With the growing challenges of graphic designing, social media is a becoming a necessity for every graphic designer. Nowadays, every industry is shifting its focus towards social media for its publicity and promotion and the graphic design industry is no exception. But like every other technology that has been invented, social media has its share of boons and banes. Now don’t get me wrong here guys, I am not suggesting that we should not utilize the blessings of social media. What I wish to achieve in my post is to give you a balanced analysis of social media and its impacts on graphic designers. As I mentioned earlier, every development has its rewards and drawbacks. Innovation can either lead to progression or towards devastation. While social media has numerous benefits for graphic designers, at the same time, overindulgence in social media can prove to be disastrous. Let us take a look at some of the positive and negative aspects of social media for graphic designers.

Social Media as a Savior for Graphic Designers:

1. Quick And Easy Promotion: It is a known fact that the fastest way to promote something is through social media. With just a simple tweet on twitter, graphic designers are able to share their graphic design world with the entire community.

2. Less Costly - More Effective: Considering the worst recession that has hit us in decades, the cheapest means of promotion for a graphic designer is social media. While the T.V medium is still considered as mass media, but it can be quite costly for graphic designers to advertise their portfolio through conventional means like the T.V or print media.

3. Connecting With The Design Community: The graphic design community is well known for its resolute unity and unwavering fraternity. Each graphic designer benefits from other graphic designers. Through social media, graphic designers share their views, assist their mates in their design work and provide feedback to each other. Also, being a part of the graphic design community on social media enables word-of-mouth advertising for graphic designers. Sharing each other’s work spreads the word throughout the design world.

4. Finding Clients And Opportunities: Social Networking and blogging services have become a popular resource for graphic designers to find potential clients and business opportunities. Clients also find it easy selecting a graphic designer through social media.

5. Create And Build An Identity: Social Networking provides the ideal identity for a graphic designer to work on. Creating profiles on twitter, Facebook etc gives a unique identity to graphic designers. People get aware of who you are and where they can find you.

6. A Platform For Healthy Discussions: Social Networking services like twitter and Facebook provide a great podium for graphic designers to come and have healthy design related discussions. This increases creativity through sharing of ideas, views and experience.

Social Media as a Menace for Graphic Designers:

1. Distraction and Diversion: While social media provides so many benefits for graphic designers, too much involvement leads to waste of graphic designers’ precious time. Sometimes a graphic designer gets trapped in the complex web of social media. One shared link leads a graphic designer to another and then another and so on so forth. Involved in social media, graphic designers often forget their basic work and deviate from their main purpose.

2. Creates Imbalance Between Work And Life: Excessive social media involvement creates an imbalance between a graphic designer’s work life and personal life. Effective social media requires a graphic designer to dedicate considerable amount of time to social networking. This creates priority issues for a graphic designer who has to fulfill personal duties as well.

3. Spam And Scam: Social Media unlike other media is the biggest victim of spamming and scams. Every day we are faced with a constant bombardment of spamming from various scam entities which creates confusion and disorientation in the design field. Graphic designers are sometimes confused for spammers and that dents their reputation.

4. Increased Chances Of Plagiarism: With the advent of social media networking, we have witnessed an increase in design plagiarism cases. Right from the design to the content, material is copied on the blogosphere which is a constants nuisance for authentic graphic designers. This may prove to be fatal for graphic designers when there is little they can do to protect their design work on the web.

5. Need for Continuous Updates and Changes: To remain popular on the social media, graphic designers are required to continuously update their profiles and portfolios. This can be a cumbersome task for someone who spends most of his day on heavy graphic software. Continuous updates on social networking consume time as well as resources of a graphic designer.

What is your perspective? I have tried to present a balanced picture of social media and its impact on graphic designers. But the question still remains… Is social media constructive or destructive?

There has been a tidal wave of buzz recently about all the new CSS3 features and properties. Just what exactly do these new properties mean for web designers, though? Well, CSS3 is pretty cool, no longer will you need to rely as much on graphics or Javascript, and more importantly it allows for better control over HTML elements, allowing you to create more flexible and even more complex web sites. Really, whats not to love about it all?

For today’s news we have collected the best articles that focus on CSS3 tutorials, and give you a little insight to what all the buzz is about.

Understanding The Basics Of CSS3

In this article,the author talks about some of the more popular features of CSS3 that have recently been spotted out in the wild among several popular websites. While most of these are only visible in some of the more modern web browsers (Mozilla, Chrome, Safari) it’s important to go ahead and get a grasp of exactly how they actually work.

