Free Website Tools
Free Website Tools

If you’re trying to get an auction site up and running quickly, give Webid a try. It is still in beta stages, but is already a popular open-source auction solutions, written in PHP and customizable. Webid features an administration panel, quick install and setup, different themes and easy integration with PayPal and Authorize.Net.

Get 50 free customized e-mail accounts (yourname@your-business.com), including calendar features and online collaboration tools with Google Services. You can create and collaborate on documents, spreadsheets, and presentations and create secure web pages for intranets and team projects/wikis without the need to know code or html. Since all services are offered online and there is no software to download, they will work on any computer, PC, Mac, Linux.

You need your own domain in order to get started. If you don’t have one yet, you can also buy your own domain to work with all your services through this site. (Domains are $10 per year.) A great feature is that you get private domain registration at no extra cost! You also get full DNS control and domain management and it comes automatically configured to work with Google services.

If you’re a professional, run a small business or you’re simply looking for free accounting software, you might want to give GnuCash a try.

GnuCash is personal and small-business financial-accounting software, freely licensed under the GNU GPL and available for GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. Download GnuCash here.

The interface is simple, but the software offers everything you’d expect from financial accounting software, like the ability to track bank accounts, stocks, income and expenses. The site itself has in-depth tutorials and also glossaries for software and financial terms.

Features include:

* QIF/OFX/HBCI Import, Transaction Matching
* Reports, Graphs
* Scheduled Transactions
* Financial Calculations

* Double-Entry Accounting
* Stock/Bond/Mutual Fund Accounts
* Small-Business Accounting
* Customers, Vendors, Jobs,
Invoices, A/P, A/R

If it’s time to once again upgrade your latest word processor, spreadsheet or other office software, and you’re reluctant to spend hefty fees to do so, you may want to consider OpenOffice, the free and open office productivity suite. If you’re already using another office software package, OpenOffice will most likely be able to read these files. OpenOffice can be downloaded and used entirely free of any licence fees. It is released under the LGPL licence which means you may use it for any purpose – domestic, commercial, educational, public administration and install it on as many computers as you like.

If you’re looking for a no cost option for a word processor, spreadsheet, presentations and collaboration tool, try Google Docs. You’ll avoid buying and updating expensive software and you can login from any computer with internet access. Another free online office suite is offered at Zozo.com. Basic services are free, with upgrade options available.

OK, the products on this site aren’t free, but many are available at a substantial discount, or for only a small administration fee. Choose from over 600 tech products that might be useful for your non-profit.

Techsoup.org offers all kinds of hardware, software, security products, hosted applications, credit card processing etc. Products on Techsoup are donated, or refurbished and are ‘provided by corporate and nonprofit technology partners.’ For example, we’ve recently spotted Norton Internet Security 2009 (CD) for $15, or Office Professional Plus 2007 (Includes Software Assurance) for $20. Not free, but a great deal!

Create awareness throughout Twitter for your non-profit campaign by adding a Twibbon to your Twitter avatar.

Create several logins for one Twitter account with TweetFunnel. Use this tool if you have multiple users tweeting from the same account. All tweets can be reviewed by admin before being posted to the account. The site says ‘free beta’ version. Maybe this will be a paid service in the future.

Sure, having lots of followers on Twitter may sound good, but how many of them have followed through spambots in the hope you will follow them back? How many of them have no true interest in your tweets? Only get true followers and weed out the spam with TrueTwit. How it works: all of your new followers will get a validation notice via direct message. If they too are TrueTwit users or pass the CAPTCHA test, you get an email indicating they are a TrueTwit validated human.

Find, create or join Twibes Twitter groups. A Twibe is a group of Twitter users interested in a common topic. To join, simply tweet the full URL, for example http://www.twibes.com/group/nonprofits from your Twitter account – no sign in required.