Wel­come to my new “How To Blog” series! In this series, I’ll try to put my knowl­edge to good use and shed some light on the basic of blog­ging. You will learn how to set up a self-hosted blog, what are the must-have plu­g­ins, how to attract read­ers, how to mon­e­tize your blog etc. I’ll pub­lish a new “How To Blog” post every Saturday.

Today, I’d like to share some­thing even more per­sonal than clothes, make-up or a tooth­brush: book­marks. We all have our favorite sites or tools to make blog­ging eas­ier… here are mine: a col­lec­tion of links to online tools, great blogs and gen­er­a­tors for the geeks impaired.

Note that all these tools are free and none of these links are sponsored!

For Blog Design:

• Fav­i­con From Pics: an online tool to cre­ate fav­i­cons (the small icon by the url of a web­site) from reg­u­lar images.
• Color Scheme Gen­er­a­tor: to cre­ate a nice scheme for your blog.
• Screen Res­o­lu­tion Checker: although most of us now use larger mon­i­tors with a 1024 x 768 res­o­lu­tion, there are still some 800 x 600 users. Would your blog look fine with this res­o­lu­tion? Have a look! Note: this tool only works with IE 5.5 or higher… not Fire­fox for some reason.
• Browser­shot: this tools test your web­site in dif­fer­ent browser… well, over 50 actu­ally, includ­ing some browsers you have never heard of! This is really use­ful because browsers such as Inter­net Explorer are well-known to dis­play some fea­tures dif­fer­ently. With this tool, you just enter your blog’s URL, book­mark the page, and pick up your screen­shots later. You can view them online or down­load them. And good luck fix­ing the cross-browsers bugs afterwards!
• Flickr Toys: do more stuffs with your pic­tures! Make a jig­saw puz­zle, a mosaic, an inspi­ra­tional poster, a badge, a movie poster… Over 40 tools to do orig­i­nal things with your pic­tures. Note: you need to open a Flickr account to upload your pic­tures, either from Flickr, either from your computer.
• 101 Fonts For Design­ers: a list of fonts to download.
• Noupe: a great design blog, which often fea­tures design ideas, CSS tricks and “best of” lists.
• Smash­ing Mag­a­zine: a design web­site which fea­tures free­bies (icons, wall­pa­pers…), graphic inspi­ra­tion, how-to…

For cod­ing (HTML, CSS) :

• Kotatsu: this one gen­er­ates HTML tables. Per­fect to align pic­tures two per two.
• Drop­down Menu Cre­ator: gen­er­ates a cus­tom drop­down menu. Just enter your links and get the HTML code.
• CSS School: CSS tuto­r­ial with exam­ples, quizzes, ref­er­ences, and an editor.
• Word­Press Max: a great blog which focuses mostly on Word­Press, with tips and arti­cles on plu­g­ins, themes, mon­e­tiz­ing etc.
• Hack Word­Press: a blog about themes, plu­g­ins, code, and Word­Press hacks.
• Web Designer Wall: a blog mostly about design but which also fea­tures great CSS tuto­ri­als. It has an amaz­ing theme!
• Pro Blog Design: design and hacks.
• Theme Lab: Word­Press cod­ing tutorials.

For SEO (Search Engine Opti­miza­tion) and mar­ket­ing your blog:

• The Blogger’s Guide To SEO: to finally under­stand what SEO is all about.
• Feed Analy­sis: analyse your feed and get an esti­mate of your future readership.
• SEO Tools: includes site analy­sis (page rank, alexa…), key­words tools, and links tools.
• Check Inter­nal Page Rank: check the page rank of your site and its inter­nal pages.
• Web­site Grader: grade your blog’s SEO.
• Inter­net Mar­ket­ing: a good blog about mar­ket­ing and blog­ging advices.

Blog Forum:

• Dig­i­tal Point: a huge forum for coders, design­ers, web­mas­ters, mar­keters and more.
• Blog­geries: a smaller but friend­lier forum about blog­ging, web­mas­ter­ing and marketing.

Hope you will find some­thing use­ful for you! And don’t hes­i­tate to send me your best links, I’ll add them to this list.

Related posts:

1. Rank­ing A Blog (8÷10)
2. The Art Of Pro­mot­ing A Blog (4÷10)
3. Must Have On Your Blog (5÷10)
4. All About Blog­ging: 8 Neat Word­Press Plugins
5. Mak­ing Money With Your Blog (7÷10)