Welcome to my "How to plan and manage your Website" series.

On the page below you will find links to a series of posts that I have written with beginners in mind. It touches defining goals for your blog or website, and proposes some strategies for planning and managing web site projects. If there are some good books on the topic, I will recommended them at the bottom.

 

1. Before you start

This article is covering questions you need to ask yourself before you start creating a website.

 

 

2. Defining Website Goals

Extremely important if not the most important task of your plan. If you get this done correctly, you are half way there.

 

 

 

3. Website Development Process

Working as a project manager I polished website development process to its best.

 

 

4.Project Management

If you are managing a web project, you will need to coordinate workflow of designers, copywriters and IT stuff. In case you are a blogger, organizing work and time effectively is even more important.

 

 

 

 

By the way – if you like these posts and want to keep in touch – subscribe to my RSS feed.

Web Project Management

Goal of this post is teaching you How to:

• Organize your Documentation.
• Manage Tasks and Time to become effective.
• Communicate with Web Designers, Text Writers and IT people.

See other posts in the series How to plan and manage your website.

How to manage Web Project Documentation?

Project Initiation Document

Many bloggers and freelancers (including myself) have problems organizing their work. I needed some kind of document that will state what I want to accomplish with my project. For every new project, I first create a Project Initiation Document that state the following things:

• Project objective: Clear, one sentence definition of what is my website/ project about.
• Project deliverables: Answers how I am going to achieve the objective(s).
• Project Timeline: For each major task, I estimate when they will be delivered.
• Project team: Here I state what is expected from each individual working on project.

Project Initiation Document helps me track what is each of my projects about and when they will be completed.

Download a free copy Project Initiation Document here. (58 Kb, PDF)

Project Task Journal

It took me almost an hour to remember what was I working on a week before, and to actually start working. To overcome this, I use a simple document called Task Journal to track what is being worked on. It includes date, task name, person responsible for this task and a note when the task was solved.

Download a free copy of Project Task Journal here. (54 Kb, PDF)

How to manage Human Resources?

Creating a website involves coordinating work flow of designers, copywriters and IT stuff. These are three completely different personas you will need to find common language with.

Working with IT

Your IT colleagues are people who love numbers, controllable processes and technical stuff. When talking with them, you will need to express very specific requests or problems they need to solve.

Working with Designers

Web Designers are the exact opposite of IT guys . They are the creative soul of your project and they hate numbers. Giving them specific details will not do any good. Instead, give them the idea behind the project, and they will produce a design based on their own vision.

Working with Text Writers

Text writers are similar to Web Designers, they want freedom while working. Give them the ability to express themselves and empower them to write for the audience, not for search engines.

How to Manage Time and Work Effectively?

Use Milestones

Milestones are short term achievements that help you evaluate progress towards your main objective. I like milestones, because I can always know where the project is standing.

Prioritization

Too many tasks, limited time and bad efficiency can be solved. But you need to make priorities! Effective way to prioritize is based on project/task value. When faced with two tasks at once, ask yourself which one is more profitable? When there are time limits, take the task that is more urgent to complete.

Working Environment

Make sure you and your team have best working conditions possible. You need a clean desk, working computer and fresh water :). You know what I mean. Find what works for you. Another important thing is to eliminate distractions: disturbing phone calls, instant messengers and noise are not part of effective working environment.

Summary:

If you needed to remember just three things about web project management these would be:

• Create good project documentation.
• Learn how to communicate with your team.
• Use milestones and prioritize tasks.

Further Reading

Jakob Nielsens Top 10 Mistakes of Web Management. Although written in 1997 most of things are still very true. Worth reading!

Mindtools.com – is a great resource for time management and related issues. If you suffer from work overload, this site will surely help you. Gives solutions to common problems and provides tools for time management.

EasySiteGuide Recommends:

Real Web Project Management: Case Studies and Best Practices from the Trenches

by Thomas J. Shelford and Gregory A. Remillard

This book is very useful for website project managers who want to learn from real examples. Book covers basics of PM and presents whole process of managing a web project. I recommend it for beginners. CD included.

How to develop a website from idea to launch?

After answering start-up questions and defining goals, we will now spend some time

on the website development process.

Note: The following text is written with client-developer relationship in mind, but is extremely useful for everyone who wants to learn basics of website development process.

1. Gather Information and prepare a plan

First phase of every new site is about gathering as much information about new website as possible, and organizing it into logical form. You need to think how you are going to structure things. What is the most important element, what is second most important?

