Tools to do the job....

Posted: Sun May 13, 2007 8:50 pm

After seeing another post tonight where someone screwed the file up with wordpad I thought I would post a list of the "Got To Haves" for working with php files....These are all FREE

Crimson Editor - Excellent file editor [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

WinMerge - for compareing two files [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Audiocity - This is for editing Audio Files... [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

The first two I use every day. I know there are more PLEASE post'em up in this thread with a link to the site to download them.

Dawg

Posted: Sun May 13, 2007 9:01 pm

MySQlDiff - Comparing MYSql Files [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Regular Joined: Dec 28, 2004 Posts: 94

BigDump - Uploading large sql databases without timeouts.
[ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 3:22 am

MySQLDumper:
[ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6433

pspad - free editor
CoreFTP - free FTP client
Beyond Compare - commercial file comparison
Easy Thumbnails - freeware photo resizing
IrfanView - free photo viewer, editor, conversion
Pixie - color picker

Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 6:53 am

Somone needs to STICKY this thread.....

Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 7:04 am

My special thanks goes to Tidy !
With this Firefox extension I have made all my sites W3C conform.
I love it, I like it and I can´t live without Tidy.
[ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 7:59 am

Dawg wrote:

Somone needs to STICKY this thread.....

Done!

To add to the list:

FileZilla (free FTP client found on SourceForge).

Everybody took mine.

Honorable mention goes to TextPad (textpad.com) if you want an excellent text editor that is low cost - no, not free).

Posted: Mon May 14, 2007 10:01 am

VIM - Vi Improved text editor
GIMP - Open Source graphics manipulation package
XAMPP - Bundled version of Apache/PHP/MySQL; one click install for Windows XP
phpMyAdmin (duh)

Posted: Sat Sep 15, 2007 5:34 pm

I used a site to check url hijacker in the past and I believe this problem still exist.

For example: You added your website url to a directory afterthat go to: [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

and check out the link. Of course its much better to check the directory before you add your link there. Smile

Copies of your website, duplicate content you can find with:
[ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 12:53 pm

Beyond Compare has been mentioned before in this thread. I just want to highlight one of its features: it can do a folder/file comparison between say a directory structure on your PC and a FTP folder structure. Before today I had used it mainly to make sure that the files in my FTP folder were current with the latest Ravennuke release(s). But I had done this more or less manually, going thru the folders individually and looking at changed files individually too and copying "up" what seemed appropriate. With as many folders and files as we have in RN that gets very time consuming.

Today I tried folder synchronization. You can basically synchronize from left (the PC) to right (the FTP location). There are a number of options such as "only copy up newer files". To use this feature you have to look at the comparison control tool on Beyond Compare and make sure it is evaluating timestamps (I had this off originally and couldn't understand why it was not replacing some files). Unfortunately, "comparison control" is on the file menu while settings for synchronization are on the tools, options, menu and synchronization itself is on the action menu where, if you choose custom synchronization you have even more options. So it can take a little experimenting to get it right.

That said, if you get everything set up right for synchronization you can probably do in 10 minutes what otherwise could take hours. Oh yeah, you also need to take a look at filters and exclude things like config.php and rnconfig.php which might otherwise overwrite changes you've made.

Posted: Mon Oct 01, 2007 1:32 pm

Jedit - free text editor with tons of plugins.

Regular Joined: Mar 14, 2005 Posts: 91

Ubuntu - No more windows for me. Anybody else running a Linux distro on their desktop?

Jedit - always open on my desktop - works on windows, linux, mac osx. Default syntax highlighting colors are ugly, but can be changed. Takes a while to get used to some things and plugins are needed to make it a great php editor.

GIMP - Nice image editor with plenty of power, it is free, and works on windows/linux/mac. Photoshop is still king though!

Meld Diff Viewer - Linux Only - Nice version compare/diff viewer

GnoTime Tracking Tool - Linux Only - Task Lists, Time Tracking, and Billing software with a bunch of cool features - great for large projects

SSH - Manage my VPS entirely through ssh doing software updates, configuration, installation, etc. Also makes some tasks easier like creating/extracting archives, moving/coping files, and all kinds of stuff.
Windows users can use Putty.

SVN - Version Control System - Just starting to get in to using this to keep track of changes between versions. Plenty of GUI's out there to work with SVN/CVS but I haven't played with too many.

Worker Joined: Feb 18, 2006 Posts: 155 Location: Virginia

Good info here.

One that I like to use to make sure that all internal & external website links
are not broken is called "Xenu Link Sleuth". It can help you find pages that
need redirect maintenance. It is free and check it out here.
[ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Cool

Posted: Fri Dec 28, 2007 5:49 am

This is How to Set up a testing server....from this post.... [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

I was hunting this so I thought I would move this QUOTE here to add to the Goodies!!

