Website For You

One of the most common things you might do if you are the kind of person that needs to be updated with the latest news about any specific matter, is taking a look at different blogs and websites that are commonly visited by your friends and other people you know. Unfortunately, the internet is full of those sites and if you try to take a look at each one of them individually it would take you for ever to do it.

That is one of the main reasons why this service could a valuable option for you to bear in mind. In essence Arktan.com could be well defined as a free online service developed to give people the help they might need to be updated with blogs, news and photos, as well as videos and other kind of interesting material their friends might have added on a variety of social websites. For instance, if any of your friends have used sites like Blogspot, Flickr, YouTube or others, Arktan will be a valuable solution to be used when it comes to aggregating and "mix" this content.

After you do that the system will allow you to share the content with your friends or family, as well as colleagues by the use of different "channels" you can create. This will be like watching TV or videos while you take a look at the content your friends like. Now, the next time you want to watch any interesting photos or videos you just need to stop by Arktan.com to make use of an attractive and useful service you will enjoy.

Sites like Drop.io and eSnips give you a neutral space to store, access and share your documents, while sites like Photosynth help you create and publish your own content.

With better broadband speeds and advances in server center technology, sites that are willing to host large amounts of your data are popping up everywhere, and some are free. Other sites take your photos or other content and help you turn them into something fun to watch and listen to. We rate these sites on how secure and inexpensive they are, how much data they will store for you, and the quality of the product that results from working with your content at the site.



Storing and sharing content

Drop.io: Here, you can dump up to 100MB of pictures, video, audio, doc­­uments or whatever into a personal folder, and then share the URL (it would look something like 'drop.io/yourname1') with family or friends. It's super easy to use, and my favorite hosting and sharing site.

eSnips: At this center for social file sharing, you can store cool content, from documents to music tracks, online, and then easily access your "snips" at a later date and share the content with other users. But what makes eSnips different is that it's really a social network that provides users ample opportunity to discuss the things they're storing and sharing.



Publish your stuff

But storing and sharing is just one piece of it. A new breed of sites is making available to users some powerful tools that allow you to transform your content into cool new forms, like multimedia presentations, and then provide a platform on which you can publish the stuff to your Facebook page or your own Web site.

Picasa Web Albums: Flickr is so 2007. Google's Picasa Web Albums does the same kind of stuff (that is, organizing and sharing your photos), with a smarter and friendlier interface.

Lulu: You're a genius, and your book is brilliant -- the world just doesn't know it yet. Go to Lulu, which will help you self-publish hard copies of your masterpiece at reasonable rates. Its services range from design to marketing.

Animoto: Animoto takes your still photos and stitches them to­­gether into a little animated film using cool effects, and then adds music. It's free and easy to use, and the result is well-worth the small effort.

Photosynth: If you really want someone to experience what it's like to visit a place you've been to (a foreign city, an art gallery, a local pub, whatever) this site -- developed by M­icro­soft's Live Labs research arm -- assembles your digital photos to create a high-resolution 3-D walk-through that people can enjoy via a Web browser.

Capzles: Here you can make digital slide shows on steroids. Capzles creates highly controllable and information-rich slide shows of your photos, complete with background images and music.

Vimeo: Vimeo is arguably the best video sharing and hosting site right now because of its generous file-size allowances, as well as its focus on professional-grade filmmaking from people who live and breathe it. Worth checking out.

Sprout: Sprout is the easiest way to assemble your own Flash-style widgets, which you can then embed in your site or blog.

The Graphic Artists Guild promotes and protects its members and is committed to improving conditions for all graphic designers and the whole industry. They also produce the well known Graphic Artists Guild Handbook which is an essential part of any designers library.

2. http://www.aiga.org/

AIGA, the professional association for design is dedicated to protecting and advancing design and its importance to society. AIGA now represents more than 19,000 designers through national activities and local programs developed by more than 55 chapters and 200 student groups.


Design Tournaments

3. http://www.cutandpaste.com/events/Cut&Paste is a world wide live digital design tournament that goes on every year in multiple locations award prizes to the worlds best anonymous designers.


Generally Useful

4. http://www.lipsum.com/

This is a pretty famous site within the design community; you can generate dummy text on this site to put into your designs until the real copy is available.

5. http://www.alexa.com/

Alexa is a traffic ranking site that is widely used to research other sites. It’s not the most accurate tool but it has become common place and your Alexa rank is often a variable when determining advertising costs or site popularity.

6. http://www.csstype.com/

An incredibly useful site that shows you exactly how web fonts will look on your screen.

7. http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/

This is the ultimate branding library with thousands of the worlds most famous and popular logos. Great for researching corporate identity.

