In this first installment, we’ll be covering Goals and Funnels. For a general overview of site analytics revolving around Google Analytics, read Unleashing the Power of Website Analytics.

Defining Your Goals

Setting up goals in Google Analytics is the best way to measure the success rate of your website.

The easiest way to understand what goals are in Google Analytics is by discussing it with an example: ecommerce sites.

The aim of ecommerce sites is to sell goods to their visitors. Therefore, a completed goal would be a successful sale on their website.

This example hints at the first part of using the Goals feature in Google Analytics: defining what your site goals are.

• What do you want to measure?
• What are the factors that determine the success of your website?
• Are you after sales?
• Are you wanting to generate enquiries from prospective clients that want to hire you?
• Or do you simply want visitors to click around and spend more time on your site reading articles?

Once you know your goal (or goals), you need to work out how they will be measured.

For most sites, this will mean either identifying a specific goal completion page (or creating one).

For example, an ecommerce site might set up their "order confirmation" page as their goal, because this page usually comes right after a finished sale. If you’re after client enquiries, then how about the page that is shown to users when they successfully send a message with your web form?

Adding a Goal in Google Analytics

If you haven’t added a goal yet, clicking on Goals in the left hand menu will show you a page that gives a brief overview of what Goals and Funnels are. At the bottom, click on the set up goals and funnels link to get started.

The second box after the Main Website Profile Information section will allow you to set up your conversion goals. You can group your goals together with goal sets, but to start, we’ll just look at setting up one basic goal. Click on the Add goal link on the left, preferably on Goals (set1).

After doing that, you’ll be faced with the Goal Settings page.

Give your goal a name, make it active, and then choose a position; Set 1, Goal 1, for example, refers to your first set of goals, with "Goal 1" indicating that it’s your primary goal.

You will then have three types of goals to choose from.

When you choose a Goal Type, you will be shown a section called Goal Details, which are settings of your goals.

URL Destination

URL Destination is the most common option and is used when visitors get a specific page to visit. For example, a completed checkout page in an ecommerce site.

Time on Site

The Time on Site goal type will track users who spend either more or less than a specified amount of time on the site.

Pages/Visit

Pages/Visit keeps track of people who visit more than, less than or an exact number of pages on the site.

Time on Site and Pages/Visit only give you a single option aside from setting the goal and that is goal value.

Goal Details

For each goal type, there are certain goal details that you can set to customize your goal.

Goal Value

All three goal types have the Goal Value option. It is a monetary return that you estimate a completed goal to be worth; this is normally worked out as part of a website marketing strategy or review.

As an example, if a website enquiry, on average, gives a return of $10, then you should set the goal value to $10.

In most cases, this is just an estimate, so if you’re not sure, you can set the Goal Value to 0.

In the case of ecommerce sites where a completed checkout is worth a variable amount, you can set the goal value to your average basket value.

If you’ve set up Time on Site or Pages/Visit as your goal type, you’re now done and you can click the Save Goal button.

If, however, you’re setting up a URL Destination as a goal type, read on.

Match Type

The Match Type goal detail has three options: Head Match, Exact Match, Regular Expression Match.

Which one to use will depend on how much variety there is in the URL or your goal page.

Head Match: If your goal page requires variables in the URL that can change, such as /checkout/?page=1&basket=50036, then using Head Match will match the starting string of the URL (/checkout/).

Exact Match: If your goal page is a static URL that doesn’t change, such as /contact/thanks.php, for example, then you’ll want to go for Exact Match.

Regular Expression Match: If it’s likely that the start of the URL could change, then you should use Regular Expression Match; this is useful with URL cases such as /department1/checkout.php and /department2/checkout.php.

That’s it for Goals in Google Analytics—let’s move onto Funnels.

Setting up funnel

What are funnels? For certain goal pages, there is a set route of pages that users must go through to get to your goal page.

Let’s take a typical checkout process on an ecommerce site as an example: You add something to the basket, enter your shipping details, add your payment details, and when you submit your order, you get a confirmation page (which is your goal page).

This path is known as a funnel process, and by tracking people’s progress through a funnel, you can see where there are problems and where people are leaving the process.

This is most often used for checkout processes to see where people are dropping their shopping cart baskets. Funnels highlight problems with a long-winded checkout procedure.

Firstly, you need to map out the pages of your process. For example, your checkout process might have these pages:

• basket.php
• shipping_details.php
• payment.php
• confirmation.php

Once you’ve determined your funnel, it’s time to review your goals.

Reviewing Goals

So your goals are all set up, now how do you actually find out information from them?

You can see your goal data straight from the Sites Overview page. Under the headings you’ll see a completed goals column which gives you a basic, straightforward figure that is excellent for a quick glance. But let’s have a deeper look.

Note: A quick thing to highlight is that whilst you can look at visitor numbers for the current day, you’re unlikely to get goal conversions in Google Analytics for the current day, at least not reliably anyway. This is because Google Analytics refreshes its data at regular set intervals, so it is better to look at data from the days before the current day.

The basic goal page, which is obtained by clicking on Goals on the main left-hand menu, provides the immediate information you need at your fingertips.

You’ll see the standard Google trend timeline and the breakdown of how many visitors completed which goals—this is more useful when you have multiple conversions set up. You’ll then get the conversion rate and the goal value if you’ve entered a value for a conversion.

All these are fairly straightforward and the goal conversion figure is the one that most people will tend to concentrate on and quote, especially with ecommerce websites.

So moving down the left hand side, you now have a number of extra menu options that we’ll look at in turn.

Total Conversions:

This shows the total number of conversions and breaks it down by day for the period you’ve selected. This gives an easy visual comparison of better performing days and can help identify trends – do you get more conversions on weekends, maybe?

