We see new beta sites all the time, but are they any good? Here are some collection of new beta sites. Some of them provide free and useful web services.

1. http://www.sliderocket.com/

SlideRocket is a web application that provides everything you need to design professional quality presentations, manage and share libraries of slides and assets, and to deliver presentations in person or remotely over the web.

2. http://www.behance.net/

This site let us to build your portfolio, list your projects to share and collaborate with other artists.

3. http://www.popfly.com/

Popfly is a tool from Microsoft for developing mashups, widgets and web pages using Silverlight.

4. http://www.sproutbuilder.com/

Sprout is a browser based WYSIWYG editor which build by Flex. It facilitates the way to build, publish, and manage widgets, mini-sites, mashups, banners and more.

5. http://www.tryphone.com/

This is online mobile phone test-drive site. You can get a feeling for what the phone is like to use.

6. http://www.meemix.com/

This is a site can let you to build a very personalised radio channel and interact with the community.

7. http://www.cushycms.com/

Cushycms is a free and truly simple CMS for web designers to let clients to safely edit their own web content without any programming skills required.

8. http://www.kaltura.com/

Kaltura is open source video platform which enables groups to create and edit video collaboratively.

9. http://www.dimdim.com/

Dimdim is the world’s free web meeting where you can share your desktop, show slides, collaborate, chat, talk and broadcast via webcam with absolutely no download required for attendees.

10. http://www.nuconomy.com/

Another web analytics as Google Analytics. It let you understand your users’ activities and how they interact with the various features of your site like never before.

11. http://www.skyfire.com/

Skyfire is a new mobile web browser that allows you to experience the internet on your phone exactly like on your computer. It is fast and support Flash and Ajax as well as QuickTime.

12. http://www.ping.fm/

Too many social networks? Use Ping to update WordPress, Twitter, Facebook, Friendster and many other supported services from whatever you are. Ping.fm is a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap. Messanges can be sent via AIM, GTalk, iGoogle, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, WAP, iPhone/iPod Touch, SMS or E-mail.

13. http://www.photrade.com/

Photrade is great for sourcing free photos legally. It also let photographers to sell and licence their own pictures to make some money.

14. http://www.pluginmeter.com/

If you are a wordpress blogger or just for some other reasons if you want to know which plugins are installed on your favorite wordpress blog then just go to Plugin Meter and you will see list of plugins installed on those blog.

1. http://www.bjtlsy.com/

2. http://www.reooo.com/

3. http://www.hanciv.com/

4. http://www.mavada.com/

5. http://www.adboy.cn/

6. http://www.abercrombie.com/

7. http://www.omnitech-inc.com/

8. http://dragoninteractive.com/

9. http://www.pauljnoble.com/

10. http://www.gozipline.com/

11. http://www.maxhaus.com.br/

12. http://www.digitalic.org/

13. http://www.thexpression.net/

14. http://www.tioti.com/

15. http://www.lancethackeray.com/

16. http://www.jeremycowart.com/

We should set up a permanent redirect (technically called a “301 redirect”) between these sites. Once we do that, we will get full search engine credit for our work on these sites.

301 redirect is useful too for search engines which may think, for example, www.office-it.org and office-it.org are two different sites. Let say, www.office-it.org seems to have 5 inbound links whereas office-it.org has 6 inbound links. By correctly configuring a permanent 301 redirect, the search rankings might improve as all inbound links are correctly counted for the website.

What is 301 redirect?

301 redirect is the best method to preserve our current search engine rankings when redirecting web pages or a web site. The code “301″ is interpreted as “moved permanently”. If we have to change file names or move pages around, it’s the safest option.

Below are a couple of methods to implement URL Redirection.

IIS Redirect
1. In internet services manager, right click on the file or folder we wish to redirect
2. Select the radio titled “a redirection to a URL”
3. Enter the redirection page
4. Check “The exact url entered above” and the “A permanent redirection for this resource”
5. Click on ‘Apply’

ColdFusion Redirect

<.cfheader statuscode="301" statustext="Moved permanently">
<.cfheader name="Location" value="http://www.new-url.com">

PHP Redirect

Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/icreativem/domains/office-it.org/public_html/wp-includes/feed-rss2.php:11) in /home/icreativem/domains/office-it.org/public_html/wp-content/plugins/exec-php/includes/runtime.php(42) : eval()'d code on line 29

