February 2010
D.I.Y. Website Tools

Even the smallest businesses need to have a web presence if they want to compete in today's market. A well-maintained website can raise your visibility and your credibility - and I've never regretted investing in having a professional design and create my company's website. It's a simple site, so - like many small business owners - I handle some of the basic maintenance on my own. In this month's ResearchNOTES, I'd like to share some of the cool tools that help with my website's upkeep...

Web links that don't work detract from your credibility, and will quickly make visitors lose interest in your site. Using Xenu's Link Sleuth, I can run regular checks for broken links on my website. Learn more about and download this free software at http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html.

It's important that everyone can access your website, and I just found out about WAVE, a free tool for evaluating a site's accessibility. Just enter a URL, and WAVE graphically displays any accessibility problems on that page. Give it a try at http://wave.webaim.org/. It was an eye opener for me.

Sometimes the software we use for creating and maintaining webpages doesn't want to cooperate. Instead of battling with FrontPage when it inexplicably changes your font style, you might want to just tweak the HTML code yourself. That's when I rely on the Bare Bones Guide to HTML, at
http://werbach.com/barebones/. Available in more than 20 languages, I find this guide easy to navigate for quick lookups.

What cools tools help you with your website maintenance chores? Let me know, and I'll post them (with credit to you) on my blog.

See you next month,
Marcy

Marcy Phelps
Phelps Research
Author, Research on Main Street: Using the Web to Find Local Business and Market Information (Forthcoming)
+1 303.239.0657                        Email: mphelps@phelpsresearch.com
Web: www.phelpsresearch.com     Blog:  www.MarcyPhelps.com