Archive | April, 2009

Need a Wiki? Top Alternatives to MediaWiki!

Apr/30 in Web Development Tutorials

Looking to setup a new wiki, but don’t know which script you should pick up to do the dirty work?  Many might say that MediaWiki is the best and the most popular, since it is what is used to run Wikipedia.  However, there are some great alternative wiki scripts you might have (or might not have) even seen before.

DokuWiki – Aimed at creating documentation of any kind, DokuWiki is a standards compliant wiki with more than a few nice features. It has anti-spam controls, all the basic editing features, supports over 30 languages and has built in page caching for quicker page rendering.  It also features a number of plugins and themes to try too.

DokuWiki Wiki Script Screenshot

BoltWire – A small and easy to use alternative wiki script, Boltwire is still able to deliver with surprising flexibility.  The neat thing here is that it has database-like storage and retrieval of form input values. But no database!  You can also restore a deleted page at any time, and customize ever site action from within the browser.

BoltWire Wiki Script Screenshot

WikyBlog – So it is a blog and a wiki?  Well I wouldn’t say it is both as much as it tries to fuse the best of both worlds.  WikyBlog brings in the user friendly publishing characteristics of blogs, delivered with the easy to use wiki syntax.  Designed with speed in mind, it is a groupware application that is a nice alternative to the more traditional wiki scripts out there.

WikyBlog Wiki Script Screenshot

WikkaWiki – I promise this wiki script has nothing to do with voodoo or magic.  The WikkaWiki is a script that was forked from WakkaWiki.  With speed, extendibility and security in mind, this wiki script deserves your attention.  They are also working on better ways to integrate WikkaWiki into other content management systems like WordPress, SMF, phpBB and more.

WikkaWiki Wiki Script Screenshot

PmWiki – Taking a different approach to content management, Pm wiki looks and acts like a normal web site.  The only difference is that each page inside of the site has an “edit” link to make modification of the page easier.  You can limit the editing to just one person, a team of people or the entire world.  This script would be for people who want a web page, with some wiki-like features.

PmWiki Wiki Script Screenshot

Which wiki script is your favorite?  Is MediaWiki still the hands down winner to you?  Would love to hear more about your own experiences with any of these top alternatives to MediaWiki.

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25 Favorite Ways to Make Your Desktop Wooden

Apr/29 in Desktop, Free Wallpaper

Decorating my PC’s desktop with a simple wood-like wallpaper seems to help me clear the clutter, and focus more on the task at hand.  Well, that and I just think the wood look and feel just looks awesome on any computer monitor.  With that in mind I have collected 25 of my favorite wood-related wallpapers to share with you here.

Have a favorite that didn’t make it onto the list?  Be sure to let me know. Also, feel free to spread the list around to see if we can find even more great wood wallpaper.

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7 Ways to Share Your Images on Twitter

Apr/28 in Online Apps

Photo Tools for Twitter

Want to share your art, your photos or your digital creations via Twitter?  There are a lot of ways to get the task down, however here are the seven best image sharing sites that aim themselves at the tweeter on the street.

  • flick.to.twitt – Quick and easy Flickr to Twitter photo sharing. 
  • Twitgoo – A Quick and reliable image host aimed at Twitter users.
  • Twitpickr – Quickly send your TwitPic images to Flickr.
  • twitngo – Quickly produce Twitter status updates with photos or images.
  • Twitrpix – Another instant photo sharing via Twitter web application.
  • TwitPic – Probably the most popular Twitter related photo sharing web site so far.
  • Twitxr – Take a picture and instantly share on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and more.

Know of another you love to use, but didn’t make it on the list?  Leave it in the comments. 

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Convert Any File Online, for Free!

Apr/27 in Online Apps

logo

Convert Files promises to give you the ability to convert just about any file format to any other similar file format, for free.  All you have to do is upload the file (or give them your file URL), select your input format, your output format and your e-mail address and they will e-mail you a link to the converted file. 

Some of the file formats they will convert over include:

Archives – RAR to TAR, ZIP, TGZ, TAR.GZ

Documents – DOCX to DOC, ODT, RTF, SWX, TXT, HTML, XHTML, PDF, PDB, ZIP

Presentations – PPT to ODP, PDF, SWF

Images – JPG to GIF, BMP, PNG, TIF, PDF

Audio – MP3 to WAV, OGG, AAC, M4A, FLAC, AU, WMA, AMR

Video – FLV to 3GP, AVI, MP4, MPEG, VOB, WMV, MOV, MKV, ASF, M4V

That is just barely scratching the surface on what this great online tool can do.  After converting, the file will stay on their servers for up to a week before it is deleted.  Also, as far as size goes, you can convert a file that is 100 MB in size or less. 

For anybody looking for an easy way to convert a file from one format to the next, but don’t want to download any special scripts or software to do so, Convert Files is a perfect converting companion.

