Software as a Service (SaaS) applications are increasingly either employing open source or are built entirely on it, a la SugarCRM. Meanwhile, there continue to be many opportunities for open source Web 2.0 and e-commerce applications to grow. If you're collaborating on any open source project that requires web application development, here are over twelve free resources to help you.
Mike Gunderloy recently wrote up Open Source Designs, which provides over 2000 web site designs, with the majority of them XHTML/CSS-based. This looks like an awesome way to get a site going with a good theme, look and platform to build on.
In a similar vein to Open Source Designs, check out Open Designs. This site relies on The Open Design Community (TODC), a group of Open Source Website Designers from around the world providing thousands more XHTML- and CSS- based free web design templates for download.
LaunchSplash is a new service that I haven't used yet, but Webware's writeup of it was interesting. If you own a domain and have a site on the way, you can drop a headline and description into LaunchSplash and you'll be automatically set up with a preview landing page, complete with an RSS feed.
Many open source developers and wannabe developers can get a lot out of brushing up on web and database development topics. I'm a big fan of W3Schools' many online tutorials on these topics. The free tutorials include lessons on CSS, Ajax, JavaScript, DHTML, XHTML and more, where you get to publish your practice attempts to actual web pages.
Piwik, at left, is open source web analytics software. When it comes to doing web analytics, it's beneficial to get as many views of your data as possible, so you can use Piwik in conjunction with a tool like Google Analytics or on its own. The really cool thing about Piwik is that a community of users constantly contributes new plug-ins so that you can see unexpected views of your site data.
If you're doing an advertising-driven site, check into OpenX, a free, open source ad server that serves more than 30,000 customers. You can use it as a hosted service or you can download it if you want to run it on your own servers, keeping your ad revenue and information in-house.
ProjectZero from IBM aims to entice Java, PHP, and Groovy developers to use its platform for creating and deploying next generation web applications.
Most web development environments cater especially to developers who favor certain languages and environments. Kompozer is a huge favorite with developers who are into CSS (cascading style sheets). Kompozer's rendering engine uses Gecko, the same layout engine in Mozilla's Firefox. It stands out for its very easy-to-use CSS editor, and strong WYSIWYG features. It's free and open source.
Quanta Plus is a very rich, open source web development environment, especially popular with those who concentrate on PHP for building sites and applications. It's based on KDE, so it appeals to those in the Linux community most. It does a good job of letting you work with multiple pages at once, and has very complete PHP debugging.
Drupal is the content management system (CMS) that much of OStatic is built on, and is a very rich environment. For some types of sites, it may actually represent overkill. Writing-intensive sites, such as blogs, often rely on WordPress to build out much of the content. I thought this post did a good job of comparing the two types of content management environments.
Are you incorporating video in your site? Media Coder is an outstanding free, open source application for batch media transcoding to almost every format you can name. You can find more good open source tools for videographers here.
Comments
Add CommentIf you are looking for a good, solid CMS, you might also want to look into Joomla and Mambo. Both of those are closely related, and are well suited for running and managing web sites. I've used them for setting up internal sites, and they work pretty well.
By Arlen Coupland on Jun. 23, 2008
Hi,
Thanks for mentioning OpenX in this great list. We're friends of the Piwik project and love the team and their work. We also use Drupal on our main website and for good reason - it is so flexible yet does a good job of keeping it simple for those who like it like that.
Cheers, Arlen Coupland OpenX
By John on Jun. 23, 2008
Don't forget that you'll need something to manage the web development process. For a free tool to use tracking your time and tasks while working on a web site, try using Intervals. The free plan gets you enough juice to easily keep track of your next project.
By phx on Jun. 24, 2008
Hi,
ProjectZero is only for development free to use, if you want to use it in production you have to buy an IBM sMash license.
so long phx
By Shashi Singh on Jul. 02, 2008
For a free tool to use tracking your time and tasks while working on a web site, try using Intervals. The free plan gets you enough juice to easily keep track of your next project. http://www.webseekers.in
By Abhishek Namdeo on Jul. 07, 2008
do we have any free open source web page development tools
By Shaun Micheals on Jul. 18, 2008
Nice article.Contains a lot of information about web development.For addtional matrerial do visit dreamworldtech.com
By Arul on Sep. 22, 2008
Hi All,
I am looking for an open source system (preferable combinations is Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), to suit (as close as possible) to my adverticement development for yellow page directory, my requirement is below:
Our company name: MAC Our Client name: Alpha Project duration: 5 years Project Descriptions: The client (i.e., Alpha) will be sending inputs to design 80 advertisements for every day (display ads for yellow pages), and we (i.e., MAC) require to deliver the designed/completed ads (as PDF document) back to the customer within 2 days (24 hrs). If any rejection in the ads then client will notify us the correction details and we need to re-send the corrected ads in the same day (12 hrs).
