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.
Tofrodos: Unix to Windows/DOS Conversion Utility
Convert text files to/from Unix and MSDOS/Windows file formats. Free with source code.
New Pages
This Month
- What Should the Width of a Web Page Be?
- Free JavaScript Minifiers (Minimizers), Obfuscators and Compressors
- How to Move Your Website to SSL (ie, Convert from HTTP to HTTPS)
- How to Redirect a URL
Last Month
- Free Image Pop-Up JavaScripts (Where Image Overlays Current Web Page)
- How to Insert a DIV Block and Other HTML Elements into a Web Page Using JavaScript
- How to Insert HTML Code into a Web Page with Expression Web
Recently on thefreecountry.com...
- Free Royalty-Free Stock Photos
- Free Solitaire Games
- Free Start Menus for Windows 8
- Free Online Editors and Integrated Development Environment (IDE)
- Free PHP Compilers: compile PHP scripts to native code, .NET or Java bytecode
- Free Embedded Web Video Player Scripts/Code
- Free Image/Photo Slide Show JavaScript
- Free Mail Servers (Email Servers / Mail Transfer Agents)
- Free File Synchronization Software
- Free GUI Builders, Application Builders and Rapid Application Development (RAD) Software
Recently on thesitewizard.com...
- Does the Price of a Domain Depend on the Name Chosen? Why do Some Domains Cost So Much?
- How to Hide Content or Data from the Search Engines
- Do I Need a Web Editor if I Create a Blog?
- How to Insert a Table into a Web Page (and Customize it) with Expression Web
- How to Use Web Fonts: CSS Tutorial
- How to Insert a Bullet Point (Unordered) List into Your Website with Expression Web
- How to Add an Automatically Numbered List to Your Website with Expression Web
- How to Add Google AdSense to Your Website with Expression Web
- How to Insert a YouTube Video into Your Website with Microsoft Expression Web
- How to Create a Contact Form with Expression Web
- How to Publish (Upload) Your Website to the Internet with Expression Web
- How to Create and Manage Multiple Pages on Your Website with Expression Web
- How to Insert a Navigation Menu into Your Website with Expression Web
- How to Make Pictures and Text into Clickable Links with Expression Web
- How to Change the Background of a Website with Expression Web
- How to Change Fonts, Text Size and Use Bold and Italics in Expression Web
- How to Add Images and a Site Logo to Your Website with Microsoft Expression Web
- Expression Web Tutorial: How to Design a Website with Microsoft Expression Web
- How to Install and Configure Apache, PHP, Perl and MySQL on Windows the Easy Way (with XAMPP)
- Can you register a domain name directly with ICANN instead of through a middleman?
- Free Mobile-Friendly Two Column Layout Wizard
- How to Make Your Images Mobile-Friendly (Responsive Design)
- How to Make a Two Column Website Layout Mobile-Friendly
- How to Make a Mobile-Friendly Website: Responsive Design in CSS
- How to Create a Table with BlueGriffon
- Should I Use a Specialized Blog Host or Install My Own Blog Software?
- How to Make Links Open in a New Window or Tab
- Why Is the Pound Symbol ("£") Displayed as a Question Mark or Rectangular Box On My Web Page?
- Which Web Hosting Package / Plan Should You Choose? How to Plan for the Traffic (Bandwidth) and Disk Space You Need
- Can I Recover My Files From a Website Discontinued a Long Time Ago?
- Dreamweaver Tutorial: How to Design a Website with Dreamweaver CS6
- BlueGriffon Tutorial: How to Create a Website with the BlueGriffon Free Web Editor
- What Banks Need to Know Before Getting a New Domain Name
- How to Reserve a Domain Name. Do You Need a Web Host if You Want to Reserve a Domain for Future Use?
- What's the Difference Between a Content Management System (CMS), a Blog, a Web Editor and an Online Site Builder?
- HTML Tutorial - Learn to Design a Website using HTML
- Should I Learn HTML or Just Use a WYSIWYG Web Editor? Pros and Cons of Using a Visual Web Editor vs Learning HTML
- How to Restore or Reopen the Properties Panel (or the CSS Styles or Files Panel) in Dreamweaver
Recently on HowToHaven.com...
- How to Boot a CD or DVD in Windows 8.1
- How to Change BIOS Settings on a Computer with Windows 8.1 Installed
- How to Shut Down Windows 8 (Full Shutdown and Normal Hybrid Shutdown)
- How to Set Up a Standard User Account (or Limited Account) on Windows Vista and Windows 7 for Daily Use
A While Ago...
- Should You Get a Domain Name with Spaces or Dots In Between to Improve Readability?
- How to Switch Between the Liquid and Fixed Layout Templates in Dreamweaver
- How to Centre a Background Image or Photo on Your Web Page Using KompoZer
- How to Rescue Your Website from the Clutches of a Bad Web Designer or Bad Web Host
- How to Create Rounded Corners for Your Box Borders in CSS
- What is MySQL? What is a Database? What is SQL?