8. http://www.blogsearch.google.com/

An easy way to weed out site and just find blog on the topics you are interested in.

9. http://www.digg.com/

Digg.com is a great place for offbeat news and can be in indispensable weapon in your arsenal of traffic getting tools. You can submit well written articles to dig and if it is dugg a lot and becomes popular it can bring in a substantial amount of traffic to your website for free.

10. http://www.bloglines.com/

Bloglines is a great way to organize all the blogs you read into one place instead of having to visit a bunch of different websites and is a good time saver.

11. www.mozilla.com/en-US/

Arguably the best web browser out right now. I use it for most of my web browsing but don’t forget the other browsers when it comes to optimizing your website. Not everyone uses the same browser.

12. www.mozilla.com/en-US/thunderbird/

This is my favorite email client to use. It’s simple, efficient, and easy to use with solid email alert features. Very handy if you get important emails often.

13. http://www.adobe.com/

Home to the well known design software we all know and love. Good site to check out once in a while for updates and help regarding software such as Photoshop and illustrator.


Networking & Freelance Work

14. http://www.craigslist.org/

Craigslist is one of my favorite forums to use. There are tons of new design jobs and gigs added every day but the competition is stiff so bring your “A” Game.

15. http://www.getafreelancer.com/

If you are looking for an affordable but professional coder this is the place to go. Freelancers bid on projects you post.

16. http://www.facebook.com/

Facebook is growing incredibly fast and is a great way to network with other people and advertising your design services. Many professionals are moving to facebook over other social networking sites.

17. http://www.myspace.com/

Myspace has tons of potential when it comes to snagging freelance gigs or networking. They have a decently active classifieds section that you can use to market your work.

18. http://www.linkedin.com/

Linkedin is a very popular site for professionals and is a valuable networking tool.

19. http://www.krop.com/

Krop.com has a database of jobs for designers, artists, and developers with an instant and easy to use search feature.

20. http://www.coroflot.com/

Corofloat.com is a site where you can promote and host your design portfolio, search for jobs and post to hire some one.


Stock Photography

21. http://www.istockphoto.com/

This stock photography site has incredible photographers and even better prices for illustrations and photos. It will make your life way easier as a designer and has many other benefits such as making money selling your illustrations and photography, networking with other design professionals, promoting your portfolio site, access to active forums and much more!

22. http://www.corbis.com/

Corbis is one of the leading stock photography sites with millions of images online, featuring historical, fine art, business, technology, celebrity, travel, sports and nature photography.

23. http://www.shutterstock.com/

Shutter Shock is a subscription based stock photography site with over two million royalty-free stock photos available.

24. http://www.bigstockphoto.com/

Big Stock Photo lets you upload and download low-cost digital stock photography. They have well over a million photos organized into categories.

25. http://www.gettyimages.com/

Getty Images offers a large searchable collection of rights-managed or royalty-free images and films. Getty Images is a great site if you are looking for current event and public figure related photography.


Color & Charts

26. kuler.adobe.com

Kuler is a useful site to go to find color themes for your projects. Users can submit their own themes to be rated and you can search for many type of color themes.

27. http://www.colourlovers.com/

Colour Lovers is a great site with user submitted color palettes and even cooler is their blog that creates color palettes based on each blog posts at the end of every post.

28. http://www.logoorange.com/color/color-codes-chart.php
Nice chart that converts PMS colors to CMYK and RGB color codes for you.

29. http://www.ideo.com/

This extremely useful but simple web safe color chart lets you easily see exactly how different colors will look on your screen.


Inspirational Sites

30. http://www.cssbeauty.com/

CSS Beauty provides its users with a database of well designed CSS designed sites, as well as news and happenings related to the CSS Community.

31. http://www.thecoolhunter.net/

The cool hunter looks for the coolest and craziest stuff from around the world. Be sure to check out the design and art sections on the site.

32. http://www.logopond.com/

The Logo Pond is a great site to go to if you are looking for inspiration while designing a logo. You can even submit your own logo designs to be voted on and reviewed. Good way to get exposure for your studio or freelancing portfolio.

33. http://www.go2web20.net/

The Web 2.0 Design style is the big thing right now and many websites are redesigning their look to get with the times. This awesome site has a massive collection of all the new web 2.0 logos and links the websites.

34. http://www.cssvault.com/

CSS Vault has a collection of spectacular CSS websites and resources including: Articles, Demos, Layouts, Tutorials, and more.

35. http://www.stumbleupon.com/

After selecting topics of interest you can stumble upon quality sites related to those topics. I have found countless amazing sites doing this and not only is it great for finding new sites but it can be a killer way to promote and drive traffic to your own portfolio site or blog.


