For anyone new to web design here are a list of the most popular HTML editors. This is by far not a list of all the ones available but will give you a starting point and a little information about each.

Dreamweaver
Front Page
Expression Web

Dreamweaver is probably at the top of most people’s list as far as the top HTML editors on the market. Formally owned by Macromedia was purchased by Adobe around the release of Dreamweaver 8. Dreamweaver replaced GoLive Adobe’s HTML editor with the release of CS3. Now with the release of Dreamweaver CS3 this HTML editor now integrates with Adobe Photoshop CS3 much better. Dreamweaver CS3 is a very nice package with many helpful tools to make your life much easer. Some of these includes database support, Dreamweaver allows you to build your query’s, and output the data to your pages easily. Also with CSS support your style information can be edited from within the design or code view at any time. If you are new to html or xhtml the WYSIWYG or What you see is what you get design view will allow you to visually create your pages without a vast knowledge of the code. Also if you hand code everything just switch to code view and code away without all of those visual effects getting in your way. Dreamweaver is by far my favorite platform to use, but its what I started with so my opinion is probably biased. Also at around $400.00 it may not be in the everyones price range, or needed for just creating a one basic website.

Front Page is/was also at the top of popular HTML editors. I say was only because Front Page 2003 was the last release and is no longer produced by Microsoft. Everyone that i know has a love hate relationship with Front Page, you either love or hate it. Front Page was created by Microsoft and like many of their other products throws alot of non-complaint code into your pages that is not really needed. If you are just doing a simple website that will be viewed on IE only this is fine but can be very annoying when designing for the masses.

Expression Web if fairly new its been out for about a year now. I know very little about this application other than it pretty much replaced Front Page. Expression Web is a Microsoft application. It is much cheaper than Dreamweaver so if you looking for a HTML editor it may be worth researching.

MySql Administrator is a great tool for mysql database design. I use this tool to build all of my database structures, because its the easiest i have found so far. Like most of the other tools I will cover on this site im going to say what i use if for, but I will not be covering all of the features in the program. Once you install MySql Admin and launch the program you will have to log into your database. If you are running a local web server like WAMP or have manually installed mysql you can build and edit your database locally and then export it to you live website. This is the option i prefer but depending on your web host configuration you may also be able to connect directly to your live database with this tool and build it there.

The reason i love this tool so much is that it allows me to build my databases without having to use SQL it does all of that for me. Less typing equals faster development, and that equals more free time. Ok so now to the one part of this program i use. Login into your database and you will have several options on the left hand side of the program, look for the Catalogs area. Now right click on Catalogs and create a new catalog. Enter in the name of the new database you would like to create. Once you click ok you have just created your new database. Now once you double click on the database name it will show you all of the tables in that database, or give you the option to create new tables. So now click on create new table at the top enter in the database table name, and in the fields below enter in the table fields. The first field in the database is going to default to Integer and auto inc because its going to assume you want that field to be your primary key. This can be changed if needed just keep in mind that what it will default to. Now just type in the rest of the table fields and the field types, and your done.

If you hate coding databases by the command line Mysql Administrator can be a time saving tool for your MySql database arsenal.

Download Link and More Info

http://www.mysql.com/products/tools/administrator/

Here is a tool i use all the time when developing web sites. The Web Developer plug in for firefox. This plug in contains many useful tools for CSS, Forms, Images, Resizing, Viewing Source Code, and many other things.

Ill start out by giving some information about the useful tools for CSS. Have you ever created a long style sheet and for some reason something just does not display the way you think it should. More than likely if your like me you have created two rules for the same area, and of course the one you don’t want overrides the other. Well this tool makes finding the mistake much easier. Just open up the webpage in a browser window, and click on the CSS drop down in the web developer tool bar. In the CSS dropdown click View Style Information. Once this option is selected as you move your mouse around your page the tool will put boxes around each area of your page that are defined by styles. So all you have to do is click on the problem area, and it will give you a pane on the left will all of the styles attached to that area. So with one click it has found the problem for you and you can see that you have that item defined twice. Correct the CSS and move on with your day.

Another very useful tool under the CSS area is the edit CSS option. This also gives you a pane on the left but with all of your linked style sheets, and CSS available to edit. I find this helpful when building a new style sheet. As you make changes to the CSS on the left, the page updates in real time on the right. This is much quicker that save style sheet change back to browser window, refresh, and repeat process.

Im not going to cover every tool in this plug in but ill cover two more that i have found useful, and i think that every other developer could probably use no matter what site. First the images drop down tool has two options i find very useful. First disable images will show you how you page will look if the user has images disabled. Also the View Alt Attributes will show if you have all of your image descriptions set for your pages. The next tool that i find usefull is the Resize tool. This tool allows you to enter in multiple monitor resolutions and save them. By being able to save these presets any time during development you can click on the resize dropdown click on any preset resolution, and see how the page will look in that resolution without having to change your monitor resolution to test.

