Recommended Web Tools Archives

Place quotes on your website with Quogr

Quogr offers an easy way for webmaster’s to place quotes of their own choosing on their website.

Admittedly, there are a ton of php quote scripts out there. Why use something like Quogr?

Well for starters, beginners might find php scripts too technical to figure out. Quogr provides simple cut and paste code that anyone can add to their website. If you can add Adsense to your website, you can add a Quogr quote block.

Second, YOU get to add the quotes you want to appear. Heck, you can even quote yourself!
A lot of of those php scripts come pre-loaded with tons of quotes. You may not want to have most or any of those quotes appear on your website. Quogr gives you the freedom to add what you want.

Whats a quote block from Quogr look like? See below:

Are Quogr quote blocks genuinely useful or are they simply website bling?

They are not for all websites. But if your website happens to be about promoting yourself, then Quogr could be a useful tool. In particular, I am thinking of all those personal coaching/self help kind of sites. Various inspirational speakers have a blog and and a store to sell their books and CD’s. Quogr would be an excellent addition to their website. Quotes from their own books and materials could appear within a sidebar. Put on your marketing hats now. Choose the right quotes and you could very well pre-sell your own material. Just a thought

Yes, Quogr could easily become website bling that will make you yawn. However, the right site, the right material with the right mindset, could turn Quogr into a very powerful self-marketing tool.

Disclosure: Paid Review

Simple Server Monitor Review

Is your server down? How would you know?

Would you like to know when it goes down?

Simple Server Monitor offers a desktop tool that allows users the ability to monitor their servers.

Simple Server Monitor offers more than just a simple ping utility to test the status of a server. It has the ability to actually login to a service and logout thus testing to see if an application is actually up and running.

The possibilities with Simple Server Monitor are mainly for the intermediate to advanced user. While SSM can be used to tell if a website is up or down, it maybe overkill for beginners to use it for this purpose especially at a price of $50. However, if you host applications on shared web hosts, then this tool will be worth the small investment. SSM is ideal for those who host their own websites on their own machines or who are in charge of maintaining a series of servers. I would hesitate to say whether it is ideal in an enterprise environment. It seems more geared towards the individual and/or small business. Though as a secondary form of alert, SSM seems like it could serve in the enterprise environment as well.

You will have to adjust your firewall accordingly to let SSM reach the servers you have set it to test. When I first fired SSM up, it tested my website and told me it was down. I went out and checked and it was most definitely up. The problem was my firewall. The firewall had kept SSM from sending out it’s test ping and when SSM did not receive any packets back it assumed the server was down. I am not a network expert by any means, but if there was a way for SSM to detect the presence if not the blockage of a firewall, this would help users immensely.

The interface is clean and easy to use. Setup (other than the firewall issue) was very easy as well. If you have a small business and manage multiple servers or websites, SSM may be the right tool for you.

Disclosure: Paid Review

htaccess help

Personally, I believe the .htaccess file emanates straight from the bowels of hell.

It is THE one thing that can easily trip up beginners.

But, alas, there is help!

Scoot on over to Ask Apache and find the htaccess help you need.

This article will help you with any of the following:

• When site is “Under Construction”
• Redirect everyone to different site except 1 IP
• prevent caching 100%
• Remove IE imagetoolbar without meta tag
• Add Privacy (P3P) Header to your site
• Add a “en-US” language tag and “UTF-8″ without meta tags!
• various redirects
• plus many more htaccess tips

I personally try to avoid the htaccess file unless it’s a must. So if you want to dip your toes into the fiery flames of he…opps…I mean htaccess then head over to Ask Apache!

Password Protect your website with Sentry Login

I had, in the past, tinkered with the notion of creating membership based websites. While there are plenty of CMS’ that could accomplish this, I have often wondered if there was a way to convert an established website into a password protected one without having to re-engineer the whole thing.

Well it looks like there is a way: Sentry Login. Sentry Login turns websites (or portions thereof) into member’s only password protected websites.

I have not yet tried out their service, I currently don’t have a need to but I always wondered what I would do if I decided to have member’s only kind of content. Re-engineering this website would be daunting. The prospect of dropping in some code sounds great.

Why would you want password protected content?

- some sites offer exclusive content to paying members
- maybe the websites content is free, but the tools and software need a password into order to enter and use.
- you want to create a special portion of your website for members to interact
- you may want to create some sort of space for private consulting or forum or the like

Sentry Login is intriguing enough to try. I would appreciate any comments from those who have tried it.

Fixing non-WWW versions of your website

You maybe surprised to learn that there are multiple ways in which your website domain name can be found. No I am not talking about various kinds of traffic, I am talking about the “version” of your domain name. For example, this website could be found by putting one or the other of the following into your browser’s address bar:

www.recommendedwebtools.com

OR

recommendedwebtools.com

So is this really that big a problem? Well it can be if search engines have links to your site that included both the WWW version and the non-www version. The process of creating one main URL that references your website is called canonicalization.

It is best to choose one of the above forms or the other. I personally prefer the WWW version, but thats just my opinion.

