Useful articles, tools, tutorials and other things of interest

[seemly]

I am a web developer by day (mainly front-end) and I often find articles of interest to improve workflow, great tutorials, fantastic design resources, apps/tools that can make life easier, etc, etc.

I decided to create a thread with a lot of the things I have found both interesting and useful (most of which I post on my twitter feed).

Note:
Don't be fooled in thinking that just because you are not a developer that most/all of these posts are not for you - you will be surprised just how useful some of these things are and if you introduce a lot of them into your affiliate marketing ventures, you may well see a great ROI (if not in money, then time).

I will be adding to this as and when, so please be patient and let me know if you find it useful (or not). As time goes on, (hopefully) this thread will be a really useful resource for members.

I have created the dummy posts to help categorise the content to make it easier to read - I hope that is OK (Admin and MOD's)?

# Graphics
# Marketing (Online based)
# Code / Programming
# Tools
# Workflow, Productivity and Efficiency
# Interesting / General
# Tutorials & Guides

* I haven't necessarily used any/all of these resources, but I had bookmarked them myself for a closer look when the right time comes.
* Some links may be duplicated in more than one section - that is because I deemed them relative, and as the list(s) grows longer, it will be harder for you guys (and myself) to keep track.

 

[seemly]

Graphics

Design, Stock Photos and assets:


Stock Assets (majority are free - with creative commons license):

Tasty design resources made with care for each pixel
Free for both personal & commercial use. Have a bite!

Dribbble & Behance best design freebies

Fribbble
Free PSD Downloads and Resources from Dribbble

Open Stock Project
Free Vectors & Stock Photos

Pexels.com
Free (CC0 (Creative Commons Zero)) Stock Photos


Collection Blog Post(s):

15 Amazing Websites for Finding Free Design Resources

17 Sites for Finding Free Public Domain Images

20 Best Free Stock Photo Sites for Designers
Contains a list of 20 different sources to get (in almost all cases) creative commons stock photography for commercial and non-commercial stock photography.
Some services require signup, but some of the assets on offer actually look like good quality.


Optimisation:

convert svg to png
Free, Web based app to help you convert SVG to PNG

TinyPNG – Compress PNG images while preserving transparency
TinyPNG also has an API, for those of you that would like to integrate into your workflow/web project

 

[seemly]

Marketing

Marketing stuff (including conversion, analytics and optimisation techniques)


On Page/Site Optimisation:
Get Ahead of Google with Insight into Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of the creation of meaning. Semioticians look at everything—words, images, traffic lights, kinship structures—and study what those signifiers (signs or anything that signifies anything) mean and how people create meaning from those signs.

Semiotics is composed of three parts: syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics. When we're approaching user optimization from a semiotic point of view, we're shifting from a focus on semantics to an incorporation of all three elements.

Social Media Marketing:

Creating and Managing Events Using Facebook Pages
If you are running a Facebook page, Facebook Events is a great tool for inviting your fans to a specific event. Facebook recently made it easier for you to set up an event and invite all of your fans, or just a selection of fans.

Sniply - Drive Conversion Through the Content You Share
Does at it says on the tin (I assume)


UX:

The power of customer retention [infographic]

102 headline writing formulas that work [pdf]

How to create a shitty brand

Lose That 'Credit Card Type' Field
"taking this approach means the business gets just as much information as they always had, with less effort required from the user, which in turn means greater conversion."


Tools:

Keyword tool - Get 750 Google Keyword Suggestions for Free
Courtesy of Max, I stumbled across this corker of a tool on twitter. Put in a keyword and watch the tool return up to 750 relative keywords for you to sift through and use as you require.

Using Events to Improve Bounce Rate in Google Analytics
High bounce rate? not convinced the user found no value in your content? Take a look at this tutorial, implement and find the truth. Let’s see how that works.

Collect e-mail addresses from various sources. Free email extractor
Pretty sure DaveP posted this little gem in another post (please correct me if I am wrong).


