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.

Did you know that your css code could be slowing down your website? Did you also know that there is a free solution out there that can help you optimize or reformat your css code for speed and readability? This article is going to explain the benefits of optimizing your css code and the reasons why all web designers should be doing it. First we need to take into account the 2 reasons why you would want to reformat your css: readability and optimization.

Readability

Having nicely formatted css that easily readable is very helpful when you are developing a site. Most of us (me included) can get pretty sloppy when in a hurry to develop code, and a formatter can really help out to make it more readable.

On development teams where both Macs and PCs are used, sometimes line breaks are not read correctly across platforms and your css can end up all on one line. A formatter can help get your code looking pretty again.

Optimization

The opposite of readability is optimization. One problem with CSS is that it can get pretty file-size heavy when designing with it - especially on complex layouts. Optimizing your CSS will strip out all unnecessary characters and leave your CSS lean and mean.

Optimizing css is great to do once you've finished your site and don't plan to work on the design very much anymore.

The css formatter is a great tool because it can do both! You can format for readability while you are designing, optimize when you go live, and reformat it for readability if you ever need to work on it again. It's really a 'win win' thing to do.

Creation of a website is not as simple as it used to be, thanks to Google and its innumerable algorithm changes. Surely, you want to create a website to carve an online presence. You could make the swankiest website, but if it does not receive eyeballs (aka traffic), it is worth little to you.

There are a lot of things to keep in mind before you set out to plan your website design, layout, content and other details. With the power of Google looming large over the Internet world, you could well be doomed if your site does not feature high in Google rankings. While Google rankings may not be your current concern, with the nuances of the website to take care of, it is advantageous to keep it in mind while deciding your site layout, content and coding language. More on that in the next article. Lets deals with simple non-technical stuff first.

While many people build websites to please the search engines, do not ignore your human visitors completely. Remember, they are your primary audience. You need to find the right balance, make your website meet the requirements of both.

Your website should have a specific goal. It could be to create an online presence, provide information, make money, generate leads, or just about anything. Next, you need to chalk out a plan for the development of the website. Be aware of the target audience. The audience could be local, international, young, old, men or women, students, professionals. Once you know the segment of people you want to attract, you will find it easier to decide upon the layout, color scheme, tone of language etc. This is because you will then orient your website design to suit your target audience's tastes.

Design a layout that enables the eye to naturally move from one information segment to another effortlessly taking them to the desired part of the website. This could be a signup form, a set of testimonials, a particular product or simply an advertisement.

Choose a good brandable name. This helps in the long run. Create good original content that provides all the necessary information to the audience. Add appropriate images to add to the appeal and beauty of the page. It is advisable to use a good CMS (Content Management System) so that things are easier in the long run. Adding, modifying and deleting pages are a breeze with a good CMS.

Keep your page light to improve loading time. Choose lighter images over heavier ones. After all, YOU will be paying for the bandwidth.

A great idea is to check out how your competitors have designed their websites. If the research has already been done by someone else, make use of it. Do not reinvent the wheel. Focus on improving upon the wheel design.

This has covered the basics. In the next article, we can talk about important onpage optimization aspects to keep in mind while designing your website. You will need to do this if you are hoping to receive traffic from the Search Engines.

You can either take your time to learn the nuances of website design, onpage optimization and Internet Marketing yourself, or you can hire a website design company, depending on what your time is worth. Either ways, it is highly recommended that you begin preparing for the online competition from day one.