Internal Teams (MAC): Team leader (2 members), Login (2 members), Graphic Designer (6 members), Quality Control (6 members), Quality Assurance (2 members)
External Team (Alpha): Project Coordinators (2 members)
Workflow:
Login: • The login person will enter the each ad details on the system, and attach some graphic files for design • If any query on the ads he will raise the clarification to Team Lead • When the Team Lead able to resolve the query then the team lead will respond back to the Login person, IF NOT • Team lead will send/forward the query to the project co-coordinator at the client end for resolution, then the resolution notification will reach login and team lead teams
Designing: • A Designer will pick any ads randomly • He will start construct the ads using some adobe application • Finally he will attach the designed ads (as PDF) and complete the task • If any query on the ads he will raise the clarification to Team Lead • When the Team Lead able to resolve the query then the team lead will respond back to the designer, IF NOT • Team lead will send/forward the query to the project co-coordinator at the client end for resolution, then the resolution notification will reach design and team lead teams
Quality Control: • A Quality controller will pick any completed ads randomly • S/He will process the QC against some specification • S/He will reject the ads and send back to the designer OR • S/He will approve the ads and send to the Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance: • A Quality Assurance person will pick any QC approved ads randomly • S/He will process the QA against some specification • S/He will reject the ads and send back to the designer (again design, QC cycle will be in place) OR • S/He will approve the ads and send to the Team lead for dispatch
Dispatch: • The team lead will dispatch the completed ads over FTP • If any error in the ads the Project Coordinator can reject the ads • Again login, design, QC, QA, dispatch cycle will repeat
Features required: • Web based system • Time Tracking for each tasks • Version control for each ads • Email, Attachment modules • Custom fields • Reports • Project Management, Collaboration, workflow, administration, security, versioning, scheduling, tem plating, syndication, personalization/localization, and session management,
I look forward to receive your views
Best regards, Arul Kumar
By Arul on Sep. 22, 2008
Hi All,
I am looking for an open source system (preferable combinations is Windows, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), to suit (as close as possible) to my adverticement development for yellow page directory, my requirement is below:
Our company name: MAC Our Client name: Alpha Project duration: 5 years Project Descriptions: The client (i.e., Alpha) will be sending inputs to design 80 advertisements for every day (display ads for yellow pages), and we (i.e., MAC) require to deliver the designed/completed ads (as PDF document) back to the customer within 2 days (24 hrs). If any rejection in the ads then client will notify us the correction details and we need to re-send the corrected ads in the same day (12 hrs).
Internal Teams (MAC): Team leader (2 members), Login (2 members), Graphic Designer (6 members), Quality Control (6 members), Quality Assurance (2 members)
External Team (Alpha): Project Coordinators (2 members)
Workflow:
Login: • The login person will enter the each ad details on the system, and attach some graphic files for design • If any query on the ads he will raise the clarification to Team Lead • When the Team Lead able to resolve the query then the team lead will respond back to the Login person, IF NOT • Team lead will send/forward the query to the project co-coordinator at the client end for resolution, then the resolution notification will reach login and team lead teams
Designing: • A Designer will pick any ads randomly • He will start construct the ads using some adobe application • Finally he will attach the designed ads (as PDF) and complete the task • If any query on the ads he will raise the clarification to Team Lead • When the Team Lead able to resolve the query then the team lead will respond back to the designer, IF NOT • Team lead will send/forward the query to the project co-coordinator at the client end for resolution, then the resolution notification will reach design and team lead teams
Quality Control: • A Quality controller will pick any completed ads randomly • S/He will process the QC against some specification • S/He will reject the ads and send back to the designer OR • S/He will approve the ads and send to the Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance: • A Quality Assurance person will pick any QC approved ads randomly • S/He will process the QA against some specification • S/He will reject the ads and send back to the designer (again design, QC cycle will be in place) OR • S/He will approve the ads and send to the Team lead for dispatch
Dispatch: • The team lead will dispatch the completed ads over FTP • If any error in the ads the Project Coordinator can reject the ads • Again login, design, QC, QA, dispatch cycle will repeat
Features required: • Web based system • Time Tracking for each tasks • Version control for each ads • Email, Attachment modules • Custom fields • Reports • Project Management, Collaboration, workflow, administration, security, versioning, scheduling, tem plating, syndication, personalization/localization, and session management,
I look forward to receive your views
Best regards, Arul Kumar
By Pitter on Sep. 22, 2008
Hello,i'm reading this comments and statements.They are very interesting.
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