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
Last Month
- How to Add Images to Your Website in Serif WebPlus X2
- Free ASP Forum Scripts (Message Boards, BBS and Discussion Forums)
- Free Regular Expression (Regex) Libraries and Source Code
- How to Add a CAPTCHA Test to Your Feedback Form Script: Reducing Spam in Your Contact Form
- How to Point a Domain Name to Your Website (Or What to Do After Buying Your Domain Name)
A While Ago...
- Free Web Hosting Control Panel Software
- 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
- Why Am I Still Seeing My Web Host's Default Page or a File Not Found Error Page After I've Published My Website?
- Is it Possible to Use Microsoft Word or Office to Create a Website? If So, How?
- How to Transfer / Move Your Website from GeoCities: Closure of GeoCities' Free Web Hosting
- 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
- How to Create a Website with Dreamweaver CS4 (Dreamweaver CS4 Tutorial)
- 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)
- Dreamweaver Tutorial: How to Create a Website with Dreamweaver CS3
- 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 Much Does It Cost to Set Up a Website?
- How to Create/Start Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide
- 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 Use the Frame Blocking Facility (Anti-Clickjacking Defence) in Internet Explorer 8. Internet Explorer 8 gives webmasters a new way to protect their site from being placed in a frame, and thus, hopefully, prevent clickjacking from taking place. This article shows you how you can configure your website so that it takes advantage of IE 8's new feature.
- Two new free online C# tutorials have been added to the Free Online C# Tutorials, References and Documentation page. One is from the horse's mouth itself (Microsoft) and the other is from a tutorial delivered at a Microsoft .NET Crash Course in Cambridge. If you're hankering to write programs using C#, check these out.
- Fancy creating your own cartoon (animation), with or without sound? Pencil lets you create your cartoons as a Flash file, a QuickTime movie file or as a series of PNG images. For lack of a better category page to list this interesting open source program, I've provisionally added it to the Free Drawing and Painting Software page. Since it can produce Flash files, you can even exhibit your cartoons on your own website. (QuickTime movies should work too, but not everyone has the QuickTime plugin.)
- Two new free tools, an icon editor and a cursor editor, have been added to the Free Resource Editors, Compilers and Icon Editors page. The icon editor, IcoFX, lets you create icons, such as the "favicon" icon that is used by websites or the icons that appear on your computer desktop. The cursor editor, AniFX, can be used to create cursors, even animated cursors, that you can integrate into your programs or substitute for existing ones to customize your computer. Check them out.
- New page:
How to Add Images to Your Website in Serif WebPlus X2.
The second chapter of the Serif WebPlus X2
Tutorial Series is now online. This chapter deals with how you can add things like your website's logo, photos, product images, background images
and so on to your web page. It also introduces the concept of a stacking order to the objects on your web page. (For those who don't know,
Serif
WebPlus X2 is a point-and-click visual web editor that you can use to create a website.)
- A new web host has been added to the Free Web Hosts with Free Domain Hosting page. Besides letting you host your own domain with them, this free web host, L4rge, also provides PHP (with limitations), MySQL access, a script installer, and so on. Check it out.
- New page:
Free ASP Forum Scripts (Message Boards, BBS and Discussion Forums).
Are you thinking of putting a forum or discussion board on your website, where visitors can chat or discuss topics of relevance to your website?
This new page lists free ASP forum scripts that you can install on your site to provide that facility.
Note: if you do not specifically need your forum script to be an ASP script (that is, it can be in any language), please also see the Free PHP Forum Scripts and Free Perl Message Board Scripts pages as well. You'll have a wider selection that way.
- New page:
Free Regular Expression (Regex) Libraries and Source Code.
Are you thinking of adding support in your program for searching for a particular piece of text? If so, the
free regular expression libraries
on this page will allow you to do so in the standard way used by most software, without having to reinvent the wheel. For the puzzled, regular expressions are
just a concise way to specify a pattern of text to match.
Note: if you are looking for a search and replace utility so that you can find a file or document containing something you wrote a while ago, you should check out the Free Text Search and Replace Utilities page instead. The libraries page mentioned earlier is meant for programmers, while the utilities page is useful for everyone.
