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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.

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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.

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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

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin is good for creating XML sitemaps of your posts, categories and everything else for Google to index.

There is definitely a need for automation for this processand you need a dependable tool for that.

Also, the plugin notifies Google, Bing and Ask.com when there is anything fresh in the sitemap.
Author: Arne Brachhold

Q2W3 Post Order

This plugin was AStickyPostOrderER by AndreSC and Max Bond improved + continued developing it.

It is useful for ordering your posts when listed under different taxonomies, categories or tags. And they all can be different.

You can show a post as first under some category and as third under one of its tags.
Author: Max Bond, AndreSC

BackWPup

BackWPup is a vital plugin as you should always backup everything and never trust no computer!

If you are moving to another server, you'll use it. If you are working locally and going to deploy it, you'll use it. If you want to feel safe and don't want any data loss, you'll use it. If you want your database to be mailed to your home email every night, (it's completely not weird) you'll use it. Simply, you'll use it.
Author: Daniel Hüsken

Contact Form 7

There are several contact form plugins to choose from. On several occasions, there has been times which I've forgotten that I had a contact form setup on one of my websites, till the day that Takayuki's Contact Form sends me a mail.
Author: Takayuki Miyoshi

File Gallery

This is an extremely useful plugin, that should definitely be a part of the core.

When you add a picture or any media to any post in WordPress, it adds a database entry to a table that attaches the media to the post.. but WordPress does not show you that.

File Gallery does. And it does not stop there. You can order the media with it or set one as a featured image.Or, you can make a theme that uses a real gallery with it including a chance to order your images and without the need to use custom fields or embedding images into your post.

Also, you can attach PDF files (any files) and list them separately from your post as related files.
Author: Bruno "Aesqe" Babic

My Category Order

You have ordered your posts but you didn't order your categories.

My Category Order allows you to set the order in which categories will appear in the sidebar by using a drag 'n' drop interface for ordering.

It also adds a widget with additional options for easy installation on widgetized themes.
Author: Andrew Charlton

Platinum SEO Pack

A complete SEO solution for your WordPress blog.

I like it because it adds automated tags and categories to the head meta blocks and when you change a permalink for your posts, it will handle this without giving you any trouble.

Again, there are several SEO plugins available, but this one makes you work less for the result you want to get.
Author: Rajesh – Techblissonline Dot Com

Regenerate Thumbnails

This plugin will save your life many times if you are the developer but not the designer of your website or you work with a customer that measures the screen with a ruler (believe me, I saw that). There is always a possiblity to change the thumbnail and medium image sizes after you coded the theme and uploaded all thousand images to WordPress.

When such an update is needed, just ask this plugin to kindly regenerate every image for every size again. Oh my, life saver.
Author: Viper007Bond

Search Everything

Let's face it, WordPress does not search everything. As the name suggests, this plugin does.

It adds search functionality without modifying any template pages: activate, configure and search.

Options Include: search highlight, search pages, excerpts, attachments, drafts, comments, tags and custom fields (metadata). Also offers the ability to exclude specific pages and posts or password-protected contents.
Author: Dan Cameron of Sprout Venture

W3 Total Cache

After changing two hosting providers, one because I blamed them for being so slow, other because they blamed me for using so much resource, I met this plugin.

WordPress may use server resources, that's normal. But with this plugin, you can cache everything and make static copies of the pages instead of regenerating them for every request.

It also minifies your assets and may even put them to CDN for you. That's nice.
Author: Frederick Townes

WP-PostRatings

This plugin is actually both fun and useful.

It adds an Ajax rating system for your WordPress blog's post/page. You can use it to put simple hearts or like buttons for your own blog. Or, create a rating-based website easily.
Author: Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan

WP-PostViews

Of course there is Google Analytics. But ,WP-Postviews satisfy another need; viewing the number of views each post get in real-time.

You can make a list of most visited or -my favorite- least visited posts lists for your sidebars. Because your least visited posts are the ones that actually need more visitors.
Author: Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan

WP-PageNavi

Everyone uses PageNavi as it adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog. Enough said.
Author: Lester 'GaMerZ' Chan & scribu

qTranslate

If you need to create a multilingual website, first you need patience, than you need content in multiple languages. And, finally, you need a plugin that does not make your life a hell.

Writing multilingual content is already hard enough, why use a plugin even more complicated?

qTranslate makes creation of multilingual content as easy as working with a single language with an easy to use interface.

It supports infinite languages which can be easily added/modified/deleted via the comfortable configuration page.

