Tools for website developers

Get answers to your web questions!
Try WebMonkey's website for help with all sorts of problems and situations.
www.webmonkey.com

WebReview.com is a large and long-standing weekly site dedicated to Web professionals. Published weekly, its stance is about Web teams — ensuring that each member of a team gets what he or she needs to do their jobs quickly, efficiently, and with the best information and skills available. Articles and tips for web authors, designers, developers, strategists and more.

SitePoint provides information and resources for people who want to build, promote and profit from their own Website. Whether you're an experienced Webmaster or a complete beginner, you'll find relevant, valuable resources on the SitePoint Network to help you: build and launch your site, manage and maintain an effective online presence, and ensure your site continues to thrive.
The SitePoint Network consists of six major sites:
• SitePoint Hub, featuring articles, reviews, tutorials, forum discussions, tools and services;
• WebmasterBase.com, which takes a hands-on approach to building successful websites;
• ECommerceBase.com, focusing on making your website profitable;
• PromotionBase.com, presenting tips, tricks and expert advice on the most effective ways to drive targeted traffic to your site;
• ServicesBase.com, a comprehensive directory of useful tools and services; and
• Forums, where you can join the SitePoint community of dedicated users who thrive on helping each other out 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Web Color Palette and Monitor Resolution

Browser-safe Color Palettes
If you're a website developer, one thing you quickly learned are the limitations of browser-safe colors. PubCom has compiled these colors into a chart organized by hue so that you can quickly see your choices.

Visit this extensive collection of links to resources concerning color technology, color image coding and accurate color reproduction, compiled by Charles Poynton.

Checking Your Monitor's Color Resolution
Following the simple steps in our quick article will ensure that you're seeing the most accurate color.

Web Hosting and Internet Connections

Looking for a comparison between Linux/Unix and Windows 2000 web hosting servers? http://www.hostway.com/webhosting/unix_vs_windows.htm

Brush up your knowledge of DSL, ISDN, dial-up, and cable modems
This is a great mini-tutorial that compares the pros and cons of the most common modems for connecting to the internet. It'll give you some background to help you select the right type of service for your needs. Although this appeared in ZDNet's MacWorld magazine, it's applicable to both Macs and PCs.
Kill Your Modem, MacWorld, Nov. 2000

508 Accessibility

Six Easy Things to Do to Meet 508 Compliance — Simple steps and a listing of useful links and resources to increase accessibility to your web pages.

PubCom's links to 508 websites.

HTML Character Chart (ASCII / ANSI)
We created this chart to give you quick access to the special characters you need when developing webpages. It has all those pesky special characters, like copyright symbols [ © Alt+0169], em-dashes [ — Alt+0151], and foreign characters [ é Alt+0233]. This chart is also known as the ASCII / ANSI character set.
HTML Character Chart [ Acrobat PDF 48k ]

Country Domain Extension list
In this instance, KY doesn't stand for Kentucky, it's the Cayman Islands. Wonder no more about those unrecognizable two letter country extensions by downloading our exclusive chart.
Country Domains Chart [ Acrobat PDF 130k ]

Understanding Copyright Law & Usage
PubCom's resource page of useful sites and links regarding copyright law.

Information on Search Engines

www.searchengines.com calls itself "your complete search engine resource center" and offers you advice on how to optimize your site, how to submit your site, lists search engines by categories such as "world" and "topical," features articles on the subject, and more.

Curious to learn more about search engines? Visit www.searchengines.net, with two ways to use the site — 1) as a search tool to help you find the kind of search engine you need to get the information you want, or 2) as a way to enhance your site's content, by adding one of the hundreds of free search engines available.

Search Engine Watch provides tips and information about searching the web, analysis of the search engine industry and help to site owners trying to improve their ability to be found in search engines.

The Rank Write Roundtable is a search engine optimization and copywriting site that features expert advice about achieving high search engine rankings, successful copywriting for the search engines and your prospects, directory submissions, and the latest SEO marketing news and alerts.

