It’s a slow day here in the Parksville office, as many of our American clients are no doubt settling into a nice game of Football, basting the turkey or visiting with family.   With the quietness in the office, I felt it would be a good time to talk about some of the things we’re thankful for here at Hosting Nation, so I’ve compiled a list of all the things I’m thankful for.  In no particular order, here they are.

I’m thankful for the Xenu Link Sleuth tool.  If you need to check the link integrity of your site, there’s no better way to do it.  Xenu finds not only broken internal links, but also finds orphaned files.  It’s fast, it’s free, and it has proven invaluable in the fight against link degradation.

I’m thankful for the myriad of design blogs that give me advice, inspiration and practical knowledge that all help my stay on the cutting edge of design trends.  Included among my faves are Noupe, SpeckyBoy, SixRevisions,  A List Apart, Smashing Magazine, Hongkiat’s Design Blog and many, many others.

I’m thankful that I get to work with such great people.  When you like the people you work with as much as the work itself, it makes every day a pleasure (even when the work isn’t pleasurable).

When I’ve had a hard day, I’m thankful for the sites that make me laugh.  Emails From Crazy People, XKCD, and This is Why You’re Fat – to name a few.

I’m thankful for Irfanview because when you just need to do a quick edit, Photoshop takes too long to open.  Irfanview is a nice, quick and free alternative that offers quick and easy viewing, resizing, cropping and editing. It also has a batch renaming program where you can rename literally any batch of files (images or otherwise) easily.

I’m thankful for Mailchimp, because it’s a great solution for sending email campaigns.  They make it fun to create a campaign and the help and support is second to none.  I’ve looked at many email solutions over the years, most are dry and boring.  Thank you Mailchimp for re-inventing the wheel (and giving it some low profile tires to boot!  Vroom vroom!)

I’m thankful for WordPress, for making publishing on the web fun and easy.  I’ve used it for years, and it just gets better and better.  It extends for miles, with plugins and themes for nearly any purpose.  Just the other day, we built an entire website for a client in 1/2 a day using WordPress, and it looks as good as any “custom” sites I’ve seen.

I’m thankful for Firefox, and all of the extensions that save me so much time.  ColorZilla, MeasureIt, FireBug, xMarks, the SEO Tool for Firefox, Fireshot and many more.

I’m thankful for all of the clients that stay with us, and even those who haven’t.  You’ve all helped us become the company we are now.  Your feedback, your support and your business are invaluable to us.

And last, but certainly not least, I’m thankful for the marketing advice I’ve received over the years from authors like Jeffrey and Brian Eisenberg and Aaron Wall, from people like Steve Roper, from websites like Search Engine Land and Threadwatch and too many others to count.

PS.  Here’s a big picture of a Wild Turkey.  Gobble Gobble everyone!