Free Website Tools
Free Website Tools

At the Google Code University (GCU) does not require registration and materials are free to use. It includes tutorials and courses on advanced topics, video lectures and exercises. Find courses like Intro to Distributed System Design, and HTML, CSS and Javascript from the Ground Up and lots of info on web security.

Unlike other services offering redirects, Jambai’s comes without ads. You can sign up for a free sub-domain name and use it to access your website, no matter where it is hosted. Visitors to your site won’t see your URL in the address space of the browser, only the chosen sub-domain. The site claims to not tolerate any spamming used in conjunction with using their service. They will also delete any account that has been inactive for a year or more.

Tired of having your IP recorded by every single site you visit on the web? Anonymouse promises to hide your IP address and instead show their own. No installation of additional software is necessary; all you need is your browser to go directly to Anonymouse. The service is free, but you can also get an upgraded version without advertising. Anonymouse also has a toolbar available that offers even more privacy features. Of course, no service is ever absolutely secure…

Here’s an easy way to search for copies of your content anywhere on the web: take the URL of your content and plug it into Copyscape. It will display all the instances where a substantial amount of your content has been published. This is a very useful service for anyone who buys content or articles, or for anyone considering buying a website. Comprehensive services are available with their paid service.

The Spamhaus Project tracks the internet’s spam senders and spam services and makes available blocklists (free for low usage) to filter your e-mail. Before you set your e-mail servers to use Spamhouse’s blocklists, be sure to check their usage terms to see if you qualify for free use. If you think your IP might actually be on their blocked list, you can check your IP and get info on how to be removed. For a list of the 10 worst ISPs that knowingly cater to spammers, or do nothing to prevent spam, click here.

If you’re curious about an offer you see on the web, but aren’t so sure if it’s a legitimate website, sign up for a temporary e-mail address with GuerrillaMail and avoid potential future spam. GuerrillaMail provides you with disposable e-mail addresses which expire after 60 Minutes. You can read and reply to e-mails that are sent to the temporary e-mail address within that given time frame. After those 60 minutes – poof! – your disposable e-mail address simply disappears.

Most of us don’t mind giving up a small part of our privacy for our personal protection (airport scanners), or a good deal (loyalty shopping programs). We even voluntarily sign up for social networking sites that track every move we make and then sell aggregate information to marketers. But what about all the times we’re on the web and are not really sure about what search and browsing activities our ISP, or other company or agency is tracking? (In repressed countries this becomes even more of an issue as one compromised e-mail can mean torture or death to the sender.)

Let’s be realistic: the only way to not be tracked in any way online is to not go on online at all. Actually, you’d better leave your computer turned off, because many applications and programs on your computer automatically check for software updates and also track and record meta data.

Tor is free software and an open network that claims to help you defend against a form of network surveillance that “threatens personal freedom and privacy, confidential business activities and relationships. It prevents your traffic from being analyzed by distributing your transactions over several places on the internet, so no single point can link you to your destination.” One of the ways Tor works is by sending your e-mails through several relays, so it’s impossible to find out where the e-mail originated and where it was meant to end up. Maybe not every ISP uses traffic monitoring services – do you know if yours does? Even if you think it doesn’t, it’s a good idea to never search for your social security number and name, or passwords with any personal info. And if you’re a Tor user, please let us know how the service is working for you and what you had to give up to use it. In other words, what are the pros and cons of using Tor?

More free security resources…

Can your site handle a large increase in traffic? Pylot is a free open source tool for testing performance and scalability of web services. It runs HTTP load tests, which are useful for capacity planning, benchmarking, analysis, and system tuning.

Spam is like plague and anything that messes with spambots we’re interested in! Simply link to Spambot Stopper and any spambot that follows the link will be flooded with endless, fake, randomly generated e-mail addresses. Nice!

Get e-mail notification when your website is down and weekly statistics reports at FreeWebsiteMonitoring. Service promises to check your website every 60 minutes.