Your goal of this first phase is to prepare a visual sitemap (hierarchy of pages) and to draw a mockup (sketch on paper). These two things are your input for developing a wireframe.

2. Create a Wireframe

Wireframe is a working model of your website without any graphical elements. It is used to indicate navigation, elements and their function, before single line of code is written and before any color of design is chosen. In practice it can cut costs and time by 40 %, because it eliminates unnecessary revisions. You can create it in Adobe Illustrator CS3, Adobe Photoshop CS3 or Adobe Fireworks CS3 (these are links to programs on amazon, but you can use any program you want) – it is up to you, but it is something I warmly recommend to do for every website.

3. Planning Content

Based on sitemap and wireframe, start planning how text will be asserted on new site. This phase is done together with a client, who is usually responsible for producing content. My experience shows that this phase causes most problems, because of inappropriate text length, spelling mistakes, biggest workload for client and so on. To handle it properly, you need to prepare a good specification and explain it to your client.

4. Web Design

While content is being prepared, you can focus on creating a base design. The initial design usually consists of homepage and typical, sub-level page. Scope of web design covers defining graphical elements (typography, colors and imagery) and developing user experience. You can create a design in Photoshop or Fireworks (check links above for details), both are very good tools. Even if you are not a web designer, you can still create a supreme looking website. You can hire a professional web designer or buy web templates.

5. Building Pages

After client has confirmed web design, you can start "slicing". Design needs to be converted into HTML and CSS (Cascading Style Sheet), which defines how HTML document should be formatted. Again there are many ways to do it even if you are not good at programming. You can hire a template slicing service that does it for you. Or you can build your site with CMS (Content Management System) like Joomla , WordPress , Typepad and others.

6. Debug until site is ready

After presentation to your client, site will surely need some corrections. In this phase, it is time to get your team on board and test new site extensively. You need to test your site in different web browsers, operating systems, on PDAs, even mobiles. Make sure you set aside a day or two before launch to do that. Webweaver lists a few popular website validators.

7. Launch

Make a final check before launch, get your team on board and cool down some champagne! You have earned it! In the next week or so, watch closely what happens with new site and be prepared to fix things if necessary.

Further Reading:

Check this one of a kind website development article by Japanese Author Koji Ito. He uses funny pictures to illustrate process of creating a website. It made me laugh because I found some things to be so true when managing a project…:)

EasySiteGuide Recommends:

Deliver First Class Web Sites: 101 Essential Checklists

by Shirley Kaiser. Excellent book powered with inspiration and motivation tips that will help you get in action. After reading this book you will be able to produce modern, user and browser friendly websites. Shirley covers everything from colors, navigation, information architecture and usability. Really handy reference to have at your fingertips even for more experienced webmasters.

Don`t make a mistake before you even start!

You have the power to avoid No.1 mistake 90% websites today share on Internet. They failed to set clear goals. You have to define your goals! I cant stress enough how important this is.

There are two types of goals for every website:

1. Visitor goals
2. Publisher goals

Visitor goals

or goals of your target audience present their motivation for coming to your website. Do you know what your audience wants, needs?

No? Than ask them! The best way to satisfy your customers is by knowing them better. Identify their goals and satisfy them 100%!

Publisher goals

are your goals – reason for having a website. If you are a blogger or if you own a company website, you need to set your goals. Ask yourself what do you want to achieve with your website? Are you selling products, building a brand or is it something else you want to achieve?

 

Note: When developing a website for a client, you also need to take into account their stakeholders goals. The owner is usually interested in commercial effects (sales, branding, etc.), sales team is interested into getting leads, and customer support will probably have less calls if some FAQ are answered properly on the website.

Why goals are important?

Publisher goals

If publishers goals are not met, consequences can be very serious. People from sales will not get any leads, customer support will waste time with unneeded questions and lastly, if owner will not see any profit, the site may soon shut down.

Visitor goals

If visitors goals are not met, they will surely go elsewhere and they are definitely not going to buy from you.

 

Note: It is important to define both publishers and visitor website goals, because clearly defined goals are core of your website plan. The better you define your goals, the better your website will do.

How to define your website goals?

To help you define goals I recommend these techniques:

• team brainstorming (get your team on board),
• ask your stakeholders what they expect from new website,
• identify needs of your target audience: ask them, analyze their behavior,
• visit lots of websites to learn what you want, and what you don`t want on your website.