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Google Profiles Help with Vanity Searches

Apr/23 in Hot Web Topics

How many times have you told friends, family or co-workers to go Google you if they want to know all the things you do?

Google has decided to give us all a little more freedom and personalization when it comes to somebody searching for you by name.  Now, when you Google a person’s name, you will get a list of Google profiles that users have setup with that name, so in turn – one would hope you find that person you are looking for faster.

How do you get your own profile setup and customized?  Go check out the Google Profiles page for more information about that.  I played around with adding more information to my own yesterday here:

Now, when somebody searches for “Mitch Keeler” in Google, my Google profile shows up at the bottom of the page.  image

Kind of wish they would put it at the top, however then people might claim they are trying to push their own pages over the search index.  Go get your own profile setup, and make it easier for others to Google you too.

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Lightweight Message Boards with PunBB

Apr/21 in Forum Scripts, Web Development Tutorials

PunBB - Forum Script in Action

A fast and lightweight PHP-powered set of forums, PunBB is a script you may not have heard much about but I can promise it is well worth looking into.  The goal of this script is to be faster, smaller and less graphically overpowering in comparison with other forum scripts out there.  That alone makes it a good option if you are on a shared web hosting account.

The requirements to get PunBB are fairly light too:

  • A webserver (preferably Apache).
  • PHP 4.1.0 or later (PHP 5 included).
  • MySQL 3.23.17 or later, PostgreSQL 7.0 or later or SQLite.

To install, all you need to do is upload the script to the location you want it on your web hosting account, and then run the install.php from the forum’s root directory, then follow the on screen instructions.

One thing I don’t like is the fact that they have various versions of the script to download from the main page.  You have PunBB 1.3 and PunBB 1.2.  This is an annoyance for me with several scripts out there.  Personally I like just having one download link with the latest version right there in front of my face.

PunBB is also extendable.  After you install it, you can take your choice of which extensions you want.  They can do anything from giving you a CAPTCHA to register and post to adding poll-like features.

Give PunBB a shot.  Why?  Well, as they put it because less is really more.

More Great Content! Bonus -  be sure to check out our other free forum script reviews! More Great Content!

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Simple Machines Forum

Apr/20 in Forum Scripts, Web Development Tutorials

Simple Machines Forum (SMF) SMF, or otherwise known as Simple Machines Forum, is a free professional software package that will let you get yourself an online community setup in minutes.  I had not heard much about this software till I started working for Lunarpages, since it is what they use to run their forums.  Ever since though, I have been sold.  It is a powerful, and customizable forum script.

This forum script uses PHP and MySQL to run the backend, so that means that any shared hosting account should be able to host it.  Here are a few more features:

  • Comprehensive template system.
  • Advanced permission and user management.
  • Supports multiple languages at once.
  • Open and well-documented source code.
  • Tracking of new and old unread topics, not just from your last visit.
  • Designed for optimal performance and scalability.
  • Multi-media output.

Continue Reading →

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Alternative to Tiny URLs – Enlarge Your Links!

Apr/17 in Online Apps

Make Your URLs Longer

Everybody these days is promising to make your URLs you share shorter, but not many are making them longer!  Longr.us is a simple web site that will make your web site addresses just a little longer.  For example it took:

and turned it into:

See, that has to be at least 10% longer!  All kidding aside, there is a purpose to this.  As you can see from the example above, it doesn’t give you a random mix of numbers and letters.  Instead if stays focused on explaining where the link came from and what it is about.  They also promise the long URLs are guaranteed to fit in 140 characters (for you Twitter users).  They even have easy access through a bookmarklet too.

Before you laugh it off as a goofy idea, give it a shot.  You might find longer is better (when it comes to sharing your links!).

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New Download Spot for Free Desktop Icons

Apr/16 in Custom Icons, Desktop

Grab Some Icon Love!

Yesterday, I decided to move all the free custom desktop icons I have created over the past year to one easy to remember location.  That location now is:

There, you can get links to download the 40+ video game related desktop icons I have created thus far – and in the future, that is where I will be archiving even more.  So bookmark it, share it with others and download all the icons you want.

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Convert Anything into a Web Page?

Apr/14 in Free Hosting

logo You can file this one under cool things I didn’t know I needed. File2.ws is a unique service that promises to convert anything into a web page.  Fuffy kitten aside (because they won’t fit in your CD-ROM drive no matter how hard you try) it does a good job at delivering on that promise.

All you need to do is browse for the file you want to convert, and then hit the “start conversion” button.  Some of the files it currently supports include:

  • image/photo files (jpeg, gif, png, svg…)
  • audio formats (mp3, ogg…)
  • documents (doc, pdf, odt, txt, rtf…)
  • programming source code (java, php, cpp…)
  • web documents (html, htm…)
  • archive (zip, rar…)
  • video, fonts, chemical file formats and more

Once uploaded, every converted file has a unique web address created for it, so you can point others to it and share the document in question.  So if you are searching for a free way to convert any file into a web page, give them a shot at File2.ws.

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