Javascript Libraries – Adding polish to your site the easy way

The more web development I do, the more I’m grateful for the plethora of amazing Javascript libraries out there. It’s never been simpler to add advanced front-end functionality like drag-and-drop, animations, or sortable, paginated, searchable tables (like those used in our Type-In Traffic Finder, for instance). Here’s a few of my favorite javascript libraries.

1. YUI
YUI (Yahoo! User Interface Library) is one of my favorite Javascript libraries. The vast majority of our domain tool dashboard is written using it. YUI has probably the best collection of widgets and user interface elements of any Javascript library, as well as great documentation, and great community support. It does tend to be more complicated and verbose than some other libraries when doing simple DOM manipulation, but that should change when YUI 3 is released.

2. JQuery
JQuery is currently my favorite Javascript library. If you’re a web developer and you’re not familiar with
it, I highly recommend learning it as soon as possible. JQuery’s tagline is “write less, do more” and that pretty much sums up my experience with it. Writing code in jQuery is very concise, but very powerful. One of my favorite features: Any DOM element can be animated just by calling the animate() function and then specifying the CSS property to animate (opacity or height for instant). JQuery also has many widgets in their jQuery UI library, but it is not as fully developed as YUI.

3. Prototype/Scriptaculous
I have less experience with Prototype and Scriptaculous, than with YUI and jQuery, but this is another mature and well-known library. Prototype focuses on DOM manipulation and more core functionality, and Scriptaculous is a UI library built on top of Prototype. These libraries are included with or supported by many popular web frameworks like Ruby on Rails and CakePHP.

Even if you’re not a developer you can use these libraries to snaz up your site.
You can find many good tutorials on adding javascript effects at NetTuts. There are many other sites with lots of prebuilt widgets and tutorials that can be found via Google.

So what do you think? Any other libraries or resources to add?

New Website Tutorial Video Released: Customizing Wordpress Themes

Although the focus of Domain Superstar is of course all about our domain name tools and making it easy for anyone to consistently find loads of valuable domain names we do also have some additional perks for our premium members, one of them being some hopefully very helpful website development tutorial videos.

The tutorial videos make it easy for you to “watch over my shoulder” as I first find a valuable domain name in the first video and then take that domain name from just a name to a fully functioning e-commerce money making website.

I use the software program Camtasia so that I can capture what is on my computer screen and record my voice at the same time.

The domain name/website that I use as an example throughout the video series is actually not my domain name but the domain name of one of our premium members. MMA Supreme is the name of the domain name and the website is close to being halfway finished as we have just made tutorial video #4 “Customizing Wordpress with Theme Tweaks” and are at the halfway point as we have 4 more videos to release in the future.

No matter whether you develop your own websites, you pay someone to do your website development, or you could care less about developing your domains be sure and sign up for our premium membership so that you can consistently find valuable domain names using our tools!

Domain Superstar Launch: 25 Best Domaining, SEO, and Internet Marketing Websites, Forum and Blogs

To kick off the launch of DomainSuperstar.com I thought that it would be fun to show people a little bit about who we are and what we want to accomplish by yes, talking a little bit about us but also making a list of our favorite blogs and websites in the SEO, domaining, and internet marketing niches.

In a nutshell, we are all about trying to help you find great domain names – over and over again. Whether you are a full time domainer that wants to be able to weed through a lot of the junk available in auction domain names and find the gems (you can do so using our All-in-One Domain Auction Tool or our personalized Domain Alerts), or maybe you are an SEO that wants to grab a great exact match keyword only domain name (like those you can find using our Type-In Traffic Finder or Keyword Domain Repository) to help you rank for a specific keyword phrase, or maybe you just want to find a great domain name for your business (you can find it quickly using our Instant Domain Search Tool) – we can help.

You can view a description of how all of our tools work by selecting a tool from the drop down menu at the top of the page, you can compare the features that free vs. premium members will have access to on our pricing page, and you can access all of our tools directly to try them out right now for free by navigating to our dashboard.

Without further ado, here is our list of the very best domaining, SEO, and internet marketing websites and blogs that we love to visit and read.