Further reading:

WebDesignFromScratch.com provides excellent tips on Goal-Oriented Design. They help you understand and set goals for your website project. Here is an article about Goal oriented Design.

Recommended Books:

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time

by Brian Tracy. Eat That Frog! is a motivational book that will help you set and accomplish your goals. This book is not only useful for your website projects, but also for other things in life.

This is first article from the series How to plan and manage your website. Its purpose is to warm you up and start thinking about your web project.

How much human resources do I have?

Website Development includes different types of skills and usually at least three people: Web Designer, Copywriter and Developer / Programmer. In case you are on your own, you will need to gain knowledge for all three areas. Many webmasters specialize in just one of them and outsource the rest of the work. When working for a client, you will also need to know how many people will be editing and publishing content.

What is my budget?

Try to estimate your costs with the project. Here goes everything from hiring people, buying photos, applications, web hosting fees, etc,…

How much time do I have?

It could be quite a challenge to build a site in planned time line so I recommend you to set realistic time goals, especially with larger projects. That way your motivation level will stay high.

What technology am I going to use?

Depending on your needs, you will have to decide what technology you will be using. This is vastly influenced by human resources and purpose of your website.

Static Vs. Dynamic Sites

Most websites are built in HTML , PHP and ASP languages. HTML pages are referred as static, pages built in PHP and ASP are called dynamic – because they allow to apply dynamic functions.

Flash and Javascript

Beautiful presentations use Flash. Flash can be very effective if used properly, however sites made completely in flash tend to rank lower in search engines, because spiders can`t crawl them. Javascript is used to enhance website functionality with some actions.

Use of Databases

Wherever there is some input that needs to be stored, you will need a database.

What are my Technical Resources ?

By this I mean Web Hosting and managing of domain name or several names. Hosting type should be chosen based on your website needs. Some websites for instance, can live on shared hosting, while others need a dedicated, and more expensive environment.

What is going to be your domain name? If you have several domain names it is wise to create redirects that point to your primary domain name.

Conclusion

According to your answers you can now define what kind of project you are going to work on. This will help you later on when you will be setting goals and making decisions about your website.

Recommended Books:

Planning and Designing Effective Websites: With Web Workshop CD

by Sue Conger and Richard Mason. Planning and Designing Effective Websites is a very useful text for beginners who try to plan website for the first time. Although written in 1998 things have not changed much regarding planning a website. Technologies have changed, but planning process stays the same. Book offers lots of examples and successfully introduces newbie to the world of creating websites.

Some people are not very techy. Actually some people will never be techy. And why should they be? We should all do what we want to do best, don`t you agree?

"Building a website for dummies"…

is not meant to be rude in any way, but it is meant to attract those of you, who either don`t have time, or don`t want to put a lot of effort in building a website.

I enjoy preparing, building and optimizing websites. Thats why you should listen to what I have to say about creating websites.

1. You don`t need any money or skills to start publishing on Internet

Are you afraid you will need to spend lots of money for your first site? Thanks to technology, it has become extremely easy to express yourself on Internet.

The most popular things for beginners are blogs. I know blogs are here for a few years now, but do you have your own? Have you ever tried how easy it is to create a new blog post?

In case you havent, let me share a few places where building a website for dummies is completely FREE!

• https://www.blogger.com/ – This one is extra easy to use. You get your own name like http://yourname.blogger.com and you can post your thoughts, photos right away. No money out of your wallet.
• http://www.wetpaint.com/ – Now this one is little different, but don`t be afraid, this website is made for dummies and there is no way you can have trouble creating your own website here. So take some wet paint and do your magic!
• http://wordpress.com/ – oh…Wordpress. I can`t believe this thing is free, because it is so good. It is a real joy to use it. I just love it! You need to try it!

There is looots of free providers. See a longer list of free blog hosts here .

Creating a dummies website for free is a super way to test if you like creating websites. If you don`t find joy in it, you haven`t spent a cent. But if you do, you will probably end up like me, charmed by Internet, websites and digital world…:)

2. When you are ready, you should buy your own domain name and hosting account

If you find passion in creating websites you will see you need to go on. Maybe you want to create a community site. Maybe you want to open an e-store. Who knows? But sooner or later you will feel you want something more.

The good thing is, you can learn and achieve almost anything you want today! Of course you can hire people to build your website. But you miss all the fun and joy!

