Did you get confused after reading the title as to why one would need to make such a conversion at all? We were too. But as we thought about it and explored the HTML to WordPress tool, we were not only pleasantly surprised but also thoroughly convinced that the conversion might actually be a good idea. Think about it: creating websites in HTML is always easier. However, for it to be monitored and maintained by someone who is not a developer, it is easier to do so in WordPress. WordPress is fairly intuitive, and easy enough to be taught to someone who comes from a non-technical background.

Of course, people have been transforming HTML code to WordPress files since forever. However, before the introduction of tools like HtmlToWordPress, the conversion had always been messier. All files had to be organized correctly and referred to during the conversion. Images and media always took tedious efforts in the conversion. Moreover, you couldn’t dream of attempting to do any of this unless you ate, lived, and breathed coding. Conversion from HTML to WordPress was a strict no-no for those who didn’t have a sound technical background.

But now doing so is a matter of a few clicks. Let us show you how.

Switch from HTML to WordPress easily

While coding in HTML is easier, the main benefit provided by WordPress is its Content Management System. If you have clients with unique requirements for their sites, you can fulfill their requirements by creating web-pages in HTML and then hand the pages over to them as WordPress PHP files so that they can maintain the site with ease. WordPress will give them access to plug-ins and other SEO tools. Once you convert your HTML site to WordPress, you have all of the following advantages and more:

• Easier maintenance
• Plug-in functionality
• Social media integration
• Easier Updates

Here’s how HtmlToWordPress can help you extract these advantages:

• Upload HTML files and pick a theme; leave the rest to the tool. No coding required
• Free Live Preview of how your website will look with the theme you picked once conversion is complete
• Compatible with any HTML based website and any HTML editor / framework
• Automatic content and image editing capability through Simple Live Editor
• Ton of tools and frameworks supported
• Time Saving since it takes only a couple of minutes
• No learning curve involved

This technique of transforming usual HTML pages into a fully functioning WordPress website is not just time-friendly but also pocket-friendly. Programmers would probably charge you hundreds of dollars for this and also take up a lot of your time. It really is an obvious choice.

This is how the tool works

The actual conversion process of your HTML pages to a WordPress site has never been simpler. Visit the tool’s homepage and you’ll see an area where you can drag-and-drop the zipped folder containing your HTML pages. That’s all there is to it. The encouraging message of getting to “see a live preview in 15 seconds or less” is more than convincing to at least give the application a try.

We tried uploading a small dummy website to the tool and here were the good and bad points we faced:

• Our zipped folder contained 4 html pages, 1 CSS file, 1 JavaScript file, and a folder containing about 30 images. It took the tool under 8 seconds to analyze the folder which was pretty decent.
• Our home page file wasn’t named index.html (that’s the default name for most HTML based websites) and the tool wasn’t happy about it. It displayed an error message saying we should rename our home page file to index.html (with a lowercase “i”) and then try the upload again. This was a bit strange since the name of the home page file shouldn’t ideally be a show-stopper, but we complied. Although that did involve a couple of iterations to match the case and change every occurrence of the file name in our code.

Once our files were converted we could see a live preview of our website inside the tool’s editor. It is worth mentioning here that the preview doesn’t add any glitter to your files. The live preview will show you a very basic website if that’s what your HTML files contain. So don’t expect anything flashy if you haven’t coded for it.

The top right corner of the editor holds a “Download Theme” button with which you can download the WordPress files created after conversion. This is also where you’ll be required to pay for tool usage, so you’ll be directed to the shopping cart.

Pros and Cons

The pros are quite straightforward:

• Any HTML framework and editor works.
• Images, style sheets are all referenced correctly.
• Both content and media can be edited directly from the Live Editor.
• Free preview after the conversion and before checking out your cart.

The cons should also be clear from the description above:

• The dependency on the home page file’s name (index.html)
• Quite a basic WordPress theme with no options to choose any other theme
• The maximum file size supported is only 100 MB

• Converting an HTML website into a WordPress one was never this easy: htmltowordpress.io/ @HTML2WP_app via @supermonitoring

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Final Words

For us, the deal of converting an entire HTML website to a WordPress one at $4.90 is too good to be true. Perhaps the creators might increase the price once it becomes popular, but for now we are hoping to milk the opportunity and get as many sites converted. The pricing is great, the FAQ is detained, and the interface is more or less self-explanatory. With a few acceptable glitches, this is one of the few apps in the market that allow such a conversion.