Conversion rate:

This looks the same as total conversions, right? Well, it is similar, and on sites that don’t have massive differences in traffic from day to day, they’ll look almost identical. However, where the total conversions page was based on the number of conversions per day, 40 conversions being larger than 10, for instance, conversion rate is based on the number of conversions as a proportion of the total visits for that day. So 40 conversions out of 120 is a rate of 25% – 10 out of 20 is 50%, so the weighting now changes.

Goal Verification Path:

This will list all the pages a completed goal was carried out on. If you’ve used an absolute path (e.g. /contact/thanks.php) they should all be the same. But if you’ve used a head match and the end of the URL varies, then this will show which URL each goal conversion comes from.

For example: if you have a shopping cart and the end of the URL is just the cart id, it won’t be much use as they’ll all be different, but if you have something more meaningful in the URL—lets say the source of the site visit or conversions on different sub domains—then it can become useful.

If you have golf.shop.com/finished and football.shop.com/finished, you can quickly compare where your conversions are happening.

Reverse Goal Path:

This data point shows the pages people landed on leading up to a completed goal. This is useful for seeing which pages are funneling more conversions, and for those results showing (entrance), which landing pages are funneling those conversions.

So as an example, we have thanks.php set as our conversion:

• (entrance) > index.php > contact.php > thanks.php

This shows that the visitor landing on the homepage went next to the contact page and then completed a conversion; you can quickly see which pages funnel in more conversions and easily start to work out which pages are more successful to understand how you can improve other pages.

Goal Value:

If you have various goals set up with different values, you can use this page to quickly see which days are more profitable and then use other tools to dig down into why.

Goal Abandoned Funnels:

This page gives you an overview of the number of people who enter the goal conversion funnel, but exit without completing a goal. You can quickly see how many potential conversions your site is losing and again compare over the time period you have selected.

Funnel Visualization:

Once you open up this page, it is self-explanatory: the usual timeline chart at the top of the page and then a flow diagram through the funnel you set up.

At each stage, you can see how many people enter at that stage, how many people are continuing in the funnel from the previous stage, how many people leave at that stage without completing, and perhaps most importantly, where they are going.

This is hugely useful for analyzing things such as checkout processes and seeing where users abandon their shopping carts and where they go.

For instance, if you have the first stage as the shopping basket, it wouldn’t be too alarming to see people exiting from there to continue browsing the site. But if they’re exiting all together, maybe something on the shopping cart page is making them drop from the process?

You can then look and see where people are dropping out and this can easily highlight problematic or broken forms and links or long-winded pages that people simply give up on.

Drilling down even further

The basic pages give you a very useful set of tools to analyse your conversions and abandonment, however, if you want an extra level of detail, the advanced segments tab can provide some very handy information.

Located in the top right of the page just above the trend graph and date picker, it will open up a drop down with a list of visitor types.

Selecting them via the tick box will show the relevant figures on the page and allow you quickly compare visitor types. Are conversions for new visitors higher than returning visitors? Do people who arrive via paid search (Adwords) abandon more carts than those who arrive by organic search? These are some of the questions that you can answer by using Google Analytics.

Related Content

• How to Increase Conversions on any Website in 45 Minutes
• 10 Promising Free Web Analytics Tools
• Unleashing the Power of Website Analytics
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About the Author

Dave Sparks is a web designer and developer working for Armitage Online in the Lake District. He can be found writing about various web topics on his blog at Kamikazemusic.com, twittering as twitter.com/dsparks83 and working on his website analytics project - Stat Share.

Of course, your visitors can use third party tools like Google Translate or Babelfish to translate your site themselves, but you should never rely on users to do anything.

Laziness is king on the internet, so always make things as easy as possible. Think how social media icons increase traffic even though users have browser bars and bookmarklets that they can use.

Fortunately, you don’t have to hire a professional translator to support multiple languages on your site. Thanks to wonderful APIs such as the Google Language API, there are a number of free and easy-to-install translation solutions available. Although these automatic methods will never be as good professional translations written by translators, they provide an attractive opportunity to offer internationalization at no cost.

Google Translate Tools

First, Google Translate provides a simple widget that you can copy and paste onto your site for a basic dropdown of 52 languages. When a language is clicked, the user is redirected to translate.google.com to see the translation.

While this widget is easy to install, it’s a bit "old web" with its unstyled dropdown and ugly branded button. However, a larger issue is that it boots users to Google for the actual translation, so you lose any linkbacks or tracking data.

The TranslateThis Button

An alternative to Google Translate Tools, The TranslateThis Button is another translation widget that can be copied and pasted onto any webpage. Leveraging the Google Language API, it provides the same 52 languages of translation as Google Translate Tools, but with a better user interface including dropdowns, overlays, and flag icons. Most importantly, users are not redirected to Google.

The translation runs in JavaScript, replacing portions of the page as it receives them from Google. In addition to producing a nice transition effect, JavaScript allows the script to work significantly faster than Google Translate for most pages.

Additionally, the TranslateThis Button provides some customizable options: Google Analytics tracking, customization options for the look and feel, callback functions, and a scope restriction. Read the docs for more info.

Overall, the TranslateThis Button is advantageous because it provides a rich user experience while staying relatively lightweight (the script is under 12kb). Running on the client-side allows it to translate most websites quickly, however sites with a great deal of content might benefit from a server side script with static caching features.

jQuery Translate Plugin

Another client-side translation option is the jQuery Translate Plugin. Similar to the TranslateThis Button, this script parses the page content and sends it to the Google Language API using JavaScript. Instead of building an interface for accessing the languages, this plugin provides a couple of handy translation functions you can use however you like.

The jQuery Translate Plugin has certain advantages and does a great job concatenating short pieces of content to limit requests to the Google Language API. However, it still tends to run slower than the TranslateThis Button since these requests run consecutively.

Additionally, even without the jQuery core, this script is the same file size as TranslateThis.

Global Translator (Wordpress)

Client-side translation can be fast, sleek and easy to implement. However, for high traffic websites, you can’t beat a server-side solution with caching.