You know, i once was a website dummie too. But I learned HTML, I learned some design and what is most important, I found out that learning is the key. If you focus on what you want to achieve you will achieve it!

So what I would suggest after making lots of websites is this:

If you have an idea for a website, business opportunity or anything else: reserve your domain name a.s.a.p. You can always build your website, but if domain name is gone, your idea could be gone too.

Next thing: get a decent hosting provider with super support. My current host saved me lots of trouble in just a few minutes. And they were very friendly too. You know, there is no website hosting sites for dummies. But there are lots of hosts that want to take your money away from you. Lots of my visitors complain to me about bad hosting experiences. So choose wisely.

3. Read a Book Building a website for Dummies

Don`t be mislead by the title. Building a Web Site for Dummies is a very well written book and even experienced webmasters find useful information in it. But what is most important about reading this book, is that you need to apply what you read about creating websites. If you read it in »I already know this, lets skip this chapter« style, you might miss the big picture. I also recommend you to read the other two books.

 

Building a Web Site for Dummies	HTML for Dummies	Creating web pages for Dummies

 

Don`t forget to have fun with your website, and send me an email if you run into trouble!

This kind of things really piss me off! Sorry for the language. Stealing intellectual property is not just wrong, but it breaches intellectual property laws!

What happened?

One of our articles about a Joomla component appeared on a website called http://www2.mvtools.nl . It has been copied completely. Every word, every letter! Scammer even hotlinked images on our server! Ok…I calmed down and sent an email to the website owner:

 

This is copy of an email that has been sent on 4.9.2007

—————————————–

From: admin at easysiteguide.com

To: owner of Mvtools.com

 

This is to advise you that you are using copyrighted and protected material on your website/blog. Your illegal use of Chronoforms article at http://www.mvtools.nl/content/view/40/3/ is originally from my website/blog called Extension Tutorial: Chronoforms at https://easysiteguide.com/articles/joomla/joomla-forms-chronoforms.html. This is original content and I am the author and copyright holder. Use of copyright protected material without permission is illegal under copyright laws.

…

—————————————-

It happaned again!

Owner then replied, and removed the article. But today, on October 4th he publishes it again!

Is is now on this url: http://www2.mvtools.nl/content/view/40/85/ , the original is here: https://easysiteguide.com/articles/joomla/joomla-forms-chronoforms.html. Try to compare them. Exactly the same.

 

Owner will probably remove them, but this time, I made screen shots. Take a look and see for yourself:

{smoothgallery}

What to do when someone steals your content?

• First thing to do is to take screen shots and document it.
• Next thing to do is to send an email to the website owner, explaining the situation.
• If owner refuses to cooperate you should notify their web host and advertisers and tell them they are dealing with a thief who breaches intellectual property laws. Most Hosting Companies have strict policies about this, and they will not tolerate it.

 

So to the owner of Mvtools and other thiefs:

You can steal my content, but that will not go unnoticed. When people will see that you are stealing copyrighted materials they will not trust you anymore. They will tell their friends about it and soon everyone who types mvtools into google, will see this post and realize what you did.

 

It is better to write your own stuff than steal, don`t you think?

 

D Champ

I work in a website building company and what amazes me lately, is how many clients we get that want to optimize their websites.

 

Ok. Website Optimization is usually connected with search engine optimization. But I am not talking about this kind of optimization. I am talking about client requests to completely rewrite already established websites. This costs lots of money. Why does this happen?

 

It`s simple. People do not plan their websites enough. So please remember: planning is far cheaper than optimizing!

 

I can`t believe some sites I see today that want to rank high in search engines. And when they fail, they turn to website optimization. Wrong! A badly planned website cannot be optimized.

 

Reminder no. 2: plan your website rather than optimize.

 

Why is Website Planning so important?

In case you didn`t notice yet, Google is becoming smarter and smarter in finding out which pages provide valuable content and which don`t. So it is absolutely a waste of time if your plan is to trick Google. What you should do instead is CARE FOR YOUR VISITOR!

 

Your visitor is the one and only purpose of your website. So keep that in mind. Post-It on your monitor or whatever you need to do just don`t forget what is the purpose of your website.

 

What website planning is really about is just two things: satisfying needs of your visitor and satisfying Google and other search engines.

 

Satisfying your visitor

Whether you are planning a website from scratch or adding a post on your blog try to imagine you are the visitor and you are seeking for interesting information. Now – this might be hard at first, but once you master it you will feel great. So whenever in doubt – ask yourself what would your users like.