All you need to do is activate the plugin and start writing the content!
Author: Qian Qin

Editorial Calendar

Do you schedule posts? Remember which post will be published for next Tuesday? What about the Friday after that?

WordPress doesn't make it easy to see when your posts are scheduled. The Editorial Calendar gives you an overview of your blog and when each post will be published. You can drag 'n' drop to move posts, edit posts right in the calendar, and manage your entire blog.
Author: Colin Vernon, Justin Evans, Joachim Kudish, Mary Vogt, and Zack Grossbart

Missed Scheduled

Ok, you schedule posts. Did you realize that WordPress sometimes misses them? This plugin fixes that. Comes to rescue and that's all it does. But, does it well.
Author: obus3000

WP Maintenance Mode

This plugin adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors to know that your blog is down for maintenance.

Logged in users can get full access to the blog including the front-end (depends of the settings you configure).
Author: Frank Bültge

Sidebar Login

Sidebar-Login has both a widget and a template tag to allows you to have a login form in the sidebar of your blog. It lets users to login and redirects them back to "the page they logged in" rather than the backend
Author: Mike Jolley

Category Checklist Expander

If you have gazillions of categories you'll definitely love this (and the next plugin).

It increases the height of the category checklist meta box on the post editing screen so that all categories are shown. No more scrolling! All of your categories will be visible.
Author: Mark Jaquith

Searchable Categories

This plugin is actually a categories autocomplete for the admin. It will make the process quick and easy for your writers to select categories. As they type in the search box, categories will be shown and hidden in real time, allowing them to easily select what is relevant to their content without having to scroll through possibly hundreds of items.
Author: Jason Corradino

ShareThis

Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites. You need a publisher key if you want to view you sharing stats or getting a weekly report. That's always nice.
Author: ShareThis, Manu Mukerji

Disqus

You know you need this plugin after finding its perks one by one when you start using it.

It will definitely make your life easier by replacing your WordPress comment system with your comments hosted and powered by Disqus.
Author: Disqus

 

Author: Devrim Vardar

Devrim Vardar is a talented web developer who also writes fiction and non-fiction besides code.

He can be found at Stild.com and via Twitter.

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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.

Booklet

Booklet is probably the plugin with most options in this list as it allows configuring each variable.

The JavaScript turning page effect is not that strong as it keeps things within corners (no overflows from the book itself) but works solid.

Pages can be turned manually, via keyboard, prev-next links or automatically (autoplay). Each page also has a unique URL (using hashtags).

It has support chapters, ca show page numbers and callbacks exist for further interaction.

imBookFlip

imBookFlip plugin can display the book-like content in an iframe or directly on the page.

Its pages can be set to turn when manually clicked or as an auto play, sadly, no support for dragging a page.

Also, its API allows directly pointing to a desired page.

FlipPage

This plugin also keeps the page flip effect inside/over the images displayed (that ends up in a 2D-like experience).

It makes use of HTML5-CSS3 + hardware acceleration and works also in mobile browsers.

Other Solutions

The list above includes the latest and more frequently updates ones. However, there are few more options like:

• jFlip
• CSS Page Flip (works better in WebKit)

Any better JavaScript alternatives with (or without) jQuery? Please feel free to share them.

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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).

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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.

Special Downloads:
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UIKit is a set of lightweight (4kb minified / gzipped), simple, functional and flexible UI components.

The components are built to work in modern browsers and, currently, there are dialog, confirmation, color picker, flipping cards, growl-like notifications and a context menu solutions in the pack.

Each component comes with multiple options like the dialog having a modal-like display option notifications having standard, warning and error modes.

Items are mostly styled to have structure-only rules which eases applying any custom styling to match our apps.

Special Downloads:
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jQuery Dynamic Drag’n Drop
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The CSS3 Test is a web-based test suite for finding out which CSS3 properties are supported by the browser being used.

It checks many features like backgrounds/borders, transitions, media queries, fonts, animations and much more.

Multiple testcases are ran on each element and this can be displayed by simply clicking to items.

The application is a must-bookmark to quickly check the issues on each property for shaping our styles accordingly.

Special Downloads:
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When creating/designing a web page, we either start with the HTML, build the structure and style it later or style-while-structuring.

If you design with the 1st approach and bored of creating a CSS file with copy-pasting all those class + id names, here is a quick solution:

Bear CSS is a free-to-use web application that generates a stylesheet with all the elements, ids and classes from a given HTML file.

The app is mostly useful for projects with a pretty long HTML and it would be better if Bear CSS had asked which items to include inside the stylesheet just after the upload -feature request : )-.

Special Downloads:
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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.

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