Global Translator by Davide Pozza is a WordPress plugin that does just that. Providing 41 languages of translation for any WordPress site, its features include a fast-caching system and SEO-friendly permalinks. No client-side method can boast all that, and what’s more, this plugin allows you to choose from four different translation engines: Google Translate, Babel Fish, Promt or FreeTranslations.

If you have a WordPress site, Global Translator is definitely the way to go. It is significantly better than the Google AJAX Translation plugin, which just leverages the jQuery Translate Plugin.

Where is translation headed?

Automatic online translation has made some amazing progress recently and is just getting better. The number of languages supported by the Google Language API is constantly increasing, allowing you to reach a growing user base. Also, the quality of the translations and speed of the API are steadily improving.

In the future, Google will hopefully increase the length of the language strings that can be passed to the API. The max is currently 1,000 and if it were increased to 2,000, a number of Translation plugins could run significantly faster.

Additionally, Google Translate recently announced Text to Speech support, and Weston Ruter released a script that combines this with HTML5 audio.

As the web moves towards a fuller internet experience, accessibility issues are coming to the forefront. Translation should not be forgotten in this process.

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About the Author

Jon Raasch is a UX nerd and free-lance developer who loves jQuery, JavaScript and CSS. Focusing on user experience, Jon uses his front-end skills and design background to sculpt robust, accessible web apps. On the side, he develops a variety of free jQuery, JavaScript and WordPress tools. Check out Jon’s blog or follow him on Twitter: @jonraasch.

Except…

What if you’re looking for a browser that does just the things you want to do online? What if you’re sick of all the browser-war hubub and want something that’s truly unique and different (and, maybe, works better than the mainstream options)? What then?

Well, there’s good news. There are more than a dozen excellent alternative browsers out there if you’re looking for something distinctive. Below are ten such web browsers, along with why you might want to consider using them.

1. Stainless

Stainless is a browser created in response to Google Chrome. It utilizes multi-processing architecture like Chrome (which, at the time of inception, wasn’t available for OS X), but also has some excellent features not found in other browsers. One of the most interesting features is the ability to log into one website using two different accounts in separate tabs.

Why you should consider it: The ability to log into a site with different credentials in different tabs makes this an excellent option for many. It’s especially useful if you have, say, work-related Gmail accounts and personal Gmail accounts.

Current release version: 0.7.5

Operating systems supported: OS X Leopard and Snow Leopard.

2. Maxthon

Maxthon is a highly configurable browser that places an emphasis on security. It has a built-in Ad Hunter that blocks most ads, as well as security features to prevent spyware, malware, and viruses. It lets you fully customize your browsing experience (you can choose between using menus, hot keys, word aliases, toolbars, or mouse gestures, plus there are more than 1,400 plug-ins to add functionality). It has filters available to block irritating or offensive content.

Other Maxthon features include a built-in screen capture tool, URL aliases for faster surfing, a built-in feed reader, an online favorites service, advanced proxy rules, and an anti-freeze feature.

Why you should consider it: If you want a customizable browser, Maxthon might be what you’re looking for; it’s built specifically for power users. Between plugins, skins, filter packs, and other customizable features, it truly lets you personalize your browsing experience. For parents concerned about their children’s’ activities online, the filters for blocking content can be reassuring.

Current release version: 2.5.11 (the Classic Version is also available: 1.6.5)

Operating systems supported: Windows

3. Sleipnir

Sleipnir is very popular in Japan with a majority share in the country. It’s a profoundly customizable browser that maintains speed and performance despite customizations. There are skins and plugins available for it, letting you change the design and settings of the browser to suit your needs. And as all good browsers should, it stresses on security and usability, and allows for tabbed browsing.

Why you should consider it: Sleipnir is an option if you want a highly customizable browsing experience.

Current release version: 2.9.2

Operating systems supported: Windows 98 and newer

4. Swiftfox

Swiftfox is an optimized build of Firefox that’s faster and more cutting edge than the regular Firefox distribution. It works with Firefox plugins, making it remarkably extensible. The overall user interface is similar to Firefox, but is a bit more minimalist and clutter-free. Most other features are in line with what Firefox has to offer.

Why you should consider it: If you love Firefox but want something faster and lighter, then Swiftfox is your best bet.

Current release version: 3.5.6

Operating systems supported: Linux

5. Lunascape

Lunascape is the world’s first and only triple engine browser. That’s right: it’s a hybrid browser that runs on Gecko, Trident, and WebKit. It supports plugins and add-ons from Firefox, Internet Explorer, as well as their own plugin platform. It’s touted to be faster and lighter than many other browser options.

Why you should consider it: If you find yourself constantly switching back and forth between browsers (either for cross-browser testing of web designs or because of add-ons available only to Firefox or Internet Explorer), Lunascape is a perfect fit for you.

Current release version: 6.0.1

Operating systems supported: Windows

6. Konqueror

Konqueror combines web browsing, local and remote file management, and a universal viewing app that lets you view documents without having to launch other programs. It’s open source and HTML 4.01 compliant. It embraces Netscape plugins (like those for Flash or RealVideo). Konqueror also has a built-in FTP and WebDAV support.

Why you should consider it: If you’re a Linux user who wants a browser that can multitask, then Konqueror is definitely something to look into. It’s especially useful for those who want to be able to manage files right from within their browser.

Operating systems supported: Linux

7. SeaMonkey

SeaMonkey is developed by Mozilla and is an "all-in-one" internet suite of apps. While the browser within SeaMonkey is pretty standard (and not unlike Firefox), what sets it apart is that it has integrated email, newsgroups, an HTML editor, IRC Chat, and web development tools. The mail feature offers tabbed reading and supports tagging and alternate views for better email finding and reading. The HTML editor renders CSS and gives you dynamic image and table resizing. For web developers, you can take advantage of the JavaScript debugger and a DOM inspector.

Why you should consider it: For developers and designers, SeaMonkey has a plethora of useful built-in features. It’s also a great option for people who like to run the bare minimum number of apps.

