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Here's a library of resources to help you enjoy the web & your website even more. Let us know if there's something we should add.

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• Planning your website

  This guide covers the planning stage of building your website. It includes identifying your target audience, choosing a domain name and hosting, drawing site maps/ wire frames and conducting competitor research.
  
  _download Planning your website

• Building your website (HTML/CSS)

  This guide will introduce you to the concepts behind building a web site. It looks at the different software available, using HTML & CSS and writing a basic web page.
  
  _download Building your website

• Marketing your website

  This guide will provide you with practical online and offline marketing ideas. It outlines the basics involved in driving traffic to your site covering search engine optimisation, pay per click advertising, affiliate marketing, directories, email marketing, advertising networks, social media, PR and print advertising.
  
  _download Marketing your website

• Improving your website

  This guide will introduce you to the methods, tools and resources available for you to analyse your website. It also enables you to use that data to make it even better, including web analytics, heat maps, user feedback and testing & optimisation.
  
  _download Improving your website

• 45 Search engine pay per click marketing tips

  In 45 steps we take you through the DOs and DON'Ts of PPC. Download our pay per click marketing tips to optimise your PPC efforts and increase your ROI.
  
  _download Pay per click marketing tips

• Setting up a Google AdWords account

  Here we will take you through how to effectively structure your own AdWords account from set up. A well thought out Google AdWords account benefits from improved quality score...
  
  _download Setting up a Google AdWords account

• How to write SEO web content in 10 steps

  Writing is as much as an art form as it is a skill, but that doesn't mean that you can't write content that is powerful and helps to improve your company's ranking with the major search engines. There are certain elements which can help your website content, blog posts, articles submitted to online directories and other online content increase your rankings and move your business forward.
  
  _download How to write SEO web content in 10 easy steps

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• GIMP: Free Photoshop alternative

  GIMP is almost a 'clone' of Photoshop. It works in very similar way with its layers, selections, filters and painting tools. It can even read and write in Photoshop format, making it ultra compatible with your Photoshop using colleagues or clients. The software doesn't feel quite as polished as Photoshop does, and its text manipulation is a little behind Photoshop's. But, if you're like the majority of people who use Photoshop to resize their images, reduce the colours, and maybe add the odd special effect to add a little extra to your websites, then the GIMP is definitely something you should try!
  
  _click for GIMP: free Adobe Photoshop alternative

• Aptana Studio: Free Dreamweaver alternative

  Aptana Studio is a HTML and CSS design suite. It is also used by programmers who write in PHP, Ruby and others. It works very similarly to Dreamweaver in that it has both a design and code view, has syntax highlighting, comes with code snippets, and will also FTP files to your website for you. If you have used Dreamweaver in the past then Aptana would feel very familiar to you, with a few nice surprises (especially for those AJAX lovers out there).
  
  _click for Aptana Studio: free Adobe Dreamweaver alternative

• Inkscape: Free Illustrator alternative

  Inkscape is a vector drawing programme with features similar to that of Adobe Illustrator and Corel Draw. It has a very large feature set, including n-sided object creation, text effects, raster images, gradients, layers, opacity and paths. It can read and write in many formats, including XML, SVG and complies with W3C standards. It can also read AI and SVG files exported from Illustrator. A fine and free alternative.
  
  _click for Inkscape: free Adobe Illustrator alternative

• OpenOffice.org: Free Microsoft Office alternative

  Open Office.org (or OOo for short) is a direct replacement for Microsoft's Office suite (excluding Outlook). It is a very mature project and they have very recently released version 3.1.0. You can use replacements for Word, Excel, Power-Point and Access. OOo can also read and write in any of the native file formats, as well as a few others (like PDF) which older versions of Office can't. This one comes highly recommended.
  
  _click for OpenOffice.org: free Microsoft Office alternative

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FTP is always the best way to upload a lot of files onto your hosting account. We have picked out some of the free ones that we think are worth trying.