 

Satisfying Google and other Search Engines

There are some technical things you need to take care of when creating a website, but if you take a closer look, you will see it is very logical. Google wants to make all information on this planet searchable and empower anyone to find them in shortest amount of time.

How can this be possible? Hm. Think about it. What would you do if you were Google? You would need a set of good rules. And what ranking in Google is really about is following their rules. Read them, then reread them. They are called Webmaster Guidelines.

 

General what not to do`s:

• Do not make your navigation completely in flash or javascript. Google does not understand it. And what Google does not understand Google does not rank (high).
• Do not create a website only because you want to make money – sooner or later you will get bored and abandon your project.
• Do not put up a website that is not completed. It is better not to publish a site, than to publish a under construction page.

What to do`s:

• Satisfy your visitor – he is the purpose of your website and business!
• Satisfy Google and make him a friend of yours!
• Do things you love and you will become very succesful!

 

Good Luck with your site and remember: website planning is better than website optimization!

Poor Website Performance Symptoms

• Site loads slowly even on a DSL connection
• When i click on a menu it is unresponsive
• Images take over 30 seconds to load

If this is the case your site needs optimization.

Step 1 – Analyze your website

Analyze why your website is slow. First, but not so obvious reason could be your server performance. If your site is running on a shared account with multiple sites, that could be a problem. Your website could slow down, if your sites gets too much traffic, or one of the sites is not properly coded. But this only happens when your site gets loads of visitors every second. If that is not the case, you are probably facing a problem connected with your website design.

 

Run the test on Website Optimization to see possible problems your site is facing.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

 

Enter your website URL and carefully check the results.

1. See the result called Download times. It will tell how much time does your website need to load on a modem and DSL connection. If you get more than 50 seconds for 56K modem, than you have a slow website and need to improve website performance. Your goal should be to load your website under 25 seconds on a 56K modem. I know this can be tough, but lots of users these days still use dial-up connections
   .
2. Check the bottom of results and consider improving results colored red and yellow.

Step 2 – Optimize Website Elements

Reducing Graphics Size

Website Graphics are the biggest elements of any slow website. We love photos and users love them, because they are great eye-stoppers, but they slow your website. You need to optimize your site and make your images smaller and more compressed. You can easily do it by opening your image in a graphic editor like IrfanView or Photoshop and reducing image quality. I really like Photoshop because you can see exact image size and image quality before you save it. Try to experiment with GIF, JPEG and PNG sizes, because images look excellent at smaller sizes with some testing. Here are my simplified rules you can use too:

• .GIF: I use it for images that have a large area of the same color and for transparent images.
• .JPG: I use it for photographic images – photos that have lots of colors
• .PNG: I use it for blended images, gradients and such.

See for yourself the difference between a .gif and .jpg:

These two images are practically the same to the human eye, but computers know the difference.

	This image is saved in .jpg format. Its size is 7 KB.
	This image is saved in .gif format. Its size is 14 KB – twice as much as in .jpg

 

For more information about image extensions read these two resources:

http://www.sitepoint.com/article/gif-jpg-png-whats-difference

http://www.killersites.com/articles_2005/theory/imagesInWebPages.jsp

Reducing number of images

Image is equal to any other html element and counts as an object. So it is wise to combine images that would be otherwise inserted alone to one bigger image or image map. This will speed up your site for sure. You may also consider limiting yourself to a certain amount of KB per page. That works fine with me. I try to keep all images on one page under 50 KB. So when i exceed it i know page will load slowly.

Move your styles to a stand alone document – CSS

In case you don t use css on your sites you should learn about it and implement it. It will strip your code and make your page load faster, since all unnecessary code will not be loaded. You can even create several CSS documents and use them for different parts of pages. Pages without CSS load slower, because browser has to load more html code every time user opens a specific page.

 

Here are two free, online css tools you can use right now:

http://csscreator.com/?q=tools/layout

http://www.qrone.org/cssdesigner.html

Removing all unnecessary objects

Are you streaming music or videos from your site? Many websites become very slow when they want to stream media on shared hosting accounts. The solution is easy: Move your files to Youtube.com or similar online providers and simply put a link on your site. This will also save you bandwidth.