Ever heard of the term “Code Playground”? If you like software programming, have an insatiable need to learn, keep monitoring the web for code editors, and like to play with code snippets, that shouldn’t be a new term for you. A “Code playground” is a website, application, or tool that lets you practice and learn by offering a space to write and test code. Think of it like a calculator – you punch in an equation and can view the result instantly to verify your own calculation and make corrections if wrong. Now apply the same concept to an online code editor that lets you type in code, save it, execute it, and also view the results.

There are a number of online tools that let you test your code and improve it to hone your programming skills. Herein, we’re focusing on one of them that lets you do all this and much more. We’re talking about JSFiddle, one of the most popular code playgrounds available online today.

JSFiddle – the fun online code editor

JSFiddle is a name most JavaScript developers recognize. It lets coders work on applications, review code snippets, share code snippets, collaborate and do more. And don’t go by its name; the tool lets you work with JavaScript, HTML, CSS, as well as any combination of these three web technologies. Create your code snippets in these languages in their respective dedicated windows and hit the “Run” button to see what your work results in, in the “Result” window. That’s how simple it all is.

JSFiddle is often credited as being one of the first online code editors or “code playgrounds” that created an example which many others followed. Here’s an overview of the tool’s main features:

• The tool includes separate, adjustable sections called “panels” for CSS, HTML, and JS, and also an execution panel
• If you log into the tool, you can debug your code snippets called “fiddles” remotely
• It executes your fiddles based on an inbuilt collection of frameworks
• Lets you collaborate in real-time with tracing
• Allows you to update / publish your fiddles privately or publicly
• Enables referencing to files from within your fiddles by adding them
• Allows you to invite team members to join your session and see you work. They can also give their inputs via a live chat
• The tool also includes a code beautifier that indents and aligns everything
• All code is color coordinated and the panel gives syntax error feedback on missing closing tags and misplaced elements

Additionally, users can create their profiles in the tool and can save and publish their fiddles with their profile names. All collaborators are also given profile names and images to add a little “fun” factor.

Working of the tool

As already pointed out, the tool is very simple to work with. It doesn’t require you to have any prior experience of HTML, CSS or JavaScript, though it is good to have some before you begin.

Go to jsfiddle.net and you shall see the main screen divided into 5 sections – left hand panel that lists down some options, 3 sections dedicated to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript respectively, and a results section. There will also be a main menu that includes various buttons to manage your code once you start writing. If you wish to work with a particular library from any of these languages, you can click on the settings icon and the top right corner of each language’s panel and select the library you need. Once all of this is done, you can begin creating your fiddles.

Click inside each panel to initiate the cursor and start writing. Once all your code has been written (in one or two or all panels) hit the “Run” button from the main menu to view the results in the Results panel. You can click on the “Tidy” button to align everything in its right place and choose specific settings that you wish to work with by clicking on the “Settings” button in the top right corner of the screen.

To invite team members and start collaborating, click on the “Collaborate” button from the main menu. You should see a pop-up explaining how you can send your session’s link to your team. Also, a column with some options should appear when your collaboration session starts. These options include profile editing, adding members, a microphone to activate voice chat, and a message icon to start a live chat. To save your fiddles, you’ll need to create an account with JSFiddle and sign into it. Signing up is quite straightforward and should take only a couple of seconds.

Pros VS Cons

Now comes the time for weighing out JSFiddle’s positives against its negatives.

Positives include:

• Online code editing along with collaboration feature
• Easy publishing of fiddles, both privately and publicly
• Creating dummy AJAX requests with the tool is very easy
• The tool is totally free of cost

You can also have a quick look at the tool features to know more about its pros.

Negatives include:

• Some users who’ve worked with other online code editors can argue that the tool isn’t quick enough is displaying results
• There’s no way to find out who has forked your fiddle
• If you wish to work with only one or two of the technologies, there’s no way to hide the remaining panels.