- Free / Open Source Non-SQL Database Servers and Engines
- Free Royalty Free Music and Sounds
- Free Programmer's Fonts
- How to Point Multiple Domain Names to One Website: And How to Avoid Search Engine Problems When Doing So
- Should You Choose a Linux or a Windows Web Hosting Package? Is There Such a Thing as a Mac Web Host?
- Is There a WYSIWYG Editor for PHP? Should I Use PHP or HTML for My Website?
- What's The Difference Between Liquid, Elastic, Relative, Fluid, Flexible and Fixed Layouts?
- Free Video Converters: Convert Movies/Videos between Different Formats
- How to Point a Domain Name to Your Website (Or What to Do After Buying Your Domain Name)
- 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
- 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) 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 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 Install and Configure PHP 5 to Run with Apache on Windows
- Free Customized CSS Navigation Menu Bar Buttons (Wizard)
Featured Pages
- How to Create / Make Your Own Website: The Beginner's A-Z Guide
- How to Register Your Own Domain Name
- 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
- 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 Antivirus Software
- Free Anonymous Surfing and Proxies
- PHP Tutorial: Writing Your First PHP Script
- Free Customized Feedback Form PHP / Perl Script
- Free C/C++ Compilers, Free Microsoft Visual C++ Compiler
- How to Accept Credit Cards on Your Website
What's New
Stay Updated (Free)
- Keep track of what's new on thefreecountry.com with your news reader
by pointing it to
thefreecountry.com's news feed
.
Note: for historical reasons, this What's New column (but not the news feed) also includes information from
thesitewizard.com's news feed
and HowToHaven.com's news feed
.
- New page: What Should the Width of a Web Page Be? I was asked by a visitor how wide his web page should be. This article addresses that question.
- New page: Free JavaScript Minifiers (Minimizers), Obfuscators and Compressors. This new page lists free tools that can shrink the size of your JavaScript code (sometimes referred to as "minify") as well as some that can obfuscate it (that is, make it hard to understand). They may be useful if you want to improve the responsiveness of your website or perhaps obscure your JavaScript from a casual inspection.
- New page: How to Move Your Website to SSL (ie, Convert from HTTP to HTTPS). This article deals with the issue of moving a website from HTTP to HTTPS. Besides discussing the pros and cons of the conversion, it gives a checklist of things that you need to remember to do. You can also read the guide if you are planning to start a website, and want a better understanding of what this is all about.
- Another source of free pictures has been added to the Free Royalty-Free Stock Photos page. This one has both scenery and people photos which are released under the Creative Commons Zero licence, which means that they may be used for any purpose without attribution or payment, even on a public website that you created.
- Two cryptographic software libraries have been added to the Free Encryption / Cryptographic Libraries and Source Code page. If you are writing software for the Internet, or any other type of software, these libraries allow you to add encryption support for your program without being a cryptographic security expert. (In fact, they assume by default that you aren't an expert, and so have appropriate options selected by default. You can of course override them if you wish.)
- New page: How to Redirect a URL. I was asked by a visitor last week how he could set things up so that when visitors go to the old URL of a web page, they will automatically be sent to its new address. This article shows you how to redirect URLs using .htaccess.
-
[Updated] The Free Feedback Form Wizard
now supports the Invisible ReCAPTCHA test. With this facility, you can generate a contact form for
your website with a test
that only shows if Google cannot figure out if the sender of the message is a human or a spam computer program.
(Note that you can still generate a form without any CAPTCHA test, or one with the visible "I am not a robot" test. It's up to you. It's just a new option for those who want it. And it's all free.)
Find out more from my guide on adding a CAPTCHA test to your form.
- New page: Free Image Pop-Up JavaScripts (Where Image Overlays Current Web Page). I'm sure you have seen sites where if you click a thumbnail, a bigger version of the image pops up overlaying the current web page. Now you can implement this on your own website with these free image pop-up JavaScripts.
- New page: How to Insert a DIV Block and Other HTML Elements into a Web Page Using JavaScript. This article discusses one way to insert a DIV block (or other HTML element) into a web page using JavaScript.
- Two new scripts have been added to the Free JavaScript Calendar and Date Picker Scripts page. They allow you to add a date picker to your web forms, where users can click a date field and select a date from a calendar that pops up.
- New page: How to Insert HTML Code into a Web Page with Expression Web. Find out how to insert HTML code into your website (whether in the main body of the page or in the HEAD section) using the free Microsoft Expression Web editor.
- New page: Does the Price of a Domain Depend on the Name Chosen? Why do Some Domains Cost So Much? This article discusses some possible reasons why the total bill you get for your domain name differs from the price listed on your registrar's page.
- Feeling nostalgic? An open source emulator for the old Macintosh 128K, Macintosh 512k, Macintosh 512ke, Macintosh Plus, Macintosh SE and Macintosh Classic has been added to the Free 68k and PowerPC Macintosh Emulators page.
- New page: How to Hide Content or Data from the Search Engines. In response to a query from a visitor, this article deals with how you can prevent Google and Bing from indexing certain content on your website and displaying it in their results.
