Ravi's Rants

Rndaom, Yet <Well Formed/>

Video LightBox Script

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A Lightbox is a piece of JavaScript used to display images and videos in an ‘overlay’.

Basically, a user can click on an image to either have the image – or a video – magnified in a Lightbox window. It is usually accompanied by the use of a dark background, usually a dimming of the page over which the image or video has been overlaid, which helps highlight the image or video being displayed.

For example, click on the image below, and see what happens.

And you can see it in action, on a real, live web site, at the home page of http://DigitalAccessPass.com

This Lightbox script is available for free. It is actually open-source, and released under the MIT license – which means you can also use it in commercial projects.

Digital Access Pass v2.0 is here!

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DAP v2.0 is out now. Very excited. Stuffed with really cool features.

We now have a new WordPress plugin with a pretty slick name (at least I think so :-), called “LiveLinks“.

It makes your blog appear “alive” – as in, show different content to different folks (members, non-members, those who just joined, those who are repeat subscribers, etc).

Low Cost Online e-Faxing: MaxEmail.com

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I was recently in the market for an “e” fax solution. I looked at quite a few services. My basic requirements were these:

  • Reliable
  • Low cost (not necessarily free – because I wanted the service to be reliable and accountable)
  • Didn’t need a local area code – anywhere was fine, as I don’t receive too many faxes
  • Offer a free trial – so that I can experience it first-hand
  • Offer a decent number of incoming pages in the package
  • Offer a low-cost pay-as-you-go model for additional use

  • After hunting around the web, looking up various forums and wasting time on made-for-adsense spam and junk-review sites, I stumbled across MaxEmail.com.

    You can get your incoming faxes sent to your email address as a PDF attachment.

    I went through their 1-month free trial, was highly satisfied with the quality of their service, and just now signed up for a whole year at $24/year (their “lite” plan).

    If you are looking for something similar, go check out MaxEmail.com

Free Customer Support and Ticketing PHP Script

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[UPDATE: This script was free for a LONG time. Apparently, at some point, they made it not-free. FYI.]

At my MyWebmasterInABox.com site, I used to run a forum powered by phpBB. But phpBB turned out to be one of the most poorly designed, least secure, web-based applications I have ever used.

So, for the longest time, I had no forum software, and no official support system.

But recently, after a number of my customers had issues with sending/receiving emails to/from me, I embarked on a (rather brief) quest to find a good PHP application, and stumbled upon a brilliant, free, ticketing and customer support application called Maian Support.

I’ve installed it on my own site now at http://www.MyWebmasterInABox.com/support/.

Going forward, if you need support for any of my scripts, go here to enter a ticket.

And to download a copy of the application that powers this, go to Maian Support.

Free RSS Feed Publishing Script

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I’ve thought about selling my RSS Feed Publishing Script for a long time.

And then one day, I just decided to give it away.

All I want is for you to try out my free newsletter. You can leave any time. No questions asked. And you will never hear from me again.

Your permission to send you really good stuff (I think – You decide) is not asking for too much, is it?

My FeedMonster script will allow you to publish any RSS or XML feed from any web site – even my own blog feed from RavisRants.com – on any page of your web site. It takes under 2 minutes to install and set up. Publish either one feed on a page, or multiple blog feeds from multiple sources on a page.

Go here to subscribe and download the FeedMonster and 14+ other PHP scripts.

Once you download and install my scripts, don’t hesitate to send me your feedback.