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.

Internet marketing is booming at rapid pace and looking at the present scenario today this industry has become multi-billion dollar industry. As business is getting more competitive the demand for online information and website development has increased dramatically in last couple of years. Presently every business firms whether it is small or big is looking for well presentable website that could explain about products and services offered by them. After having a sheer look at the present scenario, today website plays an important role of online identity for a company in online marketing. These days' websites act as visual interface and business card. By developing effective online profile of your company, you can create better corporate image of the company.

It is essential to understand that having an online presence means your business is open and you can convey your message easily. Now since every website represents a company and further help in attracting potential customer's attention, a bad website development or design may deject your customers to judge your online presence seriously. So it is very important to develop web that are well designed and have enough functionality to hold its visitors for longer time. This is one area where Flash web design solutions or Flash website development plays an important role and further gives an edge. If you want to provide a big and better impression to your visitors and want them to visit your site then using flash in your website is the answer.

Integrated with 3D Graphics, Video and Audio, it enables you to have a fully interactive multimedia experience for any website. Moreover, it facilitates designers to develop animations and interactive images that can be embedded into a web page. Any website that is developed on flash gives better interactivity as it can be used to give animations interactive features. In addition to this, flash website also improves the scope of website graphic content by creating animations. Web solutions that are developed on Flash provide facility to incorporate sound as a background element or as a synchronized element. A flash site can be loaded in a one go, and once it gets loaded it is easy for any visitor to go through different areas of the site without reloading.

Currently flash is not just a part of website, but has covered a long way and is now considered as a web template. Now you have flash templates to create any website which are better-looking than html web templates. Html web templates are plain but flash web templates are more interactive. Apart from this flash web templates have more user friendly navigation and amazing flash effects. Today where the time taken to make some decision or go through any website is getter shorter and nobody has enough time to go through the entire web-content a flash template can give them a better idea about the company.

This technology is getting its world-wide acceptance. Website that is developed on Flash has become very powerful, and today developers have begun to understand its potential in online marketing industry. Thus, flash technology is right answer if you are looking for the excellent web design solution for your website. In fact flash gives a sparkling touch to your website.

As the Internet continues to grow in popularity and billion of users access it a day endlessly surfing one website to another, a relatively small but significant percentage of those people are creating their very own websites. Statistically, there is an average of one hundred thousand new websites per day. With so many websites being created per day and so many more potential visitors to attract, to know just how many visitors your website is pulling is important to know for any webmaster. That's where a good performing, reliable and dependable website counter comes into play. No one wants to be given bad information and having a website counter that generates inaccurate data will do just that.

So which website counters are reliable? Which ones are dependable and trustworthy? Well now that you know that not every website counter is worth placing on your website, to find a good one you must look the company or the organization that created the website counter. There are many website counters that are created by no name, incredible people, companies and organizations. Just because those people offer a website counter for free, does not mean that it is reliable. It could be just free junk. Look at the website, the company, the people who are offering the website counter and make a judgment call on whether it is wise to use their website counter. A free website counter should not automatically make you want to use it. So what is the best website counter? One of the most reliable and most trustworthy website counters available so far is the Google Analytics service.

Google Analytics is the best website counter because it is very reliable, dependable and trustworthy. It will give you accurate data and it is very user friendly. Its no coincidence that Google Analytics is owned and operated by Google incorporated. If you didn't know, Google is a search engine and so much more. Google is one of the most wealthiest and credible corporations on the planet Earth. With billions of dollars rushing into their wallets per year, Google is a massive empire with worldwide respect. So with so much at stake, will Google risk their respect by creating an average service such as Google Analytics? No, if they are going to create a service available for the general public, then they are going to give it their best. With billions at their disposal and endless resources, Google is more than capable of creating an amazing service. Google Analytics is also so much more than a mere website counter, capable is of giving you various stats at a click of a mouse.

How long on average are your visitors staying on your website? Don't know? Google Analytics can tell you that a so much more. In fact with so much information, Google Analytics can get slightly confusing. But with a dedicated support team just waiting for your questions, Google Analytics quickly propels itself into a legendary service. Also with full video tutorials like GlyticVideos, anyone can master the Google Analytics service overnight. Ah and I almost forgot, did you know that Google Analytics is 100% absolutely free? But to be able to fully use Google Analytics you have to master the service. That's where GlyticVideos comes in. After that, all I can say is, checkmate.