Current release version: 2.0.1

Operating systems supported: Windows 2000 and newer, Mac OS X 10.4 and newer, and Linux.

8. OmniWeb

OmniWeb is a WebKit browser created by the same people who created OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner. It aims to be fun and easy to use (like other Omni products) and shares a similar user interface. It has all the standard browser features we’ve come to expect (including tabbed browsing, bookmarks, and ad blocking), but also includes Workspaces, which lets you save browsing sessions to open later and includes an auto-save option and a built-in RSS reader.

Why you should consider it: For Mac users who want a browser that’s efficient and easy to use, OmniWeb might be just what you’re looking for. It’s appropriate for power users too, and the Workspaces feature is especially handy.

Current release version: 5.0.1

Operating systems supported: Mac OS X 10.4.8 or newer

9. Camino

Think of Camino as a Firefox build specifically for Macs, built on the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine. It includes phishing and malware protection, tabs (including a tab overview function that lets you see all your open tabs at once), "annoyance blocking" (which blocks ads, pop-ups, and Flash animations), Keychain support (to save your browsing credentials), and download notifications. It also includes AppleScript support, feed detection, session saving, recently closed tabs, and full keyboard access.

Why you should consider it: Camino is a great browser for Mac users who like Firefox but want something built specifically for the Mac.

Current release version: 2.0

Operating systems supported: Mac OS X 10.4 or newer

10. Flock

Flock is probably better known than many of the other browsers above, especially if you’re a social media addict. Flock was created specifically to make managing your social media activities easier from within your browser.

Flock focuses on staying connected through social media by making sharing and publishing things easier. It integrates directly with Facebook, Gmail, Digg, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, WordPress, Blogger, Delicious, Bebo, TypePad, Picasa, and more. Special features include a People sidebar, a Media bar (to browse photos and videos from your favorite sites), a built-in feed reader, a photo uploader, a blog editor, and more. There are also extensions and custom themes available for download.

Why you should consider it: Flock is a great choice for social media power users who want to be able to connect with all their social media accounts from one place.

Current release version: 2.5

Operating systems supported: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X

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About the Author

Cameron Chapman is a professional web and graphic designer with over 6 years of experience in the industry. She’s also written for numerous blogs such as Smashing Magazine and Mashable. You can find her personal web presence at Cameron Chapman On Writing. If you’d like to connect with her, check her out on Twitter.

However, there are several free applications that can help you find, categorize, tag, preview, and install/uninstall your fonts. In this article, you’ll find 10 free applications that will help your better manage your font collection.

myFontbook

myFontbook is a free web application for organizing your installed fonts. It allows you to tag your fonts by keyword and gives you the ability to rate them so that you can quickly, making it easier to see your favorites. It has a pane for previewing fonts to help you in your font choices.

Notable features:

• Tagging and favorites lets you organize your fonts
• Metrics gives you insight about native letterspacing and line height of a font
• Body text preview provides realistic previewing of a selected font
• Proof sheet makes it easy to print font previews
• Being a webapp means that you can use it on any operating system

Font Book (Mac)

Font Book comes pre-installed in Apple computers and is a solid tool to use for font management if you’re an owner of a Mac. It has an intuitive and user-friendly interface, a trademark of Mac apps, and it has amazing font/organization features.

Notable features:

• Organize, install, remove, search your font collection in one interface
• Sorts fonts by categories (i.e. Modern, Traditional, Web)
• Create custom categories to organize your font collection
• Comes standard with Macs, no installation needed

Fontmatrix (Windows/Linux)

Fontmatrix is an open source font manager for Linux users; though it was recently made to work with the Windows OS as well. It is a great font management tool for power users, and is ideally suited for developers who can take advantage of the script console to extend and customize the application.

Notable features:

• Tagging feature makes organization easier
• Script console lets you extend and customize the application
• Interface is intuitive
• Displays meta information about a font such as designer, copyright info, etc.

Font Picker (Windows/Mac/Linux/Web Browser)

Font Picker is a free Adobe AIR desktop application that lets you manage and view your font collection. It’s simple and straightforward and can run in any operating system that can run the Adobe AIR framework. It also has a web-based version so that will search your  machine for installed fonts.

Notable features:

• Ability to mark fonts as favorites
• Remove fonts that you don’t like
• Simple and straightforward

sFont (Windows)

sFont is a free Windows font management tool that has a uncomplicated interface. Organize your font collection by tagging certain fonts as favorites. Quickly find TrueType or non-TrueType fonts using the Filter feature. You can review your fonts in a variety of ways including the ability to change the background and foreground colors.

Notable features:

• Add fonts to a favorites list
• Charmap view gives you a matrix preview of a font’s characters
• Customize colors to see fonts in different colors
• Filter feature lets you pick out TrueType or non-TrueType fonts

FindThatFont! (Windows/Linux)

FindThatFont is a simple and free tool for preview and categorize all the fonts installed in your system. You can organize fonts within the 30 categories that the application has. There’s also an extensibility featured called Extension manager for developers who’d like to customize how FindThatFont! works.

Notable features:

• Tag your fonts in one or more of the 30 categories
• Created using XUL language just like Firefox and Thunderbird
• Extension manager for developers to customize and extend the tool

Fonts++ (Windows)

Fonts++ is for Windows PC users that have many fonts installed on their computer. You can deactivate your unused fonts so that you don’t have to see your entire collection when looking at your fonts. You can also install/uninstall fonts with this app instead of the traditional Windows method

Notable features:

• Activate/deactivate fonts to help you navigate your collection
• Install/uninstall TrueType fonts quickly
• Small resource footprint

Cfont Pro (Windows)

Cfont Pro allows you to preview fonts even before you install them, a helpful feature if you have a external hard drive or portable media device that has fonts. It has proof sheets in case you want to print out fonts for reviewing purposes. The property viewer displays a ton of information about your fonts.