• Create and Execute HTML + CSS + JavaScript live within one tool: @jsfiddle jsfiddle.net/ via @supermonitoring

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Bottom Line

JSFiddle is honestly is a good place to practice and hone your programming skills. You don’t need to install anything, you don’t need to pay anything, and you don’t need to learn anything before starting. There are only few tools which let you do all these.

Software programmers and hackers often need working code snippets to either get better at what they do, or to test their programs. GitHub, Bitbucket, Google Code, Sourceforge, etc. are some popular websites that let users create and index large databases of working code. Software engineers keep monitoring these websites for sample codes or projects that can help them analyze and understand programming problems better.

But knowing the exact portal where you can find the specific code snippet you’re looking for can be tricky. For example, if a programmer wishes to refer to the code for a working computer card game (say, solitaire), how can he find it out directly without switching from one code search engine to another and accessing various code samples? Through SearchCode!

SearchCode – The source code search genie!

SearchCode is an indexed and searchable source code repository that lets you search for working code snippets, examples of functions, API’s and libraries over 90 languages across 10+ sources. It searches code from multiple repositories like GitHub, Bitbucket, Google Code, and others and displays the results with the relevant lines highlighted. All you need to do is provide it a query with the exact lines of code (LOC) that you’re looking for, and the tool will do the rest. That way, you not only get to experience the power of various code repositories at one place, but also get to save time since you have the exact lines of code that you want highlighted on your screen. Cool, eh?

The biggest challenge web crawlers face while searching for code examples is special characters. Most indexers don’t index special characters; also, they can often take up a lot of time. SearchCode overcomes both these issues by letting you search for code by function / method name, constant / variable names, operations, security flaws, usage, and also by special characters much faster that other source code search engines.

A few of the most noticeable features of SearchCode include:

• It uses Sphinx to conduct code searches
• Most information is presented in such a way that you shouldn’t need to click through, but can if required
• Searches can be filtered down to a specific source or identified language using different refinement options
• It is an open source tool and thus, is completely free of cost

How the tool works

To start using SearchCode visit the tool’s homepage and you’ll see a search box in the middle of the screen. If you know the exact LOC to be searched, type it in the search box and hit ‘Search’. Alternatively, you can also type in the name of a function / method (say, Palindrome) and hit ‘Search’.

The next screen will display all results for the LOC or method you’ve searched for with the specific words in the search query highlighted. The results will include programs written in different languages (like C++, Prolog, Haskell, D, C, Java, Python, etc) and from different repositories. You can filter the search results by source repository as well as programming language through checkbox options in the left hand panel of the screen. Once you have your desired filters select, hit the green button that says ‘Apply’ and your results will be narrowed down. From the results, you can pick the code snippet that appeals the most to you and use it to suit your purpose.

You can also try SearchCode out through sample filters that you can find if you scroll the homepage down a little. Click on a filter to access its related results instantly. You can also use SearchCode’s API in your application to automate your code search. Moreover, the tool offers premium features through ‘SearchCode server’, a paid plan that lets you download the tool and install on your own server so that you can have powerful code search in your own cloud.

Free VS Paid Plan

SearchCode can be used in 3 ways:

• Community Edition – Completely free, but you cannot change the look-and-feel of the results and you don’t get any support
• Full Version without Support – $99 for the full edition with all the goodies but no support
• Server Edition – $699 for the premium version with support for 2 years, free upgrades during this period and the option to make your own feature requests

• Find working code snippets, examples, functions, and APIs with a click, try searchcode.com/ via @supermonitoring

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Weighing it Out

SearchCode actually proves to be a powerhouse tool for programmers and hackers alike. It offers sample code, working examples, projects, all the push and help a quick learner needs to reach the stars. Come to think of it, the tool’s doesn’t have a downside to it. That is if you’re using its community edition. The paid versions do offer extended functionality and support, but then, are they really worth it when you have repositories like GitHub, Bitbucket, and the lot out there? People working in time critical projects who value each second would definitely say ‘Yes’; others, probably no.

Most technical organizations or the ones that are involved in core software development make use of some sort of version control system to keep track of work progress by collaborating what has been done so far. Such a system is basically a remote repository from where users “check-out” code, make changes and “check-in” the most recent, working code copy. This cycle continues for the entire duration of the project and such version controlling is usually very effective for distributed teams. It serves as a common platform where team members can share each others’ developments, test and study them and also release executable copies to the client.