Ive only just covered the very basics of what this plug in will do. If you are more interested try it out for yourself I have been using if for quite a while now and love it.

Here is a link or you can just click on the get extensions link under add ons in firefox. Search for Web Developer im sure you will find it useful.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/60

I don’t know about the rest of you, but i hate to have to upload my files to my live website to see if a piece of code works that i just created. This is were a test web server really comes in handy. If your coding in php and mysql there is a great tool out there available for free. The tool is WAMP which stands for Windows Apache Mysql PHP. This comes in a nice little installer package and the setup takes only minutes. Once complete you will have your very own local webserver to test all of you sites before they ever touch the web.

The default installation for WAMP will install the web server to your local c: drive in a folder called wamp. Inside the wamp folder you will find a directory called www which is where you would store all of your test sites. The best way i have found to use this is create a separate folder for each site im working on, and store all of the files for each site in the corresponding folder. Then all you have to do is make sure wamp is running by checking the lower right hand corner of you monitor beside your clock, and make sure the icon that looks like a speedometer is all white. If it is not just click the icon and tell it to start. Then all you have to do is open a web browser and type in localhost/foldername in the address bar.

I have been using wamp for over a year now and find it very useful when im doing any mysql or php work and im sure you will too.

www.wampserver.com/en/

There seems to be alot of different opinions regarding link management software, ethical vs non ethical, and whitehat vs blackhat link exchanging. Some people say the only links that will help you are links related to your site content from other high ranking sites. Others will exchange links with any site, of any topic, for any reason. This is a big debate and the only people that truly know the correct answer are the ones that wrote the search engine algorithms. Ive done the link exchange programs on some of the sites i have built, along with directory submission, emailing webmasters, and searching for link exchange forms. To be honest i have found them all to give about the same results. I believe it all depends on the product you are putting out there, and who your competition is.

Lets start out by looking at a very white hat way of getting links to your new website.  Lets assume that this new site has good quality content.  Ok so how do you start?  One may go to google or your favorite search engine and begin by doing a search on your number one search term.  Now you can go down the results page site by site and see if they one offer a links page, or two have a link exchange request form or email address.  Next you find a site to exchange links with you fill out the form usually requiring you to put a link to them on your website.  You click submit and one of two things now happen. Best scenario your request is emailed to the webmaster he checks his email, and adds a link back to your site in a week or two. Or what has happened to me more times than i care to count you get an error. After you have taken 5-10 minutes filling out the form adding a link to this website, surprise you get a message saying were no longer accepting links or the page to submit the link errors out. After you have spent a few hours of submitting links and get this one out of every three times it is very aggravating to say the least. Lets say you do actually get to submit the form or email and the webmaster does actually add your link you have spent at least 5-10 minutes of your time to get one link. Now lets assume that you get accepted 30-40 percent of the time for all of the requests you send. Ill even say what if you can really hammer out 10 requests in an hour and you get 4 exchanges. Now you have to at some point remove all of the links in which you received no responses from after x amount of time. Also you have to check all of you backlinks routinely to make sure they are sill linking back, and have not taken your link down, let their domains expire, or decided not to pay for their hosting. Sounds like a lot of work doesn’t it well it is. Its a full time job that not everyone has the time to do, or resources to pay someone else for. This is all just to get 4 or 5 link exchanges with your website. Now look at your competition in the major search engines and see how many linkbacks they have. In google they may have anywhere between 10-3000 links that show up and even more that dont. How can you possible compete with that with a full time job, family, and trying to start a website.

Well the answer for this that many people use are Link Exchange programs, or websites that contain other sites requesting link exchanges. If you decide to go this route make sure you pick one where you have the option to approve anything that gets posted to your website. Make sure you have control many of these will allow you to approve or reject anything that gets posted to your site so you have control not the site/program. Using these methods you can greatly increase the number of link exchanges you can submit but there is also a greater number of links to have to check on a weekly basis. If you stay on top of it and pay attention to who you are exchanging links with this can be a very affective way to start your link campaign. If you go to crazy and the search engines pick up on it some people say they have been banned or had there sites drop from the indexes. This is not good of course so use common sense and you should be in good shape. Use these programs with caution and as a means to find quality links with others wanting to trade links.

This is all my opinion and many others will tell you if you have a useful site you will not have to do many of these things because others will see how useful your website is and link to you. If this happens great. In the real world how are people ever going to find you to link to you when you start out on page 35 of the major SERP’s. I have websites that i have used link exchange programs on for 90% of my link exchanges that have been doing fine for over a year now. Not only are they doing fine but are on the first page of google for all three of the major terms I have requested links using. If all link exchange programs were so bad this would not be possible for an extended period of time. As with most SEO this is my opinion and until i see changes or results it will stay that way you can agree or disagree. I believe what it all boils down too is there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to link exchanges. There is no standard the major SERP’s have to go by so if you want use link exchange programs for what it is a tool, but don’t put all your eggs in one basket.