Portfolio Sites

36. http://www.altpick.com/

Altpic.com is a great portfolio website for artists and designers where many people come searching for the best oif the best. It is a great place to showcase your designs and talent.

37. http://www.portfolios.com/

Portfolios.com is a portfolio search site where viewers can easily browse through thousands of free artist and designer portfolios.

38. http://www.deviantart.com/

DeviantART is a large community of artists and designers who share their work with each other via an online portfolio. Many digital artists and illustrator flock to this site and you can even buy prints of your favorite artwork.


Design Magazines

39. http://www.printmag.com/

PRINT magazine is a very famous bimonthly magazine about visual culture and design.

40. http://www.howdesign.com/

HOW Magazine covers many areas of design such as the business aspect, new technologies, up and coming designers and is a place for creative inspiration.

41. http://www.idonline.com/

I.D. magazine is an International design magazine that covers products, graphics, environments, interactive media and other design related areas.

42. http://www.computerarts.co.uk/

Computer Arts is an informative site with free downloads, tutorials, galleries, competitions, a published magazine and much more.

43. http://www.maclife.com/

MacLife.com provides news and analysis of the popular Apple products and also has daily blogs from Mac Life magazine editors and a nice selection of articles to read.

44. http://www.pcmag.com/

This magazine is definitely handy for any designer. The hardware we use is the back bone of most of our work and PC Magazine has solid reviews of the leading equipment. I always look up products on their website before I buy anything.

45. http://www.pcworld.com/

PC World is a great place for Computer and Internet news and information, Resources, how-tos, downloads, products and more.


Fonts

46. http://www.dafont.com/

Dafont is an easy to use free font site with a large collection of fonts to download it. It has been around a while and is updated often with new fonts.

47. http://www.urbanfonts.com/

Urban Fonts is new to the font world but has quickly established itself as a leader in the free font community. It has an excellent design and is right up there with dafont.com in my book.

48. http://www.fontshop.com/

Font Shop offers great font collections on CD, free fonts, downloadable fonts, typography tips and more.

49. http://www.linotype.com/

Linotype has a massive collection of the most popular and well known fonts available for download. They also have a font lounge with many interesting font related resources.


Tutorials

50. http://www.pixel2life.com/

Pixel2life is one of the largest tutorial search engines on the internet providing great tutorials to graphic designers and programmers.

51. http://www.good-tutorials.com/

Good Tutorials is a massive tutorial website with tens of thousands of tutorials for Photoshop, Flash, Illustrator, and more.

52. http://www.w3schools.com/

If you need to brush up on your coding skills then this is the place to go. The information is accurate and up to date and its def worth taking all the tutorials.

53. http://www.tutorialoutpost.com/

Tutorial Outpost has a vast collection of thousands of tutorials for Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, 3D Studio Max, and more!


Photoshop Brushes

54. http://www.brusheezy.com/

Brusheezy is a very useful site with lots of great sets of free brushes varying in style.

55. http://www.psbrushes.net/

PS Brushes is home to over 500 Photoshop brushes that are all free to download and categorized for easy searching.

56. http://www.getbrushes.com/

Get Brushes has sets of Photoshop brushes made up of various swirls, ornamental designs, and flourishes. flowers, dots, circles, and various other ornamentations.


Printers

57. http://www.4over4.com/

4over4 is a good balance between quality and affordability and can handle most of the print jobs you would require.

58. http://www.modernpostcard.com/

Modern postcard is known for its quality printing but can be a bit pricey compared to other sites. If you are looking for top notch printing though look no further.

59. http://www.vistaprint.com/

Vista Print provides custom full color printing services. You can print business cards, Christmas cards, stationery, postcards, magnets, brochures, address labels, and even more.

60. http://www.clubflyers.com/

Club Flyers is an easy to use online printing service with many options available and fast shipping times.

61. http://www.alocalprinter.com/

If you are looking for a way to help the environment as a graphic designer then check out the new age of eco friendly printing.


Blog Hosts

62. http://www.wordpress.com/

Wordpress is my blog host of choice. It’s free and easy to set up on a server and there are tons of great themes and widgets available to use. I use Wordpress for all my blogs.

63. http://www.blogger.com/

Blogger is another very popular blog host. It has many of the same features Wordpress offers.

64. http://www.twitter.com/

Twitter is a surprisingly fun, easy to use and useful site when it comes to letting people know what you are up too.

65. http://www.squidoo.com/

Squidoo is an easy way to put up a quick and free website page about any topic you want. It is very popular in the affiliate marketing industry.

66. http://www.tumblr.com/

Tumblr is another super easy blogging tool that is very similar to Squidoo and twitter and just as good as both of them.


