Obviously, color is an extremely important aspect of web design and style. Figuring out the right colors to use is not easy for a lot of people. I put together a bunch of helpful resources to make it a bit easier to find colors and different color schemes. In addition, I explain to those who are unfamiliar how exactly to use the colors you find to change the look of your website.

Color Resources

4096 Color Wheel

The 4096 Color Wheel is where I go when all I need is the Hex code for certain colors. The site is very simple to navigate; just click a color on the wheel that is close to one you want to use, then use the palette next to it to find the perfect shade. Once you click on the shad you like, you’ll see it show up on the leftmost color chart.

The Color Wizard

Looking for a site that makes color matching easy? Check out The Color Wizard This site makes picking out color themes for a website a piece of cake! Use the color sliders to pick a color that works for you, and the site will find color variations of similar Hue, Saturation, Tint, & Shade. Once you’ve found the color you’re happy with, go to the bottom right corner of the site and you’ll see SUGGESTED COLOR SCHEMES. These are generated from the color you’ve chosen, and you can look at different choices of schemes including: Monocromatic, Analugus, Triadic, Tetradic, Complimentary, and Split Complimentary. Personally, I think the Monocromatic palettes are the best. This is my favorite of the bunch!

Color Scheme Chooser

The Color Scheme Chooser is a site I found recently. This site does almost exactly what the Color Wizard does, so there is no need for me to repeat myself. I suppose people might pick one over the other, but it would be soley for personal preference.

Color Theory Lessons

The final resource I thought worth mentioning is a site devoted to Color Theory Lessons. If you’re interested in learning more about color and color theory, this site has a great tutorial that walks you through everything you want to know. Explore things concepts including complementary colors, color & contrast, shades & tints, and much more.

How to Use Hex Colors in HTML

If you’re interested in web design or simply jazzing up your blog, you will need to know how to tell your computer what color you want to use. As a result, you will likely need to use something called hex colors. Put simply, hex color codes represent different colors that we can see. They are codes that make it easy for a computer to understand what color you’re referencing.

Without them, we’d need words to describe every color in the spectrum. They simplify things. I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but I’ll give an example that demonstrate the use of these codes:

If you wanted to change the color of text to a color of your choice, all you need to do is use the font tag and place a hex color code in it.
e.g. <font color=”#ff0044″>Text Here</font> will make your text a strawberry red. As you can see it is very simple to do once you understand what you’re doing. You can change background colors, table colors, and much more using these hex codes. For more info on different HTML tags, visit this site.

9/24/08 Update: We forgot to add a resource for Triple Hex Color Codes at the time of writing, but the link will take you to a great resource to help with that.

1/30/10 Update: I just learned about another cool color tool called ColorRotate.com. Check it out!

Spreading the word about your latest blog entry is as easy as pinging a few update services. Most blogs allow you to add different update services (ping sites) to notify. I thought it might be userful to put out a list of the update services I’m currently pinging. If you’re interested in adding any or all of these services to your blog, here’s how (I can only explain how using WordPress – my list of sites can be used on any blog, though).

How to Notify New Ping Sites of Your Updated Blog Posts

1. Login to your Control Panel
2. Click on the Options tab, followed by the Writing tab.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and add whatever services you’d like to the Update Services box.

The Mega List of Ping Services

This list includes all the ping services I’ve been able to locate. Feel free to use it as you wish.

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

ttp://rpc.qwikping.com

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.britblog.com

http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://ping.fakapster.com/rpc

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de/

If you have any additional services that you ping, let me know! I’d love to build this into a massive listing of all ping services.

Manual Ping Sites

There are a few good ping sites that will allow you to manually let them know of updates. These are included in the above list, but for those people who need to do things by hand, this should help.

• http://www.pingomatic.com
• http://www.pingoat.com

Failing to Stop Comment Spam

For the past week I’ve been getting a ton of comment SPAM, and it doesn’t want to stop. I’ve got the Akismet and Spam Karma 2 plug ins up and running, and SK2 is set on MEAN! Unfortunately, as you can see:

I’m getting hit by MP3 Ringtone spammers. The problem is that I’ve gone and put this spammer’s domain on the blacklist, but it doesn’t seem to be working . . . they are smart enough to be using multiple IPs to post the messages, and seem to be using some kind of exploit on the Share This plugin:

If you look at the above image, you’ll see that the posts aren’t trackbacks to an outside site, but to my site’s “Share This” pages. Of course the author’s link goes back to bla-bla-bla.us.

Tracking Down a Spammer

When I did a WhoIs search on the domain, I got what seemed like a nonsense profile, until I saw the contact email domains@sslpayments.com, which is run by Andrew Kartashov, a SPAMMER out of Moscow, Russia. (Thanks to the Spam Huntress for the info on this guy)

Domain Name: BLA-BLA-BLA.US
Domain ID: D12017577-US
Sponsoring Registrar: ENOM, INC.
Domain Status: clientTransferProhibited
Registrant ID: DE8A82A65637B3F3
Registrant Name: Tamara Larsen
Registrant Organization: RX-PHarma
Registrant Address1: Cordova
Registrant City: Cordova
Registrant State/Province: AK
Registrant Postal Code: 99574
Registrant Country: United States
Registrant Country Code: US
Registrant Phone Number: +1.34578905
Registrant Email: domains@sslpayments.com

Technical Application Purpose: P1
Technical Nexus Category: C11
Name Server: DNS1.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server: DNS2.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server: DNS3.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Name Server: DNS4.NAME-SERVICES.COM
Created by Registrar: ENOM, INC.

It looks like the domains are registered and hosted by eNom.com. I put in a message to them to see if they’d be helpful at all in dealing with this.

What about the ShareThis PlugIn Exploit?

I’m not sure. If anyone has any ideas about what I can do from here, let me know. I’ve always been able to handle spam on site with the 2 plugins I mentioned earlier, but this is just geting annoying now!

If I have to stop using the plugin to handle the situation, I guess I’ll have to . . .

Any thoughts?

It is funny how things work. I’ve been blogging for well over a year now, but I went crazy yesterday trying to figure out how to do the simplest thing to my new blog. I wanted to change the feed output from summary to full text, but for the life of me couldn’t figure out how. I looked online for almost an hour, but without success. After going back into my control panel, I had that aha moment, fixed it, and then kicked myself for being so oblivious.

Changing feed results from Summary to Full Text
This is a really easy process:

1. Log in to your WordPress administration page
2. Go to Options
3. Go to the sub-menu Reading
4. Under “Syndication Feeds” go to “For each article, show:” and select Full Text
5. Click on Update Options and you’re done!

Why make the change?
Now that I subscribe to well over 100 blog feeds, I don’t have as much time to read them all. While some claim that using a summary may be an incentive for people to actually visit the blog itself instead of the feed, I find that unless the article REALLY catches my eye, I’m going to move on. I’m more likely to go to and read an article that has a full text feed, because I can quickly scan it on my reader – there may be some interesting material that doesn’t make it to the summary that is a cause for reading the post.