27 Free Tools for Webmasters

Free and commercial software recommendations for FTP, image editing, and website development, as well as links to online tools to help with designing and promoting your website.

Software - Free

• AceFTP Free - Free FTP program.
• FTP Surfer - Another free FTP program.
• Google Toolbar - Integrates a Google search box into your browser, along with other useful features like a pop-up blocker and a PageRank estimator.
• PhotoPlus - Free image editing software. Great for resizing photos and creating graphics.
• The GIMP - Free image editing program. Powerful but a bit of a learning curve.
• Xenu’s Link Sleuth - Great little free program to check for broken links on your entire site.

Online Tools - Design

• Color Scheme Generator - Find triads, tetrads, and analogical color schemes. Produces normal or web-safe colors.
• ColorMatch - Create color themes based on a single starting color.
• EasyRGB - Tool to find color harmonies.
• FavIcon from Pics - Make a quick favicon.ico file from an image. Put this file in your root directory so when people bookmark your site they see your logo.
• Lorem Ipsum Generator - Create realistic dummy text to help you lay out a page.
• Lynx Viewer - See your site as it looks to search engines with this text-only browser emulator.
• WhatTheFont - Identifies a font based on a sample image, provided it is large enough and of good quality.
  

Online Tools - Promotion

• Link Popularity Checker - Check your link popularity on several major search engines and compare your results with other websites.
• Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool - Find the popularity of keyword phrases. An invaluable tool for SEO.
• Submit page to Google - Add your webpage for inclusion.
• Submit page to Yahoo - Add your site to Yahoo’s search engine.
  

Scripts and Programming

• Hot Scripts - A huge repository of free and commercial scripts written in many languages, including CGI/Perl and PHP.
• Master.com - A suite of free remotely hosted tools - a site search engine, a downtime checker, and more.
  

Stock Photos

• iStockphoto - Very inexpensive stock photos. You can also become a contributor and get free downloads.
• Stock.xchng - Free stock photos, many of very high quality.
  

Online Tools - Misc

• Check Domain - A simple and straightforward whois.
• Copyscape - Find sites that are copying your content.
• DNS Stuff - A compilation of many DNS lookup tools.
• Quick Character Counter - Calculates how many characters are in a block of text. Neat condensing function.
• Remote Website Tester - Useful if your site is down - sees if it’s just you or if another location cannot connect either. Displays the HTML of your site if it can connect.
• Wayback Machine - See how a domain looked in the past, if it was archived.

Professional Directories

• Portland Web Guide - Proud to Be PDX
• Portland, Oregon Web Design Services - from Marketingtool.com