Understanding The Basics Of CSS3

50 Excellent Tutorials for Web Development Using CSS3

In this emerging roundup they mphasis on some of the latest techniques: text-shadow, rounded box, box sizing, opacity handlers, multiple backgrounds, border images and also support for multi-column web layouts.

50 Excellent Tutorials for Web Development Using CSS3

Basic CSS3 Techniques That You Should Know

This article, from Six Revisions, takes a look at a few of the essential things you need to know about CSS3. With all of these new features, it’s important to place emphasis on the most important ones to get you up to speed. Even though only the most modern of web browsers (Safari, Mozilla, Opera) currently (partially or fully) support CSS3 specs, it’s an exciting time for those who like to experiment.

Basic CSS3 Techniques That You Should Know

15 CSS3 Navigation and Menu Tutorials and Techniques

Please bare in mind that for the most part all of these menu tutorials have not been written for usage in the wild, they are more experimental, a demonstration of what can be achieved and will be used in the near future.

15 CSS3 Navigation and Menu Tutorials and Techniques

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

The level of usability on your website takes on a vital role when we’re designing for the end-user. If your web application isn’t easy to use and interact with, then chances are the services and information you offer will be valuable to a rare few. Usability aims to relieve some of the things that can make your website complicated to use and simplifies the interface so that the users overall experience is a pleasurable one.

When designing with usability in mind you must make sure you test extensively, and consider the fact that what may be easy for you to interact with, may be difficult for others. It is about finding the right balance that will allow a wide variation of users to exit your website satisfied with the user experience.

Why and What to Ask?
We’ve put together several questions (you might not have heard of) that will help you enhance and assess the quality of your websites usability. Not every question may apply to your case, however, these questions are meant to help you to think a bit more from a users perspective.

How Can I Enhance the Usability of My Links?

I was a bit hesitant to start off with this very question, mostly because some believe that links don’t play any part in a websites usability factor. However, from previous testing and links being a definite part of user interaction, we know that we must find ways to make links as clear and concise as possible.

A user must clearly be able to point out a link within a sentence, paragraph, or anywhere else on the site for that matter. Many designers have solved this issue by adding small icons to links through CSS, and adding anchor text. Links that are associated with your websites navigation need to be given even more attention. A sites navigation can make or break the user experience. This is especially true with tweaking your website for maximum accessibility.

What is the Five Second Rule?

When you refer to a websites usability, you’ll sometimes come across the “five second” rule. Even though there may be several versions of the five second rule such as three or two seconds instead of five, the general idea is that a user should be able to digest or have a quick break down of what your website is all about, as well as what you have to offer within the first few seconds of their visit. Anything after that will more than likely result in disinterest and may eventually drive visitors away.

The homepage is key, since it is the first thing users will become acquainted with. What does this have to do with usability? Everything. If your website fails to catch the attention of the targeted user, then there simply will be seldom interest in using your website. The Five Second Test (usability testing tool) goes hand-in-hand with the five second rule.

Are the Titles and Headings Distinctive?

This benefits every site, however, if you run a blog/magazine then this will be one of the most important elements of your websites usability. You should make sure that your titles for sections and posts are easily distinguishable and clear. They must be easy to read, understand, and remember. When you style your headings it’s important that you don’t over-do-it and you take your time in selecting the right type of font. Bad titles and headings can make sure site look convoluted and somewhat distorted.

Is the Content on My Site Displayed in a Consistent Manner?

The information displayed on your website should be structured in such a way that it represents consistency. Content that isn’t structured will make your website look messy and unappealing.

For example, if your blog posts are all aligned to the left, you should make sure that every post is aligned to the left. It wouldn’t make much of any sense to have one post center aligned, the next to the left, and a few to the right. Users will be confused and their eyes will most likely end up hurting after trying to read the mess on your site.

Do Clickable Items Lure Me to Click Them?

Simply said, what’s the point of having an item you want users to click on if it doesn’t even seem clickable? For example, if you have image ads on your website you’d definitely want users to click on them. A simple and straightforward way to do this is to add a property such as a drop shadow to all of your image related ads through your CSS.

CSS-Tricks is a reasonable example of what we’re talking about. Check out the sidebar with the 125×125 ads, see how they interact and the size of the border around them. All of these factors contribute to luring you in to clicking on the ads. In such a way, elements you want users to click on should be undeniably clickable and are expected to contrast the rest of the content one way or another. Make it easy for your users, guide them a bit and you’ll see that they’ll respond much better to anything you “throw” at them.