Blogs

67. http://www.designobserver.com/

Design Observer is a well respected site in the design community that features writings related to all aspects of design and culture.

68. http://www.lifehack.org/

This great site is dedicated to hacking your life by providing you with tips and tricks to get things done quickly by automating, organizing and increasing your productivity.

69. http://www.ilovetypography.com/

I Love Typography is a great web site devoted to typography, type, fonts and typefaces of all kinds. If you love typography you will enjoy this site.


Web Hosting

70. http://www.hostgator.com/

Host Gator is a well known, reliable and affordable web hosting company. They have a wide range of hosting services to take care of all your websites bandwidth needs.

71. http://www.godaddy.com/

Go Daddy is one of the biggest and most affordable web hosting and domain registration services. They have excellent customer service and quality servers. It is also very easy to mange you domain names and this is important if you have a lot of them.


Web Design Forums

72. forums.digitalpoint.com
This is one of the biggest and most popular programming forums around; there are many thread topics raging from coding and servers to search engine optimization and graphic design. It’s a great place to ask questions, find help or promote your services.

73. http://www.webmasterworld.com/

This is a very active and informative forum on the world of web design. It is a great place to learn and have questions answered.


Graphic Design Forums

74. http://www.graphicdesignforum.com/

This is a discussion forum dedicated to all topics related to graphic design.

75. http://www.graphic-design-forum.com/

This is another active design forum that allows you to chat about graphic design and post designs for a review.

76. http://www.steeldolphin-forums.com/

This is a fine art and graphic design forum where many users showcase their work and discuss fine art and graphic design with fellow community members.


Keyword Research

77. http://www.freekeywords.wordtracker.com/

This is an extremely important free tool for keyword research. If you don’t use this tool before you launch a site or blog then your missing out. They also have a more extensive paid version.

78. http://www.wordze.com/

This is another powerful keyword research tool.

79. www.google.com/trends

Google Trends is another good way to research keywords. Some keywords tend to be seasonal so you can check to see if certain keywords tend to fluctuate traffic wise at certain times of the year.


Search Engine Optimization

80. http://www.seomoz.org/

SEOmoz serves as a central hub for search engine marketers worldwide, providing education, tools, resources and paid services related to search engine optimization and marketing.

81. http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/

This is probably one of the most informative sites I have ever come across in terms of search engine optimization. It literally changed my life.

82. http://www.seroundtable.com/

SEO Roundtable reports on interesting threads taking place at the SEM (Search Engine Marketing) forums. They also write many articles on the topic of search engine optimization and marketing.


Advertising

83. www.google.com/adsense

Google Adsense is a powerhouse in the advertising industry. If you are looking for an easy way to monetize our website or blog then you will definitely want to check this site out.

84. http://www.adbrite.com/

Adbrite is a popular and easy to use text link advertising website where you can buy text link spots or make money by selling advertisement space on your site.

85. http://www.adengage.com/

A place to buy and sell text link ads on popular websites related to your website or blog.

86. http://www.text-link-ads.com/

This is another very popular and easy to use text link advertising site where people can easily purchase advertising space on your blog or website.


Computers & Electronics

87. http://www.apple.com/

Apple computers are a standard in the design industry and they are a great choice if you are looking for an alternative to personal computers.

88. http://www.newegg.com/

I love checking new egg for products because of their fair prices and customer reviews.

89. http://www.tigerdirect.com/

Another great site if you are shopping for anything electronic. They have affordable prices and a wide selection of products to choose from.

90. http://www.amazon.com/

Amazon is fast and reliable and is my favorite online store to buy books from. Delivery is always top notch.


Art Supplies

91. http://www.dickblick.com/

Dick Blick Art Materials has been providing artists with the best supplies since 1911. They have a huge selection of merchandise and good prices.

92. http://www.pearlpaint.com/

Pearl Paint is one of the world’s largest discount art suppliers and has a vast selection of art supplies at very affordable prices.

93. http://www.aifriedman.com/

A.I. Friedman is another great business that has been serving the artist community for over 70 years. Their products range from basic art supplies to studio equipment and furniture.


Graphic and Web Design Books

94. How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul

By Adrian Shaughnessy

95. Thinking with Type

By Ellen Lupton

96. About Face: Reviving The Rules Of Typography

By David Jury

97. Graphic Artists Guild Handbook

By Graphic Artists Guild

98. HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition

By Elizabeth Castro

99. Bulletproof Web Design

By Dan Cederholm

100.Smashing Magazine

Pioneer of Web 2.0

We all want to become faster and more efficient – but it often seems like there’s no time to make improvements to the way we work. We can laugh at the self-defeating nature of this circular logic, but that doesn’t get us any closer to a practical solution.