One such popularly known and widely used version control system for software development is Git. It is a free and open source distributed system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. Git is easy to learn and has a tiny footprint with lightning fast performance. And if you’re already using Git or planning to start using it, give it a great head start with Bitbucket.

Bitbucket – the best Git solution for professional teams

Bitbucket is an online platform that facilitates using Git in the easiest manner possible. With an interactive GUI that is as easy as the click-next phenomenon, Bitbucket makes sure you spend more time working and less time tackling Git usage hurdles. Without the refined user interface that Bitbucket has to offer, Git, though just as efficient, is a command line tool that allows you to do just the basics – check-out, modify, and check-in. However, Bitbucket adds a lot more to the whole process by incorporating easy collaboration tools, discussions through inline comments, code review tools and more.

Overcoming the typical Git drawbacks like degraded performance with increased file size, Bitbucket scales massively to give you uninterrupted and smooth access via its Data Center. What’s more the platform offers flexible deployment models for teams of all sizes and needs with the freedom to host it in their cloud or manage it on user servers. A few key things to note about Bitbucket are:

• Assigning specific branch permissions, you can control user actions thus preventing inadvertent errors. Granular permissions at project and repository level can also be set.
• Integrates with JIRA effectively by connecting commits and pull requests to JIRA issues directly.
• Add-ons built with Atlassian Connect for Bitbucket allow you to customize Bitbucket Cloud the way you want.
• Integrates easily with HipChat, Bamboo, or other systems using webhooks.
• Enables you to better understand repository changes with unified or side-by-side diffs during code reviews.
• The platform can show build results from your CI system. A simple pass or fail icon tells you about the health of your code.

Here’s how it works

To start using Bitbucket, sign up with your basic details. The sign-up is free or paid depending upon the plan you choose:

• Personal account – Free
• 5 user team – Free
• 10 user team – $10 per month
• 25 user team – $25 per month

Once signed in you can choose to visit a tutorial on Bitbucket or Git or use SourceTree (A free Git & Mercurial client for Windows or Mac). If you wish to directly start using Bitbucket, Create a new repository for your project or Import an existing repository to work upon. After filling in the details for the repository like Name, Description, Programming language etc, your repository will be created.
On the main access page of your repository, you need to sync it with your Git installation on your machine or start from scratch. Thereafter, you have the options to Clone in SourceTree, Create a new Branch, Create a pull request, Compare code versions, Fork etc. All available actions are listed in a vertical fashion in the left hand panel of the window. If you’ve used version control software earlier, understanding Bitbucket usage shouldn’t be an issue.

On the main menu of the window you’ll find options to see a complete overview, pull requests, issues or snippets under Dashboard, create a new team or view already created teams, create or import another repository or see a snippet. At any point of time you can alter repository settings through a convenient Settings button on the bottom left corner of the window.

Overall, using Bitbucket is quite simple.

Pros VS Cons

Apart from the sheer ease-of-use that it brings, here are major benefits Bitbucket offers:

• Bitbucket Cloud is free for small teams of 5 users.
• Unlimited private and public repositories
• Bitbucket Server gives you secure, fast, enterprise-grade controls, like fine-grained permissions and powerful management features.
• Quite an affordable tool being free for small teams and $1 per user per month for larger teams of up to 25 members.

As far as drawbacks are concerned, it’s difficult to find any with the tool itself. It has everything you would expect from a version control system and more. Plus, it has a minimum learning curve. The only point at which one can get confused about using it its eventual need – it is just a pretty cover for Git after all. So why would an organization want to pay for something that it can get just as easily for free? Agreed using Bitbucket is easier than command line, however, coders who tackle complex development issues each day would surely not find Git that challenging. So at the end, it’s all about what added worth it brings to your team and organization.

• Get on #Git the easy way, with @Bitbucket bitbucket.org/ via @supermonitoring

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Final Words

All-in-all, Bitbucket is neater and more diverse than Git. It adds many good to have features to the version control system, and yet, every organization might not find use for it.