Best Domaining Websites, Forums, and Blogs

1. Domaining.com – Domaining.com is of course the owner of the absolute best domain name possible in the domaining niche and the content of the site matches the premium domain name. Francois (the owner) has been adding some very cool new features that serve the domaining community as of late including a domain name marketplace, customizable domaining news feeds, and more.

2. Chef Patrick – Chef Patrick is a key example of a person who has chosen to go the route of using and marketing a very brandable domain name (this requires more work than using a generic keyword domain name but he appears to be pulling it off quite nicely). Chef Patrick offers a great mix of content that has recently included videos of weekly domaining news.

3. Rick Schwartz – Rick’s blog is the home of the “Domain King”. Rick could very well be considered one of the Godfathers of domaining. He is a founder of the ICA (Internet Commerce Association), and he is CEO, President and Co-Founder of eRealestate.com and T.R.A.F.F.I.C.

4. DN Forum – Great domaining related forum.

5. Name Pros – Another great forum for discussing domain names and everything related to the buying and selling of domain names.

6. Domain State – Top domain name forum with a LOT of posts to read through and learn from.

7. DotSauce – Mark Fulton is the Founder and Editor of the DotSauce Domaining Magazine and has really done nice job.

8. Elliot’s Blog – Elliot Silver’s blog about all things related to domain name investing and domain news. Elliot has some very nice in depth posts on a wide range of domaining related topics.

9. Predictive Domaining – Predictive Domaining is a blog that is run by Barry Goggin who is a full time scientist and a member of the NY Academy of Sciences but a domainer on the side who manages to keep his blog updated quite frequently with some pretty good stuff.

10. DotWeekly – DotWeekly is a weekly domain name blog run by Jamie Zoch. DotWeekly has a number of great domaining resources.

11. Domain Habit – A domain name forum with not quite as many posts as some of the others but has some quality content and discussion nonetheless.

Best SEO Websites, Forums, and Blogs

12. SEO Book – SEOBook.com is run by Aaron Wall and the blog is constantly updated with very high quality SEO and internet marketing nuggets.

13. SEO Moz – The SEO Moz team headed up by Rand Fishkin is continually on the cutting edge of Search Engine Optimization. A great source for both beginner and advanced SEO learning.

14. Search Engine Land – Chock full of SEO information and information related to all things search.

15. Stomper Blog – The Stomper Blog is a good source of SEO information.

16. JenSense – Ok, ok the JenSense blog isn’t truly about SEO as Jennifer Slegg focuses on all things related to contextual advertising (both with Google AdSense & the Yahoo Publisher Network) but still worth a read to broaden your knowledge of how the search engines “think” (it’s pretty much all about money).

17. High Rankings – Known more for their SEO newsletter, the Jill Whalen High Rankings Newsletter is a very popular newsletter for search marketers.

18. SEO Roundtable – Solid SEO information and SEO news.

19. Search Engine Journal – Loren Baker’s Search Engine Journal is a tried and true place for great SEO news and information.

20. Matt Cutts – Of course you knew that the blog of everyone’s favorite Google engineer would be in the list didn’t you?

Best Internet Marketing Websites, Forums, and Blogs

21. Digital Point Forum – THE forum for learning about everything related to internet marketing, search engine marketing, coding, graphic design, copywriting, and more. Really this forum could be in any of the above sections as it is quite literally the most active webmaster related forum currently on the Internet.

22. MichaelFortin.com – Michael Fortin’s blog focuses primarily on copywriting and marketing tips as well it should as he is the “Internet’s number one copywriter”… and actually very well could be.

23. Shoe Money – Shoe Money’s blog (run by Jeremy Schoemaker) is quite possibly the most entertaining of all of the blogs on this list and one of my personal favorites. Jam packed full of very practical tips and advice for succeeding in internet marketing.

24. Copy Blogger – Copy Blogger probably takes the award for most consistently offering extremely high quality material. This stuff is so good that it really almost shouldn’t be free.

25. Perry Marshall – Perry Marshall is an AdWords guru who isn’t afraid to tell it like it is. Perry has a great way of just plain telling the truth in a way that if applied will tend to make some people a lot of money.

Submit Your Favorites

I know that I am bound to have forgotten some of the best. Submit some of your favorite domaining, SEO, and internet marketing related websites, blogs, and forums via the comment form below and then check out our tools for finding some great domain names today!