thefreecountry.com
Free Programmers', Webmasters' and Security Resources
thefreecountry.com
Welcome to thefreecountry.com's collection of free programming resources, free webmasters' resources, free security resources and free utilities.
Free Programmers' Resources
Free Programming Language Compilers
Comprehensive list of compilers for numerous programming languages.
Free Source Code and Programming Libraries
Source code and libraries that you can use in your own programs.
Free Programming Tools and Utilities
Tools to make your programming job easier, such as editors, debuggers, static code analysis, disassemblers,
compiler construction tools and grammars, file comparison, search and replace, help authoring, setup utilities,
resource editors, and lots more.
Programming Documentation
Online tutorials (free), online references (free) and frequently recommended books (not free) for programmers and webmasters.
Free Emulators and Virtual Machines
Run multiple OSes simultaneously, run a Mac OS on a PC (and vice versa), run a PC virtual machine inside your existing PC, etc.
Free Webmasters' Resources
Free Web Hosting and Cheap Web Hosting
Free and budget web hosts where you can place your website, blog, software, video, music, etc.
Free PHP Scripts ||
Free Perl CGI Scripts ||
Free ASP Scripts
Free programs that allow you to add a wide variety of facilities to your website, including forums, polls, counters, search engines,
blogs, wikis, photo galleries, etc.
Free Remote Script Hosting
Free services that allow you to set up a forum, feedback form, search engine, poll, guestbook, counter, gather web statistics, etc, when your
web host does not support scripts.
Free Webmaster Tutorials and Articles
Tutorials on running your own website, earning income from your site, writing your own PHP scripts,
starting a newsletter, search engine positioning, web design, usability, etc.
Other Free Webmaster Resources
Other useful and free webmaster resources that don't fit into the above categories, such as WYSIWYG HTML editors,
validators, DNS, FTP, SSH, and so on.
Free Security Resources
Free Security, Privacy and
Anonymity Tools and Resources
Tools to safeguard your computer (such as antivirus, anti-spyware) and data (backup, recover lost data) as well as to ensure your privacy (eg
encryption, anonymous surfing).
Free Utilities and Applications
Free System Utilities
Free utilities to recover your data, create or manage your partitions, image or backup, and lots more.
Free Multimedia Utilities
Free multimedia tools to edit, capture, process your audio and video, rip your CDs/DVDs, record your TV programs, author your own DVDs or movies, etc.
Free Office and Productivity Applications
Free applications and tools such as word processors, spreadsheets and office suites, image and photo editing software,
free fonts, free translation software and so on.
NetSyndic
Syndicate your articles on your web, with this free article syndication wizard.
Tofrodos: Unix to Windows/DOS Conversion Utility
Convert text files to/from Unix and MSDOS/Windows file formats. Free with source code.
Logtime: Free Online Internet Timer
Track your ISP online time and costs with this free online timer! No nags, no ads!
New Pages
This Month
- How to Put a Clickable Email Address on Your Web Page Using Dreamweaver
- Free PHP Web Based File Managers
- How to Install PrestaShop Shopping Cart on Your Website
Last Month
- How to Make Your Links Change Colour When the Mouse Hovers Over It Using Dreamweaver: Creating Mouseover / Rollover Effects
- Free Electronic Circuit Simulation Software / Circuit Simulators
A While Ago...
- Will I Have to Continue to Pay a Fee to Keep My Domain Name After I Buy It? Can I Change Registrars? Can I Terminate My Domain Name?
- How to Put Multiple Feedback Forms on One Website
- Free Make Utilities
- How to Delete a Web Page from Your Website: Removing an Already Uploaded File
- Free Banner Rotation and Photo Slideshow JavaScripts: Rotate Advertisements, Photos, Banners
- What's The Difference Between Liquid, Elastic, Relative, Fluid, Flexible and Fixed Layouts?
- Free Video Converters: Convert Movies/Videos between Different Formats
- How to Centre a Horizontal Navigation Menu Bar in Dreamweaver
- How to Make Your Links Change Colour When the Mouse is Hovering Over It Using KompoZer: Creating a Rollover or Mouseover Effect
- Free Registry Cleaners and Registry Repair Utilities / Software
- How to Use the Frame Blocking Facility (Anti-Clickjacking Defence) in Internet Explorer 8
- How to Point a Domain Name to Your Website (Or What to Do After Buying Your Domain Name)
- Free ASP Forum Scripts (Message Boards, BBS and Discussion Forums)
- How to Add a CAPTCHA Test to Your Feedback Form Script: Reducing Spam in Your Contact Form
- What Does It Mean to Park a Domain Name? Domain Name Parking Explained
- Serif WebPlus X2 Tutorial: How to Design Your Website with Serif WebPlus X2
- Is it Possible to Use Microsoft Word or Office to Create a Website? If So, How?
- How to Upload and Link to a PDF File (or PDF Ebook) in KompoZer and Nvu
- How to Upload and Link to a PDF File (or PDF ebook) with Dreamweaver
- Is it Possible to Create a Website Without Buying a Domain Name? The High Price of "Free".
