Free Website Tools
Free Website Tools

Start your own question and answer site easily with free open source software at osqa.net. Use this software for homework sites, product support or as a help desk feature. This question and answer engine features a voting system, social networking functions including private messaging, search, the ability to import data from a Stack Exchange site, support for widgets, themes, the ability to embed videos, audio and images, automatic site activity reports, export data and more.

Get great functionality through a minimalist interface with this CSS3 generator at CSS3Generator.com. Get help with rounded corners, transitions, box sizing, columns, RGBA and more.

If you’re wondering where Apple’s designers got their inspiration from, take a look at the the appliance company Braun’s 1970′s designs. White housing, minimalistic design, clarity. If you take the time to watch the video with Dieter Rams, former Braun’s head designer, you’ll see a couple of other designs from the 50′s to the 70′s that still look great today. Good design, like good music, never loses its appeal. Use Google translate to read this interview with Rams. He talks about receiving a letter from Jonathan Ive (Apple designer) and a little bit about Apple’s and Braun’s design principles. More on focus.de/digital

Get the open-source PHP CAPTCHA script “Secureimage” at PHPcaptcha.org. Generate complex images and CAPTCHA codes with a script that can be easily added into existing forms on your website to provide protection from spam bots. All you need to run it is PHP and GD support within PHP. The Securimage script generates the CAPTCHA images and validates the typed code. Audible codes can be streamed to the browser with Flash for the vision impaired. It requires no configuration after downloading. PHP 4 and PHP 5 versions available for download.

The printables designs on OhHappyDay may be ideal if you need some outside of the box marketing or design inspiration. How can you adapt these tangible project ideas to your own projects? Choose from photo props, ideas for greeting card designs and more.

If you’re trying to promote a brand, or just trying to reserve your preferred username on any of the social media sites, click over to KnowEm to do all the search work for you. Simply key in your desired username and the site will check dozens of social media websites at a time. Categories include blogging, bookmarking, business, community, design and more. You can sign up for paid service as well and have them set up all the accounts for you.

If you have a project that requires pictures of traffic signs with accurate colors and proportions, why not go straight to the source at the Federal Highway Administration’s website instead of just googling for traffic sign pictures. You’ll get diagrams of all traffic signs along with measurements, arrows used, spacing, borders, letter styles and design guidelines.

Even if you’re mostly occupied with designing websites, you should be aware of FTCs guidelines about disclosing material connections (like affiliate links) for your own site, or other sites and blogs you visit. These disclosure guides aren’t specifically written for bloggers, but apply to anyone who implements online advertising. As the internet is growing out of its baby stage, laws and guidelines have been created or adapted to accommodate and include new technologies. Following are a few files and guides the FTC (a consumer protection agency) has issued on the topic:

- FTC’s Q&A Guide

- Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising (PDF). These Guides offer more than 35 examples of how they apply in practical settings.

- FTC’s Guide about Online Advertising (PDF)

“The Guides address the application of Section 5 of the FTC Act (15 U.S.C. 45) to the use of endorsements and testimonials in advertising. The Guides provide the basis for voluntary compliance with the law by advertisers and endorsers. Practices inconsistent with these Guides may result in corrective action by the Commission under Section 5 if, after investigation, the Commission has reason to believe that the practices fall within the scope of conduct declared unlawful by the statute.”

What’s an endorsement?

“Endorsement means any advertising message (including verbal statements, demonstrations, or depictions of the name, signature, likeness or other identifying personal characteristics of an individual or the name or seal of an organization) that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser, even if the views expressed by that party are identical to those of the sponsoring advertiser. The party whose opinions, beliefs, findings, or experience the message appears to reflect will be called the endorser and may be an individual, group, or institution.”

What about testimonials?
“The Commission intends to treat endorsements and testimonials identically in the context of its enforcement of the Federal Trade Commission Act and for purposes of this part.”

If you need to find errors within your HTML or you simply want clean up your code, the online version of HTML Tidy can help. Simply add your URL, copy and paste your HTML code, or up load your file. Then define a few settings like your output and character encoding and this free web tool will do the rest.

Besides explanations about your messy code, HTML Tidy will clean up characters not allowed with your encoding, incomplete tags, redundant tags, unknown tags, invalid character codes and so on. The output is ready to be copied and pasted. One thing the tool is lacking is line numbering, which would make it easier to identify where your errors are.

A great place to look for web design inspiration is to look at trends in other aspects of everyday life. Trendhunter has dozens of categories, including a WTF section within each one for your enjoyment and inspiration to get your web design juices flowing again. You’ll find the latest trends in fashion, funerals and tributes for example.

If these examples won’t do it for you, maybe Cedric Laquieze’s floral skeleton sculptures will get you to stop for a second and behold: