I have a handful of posts on this site about tech support problems I’ve solved for clients. I write these posts because I usually have a hard time finding the solutions to the problems online and hope that maybe it’ll be easier for the next person who has trouble to find help. These posts are actually some of the most popular on the site and they receive a lot of visitors coming from search engines.

What’s that got to do with being a Web Developer?

It’s important to remember that just because you know how to build web sites does not mean you can or should fix any of your client’s computer problems. I promise you that the second you fix one of their problems with a printer, an email client or whatever they’ll be on you every time something goes wrong in their office. That’s fine if you’re charging them through some kind of service contract but never do this kind of work for free.

People who work for free get taken advantage of.

There’s definitely an urge to fix small problems for free or to go that extra step above and beyond what you originally agreed to with a client. I understand that and I’ve certainly done the same before but I know through experience that once you take on the two-headed role of Web Designer and Go-To Tech Support Guy your life will become miserable.

The only support requests you should ever handle are ones that are directly related to any of the programming or design work you’ve done for the client under your original contract. Extra support requests come at a huge price concerning your time. This is why I recommend against providing hosting solutions for clients as well.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the benefits of building Facebook Applications. I find the whole thing pretty interesting and I might be building a simple app to tie into Fore Score Golf Stats this year. Here are a few sites for those of you thinking about developing your own Facebook Apps to check out :

The Official Facebook Platform Site

The most obvious place to start developing Facebook Apps is the official website at http://developers.facebook.com. There you’ll find the essentials for building an application. You’ll find documentation with details of how the Facebook Platform works. There’s a resources section with code samples, client libraries and more. There’s also a Tools section that allows you to prototype your Facebook application in real time with user friendly test consoles. You can keep up with the latest news about the Facebook Platform as well.

Best Facebook Applications & FaceReviews

Best Facebook Applications posts profiles and reviews of some of the newest Facebook applications. FaceReviews also offers application spotlights and includes an Application Development program for those of you looking for help developing or marketing your Facebook Application ideas. You can use these two sites not only as inspiration for an application idea but to also keep an eye on competition your future app might have.

How to Develop a Hit Facebook App: 29 Essential Tools and Tutorials

This awesome list at SoftwareDeveloper.com contains 29 links to important articles and lessons for anyone looking to get into developing Facebook Applications. There are links for people getting ready to build an app, developers who are in the thick of things and creators ready to market and grow their apps. There are links for everyone in each stage of development. It’s definitely worth a bookmark.

I switched from PCs to Macs a little over two years ago. Aside from a little time spent in Linux, almost all of my web development work is done on my Macbook. I thought I’d take a minute today to show you the four applications I use the most when I’m working. All of these programs are highly recommended by me, but if you have any alternatives or suggestions that I should check out let me know in the comments.

Coda

I’ve written about Panic’s Coda before but I just can’t say enough good things about it. It puts everything I want under one window: file editor, FTP, previewing and terminal shells.

Without having to switch between different programs to edit, upload, etc. I find it much easier to concentrate and focus on the specific task at hand. Coda has done wonders for improving my efficiency when it comes to building sites. I use Coda every single day and that’s probably the best endorsement I can give it.

On The Job

There are a lot of options to choose from when it comes time to track your billable hours. There are even online solutions but I’m personally a bit leery of trusting someone else with my sensitive financial information. After a lot of trial and error I eventually found On The Job from Stunt Software and I’ve been using it ever since.

On The Job has a simple interface and is really easy to use. That’s exactly the kind of program you should be looking for when you have to do a tedious but necessary task like writing invoices. The best feature of On The Job, aside from the basic time tracking, is the PDF invoices it generates based on your time entry. I can have all of my monthly billing done in short order thanks to this program.

MySQL Query Browser

If you’ve read just a few posts on this site you’d know that I’m a PHP/MySQL guy so it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that I spend a lot of time using the MySQL Query Browser.

A lot of people like to use phpMyAdmin to interact with their databases and I think these people are insane. There are also other desktop programs to let you do MySQL work but none are as cheap (meaning, free) and as well put together as the MySQL Query Browser.

Paparazzi!

Paparazzi! is the type of small utility that I don’t use very often but when I do it’s a very serious timesaver. With Paparazzi! you can take high quality full-screen screenshots and thumbnails of any website.

I use Paparazzi! a lot when I’m sending comps to clients. It’s especially useful when they want to see how progress is coming but I haven’t worked out all of the quirks for a design in Internet Explorer yet. It’s a great utility.

I want to drop a quick note of thanks to Elliot Jay Stocks for his nice tutorial on getting PNGs from application icons. It was extremely helpful.

The makers of HullBreach, a browser-based space MMORPG for the Nintendo Wii, have released a JavaScript SDK for the Wii Opera browser that lets you do some pretty incredible things.

This SDK lets you write code that interacts with the Wii Remote (and its built-in motion sensor), draw rudimentary 3D graphics and even handle multiplayer communication. All inside the Opera browser available within the Wii itself.

One of the examples included on the site is a very basic StarFox demo that you have to see for yourself. I’ve included a screenshot below for those of you who don’t have browsers capable of supporting the SDK.

There are some reports online that this is an official Nintendo and/or Opera release but that certainly doesn’t appear to be the case. From what I can tell this is an entirely third-party development.

If you’re one of the lucky ones with a Nintendo Wii and you’ve got some free time you might want to give this SDK a try. If you get stuck there’s some pretty light documentation available.

When I re-launched Web Auctions Daily it was missing a way to search through the various auctions the site was collecting. I eventually got around to adding a really simple search form over the weekend. When I was finished I wanted to come up with a way of monitoring what people were searching for.

Before I sat down to add a home grown search monitoring feature to the site I remembered that Google Analytics has the ability to monitor local searching for you. Luckily it’s really simple to setup.

To activate site search tracking in Google Analytics you need to edit the Profile Information of your site. At the bottom of the Edit screen you’ll find this section:

As you can tell from that screenshot, Google Analytics uses the query string of your search script to track what people are searching for on your site. In my particular case, the query string has two parameters: q and q_type. q contains the actual term the user is searching for and q_type is the category of auction to search through (either site, domain or template in the case of Web Auctions Daily.

Here’s an example of a typical search URL from the site:
http://www.webauctionsdaily.com/search.php?q=wii&q_type=site

The only required parameter for this to work is the one that contains the actual search query. The second parameter for the category is optional. You can also have Analytics strip the parameters from the URL in its reports, if you’d like, by marking the appropriate radio button.

Once you have everything set correctly you can view all of the searches people make on your site by accessing your Google Analytics account and checking “Site Search” under the “Content” tab.

This is an excellent way to keep an eye on what people visiting your site are looking for and it’s almost painless to setup and get going. I’m a huge fan of Google Analytics because it offers you either a simple view of your site’s traffic or, with a little bit of work on your part, an in-depth analysis of visitor usage.