- How to Create a Membership or Password Protected Subscription Website
- Dreamweaver CS4 Tutorial: How to Create a Website with Dreamweaver CS4
- How to Install Apache 2.2 on Windows Vista
- How to Secure Your WordPress Blog
- How to Centre a DIV Block Using CSS
- What is HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and Perl? Do I Need to Learn Them to Create a Website?
- How to Design a Two Column Layout for Your Website Using CSS
- How to Slipstream Windows XP Service Pack 3 to Create an Integrated XP Setup Disk with SP 3
- Free 3D Software Box Image Makers
- The Fine Print in Web Hosting: Resource Usage Limits
- How to Install and Configure PHP 5 to Run with Apache on Windows
- Free Customized CSS Navigation Menu Bar Buttons (Wizard)
- How to Create an Emergency Windows Rescue CD
- How to Add a Feedback Form to Your Website (Video Tutorial)
- How to Delete Undeletable, Locked, Busy or Currently In-Use Files in Windows
- How to Record or Save Streaming Music or Audio
Featured Pages
- How to Create/Start Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide
- How Much Does It Cost to Set Up a Website?
- Six Steps to Creating a Search Engine Friendly Website
- How to Create a Bootable Windows XP Setup CD/DVD on a Preinstalled Windows System
- Free Data Recovery, File and Partition Recovery, Undelete and Unformat Software
- Hard Disk Backup and Restore, Hard Disk Image and Cloning Utilities
- Free Partitioning Software - Copy, Create, Move, Resize, Convert, Undelete Partitions
- Free DVD Authoring and Creation Tools
- Free CD and DVD Burners and Copying Software
- Free Spyware and Malware Removal, Detection and Prevention
- Free Antivirus Software
- How to Check Your Website with Multiple Browsers on a Single Machine (Cross-Browser Compatibility Checking)
- PHP Tutorial: Writing Your First PHP Script
- Free Customized Feedback Form PHP / Perl Script
- Free Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler, Free C/C++ Compilers
What's New
Stay Updated (Free)
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Note: this What's New column also includes information from
thesitewizard.com's news feed
and HowToHaven.com's news feed
.
- New page: How to Put a Clickable Email Address on Your Web Page Using Dreamweaver. For webmasters (especially those running businesses) who want to put an email address on their website, this article describes how you can make that email address into a clickable link.
- The new system programming language from the legendary Rob Pike, Ken Thompson and Robert Griesemer, currently named "Go", has been added to the Free Compilers and Interpreters for Miscellaneous Programming Languages page. Unlike the other commonly used system languages today, this one has built-in support for concurrent programming, a must with today's multi-core processors, and communication between concurrent processes. It is designed to be lean and mean, and have very fast compile and link cycles. Lovers of C and other lean systems programming languages should really take a look at it.
- For those who like to store their passwords, telephone numbers, serial numbers, etc, in a text file, the newest entry in the Free Secure Password Managers and Password Savers page lets you do so in a portable yet secure way. Your passwords are encrypted, and the entire file can be placed anywhere (a USB flash drive, your main hard disk, a floppy disk, whatever). No installation is needed and the whole program is extremely small. And free.
- New page: Free PHP Web Based File Managers. Install a web-based file manager on your website so that you can manage the files on your site simply by using a web browser. File managers let you do things like upload/download files, create directories, rename, delete, move, copy files, change file permissions, etc. Some of them even let you do things that you can't do with a normal FTP client, like extract files from archives (eg zip files, tar files) directly on your web server.
-
Exciting news: Unreal Engine 3, the game engine used by lots of games, has now been added to the
Free Game Engines, Game Programming Libraries and Source Code page.
Both the engine and its associated tools are available in the free development kit, although you can use them only for non-commercial and educational
purposes. Now you can take advantage of the game engine used by professional game developers to create your own games, complete with a realistic
game environment, artificial intelligence (AI) for the computer controlled characters, 3D location-based sound effects, and so on.
It's all very exciting. And I almost fell off my chair when I found out it's available. If you've not heard of the Unreal Engine, chances are that you don't play many FPS (first person shooter) games.
- New page: How to Install PrestaShop Shopping Cart on Your Website. Are you selling goods or services on your website? Or perhaps you want to sell digital goods like ebooks, software, music MP3 files, etc, and don't know how to get your website to automatically deliver the goods sold to your customers after they pay for it. The PrestaShop software is a free (and open source) shopping cart program that you can install on your website to run your own online shop. This tutorial shows you how you can set it up.
- Looking for a way to sell goods, services or even virtual goods (like ebooks or software) on your website? The newest entry on the Free And Open Source PHP Shopping Carts page is PrestaShop, an open source shopping cart that has lots of features (a very long list; too long to mention here) that probably has the facility you want for your online shop. Check it out.
-
A web host has been added to the Free Web Hosts
with Free Domain Hosting. This one provides 110 MB of disk space, 10 GB of traffic, PHP (with limitations), the ability
to host your own domain name, etc.