Dawg

montego wrote:

Go with the standard XAMPP installation. What I have done to mimic my site as much as is possible (outside of running it on a Linux platform!), I did this:

=== CREATE ===

I created on my "E" drive a directory called "http". The directory name and placement really is only important for this example's purposes. Use whatever you like and adjust accordingly.

=== OPEN ===

xampp/apache/conf/httpd.conf

Since I don't know where you have installed XAMPP, you have to find this on your own. lol.

=== ADD ===

Down at the very bottom of the file, I have added these two (actually I have many sites defined like this) sections:

Code:




NameVirtualHost *:80





<VirtualHost *:80>


    ServerAdmin [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]


    DocumentRoot e:/http


    ServerName localhost


    ErrorLog e:/@logs/localhost/error.log


    CustomLog e:/@logs/localhost/access.log common


</VirtualHost>





<VirtualHost *:80>


    ServerAdmin [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]


    DocumentRoot e:/http/montegoscripts/html


    ServerName montegoscripts


    ErrorLog e:/@logs/montegoscripts/error.log


    CustomLog e:/@logs/montegoscripts/access.log common


</VirtualHost>

Yes, I have obscured my email address (its not important for this local install anyways) and you can place the log files anywhere with a valid path. I keep a separate log file for every local site to help me debug better.

Also, take special note of where I have placed the nuke installation. I have placed it under the html directory, this allows me to mimic the usual "public_html" type structure on many LAMP installations.

=== OPEN ===

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Depending on your windows installation, this could be slightly different, but will always be in this system32 directory I believe.

=== ADD ===

Take special note of the "ServerName" that I used above in httpd.conf, it was "montegoscripts" for this example. So, at the bottom of this hosts file, add this:

Code:




127.0.0.1       montegoscripts

=== RESTART APACHE ===

You should now be able to access the site locally with the following URL:
[ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Yes, that is correct! "montegoscripts", via the hosts file, get "resolved" to your local PC IP address (really, the IP address for localhost). Next, Apache gets it and looks up its server requested for "montegoscripts" and routes the traffic accordingly.

What is nice about this is that I can clearly separate my sites AND I can access them at their own "root level" and with preferences I can use "http://montegoscripts" and in the forums configuration "montegoscripts" and the only difference between my local sites and production sites is the ".com" on the end!

Hope you find this useful, because using XAMPP to test your site changes is just a DREAM! Cuts out ALL production downtime issues related to our own dumb mistakes (lol). Believe me, I've made tons of them (see my signature line).

Posted: Sat Dec 29, 2007 5:02 pm

I started out with Crimson Editor which I thought was pretty good - until I came across Notepad++
I now use Notepad++ exclusively and it's still free!
For file comparisons, I still use Beyond Compare2 even after trying others like WinMerge which reimnds me, I must see if they have updated it in the 18 months or so I have been using it lol.

If I'm tweaking themes or want to do anything relating to color schemes, I also like to have my trusty ColorPicker handy as it can show me the RGB or HEX of any color my mouse hovers over as well as using it to create palletes. It also has a really handy ruler and magnifying glass.

Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 9:33 pm

Here is the Color Picker I use all the time.... [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 3:42 am

Here is the ColorPicker I use [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]
It is free and has a file size of only 501kb
I honestly do not know how I would some of the things I do without it.

Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 6:29 am

I use both of these color pickers (each has advantages). For web applications, the DHTML color sphere and DHTML color picker from ColorJack are great. The online Sphere application is also useful.

Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 7:18 am

I personally use GIMP for almost all my image needs (which is not much because I am not the most graphically inclined individual - lol). It also has a color picker built in as well as a way to pick a spot on the screen and have it capture the color.

Posted: Wed Jan 23, 2008 9:19 am

This is from a thread about Domain Registration [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

....I thought it important enough to add to the "Tools"....

Raven wrote:

I have always used and recommend [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ] .

Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 7:44 pm

I just looked at instapro - it's a reseller for GoDaddy...

Posted: Sun Mar 16, 2008 12:42 pm

Need to bump this thread: CoreFTP only provides recursive CHMOD in the PRO ($) version.

HOWEVER, FileZilla 3 is out - and yes, it has recursive CHMOD now! Get your free copy today: [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 5:17 am

I'll be interested to hear from folks how 3.x is working for them. I had tried it out during in earlier releases and was met with logs of bugs, so I downgraded back to the 2.x branch. That was probably about 6 - 8 months back, so maybe they have ironed out the major bugs by now?

Posted: Mon Mar 17, 2008 5:55 am

I'm using the 3.0.8 release, which is primarily a bug fix release. No problems yet, though it's only been used lightly.