Miscellaneous Free Webmaster Resources
In this category, you'll find a selection of miscellaneous Webmaster resources that are available on the Net. If you happen to stumble across an outdated link, we'd very much appreciate it if you could report it
SiteUptime
Web site hosts can be notoriously unreliable at times. If you have little downtime, count yourself lucky! To assist you in monitoring periods where your site may be offline or unresponsive, visit SiteUptime, a Web monitoring service. Their "free" package allows you to monitor one domain with 30 and 60 minute checks, which e-mail you in event of any downtime. Excellent commercial upgrades are available.
CSS Generator Wizard
A well-designed site, offering a free CSS code generator wizard for Webmasters. The free generator is available online but if you prefer, you can also download it to your desktop. The wizard allows you to quickly create CSS style definitions, which can be used to determine the presentation of your pages. They also include some free articles related to the topic of CSS.
Free Web Monitoring
This monitoring service will alert you via e-mail in the event that your Web site goes offline. Once your site is live again, you will receive another e-mail notifying you that this is so. Although not quite as robust as similar commercial services, Free Web Monitoring is adequate for even some larger businesses. Your designated site will be tested every 60 minutes, and you can even add multiple URLs to your account.
Sparklit Web Poll
Offers a fine Web poll that can be customised with your own questions, colours and designs. It's ideal for gaining feedback from visitors and increasing your site's interactivity. You can implement up to 25 different questions, choose from 12 different designs and play around with more features than any other service. You will also find a variety of other Webmaster services here.
> Sparklit's free survey service, Mini Survey, is also a great way to gain valuable feedback from visitors. Mini Survey is both fast and effective.
> Other Webmaster services available include a free counter, message board, guest book and newsletter.
FormSmarts
A free Web site form service that allows you to create, customise and then implement feedback forms on your site. FormSmarts, with its neat and user-friendly interface, allows users to create a fully functioning form within minutes thanks to their online form builder. You needn't have great technical knowledge and spam (junk mail) protection is available as standard.
Bravenet
The immensely popular Bravenet offers all the free Webmaster services you're likely to need in one convenient location. They provide dozens of free services to help build, promote, enhance and monetize Web sites, many of which are remotely hosted. A free help centre is always available to help you with any of your Webmaster questions, plus you can customise many of their services to your specification.
> Bravenet provides a number of services to help promote your site, including a free blog service, hit counter, guestbook, horoscope generator, headline boxes, online calendar, URL re-direction, etc.
> Additionally, they also provide a range of service to help enhance your site: tell a friend service, Web ring, free links directory, traffic exchange, site search and Web cartoons.
> They also provide free tools for interesting with guests: chat rooms, feedback forms and Web polls.
> Bravenet's affiliate program pays $1.00 for each person you refer to their network.
InternetSeer
Use InternetSeer's "free" package to monitor your Web site's uptime (or downtime!) on an hourly basis. The service will probe your site and check for any problems that might prevent visitors from viewing your pages. If a problem is found (such as a connection refused error), they will automatically send you an e-mail and monitor progress until your site is back online. They also offer commercial versions of the service, which provide more frequent monitoring.
Bpath
Here's a high quality and reliable Webmaster resources site, providing a great mixture of free and commercial services. Bpath offers free online polls, message boards, banner exchanges, guestbooks, hit counters, mail forms and lots more besides. As well as this, they provide a number of free tools to help you promote your Web site, such as the "tell a friend" site announcement service.
Easy Horoscope
Here's a completely free service for Webmasters. With Easy Horoscope, you can enhance your pages with a Flash daily horoscope and then customise the design of it to match your Web site's style. It's also very simple to implement - you simply copy the HTML code they provide and paste it into your page. Note: you'll need the Macromedia Flash plug-in to access this Web site.
NE1.net
This site provides a free URL re-direction service for Web site's with lengthy, confusing URLs. If you're a Webmaster and wish to increase your site's visitor count, a short Web address is an excellent way to generate repeat visits (in fact it's bordering on crucial). NE1.net allows you to choose from two sub-domains: "yoursite.ne1.net" and "yoursite.r8.org". The "free" version of this service is advert supported.
Zap Zone Network
This service has continued to thrive over a number of years and today offers free, co-branded e-mail accounts that Webmasters can use to add extra functionality and loyalty to their site. Basically, ZapZone acts as the middleman to provide your very own e-mail service to visitors and handles the storage and hosting of the pages for e-mail addresses resembling " anything@yoursite.zzn.com".
Alxnet.com
One of our favourite Web sites for providing a whole plateful of Webmaster goodies. Alxnet.com offers a free guestbook service, Web poll, news feeder, traffic booster and an Internet quiz that will keep your visitors entertained. Their site is easy to navigate and contains lots of detailed information about their free services. Note: English, Norwegian and Swedish translations.