Warning:  Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/icreativem/domains/office-it.org/public_html/wp-includes/feed-rss2.php:11) in /home/icreativem/domains/office-it.org/public_html/wp-content/plugins/exec-php/includes/runtime.php(42) : eval()'d code on line 30

ASP Redirect

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status="301 Moved Permanently"
Response.AddHeader "Location","http://www.new-url.com/"
%>

ASP .NET Redirect

JSP (Java) Redirect

<%
response.setStatus(301);
response.setHeader( "Location", "http://www.new-url.com/" );
response.setHeader( "Connection", "close" );
%>

CGI PERL Redirect

$q = new CGI;
print $q->redirect("http://www.new-url.com/");

Ruby on Rails Redirect

def old_action
headers["Status"] = "301 Moved Permanently"
redirect_to "http://www.new-url.com/"
end

Redirect Old domain to New domain (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all directories and pages of our old domain will get correctly redirected to our new domain. The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of our old website (i.e the same directory where our index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Please REPLACE www.newdomain.com in the above code with our actual domain name.

In addition to the redirect we would suggest that you contact every backlinking site to modify their backlink to point to your new website.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

Redirect to www (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all requests coming in to domain.com will get redirected to www.domain.com
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of our old website (i.e the same directory where our index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Please REPLACE domain.com and www.newdomain.com with our actual domain name.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

Free Tool to Test

Search Engine Friendly Redirect Checker is the free web services to test redirection.

Some web designers may not have fully knowledge to master CSS, and many of us are good enough with little bit of brushing and designing in PhotoShop. Now, I found a great website, PSD to CSS Online, which provide free service to convert PhotoShop creations into CSS pages online.

Although this tool may not appeal to big shot designer because they know CSS. It will for sure useful for those who know PhotoShop but do not know CSS. Try it out for your very own unique webpage and even template!

http://www.psd2cssonline.com/

Some websites make their 404 pages cool and imaginative. They include fancy graphics, unique ideas, and even poetry to convey to the users they have reached a bad link. Not only that, they also provide a link to the home page, sometimes a search feature, and even an option to report the bad link, so you’re not left lost.

The following are some collection of creative HTTP error not found page design:

1. http://www.aviationreviews.com//404

2. http://alt-web.com/404redirect.shtml

3. http://www.vi-su.de/404

4. http://www.cgcraft.com/404

5. http://www.homestarrunner.com/systemisdown.html

6. http://iamww.com/404

7. http://www.galiacho.es/404

8. http://www.martinkorner.co.uk/404df

9. http://www.jackfig.com/404

10. http://www.nextwaveperformance.com/404

11. http://www.porcupine.gr/404

12. http://www.scythe.net/404.html

13. http://www.f23.com/404.shtml

14. http://lumino.us/404

15. http://jeremyfuksa.com/404

16. http://www.poemofquotes.com/404

17. http://www.jhuskisson.com/404

18. http://www.ateaseweb.com/404/

19. http://www.apple.com/404

20. http://www.pyropoptrt.com/404

21. http://www.psyked.co.uk/404

22. http://bluevertigo.com.ar/404

23. http://tysontate.com/404

24. http://www.tix02.be/404

25. http://suspendedanimations.com/404

26. http://slonky.com/404

Avoid to use popular template

If many people use the same template, your website will not appear unique at all and your credibility as a solid, different website will be tarnished. In other words, you will appear generic just like your next-door neighbours.

Do not redesign the template beyond recognisation

To whole point of using a web template is to save time and effort. You just change the title and appropriate details and you’re done. The biggest mistake one makes is to customize the template beyond recognisation. While that may be good in the sense that you are creating a unique graphic, you are defying the very purpose of using a web template — saving time and effort.

However, on the opposite side, if a template you purchase is suitable but some changes must be made to suit your site’s theme, then you will have to take some time to make the changes. For example, you can find a very nice template that suits your hobby site except the original designer has put an image of stamps in the header. You can find images of garden plants and spades to replace the stamps for your gardening hobby site. However, do only make the necessary changes and do not redesign the whole template.

Choose the right template

In some circumstances, some people simply make the wrong choice of templates. This is a very subjective issue but you have to be careful in selecting templates to suit your audience. Do not choose templates just because they are pretty; choose them because they serve your purpose.

1. Check Your Site Ranks

Sitescore

This is probably the most prominent analytics tool in this overview, delivers a detailed report on dozens of various design-related aspects. Every single key point is evaluated and rated according to its performance on the scale from 1 to 10. Among other things Sitescore analyzes the quality of incoming and outgoing links, keyword density, page titles, plagiarism, popularity rank, the usage of popups and the effectiveness of site’s structure. Sitescore also grades the printability, readability, spiderability and usability of the page as well as spelling and W3C compliance.