Five easy ways to boost your productivity

1. Zero your inboxIf you can, answer emails right away. If not, file them into folders for bulk-reply sessions. Don’t just let your inbox mushroom, or important emails may get lost in the flood.

2. Don’t reinvent the wheelIf some high-quality, proven and suitable mechanism already exists for something you’re trying to do, and you’re legally entitled to use it, do so, be it a coding library or CMS. If you can create components usable over multiple projects, do so to save working on the same thing over and over.

3. Hone things downIf a client wants a 50-page site and you can see a way of doing it in 10, tell them and convince them to do so. Smaller sites are typically more creative, and offer more clarity and focus.

4. Avoid interruptionsQuit your email client and browsers when you want to fully focus on some design work. At all other times, work with passive communication, so you communicate when you want to. Avoid interrupting others, unless the matter is extremely urgent and simply can’t wait for an extra hour.

5. Get away from your computer

Inspiration rarely comes from staring at a monitor for hours. So walk, visit exhibitions and read, rather getting all your ‘inspiration’ from other websites. Also avoid the temptation to start with the computer. Instead, design and plan freely with paper and a pencil. Work fast and don’t linger – you may find ideas come surprisingly easily.

Five tools to help you design better sites

1. Basecamp

Of 37signals’ portfolio, it’s web- based project management tool Basecamp that comes in for the most praise. “We couldn’t work without it,” says Happy Cog’s Jeff Zeldman. “We use it to collaborate with local and remote partners, keep track of deadlines, and even handle the bulk of our client communications.”

2. Firefox Web Developer toolbar

If you work on standard web pages, you’ve probably already got this installed. If not, you’re missing the means to efficiently and effectively test page components from within a standards- compliant browser.

3. Subversion
This popular open source version- control system enables designers and developers to maintain versions of code. As Andy Budd notes, “This enables you to keep up to date with the latest version of project files, which is especially useful if you’re working with external developers, or if you’ve got a distributed team.”

4. Silverback
This new kid on the block is a ‘guerrilla usability testing app’, enabling you to run low-cost usability tests with hardware you already have in your Mac. It records screen activity, video, audio and mouse clicks, and you can use the Apple remote to define chapter markers when usability problems are encountered. Once tests are finished, video and data is exported to QuickTime for analysis.

5. Pen and paperSeriously. Turn off your computer, go for a walk, and sketch some ideas, rather than staring blindly at Photoshop or Fireworks, gradually turning your mouse hand into a gnarled claw.

In this post, you’ll find 10 free tools to help you evaluate and correct issues which decrease your website’s accessibility. There was a high emphasis on the ease-of-use during the selection of these tools.

1. Firefox Accessibility Extension
The Firefox Accessibility Extension is a Firefox toolbar that allows you to inspect every aspect of a web page to determine its accessibility. A helpful toolbar feature is the Text Equivalents menu which allows you to generate lists of elements such as images and links to see whether each are standards-compliant. You can also launch 3rd party applications such as the WC3 HTML Validator and Link Checker services directly from the toolbar.

2. aDesigner
aDesigner, developed by IBM, simulates the experience of visually-impaired individuals so that designers can better understand how a web page is interpreted by screen readers. It has a plenty of features including a summary and detailed report of compliancy to web accessibility guidelines and simulations for blind or low-vision impairment.

3. EvalAccess
EvalAccess is a web-based service for testing your website’s accessibility. You can either point to a web page, an entire website, or directly enter your HTML source code. It checks your mark-up against the WC3’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 1.0) and provides a summary of the number of errors and warnings and a breakdown of each error.

4. WebAnywhere
WebAnywhere is a browser-based web application that works similarly to screen readers such as JAWS. It’s an excellent way to see how a web page is read and navigated by assistive technologies.

5. Web Accessibility Inspector
The Web Accessibility Inspector, developed by Fujitsu, is a desktop application that indicates web accessibility issues. You can specify a file, folder, or URL to run the inspection on. It has the “View on the screen” option which opens the web page in a browser window with markers that point out elements that have issues.

6. Vischeck
Vischeck simulates how a web page or image will look if viewed by people affected with color-blindness. It simulates three types of color-blindness. You can conduct the test by entering a URL or uploading images.

7. Accessibility Color Wheel
The Accessibility Color Wheel is a web-based tool to help you select the background color and font color. You can enter the hexadecimal values of the colors you want to test, or you can hover over the color wheel to select colors.

