Web Services

A good web page includes some interaction on the viewers part. This interaction can be anything from joining a mailing list to participating in a forum discussion. The processes that make this interaction possible have to be included in the HTML of the web page in order for them to work. A lot of these actions take place "behind the scenes" so to speak and are triggered by scripts and forms. A newcomer to the web design game doesn't possess the knowledge to create such interactivity without a bit of studying Javascript and form handling.

A person new to web design may also not have the knowledge of HTML to troubleshoot their page when things go wrong. Your site may look great when previewed on your computer, but fall apart once uploaded to your server. Broken links, missing images and other minor problems may pop up and they are hard to fix if you don't know why they are broken.

For the above reasons and more, there are services on the Web that will take some of the difficult work off your tired shoulders. The list below will get you on the right track.

HTML Validation

These sites will check your pages for errors and other problems which may prevent the page from displaying correctly in other people's browsers. Most are not entirely free, but all offer at least a one page trial. The process is simple, usually just typing in the URL of your page. The sites will generate a report for you explaining what's wrong and possible how to fix it.

NetMechanic : This site offers many services including checking your code for errors, improving the optimization for your images and submitting your site to search engines. This is a commercial site, but they do offer free trials for most of their services.

Web site Garage : Tune up your site and Lube your GIF's with this free service.

Dr. HTML : This is a single page analysis and is basically a demo for the commercial version of Dr. HTML, which will analyze complete web pages.

Bobby : A free checker for single pages with an option of a downloadable version (presumably free also) for checking entire sites.

Dr. Watson : Single page checker with a lot of options.

Free Web Services

These sites offer free and fee based services ranging from guest books to mailing lists. All that is required is that you sign up for an account. You then choose which services you would like to use, configure them, then cut and paste the code into your web page. These are great time savers and take the hassle out of learning how to write code or configure a script.

BraveNet : My choice for easy to use, free, web tools. A host of services including Mail lists, quest books, mail forms, counters, "add a link", and a host of others. Registration is simple and configuring your service is as easy as point and click.

Alxnet : Not as many free tools as BraveNet, but still worth checking out.