Web development encompasses various activities related developing a website. The importance of building a web presence in today's times is immense, triggering rush by people and organizations to own websites to make themselves visible on the internet. This in turn has driven the need for web development software and tools that give competitive advantage to its users. Now the ubiquitous questions are

• How expensive is web development?
• How much I need to PAY for building my webpage or website?

There are a wide variety of web development products being sold by different vendors that cater to all your web development needs. But they do come at a price and often we are either not in a position or simply not willing to pay the price. We are always looking for a cheaper alternative. Better still - Can we get it for free?

Yes, we can - The same features and facilities as commercial web development software are available for free as feature rich Open source web development tools. Open source software offers us several advantages the most important of which are -

• The software comes free of cost.
• You can redistribute and share for free.
• You can modify source code to suit you own requirement or enhance it.

Are you someone who is vying open source web development?

Since web development is such an important and strategic area the need for open source software is even more important. This gives you freedom for creativity and experimentation while not denting your pocket with huge expenses. FORTUNATELY there are loads of free open source web development tools and software available that can satiate the need for a great looking web site by getting you the right tools to build it for free.

Here are some open source web development products one can try:

• Aptana 0.2.7 - An html/JavaScript editor intended for development of dynamic web applications. It provides integrated java script debugging and is excellent tool for ajax development.
• Bluefish 1.0.5 - It is a good tool for experience developers and has Unicode support.
• Drupal- It is a very good open source Content Management System.
• IceBB 1.0-rc6 - It is a feature rich bulletin board/forum software. It has a WYSIWYG ( What You See Is What You Get) editor and provides Unicode support
• Joomla 1.0.13 - One of the best CMS (content management system) available. It allows you to build professional websites with lot detailed customizing options.
• Liferay Portal 4.4.0 - It is high quality portal software allowing you to get started quickly without much effort with manuals.
• Mozilla SeaMonkey 1.1 - SeaMonkey has all the regular internet application needs in own package. It has a web-browser, email, a newsgroup client, HTML authoring program and IRC chat client all under one package.
• Nucleus CMS 3.24 - This complete blogging tool allows publishing and maintaining your blog.
• Nvu 1.0 - It is a Web development system initially intended for Linux, but now available for windows too. It has a WYSIWYG editor.
• OpenLaszlo 4.0 - it is an open source web development platform whose main function is generating flash files and AJAX/DHTML to be used on websites.
• OpenSTA 1.4.3 - It is a distributed software testing architecture whose main feature is web (HTTP and HTTPS) performance and load/stress testing.
• SilverStripe 2.1.1 - It's a content management system based on PHP.
• Umbraco 3.0.1 - It is a content Management system based on ASP.NET giving full support for AJAX framework and gives u capability to maintain your website with latest web technology standards.

Go Ahead, Try these wonderful open source web development tools and build your dream website now.

One should agree that content is the main thing that keeps visitors coming back for more to your website. Without content, your website is a dead duck in the water. Here are 5 smart ways you can create content for your website without breaking an arm and a leg:

1. Outsource Your Content

You can hire a professional freelancer to create content for you. This is an easy way to get your content created hands free. But the only problem is cost. If you have tons of extra cash lying around, then this is a viable option.

2. Use RSS Feeds

By installing RSS feeds on your site, you can have fresh new content generated practically on the fly. RSS Feeds can typically grab content from new blog posts around the web, news sites and other websites. You can also promote your content via RSS feeds using FeedBurner.

3. Use Blogs

Create a blog and allow people to comment on your posts. The comments are also a way of creating content for your site, only you are not writing the content, your readers are.

4. Create A Forum

A forum is one of the best ways to have tons of content created for you by others. If you have a popular forum, you'll have loads of fresh new information posted by the forum members.

5. Leverage Articles

Take reprint rights articles from article directories and publish them on your own website. There's a whole world of articles out there on article directories that you can use as long as you include the resource box with them.

Website development is not magic, and it's not as difficult as some people would like you to believe. The many companies involved in SEO or Search Engine Optimization are correct in stating your site must be "optimized" for the search engines in order to get higher search engine rankings. What they would like you to believe is this is all very technical and sophisticated, and therefore it justifies the prices they charge for their services.

What is in fact highly technical, sophisticated and developed by absolute geniuses, are the search engine algorithms used to rank sites as the "bots" crawl the millions of sites and bring back information. But you need to understand one thing clearly. The search engines are ultimately looking for only one result - fresh content that will be exactly what people like you and I want when we do a search.

When I made my first attempts at website building, I researched everything I could about website development and how to get my website ranked in the top 10 and then using all the technical tricks and tools to make the search engines happy and rank my site high. You can guess what happened...nothing!

The only way you could find my site was for me to actually tell you my URL. Needless to say, I had very little traffic. Then it hit me, why am I trying to outsmart the brilliant people at the search engines who continue to update their search technology on a daily basis? I realized there has to be a better website development method, and went looking. Face it, with out the search engines ranking your site highly; all your work will be for nothing, because your site will be invisible!

I was very lucky to find a company name Site Build It. I signed up with them for $300, and it was the best investment I have made yet in my online adventures. The folks at SiteSell are always on the cutting edge of everything e-business. They've helped tens of thousands of people launch successful Web businesses with SBI!.

I went through their 10 day course and read every page and watched every video. They quickly pointed out the basic misconceptions people have about website development and building sites that are ranked highly by search engines and how to avoid them. What they made clear to me can be summed up in one phrase used often in their course..."content is king!"

You start your website development with a concept or theme, a subject you are passionate about, a subject you believe you can make into a business. Then you do keyword research about your subject to find out how much search activity there is about your subject on the search engines. You also look at what keywords have the highest search demand versus websites supplying that information, and the resulting gap or surplus. When you find gaps, this means there is demand for information about those keywords, and an opportunity for your concept.

Then you build content rich pages around those keywords, and guess what. That is exactly what the search engine algorithms and "bots" are looking for...CONTENT! But you must never forget the most important part of equation will be the humans that will be reading your pages, so as they say in the training - Keep it real! You must write as your having a conversation with someone sitting in front of you.

If website development is magic, then the magic boils down to three key principles.

• Your website must have a theme that you are knowledgeable and passionate about.

• You must understand you will never outsmart the search engines, and the search engines rankings are based on good content around a specific theme and keywords.

• You must keep your human readers in mind as your first priority and develop your content for them.

Keep these basic principles in site at all times and then, and only then, you will get the results you want -- traffic and increased sales!