Free Website Tools
Free Website Tools

A fun tool at 2CreateAWebsite is based on a spinning color wheel lets you choose colors from the wheel or add hex code to create matching color schemes. Somewhat limited it its function it serves the purpose of finding matching shades of a hue you may already be using in your project.

Another free and very easy to use color scheme is designer is offered by InfoHound. You can set the saturation, brightness and hue with sliders or enter a particular value directly into one of the boxes. Matching colors will be automatically chosen, which may help a great deal if you’re looking for some new ideas. You can click on any one to set it as the primary color.

SimpleMachines’ SMF is a “free, professional grade software package that allows you to set up your own online community within minutes. Its powerful custom made template engine puts you in full control of the lay-out of your message board and with our unique SSI – or Server Side Includes – function you can let your forum and your website interact with each other.”

Create a forum on your website with free open source software phpBB. According to the site, “phpBB™ has become the most widely used Open Source forum solution. Like its predecessors, phpBB™ 3.0 “Olympus” has an easy to use administration panel and a user friendly installation process, which allows you to have a forum set up in minutes. With a large and highly customisable set of key features coupled with a standards compliant interface, phpBB™ will grow with, and complement your website. With millions of installations worldwide, it is no wonder phpBB™ is one of the most popular ways to create and support a community.”

Feedage is a free fully categorized and searchable RSS directory, that also lets you blend two or more RSS feeds together, receive your favorite RSS Feeds by e-mail, enable custom filters that will only notify you if the RSS Feed has been updated and more. They also offer a HTML to RSS converter.

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.

This strategy may not be 100% fool proof, but using a service like Tynt may help you increase the number of backlinks to your website. It works by attaching a script to any snippet that a visitor will copy from your site; the script generates a backlink where the snippet it’s being copied to. The person copying and pasting could easily delete the link, but the site claims that most people actually leave the link intact. Their basic service is free.

Create your own AJAX loading gif with this free generator at WebscriptLab. Choose from over 30 different designs, background, main color and speed.

ColoRotate features a 3D cone that lets you choose your colors quickly by manipulating hue and tint within the cone. The cone flips and spins and makes mixing and blending the colors fun! You can get your starting colors from an image and manipulate the whole palette at once. You can save, export and share your palettes and browse through palettes others have created.

The free banner designer tool at EarnMoneyOnlineHub works quite well. It’s a great tool if you need a simple banner on the fly and don’t want to fire up your graphics program. You can choose different sizes, customize font and font color, background, border, apply effects and then save the whole design in different formats.