webmaster resources and webmaster tools for webmasters and developers. Resources include articles, seo tools, design tools, domain tools and other webmaster resources and many more to improve your web site.
Search Engine Position Tool - will check your site’s position on Google, Yahoo, MSN and AltaVista. Just enter the search terms you would like to use, and the URL of the site you wish to check, and click “Submit.”
Wpdesigner – Has a nice collection of free WordPress themes, mostly designed by Small Potato himself. Occasionally he also announces quality WordPress themes designed by others.
WpSnap – Quality over quantity. Unlike a lot of other free WordPress theme showcases out there, Wpsnap has only features high-quality handpicked themes.
Design Disease – Not a huge selection, but what they have is high quality.
Free WP Themes – This site has all of the templates from freecsstemplates.org ported into WordPress.
WordPress.net – Can’t forget the official WordPress theme viewer.
Brian Gardner – A nice collection of very popular free WordPress themes. Also the designer of the popular Revolution Theme.
ThemeShaper – Home of the popular Thematic and Launchpad WordPress themes
plaintxt.org – If you’re into minimalistic design, this is the place to get WordPress themes.
WP Theme Designer – Some very nice magazine-style WordPress themes, designed by ChiQ Montes.
WordPress Galleries
We Love WP – A showcase of the best designed WordPress sites. This stuff really shows all the amazing possibilities one can accomplish with WordPress.
LoopPress – Another WordPress gallery. Maybe I’m a little biased, but they must have good taste.
Gallerific – Yet another web design gallery, with a category for WordPress powered sites.
Other WordPress Sites
How To Spot-Er – Has an amazing collection of WordPress guides and tutorials
JaypeeOnline – This isn’t specifically a WordPress-related blog, but it does feature lots of blogging news, WordPress theme reviews, and a lot of other useful information.
Weblog Tools Collection – One of the top WordPress-related blogs around. They announce any new noteworthy theme or plugin releases for WordPress, along with any other news regarding WordPress.
WP Themes Gallery – A great WordPress-related blog and home of the famous “Top 40″ WordPress blog list.
WordPress Modder – A useful resource with articles and videos on modding your WordPress blogs.
Hack WordPress – Lots of great tips on modifying your WordPress blogs along with other news about the latest WordPress themes and plugins.
WPThemesPlugin – Another great WordPress resource site featuring the latest themes, plugins, and WordPress news.
WPZOOM – A new WordPress blog featuring themes, plugins, tips, and more.
WP Candy – Another WordPress-related site, highlighting some of the best themes, plugins, and WordPress-powered sites.
WP Project – A site offering free WordPress tutorials and tips, along with other WordPress articles and news.
This is pretty damn cool..The Revolution team recently made their whole set of Premium Themes available for free download. Then, they decided to remove the free tag and make them premium themes. Which means you can’t download them for free anymore.
Luckily, I found all the downloaded theme at millionclues.com (downloaded when they were freely available).
I almost feel guilty…but..according to millionclues.com they have confirmed with Brian Gardner that it is legal and kosher to use these themes.
So, Here I present you with the whole set of Revolution Two Premium Wordpress Themes.
All of them are available for Free Direct Download at millionclues.com.
Once again..Since these themes were downloaded from www.revolutiontwo.comwhen they were free to download.
These are legal copies! So, you can save the bitch fest.
A good way to promote your site is by using Feedburner for your RSS Feeds. One of their cooler features is their Headline Animator widget and if your anything like me and you love to design graphics then this can be a fun little project for you to add to your site.
For those of you who are not familiar with Feedburner..First you will have to register at Feedburner and burn your blog.
Once you’ve done that, log into your account, select your feed, click on the “Publicize” tab and look for the Headline Animator service which is listed in the left-hand side bar.
Under “Theme” select “provide your own background” from the drop down list. Required (GIF only).
Create your graphic in Photoshop. I created a .gif that was 243px × 110px pixels and a 468×60px .gif. (view them below)
Your Headline Animator will be the same size (height and width) as the background image. Play around with different shapes and sizes. Once you’ve uploaded the new graphic, feedburner allows you to drag and drop the animated text where it needs to be on the graphic and the length of the animated text box. You can also choose the text color of your font and the size. You don’t have a lot of control but you can play with it to make it look pretty cool if your creative. If you decide to make one..make sure to post your link here so we can all check out your creation.
If you have any questions or if you get stuck feel free to leave your questions here or check out Feedburner’s FAQ.
The following screencast is day #3 which is explained below:
WordPress for Designers: Day 3
Moving right along into day three of our Wordpress for Designers series; today we will start creating our own theme from scratch. We will have a close look at how exactly to go about setting up your themes stylesheet and information, as well as creating the index.php page. In addition, we will examine wordpress template tags, what they are, and how to use them properly.
I’m using the WP Fluency 2 – Admin Theme for WordPress 2.7 and I LOVE it. I highly recommend it to anyone who uses Wordpress 2.7 it makes everything so much easier to navigate and it’s much cleaner looking. It’s basically just awesome in every way I can’t think of one negative. You must check it out!!