Articles:

Fake Reviews: Short-Term Success, Long-Term Failure
Thinking of making another get-rich quick auto affiliate site with fiverr.com reviews? Think again (for longevity)...

HTTPS as a ranking signal

over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms. We’ve seen positive results, so we’re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal.

And finally...

 

[seemly]

Code / Programming

Code stuff


Frameworks:

Web Starter Kit - Boilerplate & Tooling for Multi-Device Development
Google have recently released this web starter kit for rapid prototyping and site development.

HeadStart.io - An easy-to-use automated front-end setup.
Another rapid prototyping/development framework, keyed more for front-end developers starting new projects. Completely customisable if you are comfortable with configuration.

BOOTFLAT is an open source Flat UI KIT based on Bootstrap 3.1.1 CSS framework
It provides a faster, easier and less repetitive way for web developers or designers to create elegant web apps.


Tools / Guides:

Some common .gitignore configurations

Frontend Development bookmarks
A massive, ever-growing list of front-end related resources / bookmarks

Using .htaccess to Prevent Web Scraping
This article contains a couple of snippets to stop hotlinking, web scraping, block/allow specific IP address from accessing your site, etc.


Plugins:

Parsley - jQuery form validation
The ultimate javascript form validation library


Useful / Learn:

Regex One - Learn regular expressions with simple, interactive examples.
Interactive tutorial(s) to help you learn Regex (regular expressions).



Game Development
Because there are references to game development, success stories and the fact it is reasonably easy to get into and learn, I thought I would add the following, but as a subset for those that are interested.

How to Learn Programming and Game Development
With one of my interests lately being getting into HTML5 game development, there will be one or two related articles - just in case any of you are interested.

30 Tutorials for Developing HTML5 Web Browser Games

 

[seemly]

Tools

Tools, Plugins, Extensions (desktop, web and browser based)

Browser plugins (Chrome):

Project Naptha
web browser extension where you can highlight, copy & paste and even edit the text found in images

Check my links
An automated tool that once clicked, checks all links on the page to see if they return anything other than status 200 OK


Web Apps:

convert svg to png
Free, Web based app to help you convert SVG to PNG

TinyPNG – Compress PNG images while preserving transparency
TinyPNG also has an API, for those of you that would like to integrate into your workflow/web project

Clean up your inbox
Unsubscribe from unwanted emails & combine the rest into a single daily digest

Keyword tool - Get 750 Google Keyword Suggestions for Free
Courtesy of Max, I stumbled across this corker of a tool on twitter. Put in a keyword and watch the tool return up to 750 relative keywords for you to sift through and use as you require.


Desktop Apps:

Flux
Software to warm up your computer display at night, to match your indoor lighting.

Collect e-mail addresses from various sources. Free email extractor
Pretty sure DaveP posted this little gem in another post (please correct me if I am wrong).


Other Tools:

Top 5 Tools to Promote Your Site on Facebook
A few tools to help you increase likes and run facebook competitions.

Keyword tool - Get 750 Google Keyword Suggestions for Free
Courtesy of Max, I stumbled across this corker of a tool on twitter. Put in a keyword and watch the tool return up to 750 relative keywords for you to sift through and use as you require.

Use Sniply to Drive Conversion Through the Content You Share
Does at it says on the tin (I assume)


Development / Programming related tools:

.htaccess tester
A handy little app to test your htaccess rewrite rules

PiResponsive
Check how your website look like on every device

 

[seemly]

Workflow, Productivity and Efficiency

Workflow, Productivity and efficiency stuff

Clean up your inbox
Unsubscribe from unwanted emails & combine the rest into a single daily digest

For Developers:

Web Starter Kit - Boilerplate & Tooling for Multi-Device Development
Google have recently released this web starter kit for rapid prototyping and site development.

HeadStart.io - An easy-to-use automated front-end setup.
Another rapid prototyping/development framework, keyed more for front-end developers starting new projects. Completely customisable if you are comfortable with configuration.

