Free Tools

I would like to share with you some amazing tools that I have discovered in my many years of designing web pages. They are very impressive and completely free!

Zamzar

Have you ever wanted to convert files without the need to download software? This amazing website will conrert files for your. You simply upload the file you want converted and tell it what to convert to and it emails you the converted file in a matter of seconds. It couldn't be any simpler.
Visit there website here: www.zamzar.com

KompoZer

KompoZer is a complete web authoring system that combines a basic web file management system and easy-to-use graphical web page editing. KompoZer is designed to be extremely easy to use, making it ideal for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking website without needing to know HTML or web coding. Unfortunately, this program does not create templates like Dreaweaver does.

See free video tutorials on KompoZer here

Download KompoZer for free here

FileZilla

FileZilla is a fast, reliable, and secure FTP/SFTP client that allows you to transfer files between websites and your computer. FileZilla has lots of useful features and utilizes a graphical user interface. It supports a simple click and drag format. This program is easy to use and it supports the transfer of large files. It is more intuitive than the many of the file transfer programs that come with many web authoring programs.

Download FileZilla for free here

W3C Validation Services

This is a favorite tool of most professional web designers. It is used to determine whether or not your web pages comply with the professional standards used today. It will let you know pretty quickly if your page validates. If it doesn't validate it will specify exactly where the problem lies. If you still have a problem you can request the validator to reproduce your code in a format that will validate. There are two validators that are used most frequently.

Mark up Validation - http://validator.w3.org/
CSS Validation - http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

IE Tester

It is well known that Internet Explorer (IE) has had a history of frustrating web developers due to poor compatibility of meeting W3C's standards. While each version has improved from it's successor, it is still difficult to predict how your pages work on the various versions. It is strongly recommended that you test your web pages on the different versions of IE. The problem is most developers are only able to have one version of IE on their computer at a time. This tool enables you to test your pages on IE versions 5.5, 6, 7 and 8 all on one application.

Download IE Tester for free here

Gimp

GIMP is a versatile graphics manipulation package. In my opinion it is comparable to Adobe's Photoshop software. This is an ideal program for designing images and graphics for your website. A program of this caliber is essential for compressing your images so they are optimized for your web pages. This simply means the pictures and graphics on your website will be reduced in file size so that they will load faster on you pages. This program will reduce the size of you files without noticing any significant difference in quality.

Download Gimp for free here

Hugin

Hugin is a remarkable program that allows you to stich pictures together. It competes with most Panoramic stitching programs on the market. I found it easier to use then most. It is also more forgiving. (After clicking on the below link - you may want to scroll down the page download from Pre-compiled versions section for easiest installation)

Download Hugin for free here

Inkscape

Inkscape is a vector graphics editor with capabilities similar to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format. Many web page authors use Inkscape for web page mockups or to generate parts of web pages, such as banners, logos, icons, and more.

Download Inkscape for free here

Be Funky

Be Funky is a free online photo editing studio with a large library of photo effects to turrn your ordinary photos into extraordinary art with little effort. You can also fix photo problems like bad lighting, digital noise, fuzzy colors and details in one click.

Visit Be Funky Website here: www.befunky.com/

Audacity

Audacity is a free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. This is a very good program for making mp3 and wav files. You can use Audacity to:

Record live audio.
Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
And more! See the complete list of features.

Download Audacity for free here

OpenOffice.org

OpenOffice.org is the leading open-source office software suite for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, databases and more. It works well with all comparable Microsoft applications (i.e. word, excel, access, and power point). This application is especially useful since it is able to export PDF files. Further, you have the ability to reduce the file size by compressing the images in your PDF file as needed. This is a great tool if you intend on placing forms on your website for your visitors to download or print out.

Download OpenOffice.org for free here

CutePDF

Create professional quality PDF files from almost any printable document. There is also a professional version that features high end features at a nominal cost.

Download CutePDF for free here

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the enterprise-class web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features now let you see and analyze your traffic data in an entirely new way. With Google Analytics, you're more prepared to write better-targeted ads, strengthen your marketing initiatives and create higher converting websites.

Visit Google Analytics website for more info: www.google.com/analytics

File Converter

Convert media files online from one format into another. This free online file converter lets you convert media easy and fast from one format to another.

Visit File Converter Website here: www.online-convert.com/

Browser Shots

Browser Shots is a free website that will allow you to see what your website would look like on a multitude of browsers. This a great tool to see if there are any incompatibility issues with your website on any of the major browsers.

Visit Browser Shots Website here: http://browsershots.org

Firefox

Firefox is the web browser of choice for most web developers. The various versions of Firefox have consistently rendered the majority of web pages more accurately than internet explorer. Firefox has the ability to incorporate some of the most powerful web development tools available. This is done by using what is referred to add-ons

Download Firefox for free here

Addons can be accessed free from here

Firefox Web Developer add-on

If you only install one add-on to Firefox this is the one that I would recommend. This is the swiss army knife of web developer tools. Below is a list of a few of the many features available with this tool:

Convert POSTs to GETs
Cookie Information
Current Window Size
Disable Styles
Display Form Details
Enable Autocompletion
Hide Images
Outline Block Level Elements
Outline Images Without Alt Tags
Outline Table Cells
Resize browser window size
Validate CSS
Validate HTML
Validate Section 508 Accessibility
Validate WAI Accessibility
View Source

Download the Firefox Web Developer add-on for free here

Shrink O'Matic

Shrink O'Matic is a free application to easily (batch) resize (shrink) images. It handles JPGs, GIFs and PNGs. Simply drag and drop images and they'll be resized as you wish! Options allow you to choose the output sizes, names and formats.