Sorry, I know that the list of free web hosts on that web page is getting a bit short nowadays, what with the frequent abrupt closure of free web hosts. I'll try to add more as time permits. As the maintainer of that list, I can tell you that free web hosts close very frequently, sometimes within a month or two of adding a new entry, so keeping that list up-to-date and populated is a big hassle. If you can afford it, it's really better to just go with a commercial web host. Just saying.
- New page: How to Make Your Links Change Colour When the Mouse Hovers Over It Using Dreamweaver: Creating Mouseover / Rollover Effects. If you're fascinated by how a link is highlighted when you move your mouse over it on some sites, including thesitewizard.com itself, this article teaches you how you can create the same effect for your website using Dreamweaver. It also shows how you can change the default colour ("color") scheme for your unclicked and visited links, add/remove underlines, etc.
- Are you thinking of creating a community for your website where users can interact in a forum? A new PHP message board software has been added to the Free PHP Forum Scripts page that may be just what you're looking for. Like all forums, your visitors can sign up and post messages and interact with each other (and you). The software supports customizable themes, setting up of sub-forums belonging to different categories, assigning users to different groups with different rights, setting up of polls and calendars, and so on (too many features to list here). Check it out. It's free.
- New page: Free Electronic Circuit Simulation Software / Circuit Simulators. Build and analyse your electronic circuits using these free circuit simulators. It's more efficient, often more practical and quicker. Oh, and did I say that they are free?
- I still see many valuable sites located on Geocities. Since Geocities is closing on 29 October 2009 (yes, it's official now), if yours is one of them, please move it before it's too late. See the guide How to Transfer / Move Your Website from GeoCities: Closure of GeoCities' Free Web Hosting to make sure you don't miss an important step.
- Do you want to write a web-based program for your website but hate the JavaScript programming language? The newest addition to the Free Python Compilers, Interpreters and Implementations page lets you use the Python programming language to write programs that run in your visitor's web browser. Now you can harness the power and readability of Python to create a dynamic website.
- A new painting program for Windows and Linux has been added to the Free Drawing and Painting Software, Image and Photo Editing Programs page. This program, mtPaint, supports layers, undo, pressure-sensitive graphics tablets, a variety of effects, brush patterns, user-defined gradients, as well as the usual assortment of features such programs have. Check it out, or any of the other (numerous) free image editors listed on that page.
- A new video converter has been added to the Free Video Converters page. This one can convert DVDs as well as other video files between a wide variety of formats. It also support the conversion of audio files and ripping of music CDs. It's free, as are the other free converters on that page.
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The Microsoft Security Essentials, a free antivirus software from Microsoft, has just been released, and has been added to the
Free Antivirus Software and Free Online Virus Scans.
The software is reported to be lightweight and unobtrusive by many testers.
Note: even if you don't like this program, there are numerous other free antivirus programs listed on that page, including free versions from commercial antivirus vendors, so there's no reason for you not to have some sort of antivirus program protecting your system.
- New page: Will I Have to Continue to Pay a Fee to Keep My Domain Name After I Buy It? Can I Change Registrars? Can I Terminate My Domain Name? This article answers some questions newcomers have about registering a domain name, namely whether they have to continue to pay a fee to keep the domain name, whether they can change registrars and whether they can terminate a domain name if they don't want it any more.
- Google Sites has been added to the Free Web Hosts with Site Builders or Free Web Templates page. They provide free web hosting with a rudimentary online web editor, and may be useful if you want to create a hobby website. It doesn't allow the use of a domain name, though, so it probably isn't all that useful if you want your site to last. (See my article on Is it Possible to Create a Website Without Buying a Domain Name? The High Price of "Free". if you don't know why this is so.)
- A new clipboard history manager has been added to the Free Clipboard History Managers and Extenders page. Clipboard extenders like these are useful if you are a programmer or webmaster, since they make your job of cutting and pasting snippets of code or text very much easier, allowing you not only to use the standard cut and paste but also to copy multiple separate chunks of text (or whatever) for later pasting. They are also very handy for normal computer use, and you'll soon wonder how you ever lived without them.
- New page: How to Put Multiple Feedback Forms on One Website. I've often been asked whether it's possible to put 2 or more contact forms on a website, using thesitewizard.com's Free Feedback Form Wizard. Some webmasters want to do this because there are multiple people that visitors may want to reach. This article shows you how to do this.
- New page: Free Make Utilities. The MAKE software on this new page allow programmers to automate the building of their computer programs in a convenient and efficient way. As usual, they're all free.
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A new utility to back up and restore the device drivers on your computer system has been added to the
Free Device Driver Backup and Extraction Utilities.
Such a program is useful if you ever want to reinstall Windows and your computer manufacturer did not give you a CD containing all the
drivers for your system, a very common situation if you bought a pre-built system like a notebook.
(That is, you can use the program to make a copy of your drivers before reformatting or upgrading the hard disk or whatever, then allow your newly reinstalled Windows to install those drivers, giving you a working system again.)
