Webmaster Resources - The Best On The Net

At StatCounter we're all about helping the webmaster succeed. Having a StatCounter is critical to online success, but there are a number of other services the net savvy webmaster should be aware of.

We'll be listing a number of resources that will help you do just that. If there is a service out there you think that is worthy of a mention get in contact with us. We're not just looking for standard services out there - we want the elite service. The best of the breed. Nobody else doing it better than these guys.

Who will have the final say about what sites get listed? Well I will and we're not going to be letting any nonsense in.

List your ideas below or send us a direct email.

Also if you write a good article about a webmaster related issue, we'll give you credit. And get your article out to the mass webmaster community.

[webwey]

For a remotely hosted Guestbook, I strongly recommend Infinite FX:

www.infinitefx.co.uk

The URL for your guestbook is your own site, not theirs, so you completely customise the page as you wish....i.e. it is part of your site. You just insert the code (customised to how you want it to look) into the html of your page, no ads apart from a little graphic at the end of the guestbook.

Want to see what it is like? This is mine:

http://www.aquamoonlight.uku.co.uk/guestbook.html

(I picked a colour from my background as the message area colour)

No email facility to notify you of new messages though, but otherwise a fast and very good service.

[Annied]

Excellent idea.

[notsure]

You may know this one?

http://www.webtoolcentral.com

I like the ease of use and not too many adverts

[notsure]

Just found a good rank checking tool!

http://ranking.thumbshots.com :D

[jesterbr549]

I just signed up with you all today and already emailed this suggestion, but I will place it here as well.

I signed up with Master. Com http://www.master.com/texis/master/app/home.html and I am real impressed.

Many of their services are free and include your own Message Board, Search Engine, Calender and you can upgrade for more services. But even on their free services they index your site and will tell you if you have any broken links. I am real impressed with their service and don't have any problems recommending them to you all.

You can tailor the pages from them to fit your own site and it has given my site a professional look.

And thank you, by the way, for the service you provide here as well...

david

[webado]

A very interesting site focused on music and audio but not exclusively.
Lots of free or inexpensive software to download.

http://www.freebyte.com/music/

[jesterbr549]

Here's another good site I just found. If you have any jpgs you want resized, this is the place. Will also convert from jpgs to gifs etc. This is all for free (I'm into free stuff lately) but you can also upgrade. You can link to your photos etc, so as to save space on your website...

Image Link http://www.imagelink.org/index.php

[jesterbr549]

Another good, professional site that offers free stuff is the Press Release Web http://www.prweb.com/ where you can release articles on the Web in various catagories including, I believe, promos for you web site, if I am not mistaken. And, there as well, you can upgrade to more features.

[spectacularstuff]

Nobody has mentioned the greatest places on the Internet yet.

SEO GUY (http://www.seo-guy.com)
Webmaster World (http://www.webmasterworld.com)
Digital Point (http://www.digitalpoint.com)

Those are just a few...... Any serious webmasters HAVE to know about those places.

Hope it Helps!

[operator]

i found these helpful:

http://www.refdev.com/ ... has scripts, tools, etc.

http://invano.com/?root .... has photoshop tutorials and more

http://www.needscipts.com

mark

[Simon]

Some resources that I find useful are:

1. CountryCheck.com (http://www.countrycheck.com) - Allows webmasters to redirect traffic based on country origins. This service is also offered by others like IP2Location but with CC you only pay for what you use (not a large upfront fee), they have free sample scripts and most importantly, allow me to block surfers hiding behind anonymous proxies. Has cut down spam on my forums substantially.

2. Hurricane Transparent Website Localization Server (http://www.translationbooth.com/hurricane/) - Translation memory for your website. Saves thousands on website localization. With more that 75% of web users speaking a language other than English this software is vital. What is best is that there is a free version (with banner ads) and Google actually indexes the "translated" pages even though you haven't physically translated anything. I have had several phrases from my sites top the Google rankings in German, French, Korean, Chinese, etc.

3. http://www.netcraft.com

4. http://www.debugmode.com/wink/ - Awesome free, easy to use software for creating flash help demos.

That is my two cents worth. Hope you find them as useful as I do.

[winnipages]

If anyone is looking for a tool to catch your visitors interest right away, there is an excellent site which offers a 'virtual person' of sorts.

You can make this person look whatever way you want them too, change clothes, hair, accessories etc. You can even add your own voice to the character or have someone else do it for you.

I have used this tool a couple times and have received excellent feedback immediately.

