Well only a few months late again, at least I made it this year. Who knew a new puppy could be so much work.
So a little late but here are the 10 projects that received my JOSSA (Jamas Open Source Software Award) for 2012.
KeePass – Dominik Reichl – With the sheer number of logins I need on a daily basis it is easy to get lazy by using the same password on most sites. This of course is a really bad idea. To help keep track of all those passwords I went hunting for a password manager. KeePass is a free open source project that packs a lot of features. It also has an iOS app so combined with Dropbox you can keep your password list with you while on the go.
DisplayFusion – Binary Fortress Software – I love my dual monitor setup! I was a little shocked at the lack of support in Windows for this setup. DisplayFusion comes in free and paid versions, the free version is great. It allows for many options for dual displays, even working with Rainmeter setups.
Firebug – Fire Bug Working Group – When doing any sort of web development having a browser debugger is a must. Firebug is a Firefox Add-on that provides every tool you will need to debug webpages.
Duplicator – Cory Lamle – Creating a copy of a WordPress site for testing requires a significant amount of effort. It also requires some mucking in the WordPress database to change URLs so the test site functions properly. With Duplicator this is amazingly easy. Everything is automated by the plugin, what used to take hours is now only a few minutes. You can add a test site, move a site to a new host and even use it to create a full site backup.
WP Super Cache – Donncha O Caoimh – I have never really paid much attention to how quickly web pages load until we started running our own VPS. In my quest to reduce load on the server and speed up page load times I found WP Super Cache. This plugin will create static html pages that will be shown to visitors instead of creating the pages dynamically. While there are a lot of config options to go through the end result is worth the effort. For this site load times went from 9 seconds down to 1 second.
Akismet – Automattic – I hate spam! It is bad enough to have in your inbox, but it now shows up on website comments. Akismet provides spam filtering for your WordPress comments.
BackUpWordPress – Human Made – Having backups on your desktop is important. The same thing goes for your website. This plugin for WordPress makes keeping backups of you site a snap. It supports scheduling and will send you emails with your DB attached. Very easy to use.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) – Michael Yoshitaka Erlewine – When visitors come to your site you want them to stick around. YARPP provides the ability to include a list of related content the user might like. A recent update added a thumbnail display option which makes links just begging to be clicked.
WPtouch – BraveNewCode Inc. – With everything going mobile these days many websites need a mobile version. Doing a whole separate site can be too much work for most site owners. WPtouch is a plugin that creates a mobile version of your site with next to no effort. It has lots of options if you want to really control your mobile look.
WP to Twitter – Joe Dolson – Promoting your site on social media is a great way to increase traffic. WP to Twitter makes the promoting of new links automatic. Very easy to setup and allows you the ability to customize tweets sent for each post.
Well that is it for this year. I hope 2013 JOSSAs won’t be so late, I already have a pretty full list. I encourage you to start your own JOSSA style award. It isn’t a lot of money but it will hopefully make a developers day, which will make your year better.