Is the Entire Site as Functional as It Is Appealing?

What’s the point of having a website that has been aesthetically “perfected” if it isn’t nearly as functional as it looks? Your website should respond well to actions performed by the users. If the site can’t deliver quality functionality, then you’ve more than likely defeated the purpose of usability. True usability is more than just design, it’s function. We’re not inferring that you should place more emphasis on the back-end of your website, however, there should be a balance between the front/back end design. These two will always work together to ultimately create a much better user experience.

Does the Site Load Quickly?

Even though this question is obvious to some, it’s still something that should be included within this article. The speed of which your pages load can drastically contribute to the usability of your website. If your web pages fail to load quickly, then this can put a strain on the time users have to interact with your website. The faster your pages load, the better users are able to interact with your website, resulting in a much more appealing UX.

Remember you can always post your usability related questions on Design Reviver Answers for accurate and informative responses.

A logo design should always be shaped keeping the purpose in mind. An effective logo design is one that can portray the essence of the business in a graphically creative manner. While many businesses are associated with many consumer goods like cosmetics, sports and garments, but there has always been segregation between male and female products.
Masculine logo designs are used in various sports merchandise, bodybuilding gyms, office clothing, and barber shops. On the other hand the more delicate type, feminine logos, are used in various women businesses like hair salons, spas, beauty parlors, cosmetic shops and female garment stores. While many of us would squabble on the discrimination aspect, but having a logo design that is gender specific helps target the audience in a better way. Logo designs with male figure can signify dominance and power while the use of female figures in a logo may portray delicacy and sensitivity. Witness the historic “Girls Vs Boys” rivalry battled out with 30 inspirational male and female logos:
Canary Models   Far Out   Woman’s Entrepreneurial   Beauty Rules   Ms Photogenic Nigeria   bongiwe walaza   Primd   Yoga Australia   Designers Only   La La Handbags   Angle Face	Modern   Guia Varonil Magazine   Mister Devil   Men’s Fellowship   Prost!   Razorss   moustache lovers   Suits You sir   MVS   Rowdy Gear   God’s GYM
So which logos do you feel are more expressive? Do the Male logos express their dominance or the delicate Female logos look more appealing?

PHP RSS Reader is an application that allows you to gather virtually an unlimited amount of RSS feeds in a cool, simple and effective interface.

PHP RSS Reader allows you to organize your feeds by categories and sub-categories, for a more effective navigation. A cool feature is that the categories are keyword based which allows you to find relevant news from the news source, increasing the site’s keyword density for a specific word.

The application allows you to crawl an unlimited number of feeds and organize them in basically an unlimited amount of categories and sub-categories. The Url’s for agregated news as well as the categories and sub-categories are search engine friendly.

You can also add to each feed you add the favicon, so the article sources can be easily distinguished.

The homepage as well as any category and sub-category has its own auto discoverable by Firefox RSS Feed. A Google sitemap is also provided for Google Webmaster Tools.

PHP RSS Reader offers search functionality so you can easily find something you are interested in. The application’s interface can be easily customized through the CSS files. Also another helpful feature is the Google Analytics integration.

PHP RSS Reader is available in 2 versions :

• a free version, with certain limitations like no keyword based categories and no unlimited sub-categories.
• a paid version, with all the features.

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jQuery as expected is a very popular tag on Answers. It is the greatest and possibly easiest Javascript framework to work with, but of course everyone at some point needs a little help with it or even just a query.

Have you tried posting a jQuery question on Answers yet? All you have to do is post the question and when someone does answer your ‘jQuery query’ (I love the way that sounds!), you will receive an email notification, and hey presto your solution is there waiting for you!

Couldn’t be easier, could it?

It has been yet another good week on Answers, loads of great questions and lots of even better answers from our huge 450+ members. Thanks for all your support!

“Have you asked a question yet?“

What’s the best way to learn jquery?

This question was asked by Ralph.

Answer from Paul Andrew:

Downloading plugins and following tutorials will only take you so far – what if you need something that simply hasn’t been done before? You would have to develop it yourself, you would have to learn jQuery from the begining and start with the basics.

In the Woods offers a video series (15 videos) that will teach you PRECISELY how to use the jQuery library in your own projects:
jQuery for absolute beginners.