-
A new web-based content management system has been added to the
Free Content Management Systems (CMS) PHP Scripts page.
It is customizable, supports extensions that you can add to your site (like a blog module, a forum module, a calendar/event module), has a number
of themes that you can select to change the appearance of your website, and so on.
For those not sure what Content Management Systems are, they let you create and manage your website from your browser. That is, after you install it on your site, all you need to do is to log into your site from your web browser to add your content, customize the appearance and so on.
- New page: How to Add a CAPTCHA Test to Your Feedback Form Script: Reducing Spam in Your Contact Form. Is your mail box filled with spam sent by automated computer programs dumping junk into your feedback form? Are you tired of having to wade through tons of ridiculous body enhancement suggestions replete with grammatical errors before arriving at your real email? This article shows you how you can add a CAPTCHA facility to your feedback form in an easy-to-do way, to hopefully reduce the spam arriving through your contact form. Note that this article is intended for the ordinary, non-technical webmaster, and can be implemented by anyone.
- A new PDF converter has been added to the Free PDF Converters, Editors and Printer Drivers page. CC PDF installs itself on your system as a pseudo-printer driver. When you print a document from any program, you can select that printer, and it will generate a PDF file for you (instead of sending the document to your printer), thus allowing you to create PDF files from any program that can print. Like all the other PDF converters on the page, it is free.
-
The Feedback Form Script Wizard has been updated to
add the following features to the feedback form it creates: (1) The PHP feedback form script created by the wizard can now, at your option,
check to make sure that the comments/message field is not empty before submitting its contents. (Note: this is not exactly a new feature since it was
present in older versions of the script but was removed in recent versions. By popular request, the facility has now been restored
to the script.) (2) You can now make the wizard use either XHTML or HTML for the form code. If you don't know what to use, just leave
it at the default.
If you don't need the new features, you don't have to upgrade. As always, the script is free.
-
Another text editor has been added to the
Free Programmer's Editors, Integrated Development Environment (IDE), ASCII Text Editors
page. TED Notepad is a Windows notepad replacement with souped up features, including Unicode support, hotkeys for every function/feature,
multiple clipboards, text case conversions, and so on. Check it out, or get one of the other free text editors on that page.
Note: those looking for web editors or HTML editors may prefer to visit the Free HTML Editors and WYSIWYG Web Editors page instead. Those are, of course, also free.
- A new website offering free and open source fonts has been added to the Free Fonts page. The site provides a number of Unicode encoded and legacy fonts supporting many languages. If you are looking for fonts to make your documents look interesting and unique, check it out.
- New page: How to Point a Domain Name to Your Website (Or What to Do After Buying Your Domain Name) So you've bought your own domain name. What do you do next? How do you point a domain name at your website or your web hosting account? This article answers that question.
- New page: Free Web Hosting Control Panel Software. If you are setting up your own web server, or having to manage a bare-bones dedicated server or virtual private server (VPS), the software listed on this page may interest you. These free (and often open source) programs let you manage the server from your web browser. They let you configure the web server, email, FTP, databases, DNS, user accounts, domains, and so forth without having to resort to manual editing of server configuration files.
- New page: What Does It Mean to Park a Domain Name? Domain Name Parking Explained. In response to a query, this article explains what it means to park a domain name. It also covers situations where you may want to park a domain name, and discusses why you may not want use your domain name registrar's parking services.
- A new audio editor has been added to the Free Digital Audio / Sound Editors page. This one supports the usual assortment of editing features as well as support for VST plugins, ASIO, pitch shifting, vocal removal, loop, bit-depth conversion, etc. Like all the other digital sound editors on that page, it is free.
- New page:
Serif WebPlus X2 Tutorial: How to Design Your Website with Serif WebPlus X2.
At the request of a number of visitors, I've now begun a new tutorial series.
Serif WebPlus X2
is a site builder and WYSIWYG web editor that allows you to simply drag and drop elements onto a page to create a website. This tutorial will guide
you through the steps of building a complete, fully-functional, multi-page website using the web editor.
