Content Starts Here
Tools, widgets & more great free stuff
It's surprising what a good trawl on the web can turn up for your website:
Custom search on your site
If you have a content heavy site with lots of pages and regularly updated content, keeping it all easily accessible to site visitors is tricky. Rather than having to code your own site tool, simply copy and paste Google's custom search code in to your site and you will magically have a site search tool.
http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
HTML editor
If you are ready to upgrade from WYSIWYG template software and you are frustrated with notepad, a great free HTML editor with built in FTP is coffeecup.com's HTML editor 9.
http://www.coffeecup.com/free-editor/.
Free images
Creating an interesting site with no pictures can be a pain, but it is not always worth shelling out for the license to use a picture. A great source of free pictures can be found through Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain_image_resources
CSS templates
Just because I know how to use a paint brush doesn't mean I can paint, and that's true of graphical web design tools. Rather than hacking away for hours to make your website look presentable, leave it to the pros and download a free template that is ready to go.
http://www.opendesigns.org/
http://www.freecsstemplates.org/
Video
Adding video to your site is easy and free (as long as you already own a camera to record the video!). Simply record your sales pitch, tutorial, discussion... etc, upload it to YouTube, and then embed the link in to your site's HTML. There are no hosting, streaming, support or maintenance costs and you get to add a new dimension to your site.
http://www.youtube.com/youtubeonyoursite
Jazz up how you display your pictures
This is a little more advanced than the tools above and requires you to use CSS as part of your site’s HTML. Lightbox2 allows you to put pictures on your site that that then expand when someone clicks on them. The site explains step by step how to install the code in to your site and it is a really glossy and slick tool.
An explanation of the tool is here:
http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/
The installation guide is here:
http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/#how
Share your presentations online
Acting in very much the same way as YouTube, SlideShare.net allows you to upload your PowerPoint et al presentations and them embed a link in your website's HTML for users to view.
http://www.slideshare.net/
authorstream.com takes it one step further and lets people view the slidehow as a video so they don't have to click a button to move the slides along.
Turn your web page into PDF
This tool allows your site visitors to covert one of your site's pages in to PDF which is ideal if they want to print it off, save it for later or email it to a friend.
http://web2.pdfonline.com/
Misc:
http://www.textureking.com/
Some really nice textures for helping create cool graphics for your website.
http://www.kollermedia.at/pattern4u/
Free patterns for website backgrounds
Note: We have no affiliation with any of these websites and they are meant as a reference only. We can not accept any liability for any problems that may occur as a result of you using any of them.
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