by 6 people |
Designing websites can be a difficult job, but it doesn't need to be. There are a whole host of tools available to web page authors that make their lives much easier. This lens describes and lists some applications and utilities for website designers
Introduction
On this page I have tried to include a variety of different web tools to assist you when you are designing and writing your own web pages. I've not tried to include every possible webtool which is out there, since the list would be extremely long, but instead I'm just including those web tools which are good examples, are unique, or which cover specific areas of page design. If you think I've missed any webtool in particular, please let me know, and I'll try and include it next time I update the page.
Domain names
What are you going to call your domain? How can you check that the one that you want is available?
- Network Solutions
- ..has a dinky little name checker on the right hand side of the page. Type in the domain name you're interested in, and it will tell you if it is available, and if not, what similar ones you could get.
- EasySpace
- This web hosting site also has a nice domain checker you can use.
- Domain Name Checker :: Webmaster Toolkit
- Helps you find the domain you've been looking for, or check the details of an existing domain.
- Domain name generator
- Can't think of a good name? Type in a couple of words or concepts and the Nameboy will come up with a variety of options for you to consider.
- Domain name generator: create, generate, check, query and register domain names
- Combine your keywords with categorized prefixes and suffixes, query whois, check for availability and register domains. Provides many other valuable resources.
- Domain Tools: Whois Lookup and Domain Suggestions
- Domain name search tool; allows wildcard search of current and deleted/expired whois domains. You can get information on a particular domain and suggestions for different names if the one you want isn't available.
- Check if your domain has been attacked by typosquatters.
- Check if your domain has been attacked by typosquatters
Protect yourself from URL hijacking - Fast Domain Search/Suggestion Tool - Bust A Name
- Our free tool lets you quickly check domain availability. And our domain search engine combines the words you enter and tells you which combinations are availalbe.
Webpage creation
There are plenty of tools out there that will actually create pages for you - you don't need to know any code, use any HTML authoring tools - just plug in what you want to say and they will create the pages for you!
- Home pages for teachers
- The home maker is specifically designed for teachers to use. Create the page and the code is emailed to you.
- Build your webpages
- This service is currently suspended, but check back to see when it goes live again
- Create a Website - Also Free Websites for Beginners
- Create a website with free web site builder. 100% Free Websites. This links into the Yahoo! system for creating sites.
- Yahoo! GeoCities
- Create pages at Geocities. Great for home/personal/hobby use, but I would advise against it for serious professional use.
- Make a website easily with ZyWeb Web Site Builder
- Create a professional quality website in minutes. Includes photo editor, photo albums and e-commerce shopping cart. This is a commercial product, but it's free for 30 days if you just want to play around and try it out.
- Colour codes for your webpages
- This is a page that lists colours, allowing you to quickly choose your preferred colour and it provides you with the code to plug it into an HTML authoring tool quickly and easily.
- WebForms - HTML forms generator
- WebForms is an HTML forms generator which allows you to generate forms and import your responses into a database on your hard drive, with or without CGI!!
- FrameShop
- If you want frames on your site (which I don't advise, but it's up to you), this resource asks you some questions about exactly what you want, and then creates the code for you.
- TableMaker
- Make Tables for Netscape & Other Browsers Easily! Just fill in your preferences for the table you want to make (only the DATA field is absolutely required) and then hit either of the two "Make Table" buttons.
- ColorMaker
- ColorMaker is the fastest and easiest web-based tool for adding text colors, background colors, and background patterns to your web pages. Just click on the colors and patterns you like and the sample page is updated instantly. Great for checking out what works and what doesn't.
- MapThis!
- Map This!, Free Image Map Maker/Editor. If you want an image map for your site (a clickable image), you can download this software utility and create them quickly and easily.
- Five Across Bubbler Instant Publisher
- Make a site with drag and drop
- Edit me
- EditMe is an online service that allows customers to easily build web sites that are irrestibly editable. This is a commercial product.
- Steve's free web page templates
- A wide variety of different templates that you can use if you don't have the time to design your own.
- Free website and hosting service
- Useful for creating your own webspace - free but with advertising.
- JotForm
- Web Based WYSIWYG Form Builder. Create and publish web forms using your browser.