8. Colour Contrast Analyser
The Colour Contrast Analyser, developed by Juicy Studio, is a Firefox extension (currently in alpha) that checks all the elements in the Document Object Model for color contrast to insure that content is accessible by people who are color-blind or affected by other visual-impairments. It uses the color and brightness differences algorithm suggested by the WC3 “Techniques For Accessibility Evaluation And Repair Tools” (AERT).

Juicy Studio also has other web accessibility evaluation tools such as the Readability Test, CSS Analyser, and Image Analyser.

9. TAW Web Accessibility Test
The TAW Web Accessibility Test evaluates your website’s accessibility based on the WCAG 1.0. It marks trouble spots directly on the web page, allowing you to quickly see where the errors are. Clicking on the error/warning indicator will bump you down to a summary of the issue. It’s a great way to visualize the areas of a web page that needs work.

10. Web Accessibility Toolbar
The Web Accessibility Toolbar (WAT) is an extension for Internet Explorer or Opera that offers designers a ton of useful tools and features to help in the analysis of a web page’s accessibility. One helpful feature is the Greyscale (Colour > Greyscale) feature which renders the web page in black in white to help you find low-contrast spots in the design.

This collection of link building tips are likely to guarantee that you will receive free links from already established websites. This differs from content-oriented development strategies which hope to gradually attract natural editorial links.

These link building tips focus more on targeted link placement or link insertion, whereby you are likely to control the specific anchor text used. Some of them include agreements made with others and others involve one-way action on your part.

01. Submit your site to Web Directories. This is a pretty monotonous process that can get you several hundred backlinks if you have the time. An alternative would be to hire a manual directory submitter. Here’s a list of web directories you can use. You can also find some blog directories here.

02. Submit Press Releases to PR sites. A basic press release about your website’s launch can be released to several PR websites, who will distribute it to various online news outlets. A good way to get a free link. I recommend using PRWeb and PRLeap.

03. Reciprocal Links with Similar Websites. Its important to pick sites that are of high relevance so you’ll not only get links but traffic. Reciprocal linking can be useful from the beginning but don’t overdo it. You can find link partners by emailing them directly or searching through webmaster forums.

04. Squidoo Lenses. A Squidoo lens is fairly easy to create. It only takes around 15 minutes to set up one fully and you’ll be able to insert a bunch of anchor text links to your website along with your feed content. Hubpages is another similar site you can use.

05. Article Submissions. Create a short article on your niche topic and submit it to article directories for a backlink and some traffic. You might get more links if your article is picked up and published on other websites. Here is a list of article directories, sorted by Alexa and PageRank.

06. Social Media Profiles. There a whole bunch of social websites online which allow you to insert a link to your website on the profile page. Sign up for some of them, preferably using a username and avatar that brands your business or you as a person. This might come in useful when you decide to promote your site via the social website in the future.

07. Social Bookmarking/Voting Websites. Certain social voting websites like Netscape or Digg are often crawled by search engines and their links do help to get a website indexed. 3spots has the biggest list of social voting and bookmarking websites I’ve seen so far.

08. Forum Signatures. Sign up for some forums in your niche and start contributing to ongoing discussions. Insert a link to the homepage or some inner pages of your site.

09. Create a Tool, Theme or Widget. Pay a designer to come up with an add-on application or template that is related to a specific social network, popular website or platform. Include a credit link that points back to your designated website.

10. Blogs on Other Blog Platforms. Use existing blogs you have on other blog networks. Or set up different versions of your blog on different blog networks like Wordpress.com, Blogger and Xanga. Link to specific webpages on your website.

11. Comment on Other Blogs. Start commenting on relevant and popular sites in your niche. Don’t just spam for links but focus on building a relationship with other bloggers as well. Write a relevant comment and try to avoid using keyword names or signature links.

12. Guest posting on other blogs. Like article and press releases, this one involves having readily available content you can send out to certain blogs in your niche. This is great for getting relevant links and traffic.

13. Hold Contests. Some websites often offer contests in a bid to attract anchor text links from bloggers. An example is this iPhone giveaway on Gary Lee’s site. Contests allow you to determine the specific anchor text but its possible that too many links using the designated keyword may harm your domain instead.

14. Collaborative Projects. You may need to develop an article specifically for a writing project, blog carnival or meme but it will usually get you a couple of backlinks, depending on the number and generosity of the participants involved.

15. Offer your Expertise. This will apply if you have a specific skill set such as web design, copywriting, translation or SEO. Write to an established website and offer to revamp/optimize their website in return for a mention or credit link on a webpage. This offers excellent branding, particularly if your offer is picked up by a website with a decent audience.

This list is by no means comprehensive but are just some of the off-site methods I you’ll usually focus on networking and the development of exceptional content that’ll help to rapidly build a readership.

