Someone asked me about my favorite Web tools, and I thought it would make a good topic for my blog.
So without further ado…
SiteMeter
I’m sure this surprises a lot of you. Why in the world would I use the archaic SiteMeter when Google Analytics is arguably the best, comprehensive website stat packages around?
I use Google Analytics too, but I like SiteMeter for two reasons:
1) I’ve been using it since 2 Create a Website launched in 2002 (before Analytics existed), so it’s nice to have a complete history of my site’s traffic.
2) SiteMeter’s daily reports can be accessed much quicker than G.A. Sometimes I just want to get a quick glance at today’s traffic without having to change the reporting dates on the calendar, etc.
Even though the SiteMeter reports are very basic, they report on many of the popular stats webmasters like to keep track of. Plus, you can access them all with one click from the dashboard.
SiteMeter is best for quick, daily reports.
Search It!
This is one of SiteSell’s many freebies they provide to help PREsell their popular website builder, Site Build It! (SBI!). Nevertheless, you don’t have to buy SBI! to take advantage of this all-in-one information tool.
If you haven’t tried Search It! yet, I’ll warn you… it’s kind of addictive. (The link to the actual tool is at the very bottom of the page.)
This one tool helps you brainstorm keywords, find your competition, shows your site’s popularity, helps you find forums in your niche, reports your backlinks, and even shows you where to find affiliate programs and other monetization options for your niche.
ColorZilla
Ever noticed a color on the Web and wanted to know the hex color so you could use it on your site?
With this handy Firefox add-on, you can use the eyedropper tool to hover over any color in your browser and it will display the hex color code.
I must say, this tool has given my very own Flash hex color tools a run for their money. 🙂
IETab & BrowserShots.org
Personally, I wish there was a mandate that required everyone to switch to Firefox. 🙂 However, since we all know that will never happen, Webmasters have to continue to design for the dreaded Internet Explorer too.
So that’s why I love Firefox’s add-on called IETab. It lets you right-click your mouse to quickly view your site in IE.
Or if you don’t want to install the add-on, you can use Browsershots.org and view your site in almost every browser (and version) available. (Thanks, Paul of TechnicallyEasy.net.)
Tutorials Garden
Any time I want to learn how to do something in PhotoShop, I head over to Tutorials Garden. There are hundreds of pages of tutorials here and you can learn how to do almost anything. It’s very similar to Tutorialized.com.
Tutorials Garden doesn’t just cater to PhotoShop users. There are tutorials for Fireworks, CSS, Gimp, PHP and more.
I used their tutorial to create the graphic below for one of my blog posts a few months back…
SEOmoz
This is a very good, comprehensive site on SEO (search engine optimization).
Not only is there great advice on SEO in general, but SEOmoz provides a plethora of tools available to check your keyword rankings, site crawlability and there are a ton of different link reports.
If you are a stat junky, you may want to bookmark this site.
What are Some of Your Favorites?
I’d love to hear about some of the web tools or plug-ins that have made your life easier. Please feel free to share!
Thanks for sharing Lisa. If you are an avid Twitter Tweeter, check out my website…TwittFormer.com
Another tool that may be useful to those that uses CSS stylesheet:
http://csscreator.com/tools/layout
It is a CSS Sytlesheet generator.
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for the information. I’m a big fan that has just started out using your techniques. Another tool I use to do some text images is http://flamingtext.com. Thanks again
Hi Lisa, this is my first time visiting your website, I’m trying to learn how to create my website for my new business as a Managed Care Provider, and was lead here, the information and videos were so helpful and educational, you answered so many of my questions , I know God lead me to your site.
Thank you for sharing,
Janice
In Texas
Hi Lisa,
You’re heaven sent.. can’t believe you could freely share all of this blessings to others. Unlike the others, their offer of helps always end with the credit cards logos 😀
I get addictive to you.. im stalking all of your wonderful sharings.. im really learning to create a ‘life’ thru this. Im a failure webmaster who can’t find his way out of debt 😀 .. who gets his hands dirty on creating hard coded website as a service to one company and receive my hard-earned paycheck, and stumble again for money in few days. Now I realized, why should I take the stairs, when there’s an elevator. Thank God He allowed me to have you found. Thanks a lot lisa, no word can express my gratittude 😀
More blessings to you!
Jojo
Philippines
Great post ~ Thanks for the recommendations Lisa!
I like that new No Follow Do Follow Firefox add-on. It gives you X-ray vision when targeting back-link opportunities.
Thanks for sharing… tutorials from tutorial garden helps me much!!
Great work Lisa. These tools are really helpful.
I just have add Google Analytics to my newly started blog. I believe its useful to see your Day to Day traffic, Specially when it tells you lot of details about Source.