- SiteKreator.com
- SiteKreator lets you easily create and update your own personal or business web site. Choose from a variety of web page templates to build your site, change design with just one click, manage all types of content, add photo galleries and file storage areas, get free hosting.
Checking your pages
It can be difficult to check your own pages, to see any errors that you have made. Luckily this isn't a problem, since there are plenty of page checkers out there that you can use.
- Web page compatibility viewer
- Include your URL and the checker will see if it is backwardly compatible with various browsers.
- Dr. Watson, v5.1
- Excellent web page validator - it's one that I use on a regular basis.
- Doctor HTML v6
- Doctor HTML v6 Examines HTML pages for common mistakes and produces a report. This is now dead, I'm afraid.
- The W3C Markup Validation Service
- This is the W3C Markup Validation Service, a free service that checks Web documents in formats like HTML and XHTML for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards.
- Watchfire WebXACT
- WebXACT is a free online service that lets you test single pages of web content for quality, accessibility, and privacy issues.
- Checkweb
- First rate free utility you can download to check your web page links.
- Find broken links on your site with Xenu's Link Sleuth (TM)
- A free multi-threaded link checking software to analyze web sites to find broken links. Runs on Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000 and Windows XP.
- CSE HTML Validator Lite - FREE HTML Editor and Syntax Checker
- A free HTML syntax checker for Microsoft Windows from the developers of CSE HTML Validator Professional.
- tafweb.com
- A simple piece of software that you can download to check your links.
- Search Engine Simulator
- This service allows web authors to see what their pages will look like (sort of) to a search engine. This service ignores the META tags that some search engines honor.
- URLinfo beta || Fagan Finder
- URLinfo is a tool for handling web pages: translating, tracking changes, searching, finding similar pages, looking up WHOIS (ownership) data, reading reviews, and many more operations. You can check your pages in more ways than you thought was possible.
- Silktide Sitescore - how does your website score?
- SiteScore is a free tool which rates how well designed, popular and accessible your website is. Simple to use, but very hard to get a high ranking.
- Click Density
- Want to know where people are looking on your page? This is a nifty little tool that you can use that will tell you. Free for 30 day trial and commercial.
- Topicalizer
- The tool for topic extraction, text analysis and abstract generation
- Small business page checker
- A search engine optimization tool for evaluating website's ability to help generate leads and convert a higher percentage of them to customers.
- Website Grader
- Nice little website checker. Fast and effective - looks at the marketing side of what your site is doing. Downside is that it's a little basic.
- SiteVista: Features
- See how your pages look in a wide range of different web browsers, at different screen resolutions, and different color depths. Commercial product.
- 30 tools for checking your website
- Links to 30 free online tests to check out your website.
Graphics
Graphics, colours, information on visual disabilities... this is all stuff that you need to know.
- Imagitek's background color selector
- Make sure you choose a background that works! This tool lets you try out different colours to see what is appropriate for your site. Saves a lot of messing around and trial and error.
- Non-Dithering Colors in Browsers
- A short page packed full of information on what colours work on websites.
- Animation Factory's MediaBuilder
- Free Backgrounds, Clip Art, Web Elements, Animations and Online Tools
- Color Deficient Vision
- Color blindness references for Web Designers. Cards and Charts simulating the web-safe colors in color blindness. Explanation, instructions.
- Web Accessibility Home
- An excellent resource centre from the RNIB on everything a webdesigner needs to know about designing websites for people with disabilities.
- Favicons
- Short for Favorite Icons (?) In other words, the small image you sometimes see in the address bar of the browser. Easy creation tool.
- So You Want Your Own Bookmark Icon, Huh?
- Another guide on creating a favicon.
- Brilliant Button Maker by LucaZappa.com
- Make neat little buttons for your site, 80x15
- Steal These Buttons
- Over 3,000 80x15 buttons for you to make use of.
- Accessibility Color Wheel
- Accessibility Color Wheel - choose color combinations to improve the readability of your pages
Meta tags and keywords
All you need to know about the meta tag, and information on checking your site for keyword density.
- Meta tags - what, where, when and how
- This is an article that I wrote, and it's been copied and posted on so many other sites I've lost count. Tells you what meta tags are, and how you can use them, and the format that they take.