Give it a try, the demos are free to test out.

http://www.oddcast.com/sitepal

[Amirsan]

I cant believe SitePoint has not been mentioned...

www.sitepoint.com

also the big ones for Photoshop Tuts is www.goodtutorials.com and www.pixel2life.com

For people needing webhosting:
www.webhostingtalk.com

I will come up with more later...

[spyware remover]

I second the motion about digitalpoint.com

So many free and very worthwhile tools!

AJ

[Kievcityguide]

My website is pretty much completely powered by this companies scripting:

http://www.focalmedia.net/

IMHO, they are the best in their field. Please check it out, it's worth it - trust me :)

[kgtrip]

:arrow: If you are looking for a free web hosting solutions you may visit this comprehensive guide on http://www.web-hosting.com.bz

[sofy60]

http://isphost.org has by far the best hosting plans and prices. If you compare your host to them youll end up switching as so many already have.

[grbeneke]

For optimising graphics i find
"Paint Shop Pro"
to be very good - its not free but definitely worth every cent. You can adjust you graphics, clean up bad photos and see exactly how long the images will take to download.

And for html development i use
"HTML-kit"
It's rated as a top ten download on www.download.com. Has built in code cleanup and validation tools and very easy to use - but only if you develop in raw html and want it done very efficiently.

[scouser]

Hi folks

Try this site for really good info http://webmonkey.wired.com/webmonkey/index.html

I find Search Engine Buddy from www.searchenginebuddy.com useful.

Cheers

Scouser

[Gezeiten]

For the mac folks out there, I can strongly recommend Creatext, a nice HTML-oriented text editor (especially for those who (like me) never quite got to grips with BBEdit).

It has some really nice features, it's open source, and it's free.

http://creatext.sourceforge.net/

regards, Per

[jf1288]

I'm a big fan of Web Design Forums.net (http://www.webdesignforums.net). It's a great place for help when you need it. There's people who know javascript, php, asp and of course html like the back of their hands.

[Gezeiten]

Hi everyone!

For those who want to publish their e-mail addres on their website (who wouldn't?) without running the risk of it being harvested by spambots, a very helpful tool can be found here:

http://www.jracademy.com/~jtucek/email/index.php

It's an online Javascript tool to produce custom JS code to iclude into your site that looks like a bunch of meaningless numbers to spambots, but like your email to everyone else. It works not only for writing your address to the site, but also for email-links.

The only drawback (as always with neat JS functions): if someone doesn't have JavaScript active, they'll see nothing (and <noscript>mailto: doesnt't do the trick, of course - maybe add an (unclickable!) image of the text.)

Let's all fight spam for good!

regards, Per

[webado]

Hi everyone!

For those who want to publish their e-mail addres on their website (who wouldn't?) without running the risk of it being harvested by spambots, a very helpful tool can be found here:

http://www.jracademy.com/~jtucek/email/index.php

It's an online Javascript tool to produce custom JS code to iclude into your site that looks like a bunch of meaningless numbers to spambots, but like your email to everyone else. It works not only for writing your address to the site, but also for email-links.

The only drawback (as always with neat JS functions): if someone doesn't have JavaScript active, they'll see nothing (and <noscript>mailto: doesnt't do the trick, of course - maybe add an (unclickable!) image of the text.)

Let's all fight spam for good!

regards, Per

A better method is to use the mailto obfuscator program (http://www.awes.com/obfuscator/ ) that "scrambles" text (in this case the email address) and produces a string of unicode. You place that in your html code instead of the usual ascii text. When you look at the source code you see "meanigless" strings. The browser knows what to do with it, humans usually don't or won't take the trouble to decode it. It will not be dependant on javascript. Trouble is that some bots may still pick it up just the same since it can be used as such, as long as they identify the mailto function in there.

Much better methods involve setting up email forms which do not use mailto at all.

[Nomad]

Some good places mentioned .......

I don't see a mention of W3C World Wide Web Coding Standards Organization. IMHO, this would be the first and foremost place I'd be recomending.

One of the main reasons why is the amount of sites which whilst looking nice and fancy, have some of the most yukky standards in page coding. I fully believe myself it is this that causes so many of the problems on the net.

Not only that, most sites, especially those using html 4.01 or lower are essentially illegal!

Strong statement but where's the proof?

Simply, websites are now seen as a form of 'Media' similar to newspapers, television, radio. Now, they are bound by law to make those services as readily available to the disabled, such as the blind or hard of hearing. With the earlier html standards of html 3.2, 4.0, 4.01 this is nigh on impossible hence the reason behind the issuing of the xhtml 1.0 and above standard a couple of years ago.