Finding great quality resources to build websites it’s just like searching for a needle in a haystack: if you have googled for quality web design and web development resources you know what I’m talking about. To save you all the work and countless hours searching for good webmaster resources I have compiled a list of the best web design and web development websites.



Hosting & Domain Tools

Domain Tools - Whois, domain suggestion tool, DNS query tools and many more…
DNS Stuff - Comprehensive web-based DNS and domain name tools.
Web Host Industry Review – Free Web hosting news.
WebHosting.info– Web hosting industry statistics.
FindMyHosting.com – Compare hosting prices, read reviews to find the right plan for you.
Web Hosting Jury - Read analysis, review and research of affordable and quality web hosting providers.
WebHostingTalk – Web hosting forum.



Inspiration

CSS Zen Garden - It shows how a web page can be dramatically changed by using CSS. Users submit design variations using the same XHTML.
CSS Beauty - Among other things CSS Beauty showcases incredibly well design and semantically coded web sites submitted by its users.
Favourite Website Awards - Well known web awards for cutting edge websites.
300 images from 1800 sites - Features 300 icons from Fortune 1000 company sites, major online retailers, well known blogs, top advertising, publishing, and design agencies.
Mashup Dashboard - Thousands of web mashups with new updates daily
W3C Sites - A collection of web sites created by designers and developers that conform with W3C standards. You can register and submit your sites too.
ThinkVitamin - A resource for web developers, designers and entrepreneurs.



Web Design

Color Match - HTML color code generator that will show you how to match your web site colors, it can also export colour schemes to Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.
Adobe Kuler - Create colour schemes which can be imported to Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator.
Steel Dolphin Creative - Choose a base colour and this tool suggests a colour scheme, you can select from a number of options such as complimentary colours, monochromatic, analogic, triadic, and double contrast.
ColorPic - Handy standalone software that allows you to pick a colour from anywhere on your screen.
All Free Backgrounds - Hundreds of free backgrounds.
Banner Standard Sizes and Guidelines - A list of all recommended sizes for web site banners.
BrowserShots - Online tool to test your design in different web browser running on many different OS platforms. It features all possible combinations.
Bullet Madness - A list of bullets, arrows and icons which can be used in menus, list and so on…
Favicon From Pics - Create favicons online
Font Tester Tool - Free online font comparison tool. It allows you to visually compare fonts side by side with various CSS font styles applied.
Free Buttons - Collection of free web buttons.
Photoshop Layer Styles - Over 400 different Photoshop layers styles.
Pixel2Life– The graphic design tutorial search engine.
Fireworks to CSS - Taking a Fireworks comp to a CSS-based layout in Dreamweaver.
Talk Mania Forum - Ultra stylish free web graphics, from simple buttons to full Photoshop web layouts.
Snap Shots – Do you want to get them cool bubble previews on your links? Get it here…
Web Accessibility Test - TAW (Web Accessibility Test) is a tool for the analysis of Web sites, based on the W3C Guidelines.
Web Accessibility Inspector – A standalone software tool that diagnoses whether Web sites are accessible to elderly and visually disabled people.
CrazyEgg - Improve the design of your site by showing you where people are clicking and where they are not.
Dafont.com– Free fonts.
UrbanFonts– Good quality modern fonts here.
Youtophoto - Search over a quarter million Creative Commons, Public Domain, GNU FDL, and various other FREE images.
Stock.Xchng – Free stock photo site.



CSS

Clean CSS - Optimize and format your CSS using a variety of different compression settings. Fixes bad code and generates clean and concise CSS.
Saila.com - A tableless, CSS-based, liquid, three-column layout.
Max Design - Step by step tutorials for creating 2 columns and 3 columns, fixed and fluid CSS based page layouts.
Layout Gala - A collection of 40 layouts based on the same markup, each with valid CSS and HTML.
CSS Tinderbox - Open source CSS/XHTML blank web design templates.
Free CSS Templates - Some more free CSS templates here.
Listamatic - An extensive list of CSS menus created using unordered lists.
Relative Font Sizes - Tutorial showing how to create accessibility buttons that let people increase and decrease text size.
Ruthsarian Layouts - A wide variety of CSS layouts.
CSS Mockups with Photoshop - Tutorial showing how to create a CSS layout using Adobe Photoshop and ImageReady.
Position is Everything – Learn how to make accessible web designs without using tables for layout purposes.
13Styles - Choose from a list of styles to build your own CSS menu.



