Need a quick and easy way to do domain name lookups without the fuss of finding a good Online whois resource or domain name register? I have yet another solution to solve this problem (found via the FEGB) - and this one is for Firefox fans. The Domain Lookup addon for Firefox is a free tool to help Firefox users to find quality domain names. It works with all your favorite domain registers and TLDs (top level domains).

Once installed the addon to your browser gives you access to one click domain name searches at your favorite register. All you do is select some text in your Firefox window and hit the keyboard combination (Ctrl + Shift + D) or select it from the right-click menu. One of the really neat features of this extension is that it will strip out any non-standard characters and triggers for a domain search and also will work with GoDaddy, Moniker, Network Solutions and over 30 more.

You can download this addon right from the developer’s web site:

http://tools.qualitynonsense.com/domainlookup/

WordPress 2.5 has finally been released! Now before getting into the praise and changes, I just wanted to give the WordPress team credit for one thing. Out of all the major WordPress upgrades I have done, this is the first time nothing has screwed up after I made the move. Big congrats to the entire WordPress team.

This release does a lot for the visual aspect of WordPress and well, to put it in terms that everybody can understand - everything is a lot prettier. The entire interface has been redesigned, and it shows. Not only a visual update, it also looks like they did a lot to add functionality to the new admin section to where the important stuff is biggest and in your face while the not so important stuff is tucked away so that when you need it you can get to it.

When writing a post they have added a few new key features that are really exciting. The new “Add media” section allows you to quickly pull in audio, video, and images to your posts without doing a wacky dance to figure out the right special plugin code you should be using.

I just recently started using Windows Live Writer to do all my publishing to my various Web projects, but this latest WordPress release makes me want to go play with that interface some more instead. If you have not upgraded yet then you really have nothing to lose.

Note: Also be sure to check out the new WordPress.org too. It has been redesigned to match the new WordPress interface.

There are many server monitoring services out there, but not many have ways for you to easily take in and read that information on your own. One of the few that do is WebSitePulse. They provide a Firefox addon that will give you a brain dead simple way of keeping a watchful eye over your own domains.

Here is a little more about the extension from the developers:

The WebSitePulse Current Status extension provides an easy way to keep an eye in real-time on the status of your servers, websites and web applications when you are using the WebSitePulse monitoring service.

The WebSitePulse extension is broken off into two components. The sidebar will display all targets and their current status. To get more details, all you have to do is click on the name of the target in question.

At the bottom it will also give you a counter telling you when was the last time it was refreshed.

The second component would be the status bar icon which indicates if everything is alright. Here you pretty much play red light, green light. Red is bad and green, well… green is good. You can then right click the status bar icon to customize the extension’s settings.

You will need to also login to WebSitePulse.com and create a free account to use this tool. This current status addon for Firefox does a good job at doing real time status tracking. If you are interested in keeping a watchful eye over your server, it might be worth checking out.

By far, SimplePie is one of the coolest collections of code that helps you mesh together PHP and RSS feeds to create some really dynamic content. After downloading and installing - the number of things you an create with this is only limited by your imagination.

What is it exactly? Here is how the developers describe it:

SimplePie is a code library, written in PHP, intended to make it ridiculously easy for people to manage RSS and Atom feeds.

What Can SimplePie Do For Me?

As an example of what you could do, well - you know popurls.com right? It was made popular for delivering a lot of tiny boxes with content from delicious, digg, reddit and more on one single page. Using SimplePie you can make your own version of it.

Also be sure to check out the demo:

http://simplepie.org/demo/

Doesn’t do much (gives you a readable output from any RSS feed) but somebody with some imagination could put this or any of the other powerful things you could do with this to good use. If all this PHP and RSS stuff excites you and you want to develop a new way for people to view syndicated content on the Web give SimplePie a shot. It is hands down the easiest way to get this type of work done.

Last week I gave you five quality blogging tools and scripts and this week I am going to finish the job by giving you the second half of my favorite blogging scripts list.

Previously, WordPress was leading the charge as the best of the best, but how do these solutions stack up to that titan of the digital publishing world?

b2evolution - An old one, but still a good one - and can hold it’s own weight still with the other selections out there. Dated, but still works.

Serendipity - This is a PHP-powered weblog application which gives the user an easy way to maintain a weblog or even a complete homepage.

Joomla - Like Drupal, might be too feature rich for the casual blogging fan - but a good engine for in depth web sites or basic blogs.

Sblog - Another one similar to WordPress, looks like it is playing catchup too. Once it gets there though, might be worthy competition.

Simplog - Simple, yet powerful - the name says it all here. You want basics without the fluff - go with Simplog.

No matter which of these selections you decide to choose, you should be well off in your own content producing ways. All of them have their benefits and their drawbacks so best thing to do would be to try them all out and see which does the best job for you.

Any web developer worth his weight in PHP code can tell you that there are tons of selections when it comes to finding a blogging script that is right for you. The next time you decide to start up the Web’s next great blog you might want to take some of these choices into consideration.

1. WordPress - In my opinion WordPress is the “kind of kings” when it comes to blogging or content management in general. All hail to the king!

2. Drupal - Drupal is a little more of a WordPress jacked up on steroids. Lots of goodies and better membership system in place too.

3. AJAXPress - A little buggy by looking at the demo but will become a better idea once it has had more time to get polished.

4. Wikiblog - This one tries to mix the blogging and wiki sides of things into an interesting mashup of content creation.

5. Textpattern - Flexable and open source blogging solution - much of the same WordPress look and feel. Only problem is not that many people are using it, so support might be hard to find.

Next week I’ll have a few more selections for you to choose from in part two of this series, if you have any other suggestions you’d like to see on the list please feel free to drop me an e-mail at mitch@mitchkeeler.com or leave a comment.

Believe it or not, I have stumbled across yet another great tool to get your cPanel controlled web site backed up to your own personal computer. Site Backup CP is the newest edition to the line up and it like others has a lot of great things to love about it.

Like the others that have come before it here on the show, it gives you an easy to master interface to get your files and databases backed up from your web hosting server to your own personal computer. Give it your login information, your database names and you are all set.

It does include a scheduling feature too, so you can set it up to backup at whatever time is best for you. What does the price tag say? It is a Windows only program (runs great on Vista) - and will cost you a one time fee of $ 29.95. Not a bad price to pay for peace of mind.