- META Tag Builder
- This script builds HTML META tags for better searching by robot-based search engines such as AltaVista.
- Keyword Density Analyzer
- Search Engines Optimization software: Keyword Density Analyzer and Search Engine optimizer. Free evaluation download at GRSoftware.
- Keyword Density Analyzer
- Keyword density analyzer and word depth calculator
- Keyword density analyzer, and keyword placement & prominence analysis
- Very comprehensive and fast checker.
- Keyword Density
- Another very simple, easy to use checker.
- Meta Tags Retriever download
- Download meta tags retriever Meta Tags Retriever is a simple tool for webmasters to use to find other optimized meta tags generated from the top 20 sites returned from a Google search.
- Meta Tag Expert
- Nice piece of software that creates meta tags for you.
- Google keyword suggestion feature
- Input a word or two, or a site address and Google will come back with some suggestions for keywords or phrases. Useful if you're not sure that you have the right words on your pages, or need some more ideas for your text.
- Intention Cloud
- Get suggested terms in the form of a cloud. Useful if you're wondering what terms to put onto a web page.
Other useful utilities
Wait! There's more. A whole lot more in fact. The following is a list of utilities that you can use to further enhance your site.
- Password protecting pages
- This isn't a 100% secure script, but it's easy to use and quite difficult to break (at least for most people!)
- Email Protector
- Just follow these instructions and you'll have some code to copy and paste into your website's html. The advantage is that you can make your email address available for people to use, though the disadvantage is that it only works if your user has their email client set up correctly.
- Creating a custom 404 error message
- Get rid of horrible and unhelpful 404 error messages and replace them with something more sensible and helpful.
- Oven Fresh Poll Maker
- Download oven fresh poll maker Poll Maker. Make web site voting polls for an unlimited number of web sites. This is a piece of free software that you download and use to make your own polls.
- Google map
- Nice easy to follow description of how to put a Google map onto your site.
- Google Map Maker
- A really simple tool to make your own google maps to add to your website
- Check page ranks quickly
- I don't have much interest in page rank (Google's indication of the importance of a webpage), but I know that a lot of others do. This is a useful little tool to check the page rank of any page that is linked from the page URL that you put in.
- Vizu: Web Polls, Blog Polls, Email Polls, Public Opinion, Research
- Simple way to add a poll to your website
- Ranking factors
- Search Engine Ranking Factors
- Checking the power of your page
- A useful tool that uses a variety of different methods to work out how powerful and important your page is.
- Google Filters, how to get around them and exploit their loop holes
- This weblog posting provides lots of useful information about how to get around Google filters, and explains what they are in the first place. Very useful background information.
- LabPixies - Coolest Gadgets On The Web
- Your source for the Coolest Gadgets on the Web! LabPixies creates quality gadgets for the personalized environment. Add a cool gadget to your personelized homepage or website in one click!
- Google Desktop Gadgets
- Google Desktop Gadgets
- Widgetbox widgets for WordPress, TypePad, MySpace and other blogs and web pages
- web widget directory
- yourminis :: main
- yourminis.com allows you to customize and grab widgets for your blog, website, and now...desktop! Our widgets let you do great things like watch youtube videos, browse flickr photos, read news and rss feeds, listen to MP3 music, check the weather and much, much more.
Accessibility
You need to make sure that your site can be viewed properly by all your users - including those with disabilities. There are some tools and services that help tell you how well your site is performing.
- UsabilityExchange
- Usability Exchange - Connecting organisations directly with disabled users to resolve accessibility and usability issues. This is a commercial site that employs people with disabilities to check out websites. An excellent idea!
- Designed for all
- Designed for All is the UK's leading research advisory specialising in interactive user experiences. We ensure that websites and other interactive media are usable by everyone.
- Webcredible - web usability & accessibility consultancy
- Usability and accessibility consulting, training and CSS web development from Webcredible. Site provides a large resources area with over 100 free articles and white papers.
by Phil_Bradley
UK librarian and internet consultant. My particular interest is internet search, but I'm also an advocate of blogs, rss and Web 2.0 applications. I'm... (more)