Finding Information on the Internet: A Tutorial This tutorial grew out of the experience of the Teaching Library at University of California, Berkeley in offering beginning, intermediate, and advanced courses on using the Internet's resources to find information, which notes "From this experience we came to believe that the investment of time to learn to effectively and efficiently find information on the Internet using complex search strategies is worthwhile." Objectives of the tutorial are to provide a current, up-to-date remote and local learning resource for anyone intersted in finding information on the World Wide Web; provide a platform for beginners to the Internet, the World Wide Web, and the Netscape browser; recommend and explain effective, state-of-the-art search strategies applicable to any research interest. Check out their Glossary of Internet & Web Jargon too.

The Search Engine Tutorial for Web Designers by Northern Webs gives some guidance on how to design your pages while keeping the search engines in mind, and why it is necessary to do so. The tutorial resulted from the need to understand why a site the company created fared so poorly in search engines.

Search Engine Showdown, the users' guide to Web searching, compares and evaluates Internet search engines from the searcher's perspective. Developed originally as a way to keep track of the search engines and share that information, the site has grown to include a search engine features chart, detailed search engine reviews, an online newsletter, statistical analysis and search strategies.

Traffick, "The Guide to Portals & Search Engines" covers portals, search engines, internet marketing, SEO, browsers & vortals. The site offers feature articles, a portal & search engine directory, news, and more.

Bruce Clay offers free "how to" information, advice, products, tools, links, and services for those planning to build, optimize, and promote their own website, especially for those performing Web site architecture, web design, web marketing, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, search engine positioning, and other web site promotion tasks. You can also download his PDF chart that tracks the relationships between the major search engines. Visit www.bruceclay.com.

My Computer.com provides hosted applications that help corporations measure and increase the ROI of their web sites. Services for website owners include submitting your site to search engines. (Check out their frequently asked questions about search engines for a useful primer on the subject.) SubmitWizard Standard allows you to custom submit to over 200 leading search engines and directories and starts at $59 per year. With the Professional service, you can also generate META tags, optimize your pages, and monitor your site's uptime, load time and popularity. To learn more or order, visit www.mycomputer.com or call Toll-Free 1-877-722-7055.

Tools to Improve Your Website

Website Search Engine
Need to create your own search engine? Deva Search™ is a Javascript search engine that can be used to find information within HTML files that are stored either locally (for example, on a CD ROM or hard drive) or on your web server. Deva Search consists of a stand-alone Windows application that creates platform independent search files for any browser that supports Javascript 1.1 (Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer 4 or higher is recommended). Visit www.devahelp.com to learn more.

Deva™ products to create navigational systems
The Deva™ family of products help you create navigational systems for websites, intranets, and HTML-based help. Build and maintain tables of contents, keyword indexes, and full-text search systems; leverage the power of Macromedia® Dreamweaver®; and cut your costs, increase your productivity, and drop your dependence on dedicated online help authoring tools. Visit www.devahelp.com to learn more and to download a free evaluation copy.

Services offered by Network Solutions
Network Solutions lets you register domain names in languages other than English. Multilingual domain names will appear as a set of numbers, letters and dashes, representing your domain name in RACE encoding language. RACE encoding allows your native language characters to be represented in the ASCII characters the Domain Name System (DNS) understands. For additional information about multilingual domain name registration, go to global.networksolutions.com or call 1-888-642-9675 and press 5 (for customers outside the US or Canada, call 1-703-742-0914 and press 5).

Inktomi Search/Submit, another service offered by Network Solutions, promises that your website pages "get in" and "stay in" the Inktomi search index, which powers search sites on the Web including AOL, iWon, MSN and Looksmart. Network Solutions promises fast placement, constant updates, and online account management. For additional information visit their website at www.networksolutions.com/en_US/catalog/searchsubmit/welcome.jhtml.

Web Link Validator
http://www.relsoftware.com/wlv/
Got a Web site? If so, avoid broken links. Doctor your Web links and keep your site updated with this handy tool. Web Link Validator will even let you schedule maintenance checks. (Windows, Shareware, $27)

Cabrio
http://www.melonsoft.com/products/cabrio/
Music-loving Mac users need look no further for an MP3 player for their Macintosh. The Cabrio player's not only well-reviewed; it's also FREE! Featuring versions for Mac OS 7.5 and above, Mac OS X, even Windows. (Freeware)

Sanguine Hedgehog Technical Translation
http://www.sanguinehedgehot.com/
Want your website available to non-English speaking visitors? Sanguine Hedgehog provides custom multilanguage website localization. That means visitors from around the world can access your website in the language of their choice.