Anything that’s pretty grabs attention. That applies to people, places, things and almost everything else under the sun. But there’s one group of individuals who often forget this rule and go about their work as usual. This group includes the most talented computer programmers around the world. Though these gifted minds produce some very intricate codes, the code itself is often quite messy. Improper indentation, lack of comments and putting off the deletion of unused and repetitive code can over time lend disadvantages like redundancy, unnecessarily large file sizes and difficulty in tracing the code. That’s the reason many companies employ code quality checkers or set up software for the purpose. Getting flagged by such checkers though isn’t a big deal job security wise, but it could be embarrassing.

If you’re among such a group of coders who wish to clean-up your messy code but don’t have the time or patience to go about it manually, you should definitely try out Code Beautify, the online tool to decorate your code.

CodeBeautify – The beautician for your source code

The name of the tool gives away its purpose but Code Beautify is more than just a code decorator. Code Beautify is an online tool aimed at not only beautifying, but also validating, minifying and analyzing source code in myriad programming languages. The tool offers a powerful online script editor thus enabling users to minify, validate, decorate and even convert their source code into various programming languages. The script editor can be used to compile and execute the code as well and that makes Code Beautify a complete package in itself.

Users who register with this brilliant and simple tool get a profile where they can save their experimental projects and code snippets for more brainstorming later. No size limit on the input, output or source code and standard UTF-8 encoding make this tool quite worthy for those who wish to put it to good use. And what does all of this cost you? Not even a single penny! Yes it’s absolutely free. So why waste time and energy going the manual way. Automate the makeover of your source code with Code Beautify today!

This is how it rolls

On visiting the website you’ll find all the languages supported by the tool displayed within big boxes. It actually makes it quite easy to find the preferred language since the font and setting of the words is so in-your-face! On clicking on a language name you’re redirected to a page with an editor on the left hand side and an output window on the right hand side. Just start typing your code in the editor and click on any of the following buttons to perform the desired actions:

• Load URL – To load the source code from the mentioned URL
• Browse – To open a source code file directly from your system, for example, if you’ve selected HTML as your language, this option will let you select an html file from your system.
• Beautify – To make your source code attractive. If you’re typing directly into the editor, the source code will be automatically beautified.
• Minify – This option removes extra spaces, blank lines, tab spaces etc from the code.
• Run – Shows the output of the code.
• Download – Downloads the source code to your machine.

You can also choose to load a sample code to test the effects of each button. The editor also allows you to clear all code, copy the code or even go full screen.

Additional Features

In addition to this basic working, there are quite a few additional features offered by this interesting tool. Once you’re satisfied with your work, you can choose to save it to your profile through a “Save and Share” button on the top right corner of the screen. Plus on scrolling down the editor page, a short description of that particular language’s editor, tool features and related links are also displayed.

Other additional features include the option to track your system’s IP, see the recent links you’ve visited, language converters, unit converters (as in volume, length, weight etc), card validators, number system converters and more. It’s like so much has been packed at one space and all of it for free!

Pros Vs Cons

The good side of Code Beautify is its simplicity. No distractions, straight to the point! Secondly, the option to run the code and see the output gives this tool an edge over other conventional code enhancing tools which are very limited in their functionality. The third and biggest plus point of this tool is its wide language support. JSON, XML, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, C#, SQL, RSS, YAML; in short, there’ll hardly be any latest programming language you’ll not find here. And of course, lastly, it’s a free tool with no strings attached!

The downside is also very easily distinguishable. There is so much packed in this tool that it becomes quite unnecessary and unrelated. For example, in a tool to beauty source code, there actually shouldn’t be a link to track the user’s IP (which by the way also shows the local news of the user’s area) or an option to see the recently visited links. Okay the converters could be justified since they are sometimes needed while programming, but even to use them a user needs to visit different links on the tool’s website. For that he first needs to save his current work, then go to the said converter, then come back. Frankly, who has the time for that! A user can instead simply open another tab in his browser and do the calculations elsewhere. In short, a lot of unnecessary functionality has been stuffed into the tool which gives the impression that the makers probably wanted to show that they can do other things too. A better idea would have been to make separate tools for all the different things they intended to offer.

• Beautify, validate, minify and analyze your source code for free with @Codebeautify codebeautify.org/ via @supermonitoring

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Wrapping it up

All in all, Code Beautify is a tool which has the capability to become a popular platform for programmers, but that can be possible only if the unneeded extra things are removed from it. Code Beautify makers, are you listening?