Useful Web Sites
Here's our list of favorite web resources.
Web Site Testing Tools
- W3C Validator - Check your web site to ensure you have valid HTML.
- W3C Link Checker - Make sure all of the links on your pages are valid.
- RSS Feed Validator - Check your RSS feed to ensure you have valid, well-formed XML.
- BrowserShots - Free tool to see what your web site looks like in various browsers.
- BrowsrCamp - See what your web site looks like on a Mac.
- Mobile Phone Emulator - See what your web site looks like on a mobile phone.
- Protect Your Email Links - Make the email addresses on your web pages unreadable by harvesters.
- Email address harvest checker - See if the evil harvester bots can swipe addresses from your web site.
- Sitemap Generator - Create site maps for Google, your visitors, and other search engines, free!
- Email Server Check - See if your mail server is blacklisted, or run diagnostic tests.
- Spam Checker - Test your newsletter or other email to see if it might make it through a spam filter.
- Web Page Analyzer - Free web page analysis tool calculates page size, composition, and download time. Gives recommendations based on best practices for usability, HCI, and website optimization.
- SEO Site Checkup - Analyzes URLs and automatically gives recommendations so sites can load faster, rank higher for search terms, and attract more visitors.
- Down for Everyone or Just Me? - If you're having trouble getting to your web site, use this site to see if there's a problem on your end or if nobody can access your site.
- TinyURL takes long web addresses and makes them short enough to use in emails. It's a permanent link and the service is free! See their site for more ideas on using tiny URLs.
Web Site Essentials
- Web Site Templates - The world's largest professional ready-made web design shop.
- Free Templates - These templates are all with valid HTML and CSS! Sweet.
- Logo Design Pros - Get your business logo designed FAST, for a very reasonable price.
- Web Hosting - A nice home for your new web site, or your existing site!
- Secure Server Certificates - From GoDaddy.com, just $30 per year to certify your site.
- Web Hosting Guide - Web hosts rated by visitors.
- Web Editing - Have Dr. Jerry Bills improve your spelling, grammar and web site copy.
- Web Site Statistics - An awesome free resource to see what your web site visitors are doing.
- VisionGatePortal - All the tools you need to build a subscription web site.
- aMember - Membership software for easily password protecting areas of your web site.
- phpForms - Allows you to create your own customized, secure web forms. It's easy to install and operate and requires no programming.
- Survey Software - Add surveys to your site with this free software from LimeSurvey.
WordPress Links
- WordPress - The main site, where you can also find plugins and themes.
- Thesis Theme - A great framework for developing your WordPress blog.
- Free WordPress Templates - Find a great theme at WP Themes Free or WordPress.net
- WordPress Theme Generator - Make a theme from scratch.
- Template Generator - Another theme generator, to start very simply. Great for sites with an existing layout.
- Theme Reference - Template Tags and Conditional Tags
- WordPress Vulnerabilities
Web Site Marketing & Research
- Internet Marketing - Ralph Wilson provides great resources for web site marketing. Subscribe and get his excellent Web Marketing Checklist, plus a whole bunch of other goodies.
- Search Engine Submission - Here's a great, comprehensive list of where to submit your web site for inclusion in search engines and directories.
- Alexa - Track the popularity of your web site by looking at Alexa's traffic reports.
- dnScoop - Many domain tools wrapped into one convenient package.
- Page Rank Checker - A free tool to check the page rank of any web site easily, without the need to install Google toolbar. This tool also allows you to display the page rank value of your web site right on your web pages.
- Domain Tools - Research all kinds of information about any web site.
- Netcraft Domain Info - Find out what kind of web server a site uses, and more!
- Reverse IP Lookup - Find out who has control of a particular IP address.
- Who Is Hosting This - Find out which web host a site is using.
- About Us - Lots of info about any domain you would like to research.
Design Resources
- Glass Button Maker - Online app to create glassy buttons. Neat!
- Free photos from WikiMedia, Creating Online and Every Stock Photo.
- Free Icons - Very nice sets of icons.
- Image Optimization - Save time and bandwidth! Optimize your gif, jpg, and png images.
- Need backgrounds or other web graphics? GRSites is a great, free resource.
- Color Schemes and Tools - A very handy tool for picking colors that go together. Here's a tool to create a color scheme from an image. And here's another color palette tool.
- Color Scheme Designer - A very handy tool for picking colors that go together.
- Favicon Generator - Simple upload and go for making a favicon for your web site.
- Favicon Editor - This one lets you edit your icon. Make your web site stand out with its own custom browser icon.
- My Live Signature - Generate a realistic-looking signature for use on your web site, in emails, etc.
- Alertbox - A great site dealing with the day's web site usability issues.
- Article-Worx - An article directory providing free content for your websites, message boards, blogs, ezines, etc.
- Identifont - If you need to figure out what font is being used, here's the place to do it. Also cool is What the Font?! because you can upload a graphic and it will try to analyze the picture and detect the font.
- dafont.com, DiscoverFonts and SearchFreeFonts.com - Nice collections of free fonts for PC and Mac.
- Free CSS Templates - Free CSS Templates to use on your site or for learning or inspiration.
- Lorem Ipsum Generator, for making blocks of text when doing design work.
- eCover Tools - Create virtual product packaging for all your electronic products with this Adobe Photoshop template kit.
- Overlib - Add javascript popup windows quickly and easily.
- Table Generator - Specify the rows, columns and classes and it creates valid HTML for your table.
PDF and File Conversion Tools
- Convert Files to PDFs - Have a Word Document you want to email or place on your web site as a PDF? No problem. Converts from a variety of formats.
- Online File Conversion - Convert files between many formats.
- PDF My URL - Convert a web page into a PDF.
- PDF on Fly - Online PDF conversion, from a web page or image.
- PDF Hammer - Free online PDF editor. Combine or delete pages, add a password or update meta data.
Programming
- PHP Reserved Variables - A reference guide to all of the built-in variables PHP has to offer.
- PHP Filter Functions - For validating user input.
- HotScripts.com - An incredible collection of all kinds of scripts for your web site.
- Javascript Toolbox - A repository of code and reusable libraries by Matt Kruse.
- Javascript Countdown Timer - A nice little script to show how long before an event takes place.
- WordPress Database - Reference for accessing your database using WordPress functions and PHP.
- Javascript Events - Reference for what events are available for each type of screen object.
- How to Redirect - Essential info for when you have to redirect an old page to a new, clean one!
- HTML Code Tutorial - An excellent reference for all things HTML.
- IRT.org - Articles, FAQs and more for Internet Related Technologies.
- RegEx Tester - Enter your regular expression and some data to see if your expression works. Also handy: RegEx Reference
- Document Type Usage - Pick the correct doctype setting for web documents.
- Hacker Webzine - I like to look at this person's blog to see what's up in the world of security.
Miscellaneous
- Kill Dead Pixel - Use this if you have a dead pixel on your monitor... you might be able to bring it back to life.
- Shared Book - Self-publish your very own book!
- Lick Your Plate Clean - Emily's attempt to start a treehugger trend.
- Small Steps - Making small changes can have a big effect on your health.
- Gigapxl Project - Graham Flint has a 4 gigapixel camera!!!
- Almost Breathing - Software to make your own life-sized cardboard cutouts. Neat!!
- Kaspersky Online Virus Scanner - Upload a file and have it checked for viruses. Great for people who don't run Windows but need a file scanned.
- Men Made Easy - An incredible e-book about transforming your personal relationships.
- Resume Service - Resume writing services by a resume writer published in over 25 books. Site offers a resume clinic, career articles, career resources, and free resume samples and cover letter samples.
