What do you think are the best web tools to use for a web project? Sure you can do it on your own, but there are thousands of online tools to use for planning, development, testing and beyond. We thought it would be a good idea to have many of them on one page to refer to instead of searching around for hours online. This list is only a fraction of the sites available to help create a successfull web campaign.
Comment on the sites you like and why (or Digg it).
Concepts – Creativity - Research
http://faveup.com/ - Logo ideas
http://99designs.com/ - Get artists to design a logo to your liking.
http://www.domaintools.com/ - Registering domains, look ups, with a list of domain registrars cheaper than $9.
http://StumbleUpon.com – Creative ideas on many topics if you just can't think of one on your own. Inspirational.
http://smashingmagazine.com - Excellent content and a bunch of cool freebies.
http://www.coolwebsiteideas.com/ (maybe not so cool)
http://www.dailybits.com/11-undiscovered-website-ideas-to-steal-and-make-you-rich/
http://webmastercourse.com/articles/101/personal/
http://www.google.com/insights/search/# - See what people are searching for on Google
http://www.associateprograms.com/articles/63/1/Where-to-get-ideas-for-a-niche-website **
Planning
http://deskera.com - DeskEra interoperates wonderfully with popular Project Management softwares like Microsoft Project®. It lets you export/import to & from Microsoft Project®.
Notes and Management
http://Evernote.com Capture, Syn, Find Links, notes, images and more.
http://Pelotonics.com Works with Evernote and helps organize, manage, collaborate and succeed.
Collaborate:
http://www.basecamphq.com/
https://website.qtask.com/index.php
http://mashable.com/2007/07/22/online-collaboration/ 60+ collaboration tools.
http://www.sharepoint.com Not directly a web app but still good.
http://www.activecollab.com/ with api
http://www.skrbl.com/ - Allows the user to write graffiti on uploaded images and embed them into a site via iframes.
http://grouploop.com - Simple web-based software to organize your committee. Group messaging, calendar, file sharing, RSVP system, and more!
http://www.protonotes.com/ - Take notes on the screen. Add javascript and start noting.
http://www.near-time.net/ - Near-Time integrates wikis, weblogs, and file-sharing to deliver the fastest ROI for your collaboration investments. –Google maps, calendar, Upcoming, Polling, Linked in a Box, Video from Picasa, HipCast, YouTube, Google, BrightCove, Veoh, RSS feeds, Real Time Chat, and more.
http://docs.google.com/
http://www.sitscape.com/dashboard - Situational Remix of the Web. Enable on-demand composite web applications with componentization, redistribution, and remixing of the web. **
Execution:
http://elance.com, http://scriptlance.com, http://rentacoder.com, http://hirerussians.com (name says all), http://dice.com etc. or of course hire from your local community.
http://snappages.com/ - Create and manage a professional quality website with drag-and-drop simplicity.
Choose appropriate language platforms.
Google Apps Engine - http://code.google.com/appengine/
Testing:
Nothing beats listening to your users.
http://crazyegg.com – Heat maps on landing pages. Stats.
http://browsershots.org/ - Free online cross browser check
http://www.browsercam.com/ Cross Browser Compatibility Testing Tools including PDA’s.
http://16bugs.com/ - Track and manage bugs from a simple and productive interface.
http://getfirebug.com/ - Firefox plug in to help inspect HTML, tweak CSS and more.
https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/splash?hl=en - Website Optimizer is an easy-to-use tool for testing site content that delivers actionable results.
Widgets:
http://www.iwidgets.com/ - iWidgets drives traffic and interest from your fans and their friends by socially syndicating your website's interesting content and user activity to popular destinations such as Facebook, MySpace, and iGoogle.
http://www.google.com/ig/directory - Google’s widgets.
http://sproutbuilder.com/ - Build, publish and manage widgets, mini-sites, banners, mashups and other rich media Web content in three easy steps.
Generating Traffic and Visitors
Tracking and diagnostics:
http://www.whoson.com/ - Real time stats with chat ability from website visitor to you.
http://www.liveperson.com/ - Stats, chat and get included into their directory of online experts.
http://www.craftysyntax.com/- Open source live support solution that helps customer support with live help functionality that can be proactively pushed to visitors to your site or requested by the consumer.
http://google.com/webmasters/tools/ - Find what your missing on a site. Site maps, bad links, crawl stats, duplicate meta tags etc.
http://suggestionbox.com – Get feedback from users.
http://cli.gs/ - Similar to tinyurl but with tracking, 301 redirects
Community:
http://www.socialgo.com/ - Social network
http://www.ning.com/ - Original social network
http://www.neeetz.com/ - Social network
http://www.yuku.com/ - Social network
http://www.minggl.com/ - Social network
http://mindtouch.com - Wikis
Of course http://Twitter.com and all apps based on it.
http://facebook.com
http://squidoo.com
http://plurk.com
Blogging and other media
http://blogsearch.google.com/ping - Make sure Google knows about your blog.
http://pingoat.com/ - back in action. Add pingoat link internally to your blog for more exposure.
http://pingomatic.com - Standard blog comes with this.
http://www.deeptagging.com/ Powerful and rich presentations using content from Powerpoint, multi-media, and includes viewer questions and more.
http://www.seomoz.org/
http://www.webconfs.com/ - an oldie but a goodie.
http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal - Google's keyword lookup.
http://www.avangate.com/articles/online-seo-tools_79.htm
Domain Search
Another nice tool for Domain Finding is:
http://DomainTyper.com
Very advanced Domain Generator, and Domain Search.
SEM and Online Marketing
Great list, I'd add another category for Search Engine Marketing (SEM).
http://www.adpropel.com - one stop online marketing tools (SEM, directory listings, coupon listings, reputation tracking)
http://power.adpropel.com - tools to research keyword ad stats
https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox - google traffic estimator for keyword ads
Don't forget about MindTouch Deki for Collaboration
MindTouch Deki is great for collaboration and is open source. A great place to capture knowledge for the growth of an idea and to keep capturing throughout the life of the idea/business