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).

Yesterday marked a Big Update to Webmaster Tools for Microsoft's Live Search Webmaster Tools. They announced on their blog that they have added additional tools to the suite as well as taking it out of beta. Live Search Webmaster Tools was originally released as a beta back in November of 2007. Since then they have continued to make improvements and additions to the webmaster center.

One of the notable addition I found was the new Crawl Issues Tool. This tool will help you find indexing problems with your site. It can identify file not found (404) errors, blocked pages, long dynamic URLs, and unsupported content-types (Windows Live Help). Filtering by 2 subdomains or folders is now available for errors with 1000 or more occurrences. Because the basic output is limited to 20 results, there is also the ability to export the results as a CSV file. The exported file will contain the first 1000 records of the specified error.

The other notable addition is a Backlinks Tool that helps you discover where your inbound links are coming from. This information is very valuable for tracking where you could advertise or promote products. The links can help you understand your demographics better and market more effectively and efficiently. This tool includes the ability to filter your incoming links to a certain section of your website as well as to view all incoming links or just incoming links from other websites (excluding any incoming links from other pages on your site). Not only does this feature help you learn who is linking to your site for demographic purposes, but it also provides information about how well your site may rank. Backlinks play a part in how well your site ranks in a search, so you will want to know who is linking to you (websites with high credibility that link to you will increase your rank in a search, while websites with low credibility that link to you will lower your rank in a search). Downloading the first 1000 results as a CSV is available with this tool as well.

Overall, I think these are great improvements and additions. I think that they were expected to be released at some point in order to compete and to provide important information. I hope that the Live Search Webmaster Tools will continue to add useful and helpful features that I can use to rank better in the SEO game.

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

Webmaster guidelines play a major role in the SEO game because it helps you rank better in search results and also keeps your site from being banned by the search engines. Not following these roles will definitely hurt the traffic that comes from search engines. I have looked at and compared the webmaster guidelines published by Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. Here are the five major items that are common throughout the three different guidelines.

• Content is King - Provide useful information for your viewers.
  • Google: "Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first" (Google).
  • Yahoo!: "Original and unique content of genuine value" (Yahoo!).
  • Microsoft: "The best way to attract people to your site, and keep them coming back, is to design your pages with valuable content that your target audience is interested in" (Microsoft).
• Sitemaps - Make it easy for the search engines to crawl and index your website.
  • Google: "Google uses your Sitemap to learn about the structure of your site and to increase our coverage of your webpages" (Google).
  • Yahoo!: "Yahoo! Search will retrieve your Sitemap and make the URLs available to our crawler" (Yahoo!).
  • Microsoft: "Add a site map. A site map helps MSNBot to find all of your pages. Links that are embedded in menus, list boxes, and similar elements are not accessible to web crawlers unless they appear in your site map" (Microsoft).
• Focus on Users - Design your website with the users in mind, not the search engines.
  • Google: "Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines" (Google).
  • Yahoo!: "Pages designed primarily for humans, with search engine considerations secondary" (Yahoo!).
  • Microsoft: The following is not an appropriate technique. "Attempting to increase a page's keyword density by add lots of irrelevant words" (Microsoft).
• No Link Schemes - Don't participate in excessive cross-linking to raise your rank.
  • Google: "Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank" (Google).
  • Yahoo!: "Sites cross-linked excessively with other sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity" are unwanted (Yahoo!).
  • Microsoft: The following is not an appropriate technique. "Using techniques, such as link farms, to artificially increase the number of links to your page" (Microsoft).
• No Hidden Text or Links - Don't hide text or links so that they are only viewable to search engines and not users.
  • Google: "Avoid hidden text or hidden links" (Google).
  • Yahoo!: "The use of text or links hidden from the user" is unacceptable (Yahoo!).
  • Microsoft: The following is not an appropriate technique. "Using hidden text or links. Only use text and links that are visible to users" (Microsoft).

There are a number of other specifics and guidelines that you can read about in the pages linked above. I have only listed five of the most important ones that show up in many posts and articles. Be sure to follow all of the guidelines for each search engine to ensure that your site will be included in their index. Not following the guidelines can result in your site being banned. Search engines provide a lot of free traffic and it is worth reading through the guidelines.