Notable features:

• Proof sheets allows you to print out font previews
• Property viewer lets you display font meta data
• Character Magnifier lets you zoom in and out to inspect font characters

Font Xplorer (Windows)

Font Xplorer is a popular freeware desktop application for managing your font collection. It has a filtering feature so that you can hone in on specific types of fonts. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support Adobe Type 1, OpenType fonts with PostScript outlines, which may be a deal breaker for some designers.

Notable features:

• Browse installed and uninstalled fonts
• Print sheets allow you to print out fonts using one of the apps templates
• Comprehensive font information is displayed
• Font Repair Wizard helps you repair font files

AMP Font Viewer (Windows)

AMP Font Viewer is an easy to use but robust font manager for Windows. It has support for a wide variety of font formats such as TrueType, OpenType, and Type1 fonts. It allows you to easily install multiple fonts, as well as removing installed fonts. There are several options for categorizing your font collection, which will help you tame your massive font collection.

Notable features:

• Several previewing options are available
• Several management options
• Supports most font formats
• Search feature gives you advanced search options

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About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

Late last month, we asked what your favorite database management tool was, and now, here are the top five most-voted-for tools.

5. Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio

For Microsoft SQL Server database admins, there probably isn’t a better tool out there than Miscosoft’s freeware app (downloadable at $0 dollars on the Microsoft site), SQL Server Management Studio. SQL Server Management Studio has a GUI that Windows OS users will find straightforward, and it has an innovative feature called Object Explorer that lets you browse, select, and perform tasks on database objects. It’s the only tool you need for creating and administering Microsoft SQL Server databases.

4. Sequel Pro

For Mac OS users, Sequel Pro–an open source MySQL database management front-end tool–is a top pick. It has a slick and intuitive GUI that keeps it barebones so that you can easily navigate the app. To get started with Sequel Pro, make sure to check out their docs page (but a word of caution, the docs is still under development at this time).

3. SQLyog

SQLyog is a GUI administration tool for MySQL developed by Indian-based software company, Webyog. It comes in two flavors: Enterprise (with the price ranging from $99 to $999) and the pared down Free Community version; to see the differences, check out the feature comparison table. SQLyog’s list of features is outstanding and unfathomable – a top-notch tool for professional database admins.

2. Navicat for MySQL

Navicat for MySQL is part of the family of cross-platform (Windows/Mac/Linux) relational database management tools created by PremiumSoft. It has a visual query builder for creating complex database queries in a snap, import/export/backup tools for your databases, a report builder for printing out db queries that the boss can understand, a task scheduling assistant for scheduled execution of jobs, and much more.

Navicat also produces front-ends for Oracle and PostgreSQL. Navicat products have a Lite version (non-commercial) and a Premium version; check out the feature matrix to see the difference in features of both versions.

1. phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin, the most popularly voted database management tool by you (and where my vote would have gone), is an open source web-based MySQL manager. Don’t let it’s simple and aesthetically-challenged GUI fool you, phpMyAdmin packs a punch: you can create/manage databases, tables, db users, optimize and check for errors in your db tables, run queries, export/import data in plenty of file formats, and much more; couple all of that with ease of installation and you’ve got yourself a true winner.

To learn more about phpMyAdmin, you should consider getting the Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.1 for Effective MySQL Managementbook by Packt Publishing (a book that I highly recommend).

Is your favorite database management tool not mentioned? Tell us about it in the comments!

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About the Author

Jacob Gube is the Founder and Chief Editor of Six Revisions. He’s also a web developer/designer who specializes in front-end development (JavaScript, HTML, CSS) and PHP development. If you’d like to connect with him, head on over to the contact page and follow him on Twitter: @sixrevisions.

Let’s look at our top 20 essential Firefox extensions geared for people who build websites.

1. Web Developer

The Web Developer add-on extends Mozilla Firefox by adding a toolbar with various options for working with web pages. For example, it has an option to inspect CSS styles of page elements that will tell you what CSS attributes they have, and which styles affect them.

2. SeoQuake

SeoQuake will help you in optimizing your web pages for search engines. It gives you an SeoBar that has loads of useful SEO-related options for you to take advantage of. This extension will assist you in identify issues pertaining to search engine indexing in your web pages.

3. Window Resizer 1.0

Window Resizer comes in handy for testing different screen sizes and monitor resolutions. It quickly and accurately resizes Firefox’s viewport so that you can test to see how your design looks in standard resolution sizes.

4. FireShot

FireShot is a Firefox add-on that creates screenshots of your web page. What is unique about this plugin is that it gives you a set of editing and annotation tools for working with your screenshots. This can be a handy extension to have for presenting your work in your portfolio.

5. Firebug

Firebug is considered to be the ultimate developer’s tool for Firefox. You are given a ton of web development tools to use from within your browser. You can explore, edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript in real-time on any web page.

6. Greasemonkey

The Greasemonkey Firefox add-on enables you to modify how a web page looks and works by using small snippets of JavaScript. There are hundreds of scripts that you can download to enhance this add-on.

7. ColorZilla

ColorZilla is an incredibly simple extension for Firefox. If you’ve ever wanted to determine what colors are used on a web page, ColorZilla is the tool for the job. It adds an eyedropper icon to the bottom-left corner of Firefox.

8. FireFTP

FireFTP is a streamlined Firefox extension for uploading files to a server. It offers several advantages to standalone FTP applications, such as its operating system-independent requirements. This browser add-on has all the features you would expect from standalone apps.

9. IE Tab

This great add-on for web developers allows you to switch back and forth from IE and Firefox layout engines with a click of a button. This permits you to test and compare how each browser renders your web pages without having to leave Firefox or install IE(vil).

10. Palette Grabber

This add-on will build color themes that are exportable to popular graphic-editing software such as Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, GIMP, Fireworks, and Paint.NET of the web page you’re currently viewing.

11. Font Finder 0.5c

With this add-on, you can highlight any text on a page to find out CSS styling information about that highlighted block of text.