Avoid pasting code from Microsoft Word or other Editors

One of the popular mistakes is to copy text directly from Microsoft Word to Dreamweaver, Joomla or other Editors. Everything looks nice, but it is not. Along with your text, Microsoft Word adds a lot of ballast that slows your website. In Joomla there is a special option to paste content from Word. You can also do it manually – an easy solution is to paste text to Notepad, and then paste it to your Website Editor. You can see how your code looks by going to View>Page Source in any browser.

Step 3 – Retest your website

Check how your page is doing after you have implemented changes:

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

Super Trick for Pages that cannot reduce number of elements

This is a trick I use on some slow websites, that would not be the same if I would exclude some images. What I do is put extremely attractive text – a few sentences in the visible part of the screen. Because visitors are highly interested they start reading and in the meantime the content loads. When the visitor scrolls down, he or she doesn’t even notice the page was loading almost a minute. Note: this can not be used on every site and you must know what you are doing because this will not load your site faster.

 

If your have a slow website, turn it into a fast one with these tips!

It is amazing how many people I know, switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox, and never go back. Firefox is the choice of many Webmasters, because it is so flexible and adaptable to everyones needs.

Top 10 Reasons why I love Firefox

1. It is totally free! Firefox is an open source project. It is free of charge. Thousands of people are developing the browser, as well as many skins and extensions.
2. It is extremely fast compared to Internet Explorer. I can really do things faster. Firefox had tabbed browsing long before IE7 came out. And tabbed browsing is extremely useful when i compare several websites and need to shift fast between them.
3. Bookmarking system in Firefox is the best in the world. You can easily edit folders, sub folders and search within bookmarks.
4. Safety – Firefox is updated very often! That makes me feel sure I wont get any viruses or spyware on my computer. Integrated pop up blocker saves me lots of time, because I can stay focused on work instead of on intrusive ads.
5. Spell Checker – I am constantly writing something on the web. On EasySiteGuide I write posts in Joomla and Firefox checks spelling on the fly. It works with Gmail or any other text field on Internet – this is just awesome. I don t know how could I live without Firefox spell check.:)
6. Easy Downloading – Firefox has a tiny, but so cool download manager. I was very frustrated with Windows default download manager that Internet Explorer uses. Wasted lots of time with that.
7. History – you know when you find a great site, but you cant remember the name next day. Firefox makes it so easy. You can configure your history and search it. Another candy that saved my life several times is recently closed tabs! I was buying something with my credit card and at checkout I accidentally closed the tab. I was so upset because I had to do it all over again. Than I remembered this nifty little feature that opens a recently closed tab. It worked! All of my data was there and I could continue exactly where I stopped! I was so happy!:)
8. Extensions – this could easily be number one on the list. Firefox extensions are free little add-ons that enhance default Firefox installation. Currently I use:
   AI RoboForm – a password manager that remembers all of my passwords, logins and other stuff. I could not live without it.
   Search Status – this is the tool every webmaster urgently needs. It stacks in the right bottom cornet and shows Page Rank, Alexa Ran rank, Whois Information, Keyword density and lots of more extremely useful stuff for webmasters.
   DownThemAll! – this is an advanced download manager that super charges download speed. I just love it!
9. Integrated Search Engine – i save lots of time by directly writing keywords i want to search in address bar. Firefox is extremely smart and can handle searching in several search engines directly from the browser window. So cool!
10. Pimp your Firefox: With themes and numerous add-ons you can configure your Firefox to become one of a kind. Btw: Firefox comes in lots of Languages so your experience will be even better.

I could list even more reasons why I use Firefox. To put it short:"Firefox is giving me the freedom to surf, work, and interact on Internet the way I want. And it doesn’t cost me a cent!"

Firefox Resources

Switch2Firefox – A great site that tells you all about switching to Firefox from other Browsers.

Firefox Extensions

Official Firefox Extensions Page – Place where you can read more about extensions and download them.

Duncan Riley – 10 must have extensions for Firefox. I like this list – thats where I found Search Status.

Quick Online Tips – 50 best Firefox extensions for power surfing. An extensive list of extensions for those who need more specific add-ons, sorted in categories.

Scots Newsletter – Best Firefox extensions and customizing Tips. More information on customizing your Firefox.

Firefox Themes

Smashing Magazine – Firefox Themes in an Overview. Amazing collection of most beautiful Firefox Themes.

Customize.org – Popular Firefox Themes for immediate download

Official Firefox Themes Download – Cool Firefox Themes sorted in Categories

 

Download Firefox and give it a try! I guarantee you will be pleasantly surprised.