Spyre Studios has written an article about how to how to get started with jQuery, and actually writing your first script: Simple Guide: How To Get Started With jQuery (Part One) …

… As has Six Revisions: Getting Started with jQuery …

… There is also
Learning jQuery, a multi-author blog offering jQuery tutorials and demos. They have tutorials for all skill levels, and each entry is categorized by level of difficulty…

… And finally
jQuery for Designers is another cool resource for learning jQuery.

Can libraries like Jquery replace everything you can do with Flash?

This question was asked by Rjene.

Answer from Prajwal:

Definitely not everything, especially when it comes to advanced motion effects, manipulation of images (beyond a certain extent), even user input to a certain extent..
jQuery definitely cannot replace flash…

Answer from Michael Mior :

However, for the practical purposes of most websites, you can usually get away with using jQuery over Flash.

Animations on the web – Flash or jQuery? Pros & cons?

This question was asked by Filip Biel.

Answer from Alessio:

Well, Flash is becoming less and less popular among web designers because Flash movies are so heavy and because not everybody has Flash (or the latest version of Flash) installed. Similarly, not everybody has Java enabled on their browser, but it’s default so more people would see a jQuery animation than a Flash one. So, I’d say going with jQuery would be the stronger choice. JQuery tends to be lighter and thus loads faster and easier on bandwidth as well.

How Can I Validate My Forms (strictly) Using jQuery?

This question was asked by Pablo G.

Answer from Alessio:

Have you tried the jQuery form validation plugin?

How can i create a nice javascript calender?

This question was asked by Vanart.

Answer from Nikowillson:

With the following code you’ll be able to create a JS powered calander that will shift to the relevant month when you click on the buttons…good luck

function writeCalendar(){
var calString = '';
calString += '';
// calString += '' + months[this.month] + ', ' + this.year + '';
calString += '<';
calString += '<';
// calString += ' ';
calString += '' + months[this.month] + ', ' + this.year + '';
calString += '>';
calString += '>';
calString += '';
calString += '';
calString += '';

return calString;
}

Unanswered Questions

There is only one question that has been left unanswered this week which is just amazing!
So, can you help poor Melissa Davis Nichols with her unanswered question:

1. I’m looking for an easy Flash Loader tutorial?

Thanks again, firstly to everyone who asked a question, but most importantly thanks to everyone that took the time to offer always helpful and useful answers.

Even if you are a seasoned professional photographer the chances are you will from time to time need one or maybe all of these cheat-sheets, whether it be to remember a shortcut key when photo editing or it could a simple reminder when taking a difficult or tricky shot.

For today’s news we have a great collection of useful Photography cheat-sheets, visit the resources for the full articles and download pages.

Helpful Photography Cheat Sheets to Make Your Life Easier

Here is a list of all the cheat sheets available from this resource: Portrait Lighting Cheat Sheet Card; The Photographic Cheat Sheet by Gordon McKinney; 49 Photo Tips Cheat Sheet; Light Falloff Cheat Sheet Card; Photography Cheat sheet; PhotoBert Cheatsheets; Reflector Card Cheat Sheet.

You can download the all of the photography cheat sheets from here: Helpful Photography Cheat Sheets to Make Your Life Easier.

12 Extremely Helpful Photo Editing App Cheat Sheets

Here is a list of all the cheat sheets available from this resource: Adobe Photoshop CS4 Keyboard Shortcuts; Photoshop Lasso, Brush and Pen Tool Cheatsheets; Photoshop Elements 7 For Dummies Cheet Sheet; Photoshop Toolbox Reference; Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Cheat Sheets.

You can download the all of the photo editing cheat sheets from here: 12 Extremely Helpful Photo Editing App Cheat Sheets.

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

CSS Frameworks allow you to rapidly improve and speed up your development time when used correctly, and provide a powerful way to style our websites and applications with flexibility and effectiveness.

So How Do We Choose the Right One?
The first step you need to take is to make sure you decide upon a framework that has an established and accurate representation of detailed documentation. This is vital to the steps you’ll take in implementing and utilizing your framework the way it was intended. Next, you should analyze what problems the specified frameworks of your choice will solve. As you come across frameworks that you believe might “fit the bill” for the project(s) at hand, then it would be wise to compare each of them and elaborate on which framework addresses which concerns and satisfies your needs.