12. Total Validator

This extension is an all-in-one validation tool that will check HTML, links, take screenshots and do a lot more. It also performs accessibility validation (WCAG, US-508), broken link checking, spell checking (in five different languages), and take screen captures via different web browsers and operating systems to see how your web pages look.

13. Platypus

Hands down, Platypus is one of the best Firefox extensions for modifying a web page. It works with Greasemonkey as a sort of WYSIWYG and it will remember your edits when you visit the web page again. You can use it to experiment with different variations of a web design.

14. Dummy Lipsum

An add-on with a very simple purpose, Dummy Lipsum generates Lorem Ipsum dummy text for you to use in your designs.

15. Page Diff

Page Diff  is an add-on that helps web developers and designers see HTML source code differences between web pages. This is helpful for finding code irregularities or differences that will enable you to debug rendering issues.

16. Aardvark

Aardvark, aimed at front-end web developers, let’s you select web page elements and gives you several options for them, such as removing them from the web page (great for screen shots) or modifying their colors (helpful when printing web pages).

17. Codetch

Codetch is a WYSIWYG editor add-on that allows you to edit web pages directly in Firefox. The interface is modeled after Dreamweaver (but thankfully, the price is not).

18. Measure It

Measure It is an add-on that gives you a built-in ruler for measuring web page elements. It’s great for figuring out dimensions of things on a web page.

19. YSlow

YSlow is a web browser utility that benchmarks a web page’s front-end design performance. It will assist you in optimizing your web designs for fast response times by identifying performance issues.

20. CSSViewer

CSSViewer allows you to inspect CSS properties on a web page that you’re viewing. It’s a great way to study styles that you’ve seen on websites to learn CSS development techniques.

What Firefox Addons do you use?

Why do you use them? Join us in the comments!

*Co-authored by Jacob Gube

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About the Author

Ben Mackler is a web designer and Photoshop enthusiast originally from Maryland with over 12 years design and development experience. In addition to teaching web design, he currently writes a tutorial and design inspiration blog at www.designtutorials4u.com. You can reach him on Twitter @designtuts4u.

When you have a website or a network, it’s helpful to be aware of any issues as soon as they occur. There are open source and freeware server/network monitoring tools that will supervise your infrastructure for any issues that may arise. These tools are meant to aid you in avoiding being taken offline and evaluating if your resource needs has outgrown your infrastructure.

In this article, we review our top 10 server/network monitoring tools. You will see a variety of server applications here so that you might find the tool (or tools) for your needs.

1. Monit

Monit not only monitors your server, but also attempts to remedy problems by taking predefined actions for certain situations. For example, if your database server crashes, Monit can automatically restart the service if this is the action that you want to take (hint: it usually is).

If you have more than one server that you need to monitor, then you can use M/Monit- an extended version of Monit that provides a simple way to monitor multiple machines.

There’s also an iPhone app available for M/Monit to help you conveniently check on your network without lugging around a laptop around.

2. Ganglia

When you have a cluster of machines, it’s difficult to see how the whole cluster is doing all at once. Ganglia, instead, presents an overview of the whole cluster. This is a great tool to have set up when you’re working with a server cluster; with that said, it may be overkill for single-machine set-ups.

3. Munin

Munin monitors and graphs system performance metrics. It can automatically produce daily/weekly/monthly/yearly performance graphs and reports of many important metrics. It comes with the ability to monitor core system resources, such as memory, disk space, CPU usage, server applications such as MySQL, Apache, and Squid.

One of Munin’s greatest strengths is how simple it is to extend. With just a few lines of code, you can write a plugin to monitor almost anything. Being so easy to extend means that Munin is also a good choice for graphing things unrelated to server performance, such as the number of user signups or website popularity.

4. Cacti

Cacti is similar to Munin in many ways. What is makes Cacti different though–and where it stands out in relation to Munin–is that it allows you to resize your graphs and view data for an arbitrary range. Whereas Munin has fixed daily, weekly, monthly and yearly graphs (unless you write a custom extension), Cacti lets you view your data however you want to: last 2 hours, last 4 days, last 6 months, out of the box. You can even visually select and zoom into regions on your graphs.

5. Nagios

Nagios is "the industry standard in IT infrastructure monitoring,"–well, at least that’s what it says on their website. Nagios can be complicated to install and configure, but its wealth of features are unmatched by any tool out in the market and is geared for the experienced IT network administrator. Nagios supports monitoring of multiple hosts and can send out alerts via email, pager (if you still use this ancient technology) or SMS/text messaging. Like Monit, it can also be configured to automatically respond to problems.

6. Zabbix

Zabbix is a feature-packed monitoring tool. It has great visualization support including user-defined views, zooming, and mapping. It can send out alerts via email, SMS or instant message. It also provides audible alerts, which can be useful when you’re physically near the monitoring machine.

7. ObserverNMS

ObserverNMS is geared towards Linux, BSD and Cisco networks. It supports auto discovery of your network infrastructure, finding the networks that you’re likely interested in monitoring; this feature can be compared to how your Wi-Fi software automatically finds signals in range that you can jack into. ObserverNMS provides detailed graphs, and can be set up alongside Nagios to provide alerts. It also integrates well with Collectd (featured below) for a more robust interface.

8. Zenoss

Zenoss is an open source version of the commercial server monitoring tool Zenoss Enterprise, written entirely in Python. It supports the Nagios plugin format, so many existing Nagios plugins can be used in Zenoss. One of the main highlights of Zenoss is its powerful yet simple to use user interface.

9. Collectd

Collectd is similar to Munin and Cacti in that it focuses on graphing system metrics. Where it excels in is that it is designed specifically for performance and portability; this ultimately means it’s great on rugged systems, low-end systems, and embedded systems. Being designed for performance and low-system resource use means that Collectd can gather data every 10 seconds without interfering with your server processes, providing extremely high-resolution statistics. You can write extensions for it in C, Perl or Java.