• Filezilla

  FileZilla Client is a fast and reliable cross-platform FTP, FTPS and SFTP client with lots of useful features and an intuitive nterface. Features include: Drag & drop support; Configurable Speed limits, Supports FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS) and SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP); Cross-platform: Runs on Windows, Linux, OSX and more; Supports resume and transfer of large files >4GB.
  
  _click for the official Filezilla website

• FireFTP (Firefox Browser Extension)

  FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla Firefox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers. Features include: Cross-platform: Works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux; Secure: SSL/TLS support, same encryption used with online banking and shopping; Synchronization: Keep directories in sync while navigating; Automatic reconnect and resuming of transfers; Seamless integration with Mozilla Firefox.
  
  _click for the FireFTP website

• AcefTP

  It's cool, uncluttered drag-and-drop interface, designed in a Windows XP fashion, lets you transfer files quickly and efficiently and navigate with ease between folders, both on Web sites and on your computer. Features include: Windows XP-Style Interface; Store and configure your connections using the explorer-style advanced site manager; Make server-to-server file transfers; Open several FTP sites easily; Resume broken transfers.
  
  _click for the AcefTP website

• Classic FTP

  Classic FTP is an easy to use ftp client that allows you to view, edit, upload, download and delete files from a remote server (website) or network for free. Features include: Runs on Windows 98/2000/Xp/Vista and Mac OS X; Visually compare your local drive and what's online; Manually download selected files; Manually connect and disconnect to site.
  
  _click for the Classic FTP website

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The iPhone has been wildly popular since its debut despite its lack of support for Flash. With this coup Apple dramatically raised the bar for what customers expected in a mobile web browser. By doing this without Flash, Apple essentially redefined what the web should look like, at least on a mobile device. Flash has been (and continues to be) a great tool for us but we agree that the nature of its products is always more that of self-contained "applications" rather than well integrated elements of a web page.

• HTML5 Rocks

  HTML5Rocks.com is a great resource site featuring an interactive presentation, a code playground, step-by-step tutorials & an additional resources page.
  
  _click for the HTML5Rocks website

• PinStack.com forum thread on HTML5

  Limited but nonetheless interesting forum thread relating to the dispute around Flash and HTML5; don't expect too much but there are some nice examples and further reading.
  
  _click for an interesting HTML5 forum thread on PinStack.com

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• W3C HTML & CSS Validator

  It is surprising to see the amount of websites containing errors in their HTML and CSS code. On the face of it, errors don't necessarily matter. However, what you see isn't always what everybody else gets. To guarantee a high level of browser compatibilty the minimum requirement is valid code. Beyond the browser valid codes help with search engine optimisation. Often quite dramatically.
  
  _visit the W3C HTML & CSS validator here

• Pingdom.com uptime & performance monitoring

  Pingdom.com offers amongst other things a basic BUT FREE service to monitor your sites uptime. You can set uptime testing for different services (email or web for example) and you will receive email alerts on service outage and a further email once your service is back up again. Other metrics are available through the website and a basic uptime report will be emailed to you at the end of evey month.
  
  _click here to start monitoring your uptime at Pingdom.com

• Web Site Testing

  Ever wanted to know just how good your website really is? Measure accessibilty, user experience, marketing and technology with Nibbler. The very clever people at Silktide in Derby have developed a free service called Nibbler. Nibbler literally takes a taste of your site by taking a web address you provide, finding up to 5 pages from inside it, and testing them for a range of criteria. At the end you get a free report scoring the website out of 10 for various tests, and awarding a 'Summary score' for all the tests. The report delivers a very good overview of any site's accessibilty, user experience, marketing and technology - and all that in under 30 secs. It won't tell you how to improve. But you can come to us for that...
  
  _visit Nibbler for a taste of your website

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• UK Link Exchange

  Find link exchange partners within the UK. All sites are vetted for content. We've only started using this service recently so we can't give you the final thumbs up but it sounds like a very good idea indeed. We'll keep you posted.
  
  _UK Link Exchange