My point is most websites and most coders are not upgrading to the newer standards. Persistant problems with I.E., albeit now fixed in I.E. 6.0 if and only if the document is carrying the correct DTD identifier if at all. If the dtd is not present, then I.E. reverts back to reading merrily away as I.E. 5.0 and along with the inherant 'Box Model' problem.

Mozilla will render the site ok, but with it only being used by approxmately 15-20% of web-users as opposed to 60-70% of I.E. users? I think the point there is quite clear!

I'm one of those folk that believe if your gonna do a job, do it properly and keep upto date with your job standards! I only started out online about 3 years ago and when I started I did use html 4.0, 4.01 (And had the headaches and inherant frustrations along with it!).

About 3 mnths ago I decided I had just about had enough. I buckled down, went to W3C (http://www.w3.org) learnt how to use the Validator properly and am now writing exclusively in xhtml 1.1 along with css. It's taken me little under 3 mnths to learn and it is amazing the control, crispness and overall feel of professionalism I think it has given my site.

Anyway, thats my scope on standards and a place I will also recomend is webproworld. Has a few of the main guy's hang out in there forums from W3C...

My own place is www.trybalink.net and as far as I'm aware at this moment in time is the only site in Ireland following the recommended W3C standards! Open to correction on that but I have searched the i.e. sites quite extensively and as yet have to find any other Irish based Webmaster coding in xhtml.

I know a site that claims to use it (According to the dtd there using) but it is most definately not xhtml especially with over 100 mistakes in it! But thats all I have managed to find.

I'm actually thinking of starting up a service called 'Web Standards Eire' and promote the upgrading of Web Coding standards here.

I promote the use of 'Open Source' projects and also promote Charity projects along with what I've found may be interesting to folk in general. Most of the latter is handled in my own Community Forums, along with advice on how to protect your computer properly and for free!

The site is family and community based and is being developed as an ongoing project aimed at creating a safe, fun, educational, resource enviroment for the user.


Returning to my main point though, I really think it is time something is done about coding standards, maybe then we could get rid of some of the rubbish that abounds on the Internet.

Nomad - Trybalink Networking

[webado]

I found a very interesting page with lots of useful troubleshooting tips at http://static.tigerdirect.com/html/troubleshooting.html .

[Funk Doc]

http://tools.summitmedia.co.uk/spider/

Search engine spider simulator!

[Mikey]

I have used the following sites in the past that have useful bits and bobs and tutorials, hope they are of some use to someone:

http://www.hypergurl.com/ Free website tools, HTML scripts and Javascript

http://www.colormatch.dk/ ColourMatch - helps you co-ordinate a 6-colour matching palette for you website with hex codes (is hex the right word? Told you I am fairly new to this!!!

http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/story/storyideasindex.shtml Hold the Front Page a great website if you want some ideas and leads on stories if you have that type of website. Has helped me lots in the past when I used to have the time to write my own content. Who knows, I may start up again in the New Year!

http://www.countryluvn.com/index.html Hand drawn graphics that I have used on my site that are wonderful. There are limitations on the use and you have to link back, but I think it is very small price to pay for the exceptional work you are being allowed to display.

http://www.dhtmlcentral.com/ Scripts, demos and tutorials that I have found useful when trying to understand different things.

Apologies to all if I have repeated any of the these links, but I hope they help someone!!

Mikey

[Jeanie]

:D Hi,
You can find many free webmaster items at freebiesforwebsites.com

[efettig]

I use Creating Online (http://www.creatingonline.com)
almost everyday. They have tons of free seo and webmaster tools

[artistictouch]

another good resource is www.seoelite.com (http://www.seoelite.com)
and www.seobook.com (http://www.seobook.com), www.seoradio.com (http://www.seoradio.com)

[Jim_Westergren]

In regards to SEO then http://www.seofaq.net is a good resource.

[Joeychgo]

Can we add --- vBulletin FAQ (http://www.vbulletin-faq.com) to the list?

[webado]

I don't think so.

And BTW, if your site does not use Statcounter, kindly remove it from your profile and/or signature.

[Joeychgo]

I don't think so.

And BTW, if your site does not use Statcounter, kindly remove it from your profile and/or signature.



I do use statscounter ---

[webado]

I do use statscounter ---

It looks like now you have it, the html-only version at least. Must not have been the case when I responded previously.