Features
Software money-savers
Website creation
KompoZer
Price: Free
From www.kompozer.net
Sometimes it seems that web designers face a grim dilemma: either hand-code a website using a free text editor or shell out a lot of cash for a WYSIWYG editor such as Adobe's Dreamweaver or Microsoft Expression Web Designer. But there is an alternative for the canny designer.
KompoZer is a WYSIWYG editor that can trace its heritage back to Netscape's Composer web editor. KompoZer makes it easy to build a site from scratch, although you can also import existing HTML files. There are useful HTML tools here, including a code cleaner and validator to help ensure your site is accessible. It also has a Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) editor to ensure typographical consistency.
KompoZer even has its own FTP engine, which means that in most cases you can upload files directly to your website. KompoZer has nothing like Dreamweaver's feature list, but this does mean that the interface is less cluttered. However, we did find it rather clunky to use. KompoZer makes different views, such as Preview and Code, available under separate tabs. An HTML tag view shows the structure of your HTML document.
KompoZer isn't as good as Dreamweaver, but it can produce good results even if you're an HTML novice. The fact that it's free is a bonus.
Alternative: Dreamweaver CS3 (£393)
Website analysis
Google Analytics
Price: Free
When you've got your website running, the best way to expand it is by working out who's visiting your pages and how they find your site. Web-analysis software provides a lot of information about site visitors, but many applications cost.
The best site analysis tool for small sites is Mint (http://haveamint.com), which costs $30 (around £15) for every website you install it on, but this requires specific server software to be installed. For those who don't have the money to spend, it's hard to see past Google's less elegant, but more detailed Analytics.
Analytics is a hosted service, which means you check your site's statistics on Google's site, rather than your own. The main advantage of this is that you just need to install a bit of code on each page that you want tracked. It can even work on hosted blog services, such as Blogger. The downside is that you're relying on a third-party service to give you information.
It gives you a graphical analysis of site visits, the URL they visited from, the search terms they used to find you and how long they spent on your pages.
Alternative: Mint (£15)
FTP
FileZilla
Price: Free
From http://filezilla-project.org
The file transfer protocol might seem passé in the web 2.0 era, especially when FTP features are often built into web-editing applications. These are often poorly implemented, however, and a dedicated FTP application is usually the fastest way to transfer a file over the internet, especially large files that can often be blocked by your ISP if you're trying to send by email.
There are lots of good-quality commercial FTP applications (WS_FTP Home is among the best known), but for free alternatives look no further than FileZilla. Connecting to an FTP site with FileZilla could hardly be simpler. Just enter your login details and the ftp address and click the Quickconnect button. It's speedy and supports most popular transfer formats. As well as standard FTP, it understands secure FTP and FTP over SSL/TLS (FTPS). It can automatically adjust transfer speeds depending on the time of day. It doesn't support WebDav folders and can't automate file transfers, but it's ideal for uploading occasional files to your website.
Alternative: WS_FTP Home (£20 with no support)
Internet telephony
Skype
Price: Free
From www.skype.com
No money-saving guide would be complete without a reference to Skype, the free internet telephony application. There are plenty of Voice- over IP (VoIP) applications around, but Skype's huge user base, coupled with the fact that voice and video calls between Skype users are free, makes it the most popular.
Its advantage over conventional phone calls is financial. It costs a little over 1p a minute to call Australia and the USA, while for £30 a year you can have your own Skype number, which can be based anywhere in the world.
Skype isn't perfect. It isn't a full replacement for your phone, as you can't make emergency calls on it. There are also startup costs beyond the cost of calling. You'll need a headset and microphone for starters, and if you want to use Skype when your PC is turned off you'll need a dedicated Skype phone.
Some users have complained that Skype's call quality isn't as good as standard telephone lines. One tip to check the quality of your calls is to select Tools, Options, Advanced and turn on the Display Technical Call Info option. This lists statistics about your calls. Check the Roundtrip reading. It should be under 100ms. If it isn't, it could be a problem with your router or a configuration issue. Once those problems are corrected, Skype normally performs well.
Alternative: BT Together (UK calls 3.25p per minute)
RSS
Omea Reader
Price: Free
RSS aggregators are a great way to gather links to news updates from the growing number of websites that offer compatible feeds, but the most popular and best Windows RSS reader, FeedDemon 2.5, costs £15.
So if you're up for saving a bit of cash, pick up a free one. Of the free desktop-based clients, Omea Reader 2.2 is the best.
That's because Omea is far more than an RSS reader. Omea will also subscribe to your favourite UseNet newsgroups, and it manages web bookmarks, too. Its paid-for sibling, Omea Pro, can even send and receive emails and archive webpages as well as messages from instant messaging clients.
Alternative: FeedDemon 2.5 (£15)
