Over the past few months I’ve been working on a new little app. Yes a few months is a long time to spend on a ‘little’ app but I’ve been working on it by myself and only in my spare time, also my designing skills definitely aren’t on par with my development skills so designing stuff takes me ages.

Anyway, the main reason I created this app was because it is an app I really would like to use myself. In fact I’ve actually been using it as I’ve been developing it!

The new app is called bindrr. It lets you log in and store all of your favourite recipes in one place whether the recipe is from a website, book or anywhere else. All of the recipes you add are easily searchable and you can access them from any computer or mobile device with an internet connection (native, offline mobile applications will hopefully follow soon).

I’m looking for a few beta testers who enjoy cooking and would like to try out the app before anybody else. If you like the sound of bindrr, head over to the site and fill out the form! I’ll be sending out the beta invitations pretty soon.

This is where Postmark comes in, they say that sending your transactional emails through their API can make them look better to the recieving server so they’re less likely to be marked as spam. What’s more, they even allow you to track how many emails you’ve sent and how many went into the intended recipients spam box. This promise plus the offer of 1000 free emails on registration and at only $1.5 for 1000 emails I decided to test Postmark out on a new application I was working on.

Setting up Postmark is as easy as whoever you manage your DNS through makes it! First off I signed up for a free Google apps account for my domain, this part it really straight forward. Next I signed up for Postmark account, again nice and easy. The next step was to set up the sender signatures, this is where it got tricky.

My main server is with 1&1 and so the DNS was pointed at the 1&1 name servers. I discovered that 1&1 will not let you add the required settings to the DNS, it’s a no-go. Luckily, I had registered my domains with NameCheap who do let you add TXT information to the DNS, it just takes a bit of digging to find out how so I thought I’d share it as it might help somebody.

First of all you need to make sure the DNS is with NameCheap. When you are looking at your domain in the ‘Modify Domain’ section there will be a button that says ‘Transfer DNS Back to Us’ (see below).

I saw a lot of people trying to do the next step before this one and get stuck. You won’t be able to see the button in the next step until you have done this!

Once I’d transferred the DNS back to NameCheap I needed to point the domain at my hosting so that my site still worked. You should see a new button that says ‘All Host Records’ (see below). This is the button you couldn’t see without transferring the DNS to NameCheap.

Pointing the domain at your hosting is simple. Copy the settings below but use your own IP (I’ve blurred mine out to stop people getting confused).

The top two make sure that http://yourdomain.com and http://www.yourdomain.com both point to your site. The third one points any subdomains at your site. As far as the server is concerned http://something.yourdomain.com is a different domain to http://yourdomain.com. This just points them all to the same place (this one is optional really). The fourth one just lets you use FTP on your site by going to ftp.yoursite.com.

Next we need to do the last bit, adding the SPF and DKIM values given to us in the Postmark application. As far as I know, each signature has its own values given to it by the app. You will have to log in to your account, select the correct server (you will only have one if you’re setting your first site up) and then click the ‘Sender Signatures’ link. Anyway, the codes will be something along the lines of:

v=spf1 a mx include:spf.mtasv.net ~all

k=rsa; p=MHwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADawAwaAJhALZllb8wNEhCMSNSdMXG3eL...

The top code is the SPF one and the bottom code is the DKIM one. You should still be in the ‘All host records’ section of namecheap. We’ll do the DKIM one first as that one took me longest to get right.

Under the * and ‘ftp’ subdomains add another entry. In the first box you want to type:

pm._domainkey

In the second box copy and paste the whole second line of code that Postmark gave to you (starting with k=rsa; p=MHww…). In the third box select ‘TXT Record’ and put 1800 in the TTL box.

That should do it for the DKIM. For the SPF. I put an @ symbol in the first box because it says in the legend at the bottom of the page that @ = none. Just leaving the first box blank might work for this one but I haven’t tested it, the @ worked for me.

Again in the second box paste the text from the first line of the code the app gave you. Choose ‘TXT Record’ and 1800 again and save it. That should do it, you might have to wait a little while before the app can see the changes you have made.

Here’s an image of how my finished entries look:

Also, if you have any problems head over to the Postmark support section where I found Chris to be very helpful.

Today I came across a great little site that lets you get the links to the latest versions of the most popular javascript libraries quickly and easily.

You find your library on the page and click the ‘Copy’ button. Then all the code you need to include the library in your page is copied to your clipboard.

I really like simple, easy to use sites like this that do one thing and do it well rather than trying to do too much.

There are literally thousands of different statistics programs out there and they all have different features so finding the right one for your site and your taste is essential. I’m going to do a quick run through of the web statistics programs I like.

Google Analytics

The chances are, if you’ve only heard of one of these programs, it will be this one. Google Analytics is actually the program I use to track my website statistics at the minute. It does offer a lot of features such as ROI (return on investment) calculation which may scare new users a bit.

It produces some nice graphs and maps and is overall a very detailed program.

Clicky Web Analytics

Clicky offers a range of plans that go from free (3000 page views per day) to $49.99 a month (200,000 page views a day). This program has a very large feature list, they’ve even compared it to some other web stats programs here.

Mint

Mint charges a flat $30 per site and unlike the other programs you host it on your own server. I’ve never used Mint on my own sites, but I know a few people who do and they like it.

Again, Mint has a ton of features.

Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg is a little different from other stats programs. It shows you your stats in some pretty funky ways such as heat maps and confetti so you can see where your users click most. Crazy Egg also has a range of plans that go from $9 a month to $99 a month. Unfortuatley they don’t have a free plan but they do offer a 30 day money back guarantee.

Reinvigorate

Currently Reinvigorate is an invite only stats program. But you can reguister to get an invite on their site. Reinvigorate offers real time statistics, heatmaps and a load of other features. They also offer a prgram you can install on your computer that will give you up to date statistics for your sites.

TinyMCE

FCKEditor

jwysiwyg

openWYSIWYG

EWELive

Free Rich Text Editor

If you know of another WYSIWYG editors that should be listed here, leave a comment and I’ll get it up!