- Another game engine has been added to the Free Games Engines (Games Programming Libraries) page. It lets you build games for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android and iOS (ie, iPhones). You can even create web-based (ie HTML5) games with it for users to play on your own website.
- New page: Do I Need a Web Editor if I Create a Blog? I was asked by a visitor whether she needed to use a web editor like Expression Web or Dreamweaver if she wanted to start a blog. This article answers that question.
- A new program has been added to the Free File Comparison Utilities page. Such software typically display the differences between two text files so that you can see, at a glance, what has changed between them, and some can also merge the changes. (Note that the page also lists a tool that can compare two binary files and create a patch to update one to the other; useful for programmers wanting to distribute small updates to their software.)
- Another source code editor has been added to the Free Programmer's Editors, Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and Plain Text Editors. This one is an open source program from Microsoft.
- New page: How to Insert a Table into a Web Page (and Customize it) with Expression Web. If you want to display some information in a tabular format on your website, this article shows you how to insert a table and customize it using Microsoft Expression Web.
- New page: How to Use Web Fonts: CSS Tutorial. This article shows you how to use any font in your CSS (and not just the usual web-safe ones like Arial and Times New Roman) on your website. With modern browsers, it's now possible to use such fonts without running into the problem of visitors not having the required typefaces installed on their computers.
- Two new SFTP / FTP programs have been added to the Free FTP and Secure FTP (SFTP) Clients page. If you want to create a website and need software to transfer your files there, take a look at this page for numerous free programs that may fit your requirements.
- New page: How to Insert a Bullet Point (Unordered) List into Your Website with Expression Web. There are times when you want to put a list with bullet points appearing before each item into a web page. This article shows you how to do this. It also shows you how to use your own customized bullets instead of the default solid black circles. For example, you can use it to insert ticks before each point, like in a checklist, or arrows, etc.
- I have added 2 hosts to the Free File Storage Hosting page, which have, over time, become empty due to closures of the older entries.
- New page: How to Add an Automatically Numbered List to Your Website with Expression Web. Depending on what your website deals with, you may sometimes need to add a numbered list. This tutorial shows you how to insert an automatically numbered list using Microsoft Expression Web.
- Two new PHP scripts which allow you to conduct polls (where people can vote on an issue or whatever) on your website have been added to the Free PHP Poll and Survey Scripts page.
- New page: How to Add Google AdSense to Your Website with Expression Web. If you have seen Google advertisements (those "Ads by Google" things) as you surfed the Internet, and want to put some on your own website, this article takes you through the steps of inserting them using the Microsoft Expression Web editor.
- A new script has been added to the Free PHP Rating Scripts page. It allows visitors to your website to give a star rating to any item displayed there (such as pictures, videos, links, articles, or other content).
- New page: How to Insert a YouTube Video into Your Website with Microsoft Expression Web. For those who have designed a website and are wondering how to embed a YouTube video in one of its pages, this article takes you through the process of doing just that with the free Microsoft Expression Web editor.
- A fork (ie, spin-off) of the Open Watcom C/C++ project has been added to the Free C/C++ Compilers and Interpreters page. Like the original, this compiler generates code for Windows (16 bits, 32 bits and 64 bits), Linux (32 and 64 bits), OS/2 and MSDOS. (I assume the fork is because the original Open Watcom project appears to have stalled.)
- Are you thinking of starting your own website? Check out How to Create a Website. It takes you through all the steps of making a website, including designing it, putting it on the Internet, collecting credit card payments and inserting advertisements. The article has just been updated with the latest information on the web editors to use, as well as the browsers to test your site with.
- New page: How to Create a Contact Form with Expression Web. Find out how you can use Expression Web to add a contact (or feedback) form to your website so that your visitors can write to you. This is the final chapter of the Expression Web tutorial, so if you were waiting for me to finish the series before creating a website, you can now find all the chapters online.
- The source code for MS-DOS 1.1 and 2.0, as donated by Microsoft, is now listed on the Free DOS-compatible Operating Systems (MS-DOS/PC-DOS Clones) page.
- New page: How to Publish (Upload) Your Website to the Internet with Expression Web. Once you have finished creating your website, how do you get it onto the Internet so that others can see it? This tutorial shows you how to use the free Microsoft Expression Web editor to publish (or upload) that site.
- A new open source forum software has been added to the Free PHP Forum Scripts page. If you are thinking of adding a discussion board to your own website, where your visitors can chat with each other, take a look at the software listed here for some options.
- New page: How to Create and Manage Multiple Pages on Your Website with Expression Web. If you have created a website with multiple pages, maintenance can become a chore over time. For example, what happens when you want to change its design? Do you have to manually go through every single page to update it? This chapter of the Expression Web tutorial shows you how to use the editor's built-in facility to simplify and automate much of the drudgery of managing a multi-page site.
- New page: How to Insert a Navigation Menu into Your Website with Expression Web. Add a navigation menu to your site with Microsoft Expression Web. This is the sixth chapter of the Expression Web tutorial, a series that takes you through the steps of creating a website using Microsoft's free (but very polished) web editor.
