Thanks to iPhone apps designed with webmasters in mind, you never have to be away from your websites, your databases, or your web analytics again. Whether you’re sitting in an airport or relaxing at a cafe, vacationing abroad or commuting to the office, iPhone apps for webmasters allow you to manage your websites and start new ones from wherever you happen to be. Here’s a look at the ten very best apps for webmasters.
PHP Cheat Sheet
Shoot, what’s the syntax supposed to be again? With PHP Cheat Sheet you can check the accuracy of your code on the spot. Like crib notes for PHP, PHP Cheat Sheet is a native app rather than a link out to internet references. Since it’s searchable, it makes it easy to find the string you’re looking for. Besides the search capacity, PHP Cheat Sheet is divided into well-defined categories. Functions and descriptions for Date & Time, MySQL, SimpleXML, String, Handling, File System, and more are included. The best part is that PHP Cheat Sheet was written and reviewed by professional web developers. Free updates are available once you’ve purchased the app.
Chartbeat
For the webmaster who can’t stand to be away from his visitor stats for more than a few minutes, there’s the chartbeat app. Not unlike standard web analytics programs like AWStats and Google Analytics (arguably, chartbeat is far more robust than either), chartbeat provides up-to-the-minute information regarding where visitors are coming from, what they’re viewing, and who’s new – all in real-time. Push notification alerts tell you as soon as something big happens on your site, whether that’s a traffic spike a a slow-loading page. Especially for websites that cannot allowed to go down for any length of time, the chartbeat app is a particularly valuable tool.
Analytics App
The only downside to chartbeat is that it requires a subscription to the chartbeat analytics. If you’ve already got Google Analytics running and you want to stick with it, the Analytics App provides a way to keep in touch with your Google Analytics data while you’re on the go. However, you might enjoy this app so much that you’ll find yourself using it even when you’re not on the go. After all, why open up yet another browser tab to check your stats when you can use your iPhone instead?
Ego
Yet another web stats app, Ego gives you the benefit of checking all your stats in one central location. Why have one app to check Google Analytics, another app to check your views at Vimeo, and yet a third app to check Feedburner? Put all these stats into one place, saving you time and making you more productive. Is someone new following you on Twitter? Did that latest blog post totally flop? In a glance at your Ego app, you’ll know the answer, without having to login to each site individually.
Cliqcliq Colors
Anyone who’s ever designed a website or two – especially in CSS, Flex, Flash, or Objective-C – knows how much time can be wasted looking for the right color palette. With cliqcliq Colors, palettes can be easily created, then converted into integer and floating point scales, or RGB, HSB, and CMYK. cliqcliq also makes extracting colors from your iPhone camera, your Photo Library, or from Flickr a cinch. Once you’ve got the palette you want, you can email it to yourself in formats compatible with Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, or Microsoft Office. When you send it to yourself, you’ll get a text, CSV, and BMP file just for your reference.
FTP On The Go
Imagine the ability to login to your FTP site, download a file, edit it, and upload it back onto your site. With FTP On The Go, you can do just that and more. Apple’s own “iPhone in Business” site describes this app as “essential for website administrators who need to make adjustments and updates to websites on the go.” Indeed, FTP On The Go is the first app a webmaster should purchase for his iPhone. Not unlike a regular FTP program such as SmartFTP, you can create bookmarks to servers you frequently access, change file permissions on Unix servers, and upload photos directly from your iPhone into your FTP site. The potential uses for FTP On The Go are endless.
Web Tools
If you like the iPhone app Domain Scout, you’ll like Web Tools even more. Like Domain Scout, busy webmasters can use this app to look up the domain name and check its availability. Web Tools also provides contact details and DNS information for registered domain names. Unlike Domain Scout, Web Tools has additional functionality, including viewing server information, such as hostname and location, and pinging the servers.
Jaadu VNC
Have you ever used GoToMyPC to access your computer remotely? Jaadu VNC is basically the same idea, except you can access your computer handily from your iPhone. Imagine being on holiday and receiving a call from your boss asking about a particular file that he needs immediately. All you can do is groan: you know exactly where that file is, it’s on your computer at home, and there’s no way you can reach it. Jaadu VNC changes all that. With a few clicks you can access your computer, and a helpful zoom feature allows you to zero in on the part of the workspace you need to see. Within minutes, you can access that file and email it to your boss.
pTerm
pTerm turns your iPhone into a terminal, giving you SSH, Telnet, and raw TCP client. Based on the popular desktop client PuTTY, in a few seconds you can login and start editing. pTerm also adds in a CTRL and ESC key – an improvement over other terminal apps. While the keyboard takes up a lot of screen space, you can use pTerm in landscape mode or portrait mode, and like most iPhone apps, pinch and zoom are in effect.
Database Viewer Plus
For anyone who needs MySQL access from iPhone, Database Viewer Plus is a must-have. Besides MySQL, Database Viewer Plus also supports Excel, FileMaker Pro, Oracle, SQL, DB2, dBase, and others. With easy navigation and 128 bit encryption, not to mention supporting Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian, and more, Database Viewer Plus is a great way to update data while in the field or on the go. What’s more, when you make a change from your iPhone, it will sync instantly with your desktop database. Likewise, changes on the desktop database can be sent wirelessly and immediately to iPhone whenever you start the app. You can be confident when you start using this app that you have the most recent version of your database.