Download Shrink O'Matic for free here

Color Jack

This website is a fantastic tool that will help you pick compatible colors for your website. It is easy to use and it will help ensure that your site is color coordinated.

Visit the Color Jack web site here: www.colorjack.com/sphere

Splash Up

This is a simple and fun program to use. While not as sophisticated as some of the other image editor applications, it is so easy to use. It doesn't have to be downloaded and it can be used from anywhere that you can access the internet. It is a great way to quickly edit some images for your website.

Visit the Splash Up web site here: www.splashup.com

Internet Explorer Toolbar

The Microsoft Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar provides a variety of tools for quickly creating, understanding, and troubleshooting web pages. While not as comprehensive as the Wed Developer Firefox add-on listed above, it is a valuable tool for trouble shooting compatability issues with Internet Explorer.

You can dowload the Internet Explorer Toolbar for free here

Google Sketch Up

Google SketchUp is a free, easy-to-learn 3D-modeling program with a few simple tools to let you create 3D models of a multitude of objects. You can add details, textures, and glass to your models, and design with dimensional accuracy. This can be combined with a standard image editing program to create some decent effects.

Download Gogle Sketch up for free here

Blender

Blender is a suite of tools enabling the creation of and replay of linear and real-time, interactive 3D content. It offers full functionality for modeling, rendering, animation, post-production and game creation. Aimed at media professionals and individual creative users, Blender can be used to create commercials and other broadcast quality linear content, while the incorporation of a real-time 3D engine allows for the creation of 3D interactive content for stand-alone playback or integration in a web browser. I would not recommend this program unless you plan on spending a considerable amount of time learning how it functions. However, this program is capable of making some stunning animations.

Download Blender for free here

The Top Three Search Engine Submission Sites

The easiest way to list your site with over ninety percent of the search engines is to submit it to the top three search engine submission pages. Below are the submission pages for the top three search engines:

Scrub the Web SEO Meta Tag Builder / Meta Tag Generator Tool

Titles & Meta Tags are special HTML Tags that are inserted into your web page and are often not directly visible to your visitors. The main purpose of Title & Meta Tags is to help search engines understand, catalog and categorize your web page so those looking for your products or services can find you. There are many different types of Meta Tags that can be used for many different purposes. Use this free Meta Tag Generator on the below link to generate your "robot friendly" Title and Meta Tags. When it comes to search engines there are five major Tags that are important. These Tags will be created for you after you complete the form on this web page.

Visit Scrub the Web site here: http://www.scrubtheweb.com/abs/builder.html

Google Keyword Tool

Use this free Keyword Tool to get new keyword ideas. Either enter a few descriptive words or phrases, or type in your website's URL and this site will generate a comprehensive list of keywords and inform you of how many times that word or phrase has been seached for in Google.

Find Google Keyword Tool here: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Open Source Web Design

Open Source Web Design is a site that allows you to download and share free web design templates. This can save you countless hours of design time. In most instances you can use these templates by simply keeping a link at the bottom of your site acknowledging their designer.

Visit Open Source Web Design Site here: www.oswd.org

Clean CSS

CleanCSS is a powerful CSS optimizer and formatter. Basically, it takes your CSS code and makes it cleaner and more concise.

Visit Clean CSS here: www.cleancss.com

Dynamic Drive Fav Icon Generator

Use this online tool to easily create a favicon (favorites icon) for your site. A favicon is a small, 16x16 image that is shown inside the browser's location bar and bookmark menu when your site is called up. It is a good way to brand your site and increase it's prominence in your visitor's bookmark menu.

http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/favicon

Free Font Programs

It is important to have access to high quality fonts for helping to create professional looking logos, grapics and high quality lettering when working with graphic design programs. Here are a couple of websites where you can download some free fonts:

Free way of adding a search feature to your website

It is easy to add a search feature to your website. Simply copy and past the following code in the body section of your website:

<form method="get" action="http://www.google.com/search">
   <label for="q">SEARCH:</label>
   <input id="q" name="q" size="20" maxlength="255" value=""
type="text" />
   <input name="domains" value="http://www.mywebsite.com/"
type="hidden" />

   <input name="sitesearch" value="http://www.mywebsite.com/"
checked="checked" id="mysite" type="radio" />
   <label for="mysite">MYWEBSITE.COM</label>
    <span class="style1">.</span>
    <input name="sitesearch" value="" id="www" type="radio" />
   <label for="www">GOOGLE</label>
   <span class="style1">.</span>
   <input name="btnG" value="Go" type="submit" />
</form>

After copying and pasting the above code into your website change the sections that say my mywebsite.com to your websites address. Once the code is in place then submit your site to Google for indexing at http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

SITEMAPS pal

To improve your websites search ranking you should generate a sitemap. This website will walk you through the steps of generating a Google XML sitemap. It will only take a few minutes to complete the process.

Visit SITEMAPS pal here: http://www.sitemapspal.com/

Google Webmaster Central

Here is an essential site for helping you improve your ranking with Google search engines

Visit Google Webmaster Central here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/