101 Free Web Resources That Will Make You a Successful Webmaster

    

Posted on June 3rd, 2007 .

Finding great quality resources to build websites it’s just like searching for a needle in a haystack: if you have googled for quality web design and web development resources you know what I’m talking about. To save you all the work and countless hours searching for good webmaster resources I have compiled a list of the best web design and web development websites.

PS I will update this list with valuable web resources and web tools as I discover them. If you know a good resource and would like to see it here please contact me.

Hosting & Domain Tools

• Domain Tools - Whois, domain suggestion tool, DNS query tools and many more…
• DNS Stuff - Comprehensive web-based DNS and domain name tools.
• Web Host Industry Review Free Web hosting news.
• WebHosting.info Web hosting industry statistics.
• FindMyHosting.com Compare hosting prices, read reviews to find the right plan for you.
• Web Hosting Jury - Read analysis, review and research of affordable and quality web hosting providers.
• WebHostingTalk Web hosting forum.

Inspiration

• CSS Zen Garden - It shows how a web page can be dramatically changed by using CSS. Users submit design variations using the same XHTML.
• CSS Beauty - Among other things CSS Beauty showcases incredibly well design and semantically coded web sites submitted by its users.
• Favourite Website Awards - Well known web awards for cutting edge websites.
• 300 images from 1800 sites - Features 300 icons from Fortune 1000 company sites, major online retailers, well known blogs, top advertising, publishing, and design agencies.
• Mashup Dashboard - Thousands of web mashups with new updates daily
• W3C Sites - A collection of web sites created by designers and developers that conform with W3C standards. You can register and submit your sites too.
• ThinkVitamin - A resource for web developers, designers and entrepreneurs.

Web Design

• Color Match - HTML color code generator that will show you how to match your web site colors, it can also export colour schemes to Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.
• Adobe Kuler - Create colour schemes which can be imported to Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.
• Steel Dolphin Creative - Choose a base colour and this tool suggests a colour scheme, you can select from a number of options such as complimentary colours, monochromatic, analogic, triadic, and double contrast.
• ColorPic - Handy standalone software that allows you to pick a colour from anywhere on your screen.
• All Free Backgrounds - Hundreds of free backgrounds.
• Banner Standard Sizes and Guidelines - A list of all recommended sizes for web site banners.
• BrowserShots - Online tool to test your design in different web browser running on many different OS platforms. It features all possible combinations.
• Bullet Madness - A list of bullets, arrows and icons which can be used in menus, list and so on…
• Favicon From Pics - Create favicons online
• Font Tester Tool - Free online font comparison tool. It allows you to visually compare fonts side by side with various CSS font styles applied.
• Free Buttons - Collection of free web buttons.
• Photoshop Layer Styles - Over 400 different Photoshop layers styles.
• Pixel2Life The graphic design tutorial search engine.
• Fireworks to CSS - Taking a Fireworks comp to a CSS-based layout in Dreamweaver.
• Talk Mania Forum - Ultra stylish free web graphics, from simple buttons to full Photoshop web layouts.
• Snap Shots Do you want to get them cool bubble previews on your links? Get it here…
• Web Accessibility Test - TAW (Web Accessibility Test) is a tool for the analysis of Web sites, based on the W3C Guidelines.
• Web Accessibility Inspector A standalone software tool that diagnoses whether Web sites are accessible to elderly and visually disabled people.
• CrazyEgg - Improve the design of your site by showing you where people are clicking and where they are not.
• Dafont.com Free fonts.
• UrbanFonts Good quality modern fonts here.
• Youtophoto - Search over a quarter million Creative Commons, Public Domain, GNU FDL, and various other FREE images.
• Stock.Xchng Free stock photo site.
• Free Icons DownloadFree Icons

CSS

• Clean CSS - Optimize and format your CSS using a variety of different compression settings. Fixes bad code and generates clean and concise CSS.
• Saila.com - A tableless, CSS-based, liquid, three-column layout.
• Max Design - Step by step tutorials for creating 2 columns and 3 columns, fixed and fluid CSS based page layouts.
• Layout Gala - A collection of 40 layouts based on the same markup, each with valid CSS and HTML.
• CSS Tinderbox - Open source CSS/XHTML blank web design templates.
• Free CSS Templates - Some more free CSS templates here.
• Listamatic - An extensive list of CSS menus created using unordered lists.
• Relative Font Sizes - Tutorial showing how to create accessibility buttons that let people increase and decrease text size.
• Ruthsarian Layouts - A wide variety of CSS layouts.
• CSS Mockups with Photoshop - Tutorial showing how to create a CSS layout using Adobe Photoshop and ImageReady.
• Position is Everything Learn how to make accessible web designs without using tables for layout purposes.
• 13Styles - Choose from a list of styles to build your own CSS menu.

Web Development

• Email MeForm - Free service offering you customizable HTML forms for your website, without requiring you to know HTML or php.
• Mailto Link Generator - For those of you who still using mailto links, here’s a handy online generator. Include multiple To: addresses, multiple Cc: addressees, multiple Bcc: addressees, add subject text, include some body text and add the text to be used as a link.
• Search Engine Friendly Layouts - SEO friendly standards compliant layouts
• Dreamweaver Developer Center - Official Adobe web site, features loads of tips and tutorials on Dreamweaver best practices.
• Tutorialized - Great resource tutorials covering all aspects of web design and web development.
• .htaccess Password Generator - Generates the files you need (.htaccess and .htpasswd) to password protect a directory of your website.
• .htaccess Magic A comprehensive guide about using .htaccess effectively.
• Adaptive Layout Technique - An alternative to liquid layouts. It uses a light JavaScript code to identify the user’s browser settings and will load different CSS stylesheets accordingly.
• Embedding Flash - A tutorial showing you how to embed Flash objects while supporting web standards.
• Google Maps Mania - An unofficial Google Maps blog tracking the websites, mashups and tools being influenced by Google Maps.
• Google Maps Integration - How to add a Google Map to any web page in less than 10 minutes.
• JavaScript Kit - Comprehensive JavaScript tutorials and over 400 free scripts.
• MD5 Encryption & Decryption A useful tool to crack the hardcoded md5.
• WampServer - The acronym stands for Windows Apache MySQL PHP server. Basically is a package to set up a complete PHP development environment on your local machine.
• MiniAjax.com - A showroom of nice looking simple downloadable DHTML and AJAX scripts.
• Secure Password Generator - Create random passwords that are highly secure and extremely difficult to crack.
• W3C Validator This tool is my place of worship when developing websites, check that all your pages conform to W3C Recommendations and other standards.
• CopyScape This tool enable you to search for copies of your pages on the Web.

