Everyone seems to agree that the “standardized” icon for RSS feeds is the type available at www.feed-icons.com. But what if you want something slightly different? Here are some ideas to get you started (you can use them on your site or blog if you wish). The standard icon is getting boring, make your own, use these, etc. What are you waiting for? Make feed icons more interesting! Fire up Photoshop and make your own!

Ever heard of Smashing Magazine? Their tagline is “We smash you with the information, which will make your life easier. Really.” And they carry out their promise. Every couple days they post a new entry that literally does smash you with information. The posts vary in web-related topics (css, photoshop, html, php, useful sites, etc.). A lot of their posts consist of a list of links that they think you may find useful. The number of links varies — anywhere from a rare 5 to the largest I’ve seen so far: 83. You’d think that it would be unpleasant reading through 83 links, but it’s quite enjoyable. Smashing Magazine knows what their doing. Try their site out. If your a webmaster, you’ll enjoy it. You may even want to subscribe to their RSS feed. Here’s my current top favorite posts of theirs:

• Free Web Templates
  
• 83 Beautiful Wordpress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen
• Web-Sites of the Month: The Best of January 2007
• 53 CSS Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without
• Online Generators

You’ve probably wanted to make cool-looking menus for you’re website before, right? But a lot of times it’s time-consuming to make them, having to prepare several images, write stylesheets, etc. Well, now there’s an option for building quick CSS menus. It’s called CSS Tab Designer. With CSS Tab Designer you just make a list of entries for the menu, pick a style, and hit generate code. The program will save the HTML, CSS, and images required to the path you specify. You may be wondering what the various styles of menu look like by now, right? Well, you can view a LARGE screenshot of the styles pane by clicking here. Give it a try; at worst you won’t like it. At best, it will be a useful tool to aid the development of you’re website.

It’s time for the results of the Battle of the Domain Email Services. It seems that Gmail For Your Domain has a slight edge on RoundCube, if you take a few things into account. Here are the results.

1. Gmail For Your Domain (www.google.com/a/)
2. RoundCube Webmail (www.roundcube.net)
3. Plain Old IMAP or POP3.
4. Squirrelmail (included on most server accounts, www.squirrelmail.org)

If you want easy setup and very little management, or if you lack IMAP accounts and storage, go with Gmail For Your Domain. If you have enough IMAP accounts, storage, and expertise to configure it, you can go with RoundCube. RoundCube is for those of you who want more control over the look and feel than GMail offers. Both came very close in score.

Avoid Squirrelmail at all costs. Isn’t it funny that something intended to be an improvement on IMAP’s (or POP3’s) usability… well… isn’t really. It may have been in 1996, but it badly needs to be updated.

This concludes the Battle of the Domain Email Services… for now.

Today on the Battle of the Domain Email Services we have RoundCube Webmail (www.roundcube.net). This cool software package costs nothing at all, and it behaves a lot like a desktop email program like Thunderbird.

Basically you create an IMAP inbox on your server for each user. Then you install RoundCube by FTPing the whole thing, editing a couple of files, and adding some tables to a database. You can edit all the images and template files to your hearts content, making this email system look exactly how you want it. If you’re a PHP freak, you can even open up end edit parts of the script’s inner workings to customize things even further.

You log in by going to www.yourdomain.com/the_folder_you_installed_roundcube_in/. You enter your username and password and you’re in. The inbox sort of reminds me of GMail, but with more AJAX-based functions. You can drag and drop messages, select multiple items, and more.

This is one slick script. It seems that it would be capable of running a small email service (not Yahoo-sized). All you’d need would be a script to create IMAP accounts on your server.

Advantages:

• Mega AJAX! This is nearly as cool as GMail for your domain.
• The ultimate in customization.
• Nice and user-friendly.
• It’s all on your server so you have infinite control over everything.

Disadvantages:

• You have to set everything up yourself.
• This is beta software, so there are occasional bugs and quirks.
• It’s all on your server, so make sure you have storage space.