Also, don’t hesitate to ask other developers and colleagues which framework has worked best for them and why? This will help you gain valuable insight based on the experience of others, something that can’t be bought. Another point I would like to make is the role your chosen framework’s community plays. How big is it? Are the members helpful? Does it provide invaluable resources? Every one of these questions help you determine if your framework’s community is going to be of use. The logical point of view is, the larger and more involved the community is, the better your chances are at finding the right type of help when you need it.

Below we will take a look at 8 of the best frameworks we found to be useful for both developers and designers.

Blueprint CSS

The Blueprint CSS framework uses a grid-system that has pre-built typography and includes various plugins, built-in form styles and more. With BP you’ll also find good stable documentation, a wiki, an active discussion group, and examples of sites built on the Blueprint system.

Elements CSS Framework

Overall, the Elements framework makes it much easier and efficient to write CSS code. It’s a way to keep your files organized, benefit from a collection of present classes that can make your development process much friendlier, and it’ll automatically add respective icons for external links so that users will be able to quickly find and access them as well.

Content with Style

Content with Style is a CSS framework that helps you style and structure your website with amazing design and typographical elements. With six different layouts to choose from that include vertical navigation, two content columns, horizontal navigation with two columns of content and useful one content columns. Content with Style is an efficient way to “prioritize” the content on your site and focus on areas such as the header, main content, sub content, and more.

Emastic

This lightweight CSS framework uses PX, EM, or % widths for the process of signaling a page width, and it is also based on an elastic layout. Emastic comes with various pre-defined styles for your typography and much more. Predominantly, the grid is made up of blocks that are sized from 5 to 75em units. The default sizes can be changed at any time and the frameworks design options depend on the grid layout.

960 Grid System

The 960 grid system is a powerful CSS framework that lets us develop and prototype websites rapidly. The layouts are based on 12-16 columns and the layout templates are for Illustrator, Photoshop, Expression Design, Fireworks and more. You can also print a variety of templates for use with pen and paper if that’s what suits you best.

Yui Grids

The foundational YUI Grids CSS offers four preset page widths, six preset templates, and the ability to stack and nest subdivided regions of two, three, or four columns. The 4kb file provides over 1000 page layout combinations. Features included are support for fluid-width, easy customization, flexible template columns, and more.

Yaml

“Yet Another Multicolumn Layout” (YAML) is an (X)HTML/CSS framework for creating modern and flexible floated layouts. The structure is extremely versatile in its programming and absolutely accessible for end users. YAML is focussed on web standards and accessibility, slim framework core with numerous extensions, complete multilingual documentation, and robust, flexible layout concept (columns & grids).

SenCSs

SenCSs stands for Sensible Standards CSS baseline, (pronounced “sense”). It supplies sensible styling for all repetitive parts of your CSS, and doesn’t force a lay-out system on you. This allows you to focus on actually developing your website’s style. SenCSs isn’t a framework like other CSS frameworks, it doesn’t include a layout system littered with silly classes and pre-set grids, so what does SenCSs do? SenCSs does everything else: baseline, fonts, paddings, margins, tables, lists, headers, blockquotes, forms and more.

Today we have a very special giveaway for our precious readers – five of the best and most popular design books currently available. Just have a look at the line up of books we have, the books are: A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web, jQuery: Novice To Ninja, Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog, Digging into Wordpress and finally, Rocket Surgery.

Who wouldn’t want these on their bookshelf. Read further on in this post to find out how to enter and, hopefully, win these fantastic books.

Here is an overview of the books you can win:

A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web

A Practical Guide to Designing for the Web aims to teach you techniques for designing your website using the principles of graphic design. Featuring five sections, each covering a core aspect of graphic design: Getting Started, Research, Typography, Colour, and Layout. Learn solid graphic design theory that you can simply apply to your designs, making the difference from a good design to a great one.

jQuery: Novice To Ninja

jQuery: Novice to Ninja, from sitepoint.com, will show you how to unleash the amazing power of jQuery. In this easy-to-follow guide, you’ll master all the major tricks and techniques that jQuery offers—within hours.

jQuery has quickly become the JavaScript library of choice, and it’s easy to see why. This JavaScript framework dramatically improves how you add interactivity and animation to your website.

Smashing WordPress: Beyond the Blog

Smashing WordPress shows you how to utilize the power of the WordPress platform, and provides a creative spark to help you build WordPress-powered sites that go beyond the obvious. You will learn the core concepts used to build just about anything in WordPress, resulting in fast deployments and greater design flexibility.

Inside, WordPress expert Thord Daniel Hedengren takes you beyond the blog and shows you how WordPress can serve as a CMS, a photo gallery, an e-commerce site, and more.