Free Website Templates

• ClickSite Pro - Hundreds of webmaster Tools and Resources for webmasters and developers including free templates.
• EffexMedia - Free website templates by designers.
• FreeLayouts.com - Over one hundred free templates.
• FreshTemplates.com - Free professional website templates.
• Open Source Web Design - Download free website templates, you can also upload yours.
• Zero Dollar Templates - Submit or download free templates.
• Free CSS Templates Good clean CSS templates.

Search Engine Optimisation, Web Analytics and Traffic Building

• Submit to Google Google’s official web submission page.
• Yahoo! Site Explorer Dig into all pages indexed by Yahoo!
• Advanced Search Operators - Instruct Google where in the pages or site, or even in which site, it should look to execute the query.
• Just Search Blog Great SEO blog updated daily with Internet marketing and search engine optimisation related news.
• Free SEO Software I have tried many SEO software packages and Web CEO is without doubt the most complete, easy to use, and the best of all, it has a well packed free version.
• Web CEO University Test and improve your Search Marketing expertise with this free SEO course.
• Quintura The visual search engine. It extracts keywords from search results and builds a word cloud. By clicking words in the cloud, you refine your query. You can also download the standalone software.
• 131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies - In search engine optimization (SEO), ‘off page’ factors have become more and more important as they relate to rankings. This article covers well-founded techniques to increase you link popularity.
• The Art of Linkbaiting Learn strategies that will make your backlinks go through the roof.
• Wordtracker Keyword Tool - The free keyword suggestion tool from Wordtracker to help your website rank higher in the search engines.
• XML Sitemaps - Free Online XML Sitemap generator. XML Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling.
• HTML Sitemap Generator - The HTML Sitemap Generator tool can be used to make HTML sitemap webpages for your website.
• Google Analytics - Use Google Analytics to see how visitors actually interact with your site.
• Adsense Alternatives Here’s a huge list of alternatives of advertising platforms to help you monetise your website.
• Free SEO Tools A wide range of search engine optimisation tools.
• 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic Killer tactics to get more visitors to your blog.
• 15 Most Common Errors in an AdWords Campaign Common pitfalls that marketers commit over and over again.
• URL rewriting Make your URL’s SEO friendly.
• Ping-o-Matic - Update different search engines that your blog has updated.
• Pingoat - Notify a number of services that keep track of weblogs and publish them.

CMS (Content Management Systems)

• OsCommerce - Open Source online shop e-commerce solution, it is one of the most popular free ecommerce solutions.
• Wordpress This is the CMS that I used to build this blog. It is simply to work with and there’s a massive community behind it.
• Joomla Known for its flexibility, Joomla is currently one of the most popular CMS. With a large repository of components, modules, and mambots; You can build any type of web solution with it.
• Drupal - Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal can support a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.
• CMS from Scratch - A quick, easy, and affordable solution that lets web designers give their customers a web site they can edit themselves.
• Geeklog - A PHP/MySQL based application for managing dynamic web content.
• PHPNuke - One of the most popular community-based portals with a big choice of modules and languages.
• Knock Knock! I’ve mentioned 101 resources remember?

Tino Triste

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Tamron unveils AF28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Macro lens

    

Posted on May 28th, 2007 .

Tamron announces the AF28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 XR Di VC LD Aspherical (IF) MACRO zoom lens, a high power zoom lens designed for SLR cameras. The new lens is a high power zoom lens that covers the range from wide-angle to telephoto and macro. Tamron has incorporated a Vibration Compensator anti-shake mechanism into this zoom lens. When lens is used with a full size format SLR camera, it covers the focal length range from 28mm in wide angle to 300mm ultra telephoto…

Tino Triste

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Bill Gates says all reading will be online

    

Posted on May 11th, 2007 .

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft has told a conference in his home town of Seattle that all reading will be online within five years. In his presentation the software guru believes the only barriers to total online reading are device size, cost and battery life.

“Somewhere in the next five-year period we’ll hit the transition point,” Gates told the Microsoft Strategic Account Summit for online advertisers. “Why is reading online better? It’s up to date, you can navigate you can follow links.”

Gates did not provide attendees with any clarity on how this transition will take place, whether eBook readers or MP3 devices would lead the change in consumer behaviour. “The only drawbacks of the digital form are the things associated with the device: how big is it, heavy is it, how many hours of power does it have, much do I have to spend to buy it?” Gates admitted that a high level of reading still takes place in print, but believes that will change, “As the device moves down in size and simplicity…we’ll hit that transition point, and things will be even more dramatic than they are today.”

Gates said the mass media will undergo the most radical change, although he didn’t cite any particular change. “The media itself will be quite quite different. The number of people who actually buy or subscribe to the newspaper and read it has started an inexorable decline. The internet is like a lot of things – the only sure winners are the consumers themselves.”

Tino Triste

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