Web Development

Email MeForm - Free service offering you customizable HTML forms for your website, without requiring you to know HTML or php.
Mailto Link Generator - For those of you who still using mailto links, here’s a handy online generator. Include multiple To: addresses, multiple Cc: addressees, multiple Bcc: addressees, add subject text, include some body text and add the text to be used as a link.
Search Engine Friendly Layouts - SEO friendly standards compliant layouts
Dreamweaver Developer Center - Official Adobe web site, features loads of tips and tutorials on Dreamweaver best practices.
Tutorialized - Great resource tutorials covering all aspects of web design and web development.
.htaccess Password Generator - Generates the files you need (.htaccess and .htpasswd) to password protect a directory of your website.
.htaccess Magic – A comprehensive guide about using .htaccess effectively.
Adaptive Layout Technique - An alternative to liquid layouts. It uses a light JavaScript code to identify the user’s browser settings and will load different CSS stylesheets accordingly.
Embedding Flash - A tutorial showing you how to embed Flash objects while supporting web standards.
Google Maps Mania - An unofficial Google Maps blog tracking the websites, mashups and tools being influenced by Google Maps.
Google Maps Integration - How to add a Google Map to any web page in less than 10 minutes.
JavaScript Kit - Comprehensive JavaScript tutorials and over 400 free scripts.
MD5 Encryption & Decryption – A useful tool to crack the hardcoded md5.
WampServer - The acronym stands for Windows Apache MySQL PHP server. Basically is a package to set up a complete PHP development environment on your local machine.
MiniAjax.com - A showroom of nice looking simple downloadable DHTML and AJAX scripts.
Secure Password Generator - Create random passwords that are highly secure and extremely difficult to crack.
W3C Validator – This tool is my place of worship when developing websites, check that all your pages conform to W3C Recommendations and other standards.
CopyScape – This tool enable you to search for copies of your pages on the Web.



Free Website Templates

ClickSite Pro - Hundreds of webmaster Tools and Resources for webmasters and developers including free templates.
EffexMedia - Free website templates by designers.
FreeLayouts.com - Over one hundred free templates.
FreshTemplates.com - Free professional website templates.
Open Source Web Design - Download free website templates, you can also upload yours.
Zero Dollar Templates - Submit or download free templates.
Free CSS Templates – Good clean CSS templates.



Search Engine Optimisation, Web Analytics and Traffic Building

Submit to Google – Google’s official web submission page.
Yahoo! Site Explorer – Dig into all pages indexed by Yahoo!
Advanced Search Operators - Instruct Google where in the pages or site, or even in which site, it should look to execute the query.
Just Search Blog – Great SEO blog updated daily with Internet marketing and search engine optimisation related news.
Free SEO Software– I have tried many SEO software packages and Web CEO is without doubt the most complete, easy to use, and the best of all, it has a well packed free version.
Web CEO University – Test and improve your Search Marketing expertise with this free SEO course.
Quintura – The visual search engine. It extracts keywords from search results and builds a word cloud. By clicking words in the cloud, you refine your query. You can also download the standalone software.
131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies - In search engine optimization (SEO), ‘off page’ factors have become more and more important as they relate to rankings. This article covers well-founded techniques to increase you link popularity.
The Art of Linkbaiting– Learn strategies that will make your backlinks go through the roof.
Wordtracker Keyword Tool - The free keyword suggestion tool from Wordtracker to help your website rank higher in the search engines.
XML Sitemaps - Free Online XML Sitemap generator. XML Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling.
HTML Sitemap Generator - The HTML Sitemap Generator tool can be used to make HTML sitemap webpages for your website.
Google Analytics - Use Google Analytics to see how visitors actually interact with your site.
Adsense Alternatives – Here’s a huge list of alternatives of advertising platforms to help you monetise your website.
Free SEO Tools – A wide range of search engine optimisation tools.
21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic– Killer tactics to get more visitors to your blog.
15 Most Common Errors in an AdWords Campaign– Common pitfalls that marketers commit over and over again.
URL rewriting – Make your URL’s SEO friendly.
Ping-o-Matic - Update different search engines that your blog has updated.
Pingoat - Notify a number of services that keep track of weblogs and publish them.



CMS (Content Management Systems)

OsCommerce - Open Source online shop e-commerce solution, it is one of the most popular free ecommerce solutions.
Wordpress– This is the CMS that I used to build this blog. It is simply to work with and there’s a massive community behind it.
Joomla – Known for its flexibility, Joomla is currently one of the most popular CMS. With a large repository of components, modules, and mambots; You can build any type of web solution with it.
Drupal - Equipped with a powerful blend of features, Drupal can support a variety of websites ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven websites.
- A quick, easy, and affordable solution that lets web designers give their customers a web site they can edit themselves.
Geeklog - A PHP/MySQL based application for managing dynamic web content.
PHPNuke - One of the most popular community-based portals with a big choice of modules and languages.