Thanks Lark! Try http://www.tutorialsgarden.com or http://www.tutorialized.com I know Tutorials Garden does but not 100% sure if it’s CS4…. but definitely earlier versions.
Lisa,
Thanks for another outstanding in informative blog post! I am learning a lot and you were the inspiration for me to create my not for profit Vbulletin forum site that has over 500 members in only 4 months.
Can you tell me if there is a good tutorial site for Dreamweaver and/or CS4? Thanks
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for the article. I agree with you about Firefox. I always tell anyone I know to stop using IE and why Firefox is the way to go. I picked up the colorzilla plugin, thanks.
You are right about SBI’s searchit being addicting 😉 I just came from there and its a great tool. I am going to be purchasing SBI in the next few days and the brainstorming was helpful and fun too. A few of the search categories are only for paid users of SBI, but the majority of them were for anyone.
Once again Lisa, you continue to educate and enlighten us. I”m still fairly new at this so I haven’t used a lot the tools mentioned here. To be perfectly honest I’m still marveling over the basic wordpress software. I am however looking forward to the release of WordPress 2.7. I posted an update about it on my blog. I always look forward to your posts, I don’t always comment but I always get something out of them. 🙂
Hello Lisa,
Just wanted to let you know I never did get to access the tools section on “Search It”. However I had great foraging on your sugested link to SEOmon which in turn led to Copyblogger. Spend quite some time soaking it all up.
Thanks again
Hi Lisa,
How’s it going? I just would like to add StatCounter.com to your list because it offers lots of helpful tools in one place such as how many clicks you got for each keyword, and where your traffic is coming from target demographics, and my favorite feature is that it tells you where your site was clicked i.e who referred you.
Hey Tom, thanks. The link for Search It! is at the very bottom of the page. I don’t like how they do that. The tool used to come right up but it’s at the very bottom of the page so they can sell SBI!.
Hi Lisa,
Really enjoy your blog. Was looking forward to trying the “Search It” tools. Followed the link and could only find a hard sell for there product. Probably just me but I spent several mins there.
Take care
hi lisa ! 🙂
these tools are great ! i have to check browsershots.org for sure !
i dont use any specific tool myself, i mainly do it all with blogger.
oh i know ! for the photos storage and upload photobucket.com is like the best thing ever ! tons of tools to edit, share and much storage ! really good 🙂 🙂
Thanks for sharing Matt! I use almost all those plugins you mentioned. I’ll have to look into MultiFeedSnap.
Lisa,
I am a huge fan of WordPress. I have been designing sites for about 10 years. I started out in Notepad and eventually started using Dreamweaver and Flash. Then, I began developing sites using PHP which made life much easier by utilizing includes.
From there I began developing database driven websites that used PHP and MySQL. It got very interesting when I started plugging Flash into a MySQL database!
Now, I almost exclusively use WordPress to create blogs as well as websites. I wanted to share my top 5 favorite WordPress Plugins.
1) Google XML Sitemaps – This is one of the most popular plugins for WordPress and for good reason. One very critical way to keep Google indexing your site and making sure your site can be seen by search engines is by maintaining a site map. I used to spend hours maintaining site maps for all of my own sites in addition to my clients sites. Now, with this plugin, the updating is automatic. The best feature of this plugin is the fact that it will notify Google, Yahoo, ASK and MSN that a new site map is out there and their bots are all over your site in no time.
2) All in One SEO Pack – This is another brilliant plug in that has saved the blogging and website building community thousands of hours in search engine optimization efforts. This plugin automatically generates meta tags and optimize titles for you. You can also override the auto setting and create your own meta tags and titles. I love this plugin and sometimes give it the #1 spot over the sitemap generator.
3) pageMash – This plugin makes ordering the pages you create in WordPress super simple. If you want to bump one page to the top of your page list or make a page become a sub page of another page, this is the plugin for you. The sleek interface allows you to drag-and-drop the pages into place, push a button and make the changes live. Again, a huge timesaving plugin.
4) MultiFeedSnap – I searched FOREVER trying to find an easy-to-use RSS feed aggregator. I came upon MultiFeedSnap and life got much easier. As the name implies, MultiFeedSnap allows you to post multiple feeds to your blog in a snap. This feature has helped me greatly improve my SEO rankings and traffic for many of my Ebay niche stores.
5) Share This – This is the coolest way to let your readers share your content with others. This one probably belongs higher up on my list. You can register with Share This and they show you some pretty cool stats about which bookmarking sites get clicked in addition to some other useful stats.
Lisa, again great job on your websites and videos.
Matt @ FireYourWebsiteDesigner