Page Strength SEO Tool

Another tool with similar approach. It measures the relative importance and visibility of a page, the potential strength and ability to rank in the search engines and presents data on popularity, links & mentions of the page across the Web. The tool is designed to satisfy the curiosity of webmasters, surfers and web marketing professionals seeking a better metric to quickly assess a site/page’s relative importance and visibility.

Webagogo

Similar to Sitescore, Webagogo tests the quality of web sites and presents the results as reports in a brief overview. The tool performs markup and style analysis, accessibility tests, usability tests, speed benchmark tests and calculates SEO effectiveness. Not really spectacular, but it’s nice to have some important checkpoints ready to hand. You have to be the site owner and have access to an e-mail address on the site’s domain.

Blog Juice

Blog Juice estimates blog’s value upon the approximate number of Bloglines subscribers, Alexa rank, the ranking assigned by Technorati and the number of inbound links.

2. Use the power of Usability Tests

Taskee

This web-tool offers an effective website task management system you, your colleagues and your testers can use to exchange information and discuss some critical issues related to the page design.

3. Track your growth permanently

Urltrends

It’s primary task is to observe trends and developments related to your web site. The tool collects information about incoming links from Google, Yahoo and MSN as well as social bookmarks which point to your site and presents them in Flash-based graphs. Thus you can observe directly, how your site is growing, which tendencies occur and what changes might be important to increase your popularity.

4. Prepare your site for search engines

SEO Analysis Tool

This SEO Analysis Tool is to help you analyze and measure the ranking potential of your web pages. It doesn’t only analyze the Meta Tags of your pages, rather it tries to use the same spider technology as the search engines spiders them self.

Nikita The Spider

Nikita The Spider is a service that validates and link checks your entire Web site and reports on what she finds. All you have to do is give Nikita your home page URL and she’ll take it from there. Nikita’s link checker will find broken images, broken hyperlinks (both internal and external), and references to missing documents. The tool uses the same validation parser engine as the W3C Validator and checks for HTTP headers that often contain mistakes.

5. Identify your weak spots and fight against them

Website Grader

Website Grader calculates the marketing effectiveness of your web-pages based upon the keyword popularity, link popularity, page structure, traffic ranking, readability level and search results in Google. With this tool you can compare the quality of your web site with the quality of your competitors, partners or colleagues and thus generate a detailed competitive analysis which can give you some ideas on what you might be willing to improve. The tool also calculates the amount of diggs and articles from your site submitted on Digg.com.

Compete

Get competitive metrics for every site on the web – powered by the largest pool of online consumer behavior data in the industry.

6. Ensure the Best Performance

mon.itor.us

mon.itor.us provides free real-time personalized Ajax dashboard interface, checks server performance and availability, generates uptime and availability reports, tracks visitors, checks system resources, and alerts its users in case abnormalities are detected.

7. Ensure the best quality of your content

Orangoo Spell Check / SpellCheck.net

A perfect site is based upon the perfect content. However, there is nothing more annoying than mistakes and typos – particularly in the opening paragraph. To make sure you’ve brought your article in an optimal form, you should make use of an online spellchecker.

8. Know what your users are doing

Clicky

Clicky offers web analytics in 2.0 style. The service is supposed to give bloggers a more personal understanding of their visitors. The tool offers a highly customizable, clean and simple user interface. Apart from “traditional” data about the visitors of your page, Clicky stores the details about every visitor, including every action they made on web site (page views, file downloads, outbound links).

9. Explore your demographics – know who your users are

Quantcast

It presents the demographics of web sites as well as the estimated monthly unique visitors, similar sites and the profile of a typical visitor of the site. Unfortunately, the results are sometimes quite unusable, because there are simply too many sites quantcast doesn’t know yet.

10. Know where you stand

Popuri.us

A tool to check at-a-glance the link popularity of any site based on its ranking (Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati etc.), social bookmarks (del.icio.us, etc), subscribers (Bloglines, etc) and more!

Xinu

It help you find out how well your site is doing in popular search engines, social bookmarking and other site statistics.

Check everything you ever wanted to check

You can also use time-consuming tools in order to check some specific aspects you are interested in. The following services provide references to all checkers you could ever possibly think of.

UITest

Test Everything!