BrowserSync
Time-saving synchronised browser testing

 

[seemly]

Interesting / General

Interesting / General Stuff

The best length for online content
The ideal length for everything on the Internet

2 brothers with little/no game dev experience try to make games for a living

How my app got 455K users in the first week
This guy says "I don't know what I am doing" yet writes a post about "How my app got 455K users in the first week"

I'm 21, self-employed, and make video games for a living from home.
An AMA (ask me anything) over at reddit. The guys name is Matthew (@TrueValhalla) and he is a mobile/HTML5 game developer.
He does some pretty awesome monthly income reports. I definitely recommend looking through the archive on his TrueValhalla Blog.

10 DESIGN GUIDELINES TO REDUCE CART ABANDONMENT
A great infographic pointing out common failures in ecommerce basket/checkout phase(s), leading to cart abandonment.

What I’ve learned in my first year as a college dropout

Vylo - Web based voice chat for gamers


Infographics:

The power of customer retention [infographic]


For Developers / Programmers:

You can't JavaScript Under Pressure (game)

 

[seemly]

Tutorials / Guides

Tutorials & Guides

The best place on the web to learn anything, free.
From languages, to DIY, coding, cooking, art, academics - you truly have no excuse for putting off to tomorrow that you could get done today.

Using Events to Improve Bounce Rate in Google Analytics
High bounce rate? not convinced the user found no value in your content? Take a look at this tutorial, implement and find the truth.

How To Speed Up Your WordPress Website
Covers choosing a good host, choose a good theme, use a CDN (content delivery network) and 12 Quick Fixes To Speed Up WordPress,

Using .htaccess to Prevent Web Scraping
This article contains a couple of snippets to stop hotlinking, web scraping, block/allow specific IP address from accessing your site, etc.

LevelUpTuts
Free video tutorials for web developers and designers (also found on youtube)

Prevent WordPress Comment Spam
"How I went from 8,000 spam comments PER DAY to 0 (zero)"

Code Avengers
Learn to code games, apps and websites


Game Development
Because there are references to game development, success stories and the fact it is reasonably easy to get into and learn, I thought I would add the following, but as a subset for those that are interested.

How to Learn Programming and Game Development
With one of my interests lately being getting into HTML5 game development, there will be one or two related articles - just in case any of you are interested.

30 Tutorials for Developing HTML5 Web Browser Games

 

[diablo]

Great idea - look forward to following this thread.

 

[seemly]

Great idea - look forward to following this thread.

Thank you very much, George.

A few things added so far. As mentioned, I will update as and when.

Hopefully you guys find it useful.

 

[murph]

Simply amazing! Thanks for taking the time to share this.

 

[AssetDomains]

Excellent resources thanks mate

 

[Edwin]

Very nice job, generous of you to share so much.

Can this be made a sticky?

 

[diablo]

Brilliant Chris - many thanks for sharing this information.

I agree with Edwin - should definitely be a sticky.

 

[scottmccloud]

Quite possibly the most useful thread I've seen on Acorn.

Thank you so much!

 

[seemly]

You're all very kind. I'm glad the lists have been well received so far.

If there are any resources in particular that people favour, I am all ears and I'll see what I can come up with and add to the list(s).

In fact I have just added a poll to this thread, so members can vote on their favoured subject and post any other interests they would like more useful links on.

 

[seemly]

New link added to "Tutorials & Guides"

LevelUpTuts
Free video tutorials for web developers and designers (also found on youtube)

 

[seemly]

Marketing post updated:

Get Ahead of Google with Insight into Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of the creation of meaning. Semioticians look at everything—words, images, traffic lights, kinship structures—and study what those signifiers (signs or anything that signifies anything) mean and how people create meaning from those signs.

Semiotics is composed of three parts: syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics. When we're approaching user optimization from a semiotic point of view, we're shifting from a focus on semantics to an incorporation of all three elements.

 

[seemly]

Tutorials / Guides updated

Prevent WordPress Comment Spam
"How I went from 8,000 spam comments PER DAY to 0 (zero)"

 

[seemly]

Marketing updated with:

HTTPS as a ranking signal

over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms. We’ve seen positive results, so we’re starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal.