Adobe Dreamweaver CS3

I use Dreamweaver for all of my coding needs. I use it to write (X)HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript for my sites. There are many free options available to do what I need, like HTML-Kit, but I'm hooked on the code editor in Dreamweaver. I don't ever use the visual design aspect of Dreamweaver, so I don't actually use everything that Dreamweaver offers. Maybe I'll choose a free option next time instead of upgrading to CS4. For now though, I love what Dreamweaver has to offer and highly recommend it to anyone looking for an editor they are willing to pay for.

Adobe Photoshop CS3

I use Photoshop for everything graphics. i have been using it for a long time now and you just can't beat it. There are some other programs out there that offer great features like GIMP, but for me it just doesn't compare. Photoshop is easy to use, easy to understand, and offers an amazing number of features that can be used to create incredibly unique images. Beyond the basics, there are a ton of tutorials available to get the most out of what Photoshop can do. If you want to use Photoshop, but can't drop that much money into it, you can try Photoshop Elements which is a watered down version that includes most of the core functionality needed, as well as the new free online Photoshop Express.

WordPress

I use WordPress to publish this blog and although I'm not able to publish a new post everyday, I am writing drafts and working on posts everyday. I love WordPress because of all the available plugins, themes, as well as the updates to security and features. This is a huge time-saver. I am able to manage the whole blog from an easy administration module of the blog. Maintainance is also really easy because it requires very little coding in the backend; most things can be done with a plugin. Of all the available blog systems, WordPress is my favorite and I plan to stick with it.

FileZilla

I use FileZilla as my main FTP client. To be honest it isn't my favorite though. I used SmartFTP for as long as I can remember, but as of recent I have been using FileZilla because SmartFTP is no longer free. I have thought about purchasing the new SmartFTP, but haven't yet because FileZilla is growing on me. FileZilla is fast, easy and although not the greatest looking, it works very well all the time. If you are looking for free FTP clients, check out the 5 Best Free FTP Program, which includes FileZilla.

phpMyAdmin

I use phpMyAdmin for managing all of my MySQL databases. I have been using this tool for as long as I have been using MySQL and have yet to consider a new option. There are other tools out there, but this one has so many great features. I love the import/export options, the ability to create, insert, delete, and update rows visually, and view query output in a nice table form. Although writing SQL isn't that hard after a few times, it is nice to be able to just click the red X and delete a row or update multiple rows without having to write and update statement for each. I find that some things are a little slow to load and I wish there was some Ajax worked in to speed things up. Hopefully that is on the way in a future release, but even without it, I love this tool.

dotProject

I use dotProject to manage my tasks and projects, both big and small. There are some other options out there for managing tasks like Remember The Milk, but I found myself using dotProejct for the little things because I had already been in the habit of going to dotProject on a regular basis to check and update my progress. There are a number of great features that keep me hooked on dotProject. There is a Gantt chart, a number of prebuilt reports for tracking projects or tasks or people, and an easy to use interface. I have been very pleased with this app and will continue to use it and recommend it.

Google

This one is a no-brainer. I use Google dozens of times a day. Any time I need to find something out, I look to Google to recommend some answers. Thankfully there are websites out there that offer a plethera of information that I refer to time and time again, but Google is there to help me continue to learn new things. I often look for code examples, web standards, tutorials, news, and so much more related to web development and web design. This one does't need much explanation, so I will stop here.

Contribute: What's in your development/design toolbox? Please share in the comments what you find helpful enough to use everyday (or at least close to everyday).

Have you ever wanted to see where your website shows up in the two major search engines for a particular keyword? Well, now you can. Yahoo! vs. Google compares the first 100 search results between the two search engines. You can enter a search term and look at the similarities and differences between the results. The app is a SWF that is clean to look at and easy to use.

Once you enter a keyword, the app generates a point-to-point graph with Google results on the top and Yahoo! results on the bottom. You can follow the blue lines that connect two points to know where a certain website shows up in each search engine. This is a quick way to find out which search engine shows a website in a higher position within the results. It’s a pretty limited tool without a lot of bells and whistles, but it is a useful tool nonetheless. It provides some interesting information that hasn’t been easy to acquire in the past. It’s worth checking out.

Sitemaps are a big part of the SEO game. The main reason for generating a Sitemap (Sitemap with a capital "S" denotes an XML Sitemap) is to help ensure all your web pages are listed in the search engine indexes. It is incredibly important to have search engines indexing your page to show when a keyword is searched. Major search engines like Google and Yahoo! can drive a lot of traffic to your site simply because you added a valid sitemap to your site. A Sitemap file is simply an XML file that contains a list of pages on your site. Here are the rules to follow when creating a Sitemap.

General Rules

• The file must use the UTF-8 encoding.
• The data values must be entity-escaped.
• The file location must be the root of the URL's being submitted.
• A minimum of 3 tags are required: "urlset", "url", and "loc".

Detailed Rules

• The file location determines what URL's can be included in the Sitemap. If you place the Sitemap at "http://www.yoursite.com/blog", the only URL's that can be submitted have to reside in the root URL "http://www.yoursite.com/blog". URL's from "http://www.yoursite.com" can't be submitted in the Sitemap. The URL's can also be only from a single host. If you place the Sitemap at "http://www.yoursite.com", you can't submit URL's from "http://dev.yoursite.com".
• The "urlset" tag is the root tag of the Sitemap. All other tags will be within the open "urlset" tag (<urlset>) and the close "urlset" tag (</urlset>). Within the open "urlset" tag you must include the schema to be used; in most cases it will be "http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9".
• The "url" tag is the parent tag for each URL you want to to be included in the Sitemap. All tags available, with the exception of the aforementioned "urlset" tag, are child tags of the "url" tag. Available children tags include "loc", "lastmod", "changefreq", and "priority".
• The "loc" tag is the last required tag. This tag gives the exact URL of the page that is being referenced. The URL entered here needs to be the full URL including "http://".

Optional Rules

• The "lastmod" tag can be included to show when the page was last updated. This date needs to be in "YYYY-MM-DD" format.
• The "changefreq" tag allows you to show how often the page is changed. There are 7 possible values for "changefreg"; they are "always", "hourly", "daily", "weekly", "monthly", "yearly", and "never".
• The "priority" tag is the level of importance each page is in relation to the others (on your site). This tag does not have anything to do with other website pages. The values can range from 0.0 to 1.0, with 0.5 being the default value.

Example Sitemap

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9">
   <url>
      <loc>http://www.yoursite.com/</loc>
      <lastmod>2008-07-07</lastmod>
      <changefreq>daily</changefreq>
      <priority>1.0</priority>
   </url>
   <url>
      <loc>http://www.yoursite.com/about</loc>
      <lastmod>2008-06-09</lastmod>
      <changefreq>monthly</changefreq>
      <priority>0.2</priority>
   </url>
</urlset>

Additional Resources

• Google Webmaster Help Center
• Sitemaps.org Protocol Information
• XML Sitemaps Generator