Free Website Health Check - Let me know where to find your website and I'll send you a free, detailed review of your website, covering design, layout, ease of use and navigation, accessibility and search engine optimisation.
Websites from A-Z - Do you know your domain registration from your web hosting? Take a look at this one-page flowchart guide to getting your website up and running. No technical expertise required!
List of Topics
The list of links and free resources below are provided for anyone interested in finding out more about a variety of web design and development topics. Please note: the captions provided below represent personal opinions. Whilst my comments are drawn from my own experience, Rebel Phoenix cannot accept any responsibility for your use of the links provided below, or any further action taken (e.g. download, installation etc.) If you discover a broken or invalid link, please let me know.
Web standards; Blogs and social media; Web browsers; E-mail clients; FTP clients; Content Management Systems (CMS); HTML/CSS tutorials; Web design/development code editors; Web statistics; Images, photos and animations; Databases; Web hosts and domain name information; PDF readers; Miscellaneous.
Web Standards
- W3C - The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is an international community that develops standards to ensure best practice prevails among web developers and web designers.
- W3 schools - free web building tutorials for web design and web development, includes references, examples and information regarding web developer certification.
Blogs and social media
- Wordpress - Easy-to-use blog tool and publishing platform.
- Blogger - Google's blog tool, allows you to choose and customise a template with gadgets.
- Facebook - Social networking site, can be used to create a simple multimedia webpage for your business, including images, videos, links, news and discussion forums. Requires no knowledge of programming or web development.
- Twitter - Social networking site, useful for marketing purposes to provide brief news updates and links about your business.
- Add This - A simple button to bookmark your webpage on many social sites.
Web Browsers
- Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 - Although Internet Explorer has received a bad coverage in the press of late, Microsoft claims that the latest release, Internet Explorer 8, redresses major security bugs.
- Mozilla Firefox - a good alternative to Internet Explorer, with more useful shortcuts and more effective, less intrusive security features.
- Safari 4 - Apple's clean, aeshetically-pleasing browser. As the default browser supplied with Apple Macs, iPhones and the new iPad, this can be useful for web developers to see how their web design and web applications will appear to Apple users. This browser is also downloadable for Windows PCs.
- Opera - a quick, effective browser, funded by advertisement banners in the browser frame.
- Lynx - this text web browser gives you an approximation of how your web site or application is likely to be viewed by Google and other search engines. Useful to consult in various stages of web development.
E-mail Clients
- Mozilla Thunderbird - an easy-to-use e-mail client, allowing you to view and send mail from your account via a third-party client.
FTP Clients
- FileZilla - a free, reliable stand-alone program which allows you to drag and drop files onto your web server and create profiles for frequently-used FTP settings.
- FireFTP - a free, reliable program but must be run as an add-on to the Mozilla Firefox browser and is not available as a stand-alone program.
Content Management Systems (CMS)
- Freecms.com - allows easy text editing of HTML components of your web site. Very quick to set up and easy to use. Useful for those with little knowledge of HTML or web design. Requires inclusion of identifier tags in your web site, which can slow the loading of your web site.
- Cushy CMS - easy-to-use editing of HTML content. Web designers can set FTP settings and editable regions on behalf of clients.
- Joomla - an open source Content Management System, which requires some knowledge of Apache server.
HTML/CSS Tutorials
- Tizag - a clear, well-designed web site, offering tutorials and tips for beginner programmers and web developers in using HTML and CSS in accordance with standards of best practice.
- HTMLDog - a useful reference site for web designers considering webpage design and web development.
- CSS HTML Tutorial - includes information on HTML tags, links, images, lists, tables and forms. Useful for providing straightforward examples for those starting out in website design.
Web design/development code editors
- Visual Studio express versions - Visual Studio express versions are available for download. Useful for web developers looking to develop in ASP.NET, VB.NET (Visual Basic) and C#.NET. (N.B. In order to deploy a web solution, an upgrade to a paid version is required.)
- Crimson Editor - a small, professional program for writing and debugging code, includes syntax Highlighting for HTML, C/C++, Perl, Java, Matlab and LaTex. Can be customised to include highlighting for other programming languages.
Web statistics
- Google Analytics - register your website with Google Analytics (requires insertion of HTML tag to verify web site ownership) and retrieve information regarding: your most popular site content and keywords; routes to your web site (including search engines, advertising and direct hits); benchmarking (comparing your web site statistics with those of comparable businesses) and visitor profiling (including the geographical location, browser preferences and activity of your web site visitors). This tool is extremely useful for the purposes of web marketing, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and maximising footfall to your website. It can also help prioritise development projects to enhance visitor experience whilst using your web application.
Images, photos and animations
- GIMP - A full and versatile, free image manipulation program, allowing you to create sophisticated web graphics from scratch or using existing templates by graphic designers. Includes extensive free help documentation.
- Free Range Stock Photos - a web site of professional photographs free to download (upon registration). Web design using photographs from this website must include credits to the web site.
- Free Resources for Flash Developers - Flash facilitates the creation of versatile animated movies and presentations. Whilst the resources are free, Flash is not: it can be purchased as part of the Adobe CS4 (Adobe Creative Suite 4) package, including Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Contribute.
Databases
- SQL Server Express - a multi-layer database offering much of the functionality of the full (professional) version, a useful resource for web developers to test database behaviours with their rich web applications. However, the full, paid version is required for deployment.
- Access 2007 - the latest offering from Microsoft, Access is increasingly usable for scalable web applications. Whilst Access 2007 must be purchased, a free 60-day trial is available for web developers to try out the new features in this version.
Web hosts and domain name information
- Whois - a useful resource for determining the owner of a web site, if found to be unavailable. Requests to this web site are limited by IP address.
- Register.com - find out if your desired web domain is available or seek alternative domain names or extensions.
PDF writers
- Adobe reader - view, print and collaborate on pdf documents.
- Cute PDF writer - a free program producing high-quality, professional-looking PDF documents, enabling document security for non-editable documents. Adds CutePDF printer as a system printer on your computer or network.
Miscellaneous
- Seamonkey - an “all-in-one” web application, including web browser, e-mail client, newsgroup and feed client, IRC chat, and HTML editing.
- Favicon generator - a facility which allows you to upload an ordinary image file (.jpg, .gif etc) and converts it to an icon (.ico) file. Once uploaded to the root file of your website with the name "favicon.ico", this icon will show next to bookmarks and in the address bar of most browsers, promoting your brand.
- .NET magazine - provides interesting and informative articles exploring the features and functionality of the .NET framework and Visual Studio. A must for DOT.NET developers and web architects - some articles are available online, but receipt of the magazine in hardcopy requires subscription.
- Browsershots.org - generates screenshots of how your website or web application appears in up to six web browsers. Useful when choosing web design and styles compatible with more than one web browser or debugging browser-specific problems, to encourage web traffic to your site via a variety of browsers. This site can be slow when demand is high, but the results are useful and well worth the wait.
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