10. Argus

Argus focuses on the monitoring of network services, and supports IPv4 and IPv6. It has a nice alert escalation procedure: after sending out an alert and the problem still isn’t resolved within a fixed amount of time (because the systems admin is at home enjoying his sleep), another alert will be sent out to someone else.

What do you use?

Do you have experiences with any of the tools above? Do you use something else? Join our discussion in the comments.

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About the Author

Ben Dowling is a passionate software developer who specializes in web and mobile application development. He currently works for Mendeley in London, UK, and regularly blogs about development at Coderholic. You can also find him on twitter.

In this article, we briefly review some top-notch free desktop blog editors for you to consider.

1. Thingamablog

Thingamablog is an open source blogging application that has a wide array of features such as an RSS feed import function that allows you to import blog entries into the application. It has the capability to post to blogs via email and tools to set-up and install a weblogging platform onto your server in minutes. In addition, it has built-in wizards to aid you in accomplishing your blogging tasks.

Screenshots of Thingamablog | Download Thingamablog

2. Windows Live Writer

Surprisingly (to many), Microsoft has a very good offline desktop blogging application called Windows Liver Writer that’s regarded by seasoned bloggers as the best one out there (for Windows users). It has a characteristic MS Office look and feel that will be familiar to most Windows users. A key feature of this blog editor is its ability to post maps, videos and other types of media easily.

Download Windows Live Writer

3. BlogDesk

Among the many things that makes BlogDesk a favorite amongst bloggers is the handy ability to publish posts to multiple blogs at once. BlogDesk comes with an ImageWizard feature that allows you to prepare your images for the web. Its spellchecker has a built-in dictionary that supports 14 languages. It even has a notebook that serves as a scratch pad that you can use to keep track of your post ideas.  It also has a feature called Tag-generator that remembers previously used keywords to help you tag your posts quicker.

Screenshots of BlogDesk | Download BlogDesk

4. Bleezer

The main advantage that Bleezer has is its cross-platform support for Linux, Windows and the Mac OS. It’s compatible with most blogging and content management platforms such as Drupal, WordPress and Blogger. Features that will appeal to you in Bleezer include image uploads to a server of your choice, a good spellchecker to avoid typos, the ability to add keyword tags to your posts, and a WYSIWIG interface. Bleezer can also work while you are logged into your account for real-time posting.

Download Bleezer

5. Post2Blog

Post2Blog is a freeware desktop blogging application that is portable, giving you the opportunity to carry it around on a USB stick for use in any computer. It also has a robust image uploader that supports services such as Flickr and imageshack.us. It has a "Live" spellchecking feature that evaluates your spelling and grammar on the fly.

Download Post2Blog

6. w.Bloggar

w.Bloggar is quite a nice blogging application that’s portable onto a USB drive. It has a file upload function that is able to interface with most of the popular blog platforms such as Typepad, Drupal and WordPress. Its hot-key combination feature can be set up for keyboard shortcuts to make blogging quicker.

Download w.Bloggar

7. Flock

This is actually a web browser that has a built-in weblog editor. Flock allows you to work online or offline. The browser comes with other features such as a web clipboard, image uploader, tight social media integration, and a nifty feed reader that can help you get some blog post ideas.

Download Flock

8. ScribeFire

This Mozilla add-on takes the form of an icon on your Firefox browser. It’s uniquely convenient as you can post to your blog directly from your browser instead of having to start an editor while your idea is still hot in your mind. It also comes with the usual features such as HTML tags, image uploadm and multiple posting to several weblogs. ScribeFire has a vibrant support forum where you can with get help and chat fellow ScribeFire users.

Download ScribeFire

9. Qumana

This excellent desktop weblog editor has an interesting and useful feature called DropPad, an area where you can drag and drop items such as photos for instant posting to your blog.

Download Quamana

10. Zoundry

Zoundry is a terrific blogging application that has a feature to help you recommend products and services to your readers (and get paid for it). In addition to this feature, it also has the usual blog editor features like spellchecking and a WYSIWYG interface.

Download Zoundry

What’s your blogging editor of choice (and why)? Share your thoughts and opinion on this topic in the comments.

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About the Author

John Urban is a student at UCLA majoring in computer science. He is a writer for an online magazine StyleCeo, which deals with fashion. In his spare time, he enjoys sports, being with his girl, or just doing some freelance work. If you like his work on here and you’d like for him to work as a freelancer for you, you can contact him on Twitter.

As a developer or designer, it is often helpful to have multiple monitors to increase the amount of screen real estate you have, which in turn can lead to higher productivity. For instance, you may have one screen as your primary monitor where you perform your work, and another one that has your email client, Skype, IM client, Twitter client, and other communication apps that you can easily monitor and switch to.

We’d like to share several freeware and open source tools available for download to help you harness the power of multi-display set ups and get you up and running quickly. We hope that you might find the perfect application for you!

Synergy

Synergy is an open source software application that lets users of multi-monitor workstations share a mouse and keyboard between several displays. All you have to do is move the mouse cursor off the edge of one display to have it on another adjacent display. It also creates a single virtual clipboard to allow the copy and pasting across the many displays. With Synergy comes a handy module for synchronizing your screensavers across multiple displays so that they run in tandem. If there is a password required after screensaver mode, you only have to type in the password into one monitor to activate all the others. There is also a fork of Synergy called Synergy+ that you can check out on Google Code.

Input Director

Input Director grants you the ability to use a single keyboard and mouse on a multi-computer set up, making it the ideal solution for networked computers, a common situation where professionals have more than one computer (such as a desktop and laptop). All you have to do is move the pointer off the edge of the display and it appears on the adjacent monitor on that side, making it the active monitor.

