RIOT - Radical Image Optimization Tool

I have used RIOT many times to reduce the footprint of images.

http://luci.criosweb.ro/riot/

Incredibly easy to use image compression tool. Best of all it's free!

Zoho.com - Add Email to a Custom Wordpress Website

Created a new free Wordpress website for an existing hosted website for a club who lost their webmaster. The website prototype is complete and awaiting approval. In the meantime, the club wants a way to send emails from a "club" email rather than a personal email.

Wordpress Support pointed me to Zoho mail. Zoho Lite allows 5 email addresses, enough for our purposes.

A few technical things to set up - https://www.zoho.com/mail/help/email-hosting-with-zoho.html

• Verified the domain using the CNAME method
• Configured the MX (Mail eXchanger) records for the domain name

Tested emails sent to and from user accounts. If this works as advertised, it is a simple matter to import email addresses of club members so the President can log on and email from Zoho rather than using a personal email contact list that can't be shared with anyone else. It makes a difference when there are several hundred emails that must be set up every time an officer changes.

Update: Discovered that Zoho won't work to email over several hundred members without splitting the mailing into three separate sections. Exploring MailChimp as an alternative.

Vector Format - Inkscape

Needed to convert a .gif file to a vector format.  Found Inkscape to convert the file with minimum work...http://www.inkscape.org/en//.

This video was a big help - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ch9EbujPSs

Learn to Build Websites

I need another 30 years...

http://www.skilledup.com/learn-web-design-guide/

Bento - Learn to Code

Ah! I need more time in the day to learn all this stuff!

http://www.bentobox.io/index.html

Zamzar - Free Online File Conversion

Folks will either send or upload files in whatever format the program they use saves it in. That doesn't always translate well since the daily email newsletter I create is sent to several thousand people with all levels of computer literacy. 

When I'm stuck I use Zamzar to convert files.

Time and Date Calculator

Yeah, I'm challenged when it comes to calculating the number of days between two dates. Worse, I need to do it for my job.

timeanddate.com makes that bit as easy as pie.

Chrome Extension - IP Address

During testing of the announcement system on GoDaddy's Virtual Private Server versus the live system on the Shared Web Hosting Server, it was difficult to figure out whether I was accessing the live or the test program. One of techs at the hosting customer service center turned me onto tinyBIGideas's Website IP - http://tinybigideas.com/browser-extensions/website-ip/, an extension for Chrome. The extension adds the IP of the current website you are viewing to the bottom right of the screen.

Totally rocks!

FileZilla versus Expression Web

I've been using Microsoft Expression Web for years as an FTP client and HTML editor - http://bit.ly/KUDdSq.  It's what I started using to redesign an art gallery website and didn't have a reason to change.  In the meantime Microsoft discontinued support for the product, the last update being 12/20/2012. Now it's a free product.

During a project (aka crisis!) to find a new host for a custom-designed announcement system built using an older version of Ruby, my tech resource introduced me to FileZilla, https://filezilla-project.org/.  Time to move to a new updated tool.