Free WYSIWYG web editors and other useful free programs for webmaster
Reviews and ratings of quality, hand-picked, UK websites
Free WYSIWYG web editors and text editors. Plus we have also found an excellent free program that gives you website statistics, an intuitive free FTP program, live website chat software and a really nice DHTML menu builder.
We have yet to find a free WYSIWYG web editor that has an inbuilt sitewide search and replace function - although we are still searching! What we have found, however, is a very good free standalone search and replace program that you can use to search and replace hundreds (probably thousands, we haven't checked) files in one go. You can use this in conjunction with any of the free editors to give greater functionality. We have listed this program first.
BK ReplaceEm
www.snapfiles.com
Program Type: Search and Replace
100% free text search-and-replace program that can operate on multiple files at once. You can also setup a list of operations to perform. Software is by Custom Fit Software.
572KB Download
Nvu
www.nvu.com
Nvu (that's pronounced N view) is an impressive 100% free open source web authoring software. It's WYSIWYG so you don't have to know html to use it.
Here are some of the things it can do:
Integrated web file management
Enhanced handling of forms, templates, etc.
Extensibility which allows advanced users to build their own extensions to Nvu with a dash of JavaScript.
Video tutorials on the website.
Its available for Windows, Unix and MacOSX.
Amaya
www.w3.org/Amaya
Amaya is an open source project hosted by W3C. Its available for Windows, Unix and MacOSX.
Ewisoft Website Builder
www.ewisoft.com
Free website builder especially for beginners or website content owners, who don't understand HTML and may find other design software are too dificult.
Mozilla Suite
www.mozilla.org
From Netscape. This has a web browser, email client, IRC chat and an HTML editor.
Trellian Webpage
www.trellian.com/webpage
Suitable for both beginners and advanced users.
Web Dwarf
www.virtualmechanics.com
From software developers Virtual Mechanics, WebDwarf is a free wysiwyg web editor with drag and drop editing.
Web Weaver EZ
www.mcwebsoftware.com
Free WYSIWYG Web page editor for Windows. Drag N' Drop your images and other items around your Web page.Very easy to use and a breeze even for absolute beginners.
Free Text Editors
HTML-Kit
www.chami.com
Much more than just a text editor and a must if you want your webpages to achieve full accessibily. HTML Kit is a standards-compliant full-featured free editor for HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS and other common languages and over 400 plugins available. It features HTML Tidy which allows you to clean up your webpages and is recommended by W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium).
Platforms: Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000, NT 4, ME, 98 and 95.
Alleycode
www.alleycode.com
Includes a tutorial for beginners plus advanced features such as CSS and optimizer wizards.
Crimson Editor
www.crimsoneditor.com
Program Type: Source Code Web Editor
Crimson Editor is a small, fast loading, professional source code editor for Windows.
Features of Crimson Editor include: Edit multiple documents, Syntax highlighting, Multi-level undo / redo, Project management, Directory tree view window, Find & Replace, Column mode editing, Natural word wrapping, Spell checker, User tools and macros, Edit remote files directly using built-in FTP client, Print & Print preview
Arachnophilia
www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/
Program Type: Source Code Web Editor
Written in Java so can be used by almost any operating system. Can import a wide variety of file types and convert to HTML. This is not freeware but careware - in order to get your free copy of Arachnophilia the stipulation is that you should "stop whining for an hour, a day, a week, your choice." Can't say fairer than that.
DHTML Menu Builder
Soyouthink DHTML Menu Builder Free Version
• www.dhtml-menu-builder.com
Program Type: DHTML Menu Builder
Professional DHTML pop-up menus. Choose your own fonts and colours. Each menu button can be customised separately. Add icon and pictures. The interface is very simple so making a menu is a breeze. The javascript code is generated automatically. Its also search engine friendly. Soyouthink has several free and paid for software products
Platform: Windows
FTP Programs
Filezilla FTP Program 
• http://filezilla-project.org
This excellent free ftp program has a nicely laid out interface and get the job done very quickly and easily. On the left are your files on the home computer and on the right, the internet. Simply drag and drop or double click and the site is updated.
Live Chat
Volusion Live Chat
• www.volusion.com/livechat_software.asp
Program Type: Live Chat Software
If you would like to add a chat facility to your website. The software is free and fully customisable. This is a free offering from Volusion who provide (paid for!) ecommerce solutions for businesses.
Platform: Windows
Skype
• www.skype.com
Add a Skype Me button on your website, if you have one. You just need to add a small amout of code (Skype will give you this) and when you set your stat
us to "Skype Me" in Skype itself, the button will also show on your website! Neat!
Available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Pocket PC.
Google Talk
• www.google.com/talk
Google Talk Chatback for your website:
Chatback allows visitors to your website to chat with you, e
ven if they haven't signed up for Google Talk. Simply paste the html code for your google badge (see our non working illustration) into your web page and your visitors can chat with you whenever you are signed into Google Talk. The badge displays your online status. After you have signed up with Google Talk, get your chatback badge by visiting:
www.google.com/talk/service/badge/New
To use this facility you need to have Google Mail open as the messages are displayed there, but you can minimise the window as you will be alerted by a sound whenever someone initiates a chat.
Link Checker
Xenu's Link Sleuth
• http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
Program Type: Free Link Checker
Saves a huge amount of time if you have a lot of links to check. Simply type in the url of your website and the program checks all the outgoing links for you and flags up any broken links. You can choose how you want the results to be sorted.
Platform: Windows only
Web Site Promotion
Web CEO Free Edition
www.websiteceo.com
Use this free edition to optimise and tweak your websites so that they do well on the search engines. You can also use the program to submit to search engines and much more - check it out. If you are impressed (and we are sure you will be) you probably won't even want to upgrade to the paid edition!
Website Statistics
eWebCounter.com
• www.ewebcounter.com
Program Type: Free Website Statistics and Web Counter
The nice thing about this is that you do not have to have the web counter displayed visibly on your website if you don't think it will fit in with your design. The stats, which you view online, only track in detail the last 200 visits at any one time, but this is more than enough to get a feel for where your visitors are coming from and what they are doing on your website. The stats are detailed and very to access and implement, plus you can track more than one website. Statistics include page activity, visitor activity, referral activity, user information and who is on your website in real time. The free account offers 150,000 page views, per month and a maximum of 5 projects (tracked websites) but full details are included. If you want more page views and a bigger log size, you can always upgrade to one of their paid options.
Google Sitemap Generator
Vigos Gsitemap
• www.vigos.com
Program Type: Google Sitemap Generator for Windows
If you want to submit a sitemap to Google sitemaps then this software will generate one easily and quickly for you.
TIP: Do you want to find out who is linking to your site? You could try Google. Type in
'link:www.yoursite.com'
in the search box . This will bring up links to your home page so if you want to find out about a specific page, just type in the specific address.
Or you could go to Yahoo and type in
'linkdomain:yoursite.com'
leaving out the www. Note that not all links to your site may be shown because linking sites might not yet have been indexed by Google or Yahoo.
Google Rankings
To find out what position you are in Google for any particular search term go to googlerankings.com. Type the search term you are interested in and hold your breath!
