The First Step in Every Project: A MindMap

You've a new project in your mind, but you don't know where to begin.

To me it's a bit like writers' block, except the ideas are there - but so are a thousand questions.

Identifying your first step is half the battle and having a step-by-step plan is a good deal towards organizing you mind.

But that still begs the question - Where do I start?!

Mind Mapping Tools are an invaluable resource for any project and if, like most of us, you use more than one computer you need an online solution - there's nothing more frustrating than sitting down to work on a project, only to realize all your work is saved on another computer!

SlickPlan ticks all the boxes - it's online, so you can access it from any computer with an internet connection; it has a clean and simple, user friendly interface; results can be saved to html, pdf or sent in  html  to any email address.

Let's take a look inside SlickPlan...

Sign up for a free account and confirm your email address.  We had to wait a few hours for the email confirmation to come through, but so far, that's our only critisism.

Once inside you'll find your personal dashboard.

Click 'Create a New Sitemap'

This is a sample project to show you the basics of mindmapping with SlickPlan.

 First off you'll want to name your project, make it something memorable that relates to the project you're working on - the name of the website or product is usually good enough.

To the left of the page, you'll see a sort of control panel, like this one:

The labels correspond with the nodes you name. In this case, each node represents a page on our new website.

You'll notice three symbols for each node; green arrows to move; pencil to edit and red circle to delete a node.

To edit, click the pencil and change a node's name of it's parent, using the drop-down menu.

When you've finished editing, export your results in html or as a pdf - and don't forget to hit 'save changes' whenever you make any alterations.

 So now you're projects all mapped out, your mind's free of clutter and you can work smarter and more efficiently.

Don't Search General Stock Photography for Royalty Free Textures...

Texture Vault was launched in May 2009 and is run by the peeps from established sites like StockVault, a stock photo sharing site which has been around since 2001.

The difference between  the 100's of available stock photography sites and texture vault is, well the clues in the name - yep, they only deal in textures and backgrounds.

There are hundreds to choose from, in categories ranging from Architecture to feathers to plants & foliage -  and the best news is you can download their medium quality images free.

Premium high quality and maximum quality images are also on offer for $2 and $4 respectively. In addition, extended licences can be purchased for projects intended for resale.

If you're a photographer, there's always the opportunity to upload your images and reap 50% of the sale price.

Not a whizz with a camera? Sign up for the affiliate program and earn 10% on referrals.

Registering for an account is free and once inside members can vote for favorite textures, add to lightbox and make comments.

If you're looking for a texture, Texture Vault should be your first port of call.

Solution to Unknown File Extensions

There are numerous file extensions, many of which we come across every day - htm, html, zip, rar, php, - well there's too many to list here, but what do you do if you come across a file with an extension unknown to you?

Hmm, a file extension library would be handy!

Go there and you'll find a hyperlinked list of common and not so common file extensions.

Have a look for the extension you're trying to identify, click on it and you'll find information about the extension, what to do if windows can't open your file and, when you scroll down the page, more detailed information about the extension.

Check out File Extension Library.

Need Website Icons?

Icon Pot is a simply interfaced icon gallery. For each set an image of a selection of the icon pack plus information, date added, number of icons in the pack, author, any restrictions and of course a link are shown.

In their own words, they differ from other icon lists because they 'only list icons which you can use for free on personal AND commercial projects AND without having to provide back-links/credit to the author.'

However, a word of caution - licences can change, so always double check any graphic's usage terms to avoid getting into trouble!

Email: Hide Your Address

It's a sad and annoying fact; spambots are continually crawling webpages all round the globe, harvesting email addresses, builiding mailing lists and spewing out spam.

Less successful attempts at protecting email addresses are Address Mungeing or deliberate obviscation using (at) instead of @ in the address.

However, a more foolproof solution is to display your contact address as an image and there's a free service that will do this for you in three simple steps...

Go to Safemail

Enter the email you want to hide in an image...

Choose a font and style to match your web page...

You're good to go, just click 'Create Now'...

 

The resulting code can be applied to a variety of platforms and safemail will even host the image for you.