Free Web Design Software & Tools

Welcome to the section of Iron Spider that covers all the free software and tools available on the net that can help you build that ultimate website. Some of these resources are mine (e.g., free web templates I made from scratch) whereas others are resources I've happened across during my travels through cyberspace and have since become a permanent part of my personal web design toolbox.

Enjoy!

Best Free Website Tools

This section lists all the best free HTML and text editors, graphics editors (a.k.a., photo editors) and website analysis tools. I've personally tested all the software and all the online web tools and found them to be solid and immensely useful. And quite frankly, if your goal is to build a successful website, some of these tools are essential (e.g., Google Analytics).

HTML Kit - The Best HTML Editor. Period.

Uh... Well, the title above pretty much says it all. I'm at this very moment typing out this description using HTML Kit. I've been using this web editor for seven years straight and honestly, nothing comes close to it in my humble opinion.

However, the array of options available in this fabulous piece of free software can be quite overwhelming to the novice which is why I took the trouble to take detailed notes on how to set it up. This was originally meant to help me maintain my own sanity but then it hit me that others could benefit from these notes so I compiled them into a full online tutorial ~> Setting up HTML Kit

Free Website Templates

Here is a collection of free templates I designed myself from scratch that you can use to create your website. They're self-contained and easy-to-use. All you have to do is download the .zip file, unpack it and away you go. A very unobtrusive link back to my site is all I ask (the tiny link is automatically built into each page of the templates at the bottom). If you'd like to use one of my templates without having to display the Design by Iron Spider link, send me an email and I'll send you my Paypal address. It will only cost you $15 for a lifetime license to use any one of my templates on your website (one license per website).

How to Use an Iron Spider Template

Of course it hasn't escaped me that some, scratch that, many of you are new to web templates so I whipped up a complete tutorial on how to edit my templates in order to add your logo, insert your own content, edit menu links and such. You can either do it the geek way (like me) and edit the HTML directly or you can use a free web editor like Seamonkey Composer.

Web Design Tips

In this section, the free stuff is in the form of information. Here you'll learn some basic web design principles including How to Make a Crappy Web Page. I also go over using HTML tables (*gasp*) to design your web page as well as the advantages and disadvantages of using a CSS tableless design. This is where you also find some basic web design layouts (e.g. two column layout, three column layout with header and footer, etc) which you can use as a jumping off point to design your own web template from scratch (it's really not that hard!)

Free Twitter Backgrounds

If you've got a Twitter page, you may be interested in gussying it up with one of these beautiful Twitter backgrounds I created, once again, from scratch. You can check out the official Iron Spider Twitter page to see one of these backgrounds in action. These layouts come complete with color codes and easy-to-install instructions.

Essential Web Browsers

If you're going to get serious about web design, you'll need to first of all know exactly what a web browser is and which ones most people use so that you can make sure your budding web development project is compatible with them all. This section of Iron Spider covers everything about web browsers.