10 Useful Sites for Web Developers

As a web designer and developer here’s some I use frequently and I think you’ll find them useful too. I’m sure there’s other useful sites out there so if you know of any then please add a comment for everyone else to benefit from. (I’ve actually added 11 to the list but that doesn’t sound as good in the title!)

Arctic Tracker
Arctic is a bug and issue tracker. This allows the client to go through what you’ve produced and then provide feedback on bugs, issues and also support requests. It’s free for one project and then only $99 for a full license. You will need to download and install on your own webspace but it’s straight-forward. Very useful for both you and your client to keep track of everything.

COLOURlovers
A resource site that gives you a bit of inspiration for colour themes and palettes. Very useful if your client has a base colour but then you’re a little unsure of what colours would be compliment.

dafont.com
A font library with lots of user created fonts, with most available for free.

Google Analytics
A free and comprehensive online web stats program from Google with lots of useful features. All you need to do is add some tracking code to your clients site for the stats to show up in Analytics

iStockphoto
Useful for both inspiration and also fantastic quality photos, illustrations, audio and video. Credits start at around a pound and you really don’t have to spend a great deal to get some fantastic imagery on your clients sites. Gone are the days of those expensive Royalty Free Discs from Getty (even though Getty own iStock!)

Lorem Ipsum
It’s unusual for your client to have all the copy ready when you start designing their site. For those pages where they don’t then simply use some Latin copy which, unless they can understand Latin, is ideal for dummy copy.

Size Puppy
See what your website looks at different browser sizes.

TYPETESTER
A great way to see how different sized and coloured fonts will appear online. Simply type in the font, colour, leading, tracking etc etc and you can compare up to 3 fonts alongside each other.

W3Schools
A fantastic resource for anything and everything web development. Very useful stats on browsers, platforms and OS’s as well.

W3C Validation Tools
It’s always useful if your sites are W3C validated – this ensures your code is pristine and that Google and all the other major Search Engines will crawl your clients sites with no errors. You can check there’s no broken links, validate your page source code and also validate your CSS.

Web fonts for Mac and PC
You’re not restricted to using Arial or Verdana on your site. Check this site on both Mac and PC to see how fonts will look on both platforms – you’ll be surprised at what you can use.