Linux webmaster and webdesign tools.
I have been a long time linux user, to the point I don’t feel comfortable at all anymore working on a Windows workstation. The last Windows version I really used was Windows 2000. After playing with Mandrake, Debian and Slackware linux I finally found Gentoo linux and sticked with it. It’s a source based distribution which means I have to compile all programs myself, I don’t use binaries. Some people find this time consuming and a total waste of resources, I have been very happy with it. My enthusiasm for linux comes from the stability and high level of productivity it gives me. Combined with a very powerful 4 core dual opteron workstation and two 22inch LCD monitors I have a machine that can handle anything and is a pleasure to work with.
The webmaster tools I use:
1)
Whois: To check if a domain is free or by who it is registered I don’t surf to some website, I just use the command line tool whois. You just type whois domain.tld and it gives you the whois details. Works much faster then any online whois service. I believe the whois tool is installed by default on every linux distribution.
2)
Quanta plus: Quanta is a highly stable and feature rich web development environment. The most advanced and user friendly text editor I have used. It can handle all sorts of code, html php css and a lot more. I use it for all my webdesign needs.
3)
NVU, pronounced “N-view” is a WYSIWYG editor similar to Frontpage and Dreamweaver. Ideal for people who don’t like editing code or for those who don’t know anything about writing html. I prefer to write code myself in Quanta but for some repetitive tasks a WYSIWYG editor can be handy.
4)
Gimp, the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It can almost rival Adobe Photoshop but Gimp lacks CMYK support. Most other features in Photoshop you can find in Gimp. A lot of people (mostly Photoshop users) dislike gimp because of it’s user interface. The gimp developers did not want to make a Photoshop clone, so the UI is hard to learn for someone used to Photoshop. I also had some trouble learning gimp, eventually I bought a couple of books to help me out.
5)
Mozilla Firefox Firefox is my favorite browser, it’s fast secure and you can find a lot of plugins for it that are a webmasters best friend:
Seolinkanalysis This plugins shows you the pagerank of your backlinks in Yahoo and Google webmastertools. Ideal to see how your link building campaigns are doing.
Seoquake, Seoquake shows you the pagerank, indexed pages, backlinks and Alexa rank. It shows these statistics in a small bar on the top of every page you open, great do some investigative work.
Web developer The web developer plugin adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools. I use it mostly to check if a link is dofollow or nofollow.
To upload files I don’t use a separate ftp program, I use the standard KDE file explorer Konqueror and copy paste the files to my websites. By right clicking on files and folders you can change the permissions. It works the same way as my local file systems.