Basically, this is a great email program for those of you with the experience to set it up. It’s the alternative you should go with if you find Gmail For Your Domain too limiting in terms of customization. If you know some PHP, this is the script for you. You can add a quick-login form to your site’s mainpage if you can script one (or if you ask on the RoundCube forum). RoundCube is a great option for domain email — as long as you have the experience to set it up.

Now on the Battle of the Domain Email Services is one of my preferred ones, gMail For Your Domain. With GFYD you get the famous AJAX-based (with non-AJAX compatibility mode) interface of Google’s GMail, 2GB space per account, up to 100 accounts, and tons of customizations features. All you need is a domain, google hosts everything for you.

Advantages:

• It’s GMail, only with your domain name instead!
• Google hosts everything for you. All you need is your domain.
• Google can register a domain for you for $10/year if you don’t already have one.
• You get 100 accounts, plus unlimited “aliases”.
• You can customize it to have your own logo, and make the login page look different, etc.
• 2GB of space — and it’s on someone else’s servers!
• An amazing easy to use interface — exactly like GMails.
• Built in Instant Messaging/Chat network.

Disadvantages:

• Could use more customization features.
• You can’t put a login box on your site without messing around with some obscure API.

In short, GMFYD (google.com/a/) is an amazing way to get domain email (and it’s free). Unless you want to run your own email service with over 100 users, and let them register themselves (you have to approve everyone in the admin panel), this is the best service for you to go with. If it doesn’t meet your needs, you may want RoundCube (blog post coming soon).

Okay, next on the list for the Battle of the Domain Email Services is Sqirrelmail. This email system is sort of the industry standard for domain email. My advice: avoid it like the plague. See the screenshot to the right? You can see more at squirrelmail.org. Horrible isn’t it? It’s a usability nightmare. It may support tons of ancient browsers due t it’s lack of AJAX, but honestly, who would want to use this? It BADLY needs to be updated to work in the modern mail world.

Advantages:

• It supports nearly every ancient outdated browser on the planet.
• Nearly every webhost comes preinstalled with it.
• cPanel has integrated it into it’s setup so there’s zero configuration for you to do.

Disadvantages:

• No AJAX support.
• It’s definitely not very user-friendly.
• Could use more customization options.
• It seems to be stuck in the ’90s. There haven’t many interface updates.
• As soon as a user logs in they’re like “Aaagh! No! It’s Squirrelmail!“.
• Did I mention it’s not user friendly, it looks horrible, and you can’t navigate very well?

Clearly it can’t hope to compete with it’s competitors much longer unless it gets a major interface overhaul.

First up on the Battle of the Domain Email Services is Plain Old IMAP or POP3. The advantages of this are:

• You don’t have to rely on another company. Your mail is still kept on your server.
• You can use Thunderbird or Outlook to read your email.
• You get to pick how big your mailbox is and things like that.

The disadvatages are:

• You have to use Thunderbird or Outlook.
• If you use POP3 you’ll have a hard time checking your mail on more than one computer.
• You have to set up everything yourself.

Anyone who runs a website most likely wants to have an email account featuring their domain name. You know, sort of like redwall_hp@whatevermydomainis.com. The question is: how should it be set up? I’m going to answer this question with the Battle of the Domain Email Services. What’s that? I’m going do a post for each of the contending ways to get email at your domain. As I post, points will be tallied. At the end, the results will be posted.

The contenders are:

• Gmail For Your Domain (www.google.com/a/)
• Plain old POP3 or IMAP
• Squirrelmail
• RoundCube Webmail (www.roundcube.net)

Windows Live Domain Mail has been disqualified for several reasons. 1. It’s Windows Live Mail Beta. Bleh! That’s worse than Horrible Hotmail. 2. It doesn’t work right in Firefox. 3. It’s really slow. 4. It doesn’t work very well unless you have a new computer.

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2006/12/verisign_and_us.html
What the heck? BAD idea. A corporation should NOT be in control of the world’s domain names.