UltraMon

UltraMon is a great tool for multi-display computer configurations that can support up to 10 monitors. It allows you to set custom features for each monitor such as resolution, wallpaper, and taskbar settings. UltraMon allows for the moving of running programs from the primary display to the secondary (and vice versa). Each of the monitors will have their own taskbar showing you the applications running on them. You can predefine and save monitor settings, as well as position where a program opens from the shortcut menu to help speed up your workflow. It also has a feature for easily turning off secondary monitors to conserve electricity consumption when you don’t need them and to reduce distraction when they’re not in use.

Multi Monitor Mouse (M³)

This app saves you from the hassle of having to drag your mouse off the desk as you try to get to the farthest monitor in a multi monitor environment. It immediately warps your cursor across the borders of the display on demand and runs in the background to avoid taxing the systems resources. It is accessible from the system tray where you can change the settings at will. It also speeds up mouse targeting by an estimated 30%.

MultiMon Taskbar

MultiMon Taskbar lets you have unique taskbars for each monitor, helping you to easily organize your applications across multiple computer screens. It has a move-to-monitor button accessible from all Windows programs for convenience and ease of movement from one monitor to another. In addition, MultiMon has a clipboard extender module for synchronizing your clipboards across multiple displays, making copy and pasting between networked computers a breeze.

Do you use multiple monitors? Are you looking into using multiple monitors? Do you hate multi-monitor setups? Share your thoughts, opinions, and advice in the comments.

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About the Author

John Urban is a sophmore at UCLA and currently majoring in computer science. He is a writer for an online magazine StyleCeo, which deals with fashion. In his spare time, he enjoys sports, being with his girl, or just doing some freelance work. If you like his work on here and you’d like for him to work as a freelancer for you, you can contact him on Twitter.

In this article, you’ll find terrific applications that will help you in your design and image-editing oriented tasks.

If you don’t have Adobe AIR installed, you can download it free from get.adobe.com/air/.

1. ImageSizer

ImageSizer is a batch image processor tool built to resize, optimize and rename multiple JPG files. Once your images are processed, they can be exported as a single ZIP file, making it convenient to transfer groups of images on the internet.

2. Contrast-A

Contrast-A is a great Adobe AIR application for designers wanting to easily create color schemes for their design. The tool comes with a contrast checker based on WCAG standards for accessible color contrast ratios.

3. Color Browser

Color Browser is made for archiving and organizing your color palette collections. It is a terrific way to store your favorite color schemes for later use in your designs.

4. Font Picker

This simple tool helps you pick the best font for a project. Font Picker shows you fonts installed on your computer with customizable sample text for quick and easy font management and selection.

5. XeIMG Image Editor

Xe-IMG Editor is a simple and free image editor built on top of the Adobe AIR framework. Because of AIR’s cross-platform capabilities – designers who work with multiple operating systems that need a quick and easy image editor will find this tool helpful.

6. WebKut

WebKut is a free Adobe AIR application that will enable you to capture web page screen shots (or only certain sections of a web page). The three screen capture options are: the entire page, the current view, or only a selection.

7. SWFShot

SWFShot is an Adobe AIR based application that allows you to create high-resolution images of Flash content stored on your hard drive.

8. Caliper Project

Easily measure things on the screen with the excellent Adobe AIR app called Caliper. Caliper can be overlaid on top of any program – so it’s an awesome tool to use for measuring in between different applications.

9. iPlotz

iPlotz is a downloadable Adobe AIR application for wireframing and creating clickable and navigable mockups of websites and app interfaces. It comes with collaboration and project management tools for designers working in teams.

10. Fractal4D

With the Fractal4D Adobe AIR application, you can draw fractal swirls that can then be exported as a vector file or in PNG format. Use the fractals you create to enhance your graphic designs.

11. Designview

This AIR app is for creating Flex Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) and is great for designers wishing to easily craft interfaces for their Flex-based apps.

12. Splashup Light

Splashup Light is a simple image editor that allows you to change levels, contrast/brightness, hue saturation, text editing, and shapes. It helps to enhance and improve your existing photos.

13. Mindomo

Mindomo Desktop is a mind mapping application which can be deployed onto your desktop and used across Linux, Mac OS, and Windows operating systems. It allows you to work on your mind maps offline.

14. Flickr Desktop Search

One thing that many designers will often have at hand is a Flickr account for storing their own images and stock photos. With the Flickr Desktop Search tool, you can easily search Flickr for interesting photos.

15. CleVR Stitcher

If you’ve ever needed to piece together several photos to create a wide panoramic photo – CleVR Sticher is the Adobe AIR app you’ve been looking for. It also has basic photograph editing capabilities such as an option to correct/adjust exposures (for color matching).

16. ImageDropr

Staying in line with the assertion that designers often have a Flickr account – you should also check out ImageDropr, which is a Flickr tool for easily managing your own photos on Flickr. With it, you can upload, tag, edit your photos’ titles, and more – all from within your desktop.

17. PhotoTable

With this simple but highly useful Adobe AIR application, you can easily save images from the web via a drag-and-drop interface.

18. Snoto Photo

Snoto Photo is a desktop application using Adobe AIR technology for browsing your recent photos and other images. You can also create a slideshow of your photos with AIR app.

19. TiltShift Generator

If you’ve ever wanted to create a Tilt-shift image without blowing your hard-earned money on expensive and limited-use photo lenses, check out the TiltShift Generator AIR application.

20. Website Generation Tool Take II

Website Generation Tool Take II is for creating simple site templates for those quick and easy design jobs.

21. zFlick

zFlick is a simple desktop application for viewing Flickr images. It enables you to easily search Flickr for that perfect photo. Check out this YouTube video to see zFlickr in action.

22. PixelWindow

PixelWindow is a straightforward and lightweight AIR application for measuring elements on your screen in pixels.

Got more AIR?

Do you have experience with the tools we’ve discussed? Do you know of an Adobe AIR tool not mentioned here? Share your thoughts and experience in the comments.

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About the Author

Tomas Laurinavičius is interested in web design, graphic design and web development, based in Lithuania. If you’d like to connect with him, you can follow him on Twitter.