Digging into Wordpress

There is much to learn about the World’s most popular publishing platform. From your first steps of learning about WordPress all the way through maintaining a site throughout the years, this book is packed with truly practical information.

Rocket Surgery

Rocket Surgery, written by Steve Krug, it’s a how-to book that explains exactly how to do your own web site usability testing.

As designers and developers we generally worry about the aesthetics and behavior of a website. But what about the server it runs on that has made it all possible for this site to operate swiftly? In order to provide your clients with the best possible service you should ensure that their websites server is running smoothly on a regular basis, and what better way to do so then with intelligently designed tools that can notify you of any disturbances or irregularities that your websites server may encounter.

The following tools manage and monitor various levels of quality relating to the uptime and security of your servers. These tools will help you identify any problems so that you’re able to resolve the issues as quickly as possible. Take a look at the ones we’ve compiled below, and then test whichever ones appeal to you the most in terms of functionality and reliability.

Webmetrics GlobalWatch

GlobalWatch is an interactive tool that allows you to monitor a variety of web applications and sites. It digs deep into the root of the problem and quickly identifies and diagnoses any downtime errors, and poor performance levels in detail reports and customizable alerts. With this tool you’ll always be informed of any of your websites irregular performance.

Pingdom

Pingdom ensures that your website is accessible and responds accordingly consistently. It’s able to monitor uptime, various levels of performance, multiple applications, FTP servers, email servers and any application that’s accessible from the Internet. Pingdom provides you with detailed email and SMS alerts if anything is wrong. It also lets you read results in the form of charts and tables that are extremely legible. This tool is also available as an iPhone application.

McAfee Secure

McAfee Secure strategically monitors any and all of your severs that may be at a potential security risk. This powerful tool will protect your servers against security breaches, the end-users from being subject to identity theft, credit card frauds, viruses, scams, and your dose of annoying spam. Your site will be in good hands since McAfee will test it and certify it on a daily basis. McAfee currently monitors and certifies over 80,000 websites ranging from a wide scope of business sizes and structures.

Nimsoft Monitoring Solutions (NMS)

NMS actively monitors your servers and any applications found on the servers. Everything from CPU to memory, server resources, even logs and more are accurately monitored and recorded. Being quick and easy to install is just the beginning, NMS is also a lightweight application that has the power to monitor thousands of servers at a time. NMS is also very easy to use, alerts and details are always clear, and it also visually shows you your servers interconnected, color-coded indicators, and the response times from server-to-server. It’s a great choice no matter the size of your servers.

Simple Server Monitor

Simple Server seems to understand the importance of having a valuable application that can effectively monitor your servers. It’s designed for those on a small budget and offers a free 30-day trial. Useful features such as the monitoring of uptimes, performance levels, and FTP/HTTP/POP/IMAP servers (to name a few) are included. It’s ideal for those who wish to receive updates and alerts within their desktop in the form of pop-up messages, SMS format, and charts.

Solarwinds Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM)

Orion’s NPM tool monitors all of your servers and ensures that their running without any problems every minute of the day. It also monitors all of your routers, switches and wireless access points within your network as well. It comes with a fairly easy set-up and the support of 100’s of expert network engineers. It’s extremely easy to use and Orion can be up and running in less than an hour right after it’s been downloaded!

ENVIROMUX Server Environment Monitoring System

Nagios hit the ball out of the park when they developed powerful tool that monitors your servers temperature, humidity, liquid presence, motion, intrusion and vibration all to ensure that your server’s in tip-top operating capacity. You’re able to create custom alarm signals, monitor and manage security conditions over IP, monitor/ping up to 64 IP network devices, and manage your servers using a single attractive web interface for all systems connected.

SiteUptime

SiteUptime works like clock-work by monitoring your website 24/7 365 days a year. SU provides free and advanced remote monitoring services that notifies you when your servers are down via email and or SMS text messaging. This will ensure that the errors are sent to you with priority and speed so that you’re able to quickly fix any problems with your connections. SU allows you to view detailed statistics about your website’s availability and server response times anytime you’d like. Overall, it’s a very useful multiple monitoring tool for servers that runs tests on specific intervals (every couple seconds).

Further Resources

• How to Easily Monitor your Web Server Using PHP
• Setp-by-Step: Monitoring and tuning your IIS Web servers
• Optimizing Apache Server Performance
• How to Monitor Server Availability