As a blogger, one of the most rewarding things you can do is look back over your body of work at the end of a year to see what you’ve accomplished. I’ve spent the last week perusing the archives and I am very pleased with what Search-This was able to offer up in 2007. In case you missed anything, here are just some of the great posts from 2007. Enjoy!

Blogging

• Blog Critique: Chris Garrett on New Media
• How to Promote Your Blog
• WordPress – From Install to Pimped Out
• 10 Blogging Mistakes / Why Your Blog Struggles

CSS

• Relatives – Who needs them?
• CSS Liquid Round Corners
• 10 Quick Tips for an Easier CSS Life
• CSS – A Recipe for Success

SEO

• Title Tags – A Search Engine Optimization Cornerstone
• Do It Yourself SEO? Part 2
• Stop Worrying – About SEO
• Link Swapping – Should You Do It?

Coding

• OOP in PHP from a .NET OOP Perspective
• CSS The Star Matrix Pre-loaded: Part 2
• Objects – Why You Should Care About Them

Other Stuff

• Web Browser Wednesday – Going to the Opera (Part 1)
• Simple Tips to Help Survive The Digg Effect
• Yahoo Job Interview Questions: Part 1
• What’s Your 404?

Random Bits

• Random Bits Podcast with Rand Fishkin
• Random Bits Podcast with Peter Flaschner
• Random Bits Podcast with Chris Garrett, Part 1
• Random Bits Podcast with Eric Meyer

Let us know if there is something you would like to have us blog about in 2008. Or who you would like to see interviewed in a Random Bits Podcast. And Thanks for making 2007 a wonderful year.

• Come Home to a Tennessee Winters – a nice looking site design
• Displaying Images in Photoblogs & Galleries – great article
• Google Analytics Update – now uses ga.js instead of urchin.js – says improved performance and a smaller file size
• Interview with Matt Cutts from Google – worth a look
• Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull – In Theaters May 22, 2008, I’m there!
• New Subscribe Page – now would be a good time to subscribe, thanks and enjoy

In this second installment of the Developer’s Toolbox, I’ll be sharing with you another of my favorite tools that saves me a lot of time and energy: phpMyAdmin. As comfortable as I am doing things from the command line, there are certain tasks in MySQL that are quite tedious to do by hand. Having a user interface to use makes these tasks much easier and quicker to complete.

If MySQL is not your DB of choice, there are other applications out there for interfacing the various other database platforms (such as phpMyAdmin’s relative for PostgreSQL, phpPgAdmin), but MySQL is the most widely used and phpMyAdmin is often included or offered as a part of many basic hosting plans.

As of this writing, 2.11.3 is the most current version of phpMyAdmin. It can be downloaded at the main phpMyAdmin download page. Please follow the installation instructions found in the phpMyAdmin documentation. I’m going to show you how to use phpMyAdmin to create a new database, create tables, insert records, backup your data, and import data into your database. There are many, many other things you can do with this wonderful application, but I’ll keep it simple.

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Each year Oprah does a “favorite things” show where she shares with the audience some of her favorite things of the year. It’s the loudest, most insane crowd Oprah gets each year. I’m looking for that same reaction here 🙂

These are some of my favorite things of 2007. Keep in mind I have an 18 month old so I don’t get out much. And yes I live a simple life (some may say pathetic) but good coffee and a burger are things I really do enjoy…

So, without further adieu:

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• Krop – Creative & Tech Jobs – another place to look for tech jobs
• A First Glimpse Into the Future of Line Riderâ„¢ – very cool
• Internet Explorer 8 and Acid2: A Milestone – hopefully there will be a day without IE hacks…
• Peter Jackson to do The Hobbit – release planned for 2010, and the sequel following in 2011
• New Batman Trailer – looks pretty dark
• Disappearing Car Door – nice design

In this article we are going to re-visit a technique we first learned in the Star Matrix Pre-loaded article, except that this time we are going to use it to produce a navigation menu. Before we start it may be worth it to become familiar with the menu we are going to make; you can see a live version here.

At first glance it seems simple enough, but as often is the case there’s more to it than meets the eye. As you roll your mouse over a menu item all the menu items go into the off-state and only the hovered item stays alight. This is quite a subtle difference from the norm where just the item rolled-over changes. Usually this effect can only be done with added JavaScript but today you will learn how to do this with CSS alone.

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Nominate your favorite blogs for the Performancing Blog Awards 2007.

It would be nice to get Random Bits nominated for “The Best Blog Podcast” since Sara does such a fantastic job with it!

Perhaps Search-This could get nominated for “The Best Blogs You’ve Never Heard Of” too. Although that may be one you don’t want to win. 🙂

Anyways, get over there and vote people!!!

Official Categories For The 2007 Performancing Blog Awards:

1. The Best Overall Blog
2. The Most Influential Blogger
3. The Best Blog Design
4. The Best Blog Typography
5. The Best Blog Name
6. The Best New Blog
7. The Best Blog Community
8. The Most Improved Blog of 2007
9. The Best Blogs You’ve Never Heard Of
10. The Best Blog Podcast
11. The Best Use of a Corporate Blog
12. The Best Video Blog
13. The Best Writing/Blogging Blog
14. The Best Science/Technology Blog
15. The Most Controversial Blog
16. The Best SEO Blog
17. The Best Celeb/Style Blog
18. The Best Business/Money Blogs
19. The Best Photo Blog
20. The Best Sports Blog
21. The Best Blog WebHost
22. The Best Family and Parenting Blog
23. The Best Political Blog
24. The Best Food/Health Blog
25. The Funniest Blog
26. The Best Travel Blog
27. The Best Education Blog