How can you canonicalize a URL? You have to turn to your friend and mine: .htaccess. (That is said tongue in cheek, btw. For beginners, .htaccess is a bane on your existence.) However, with the right help you can’t go wrong. 14th Colony has a handy little tool that helps you fix any canonicalization issues that you might have. They provide a little code generator that creates the .htaccess code needed. They also include a helpful explanation of the issue.

Why canonicalize?

One main way of referencing your website will help search engines and that, in the long run, will help you.

Entertaining and Humorous Spam Comments

While spam is a blight upon the Web, I occasionally scan my blocked spam to see if there is anything entertaining. As I scrolled down the list there were the usual suspects: viagra, porn and cialis were rampant. Frankly, those are now boring. Bad spelling and nonsensical sentences are still fairly common. This one was my favorite:

Interpol charming amphibious rustled!click hark placid splines?

However, I noticed a new trend. Spammers are using the text of jokes in the comments field. So for your entertainment, below are three jokes left by spammers over the last few weeks:

A little boy goes to his dad and asks, “What is politics?”

Dad says, “Well son, let me try to explain it this way: I’m the breadwinner of the family, so let’s call me capitalism. Your Mom, she’s the administrator of the money, so we’ll call her the Government. We’re here to take care of your needs, so we’ll call you the people. The nanny, we’ll consider her the Working Class. And your baby brother, we’ll call him the Future. Now, think about that and see if that makes sense,”

So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what dad had said.

Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him. He finds that the baby has severely soiled his diaper. So the little boy goes to his parents’ room and finds his mother sound asleep. Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny’s room. Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father in bed with the nanny. He gives up and goes back to bed. The next morning, the little boy says to his father, “Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now.”

The father says, “Good son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about.”

The little boy replies, “Well, while Capitalism is screwing the Working Class, the Government is sound asleep, the People are being ignored and the Future is in deep poo.”

A husband and wife came for counselling after 15 years of marriage.
When asked what the problem was, the wife went into a passionate, painful tirade listing every problem they had ever had in the 15 years they had been married. She went on and on and on: neglect, lack of intimacy, emptiness, loneliness, feeling unloved and unlovable, an entire laundry list of un-met needs she had endured over the course of their marriage.

Finally, after allowing this to go on for a sufficient length of time, the therapist got up, walked around the desk and, after asking the wife to stand, embraced and kissed her passionately.

The woman shut up and quietly sat down as though in a daze. The therapist turned to the husband and said, “This is what your wife needs at least three times a week. Can you do this?”

The husband thought for a moment and replied,.. “Well, I can drop her off here on Mondays and Wednesdays, but on Fridays, I go fishing.”

A college physics professor was explaining a particularly complicated concept to his class when a pre-med student interrupted him.

“Why do we have to learn this stuff?” the frustrated student blurted out.

“To save lives,” the professor responded before continuing the lecture.

A few minutes later the student spoke up again. “So how does physics save lives?”

The professor stared at the student without saying a word.

“Physics saves lives,” he finally continued, “because it keeps the idiots out of medical school.”

The history of the Internet

Forget about the future. Interested in knowing how we got to this point of our Internet-driven world?

Check out these sites about the history of the Internet:

A Brief History of the Internet – Robert X. Cringely’s guide to the history of the Internet.

Timeline of Internet History – Robert Hobbes Zakon’s history of the Internet in easy to read timeline form.

A Short History of the Internet – the W3′s short history of the Internet.

Did you know that by starting a website you are adding to the history of the Internet? While you may not be the next YouTube, your website makes and changes the digital landscape.

The future of the Internet

Interested in the future of the Internet?

Check out the following resources:

Internet Society – organization which sets Internet standards

Internet 2 – Organization which leads the construction of a high speed network which currently connects connects two-thirds of college campuses and one-third of U.S. high schools.

Abilene – information on the network backbone that runs the Internet2. Checkout the weathermap which displays the main nodes of the network and the usages between those nodes. Note that the nodes between New York and Chicago are more highly used than the nodes between Seattle and Silicon Valley. Interesting.

IPv6 – the new internet protocol.

Definition of Web 2.0

In Steven Johnson’s Time magazine article “Its All About Us“, he gives what maybe the simplest definition of Web 2.0 that I have seen yet:

If web 1.0 was organized around pages, web 2.0 is organized around people.

Of course, boiling something done to its very essence sometimes isn’t very helpful. It might be better to say Web 2.0 is social. Though frankly, I don’t think people understand the term “social”. Because of our video game age, a better term would be “interactive.”

Web 2.0, then, is the interactive web.

2007 Wishlist

7 wishes for 2007

1. WordPress 2.1- Come on alreadyyyyyyyyyyyy.
2. Cleva Treva’s CSS Layout Tool- I would really love to see the tool focus on IE6, IE7, Firefox 1.5, Firefox 2.0, and Opera 9. Personally, I don’t see the need to continue to make sure things work in Netscape 4, etc. Also, I want all functionality to be complete. Plus, I would love to be able to create layouts with both columns on one side of the page.
3. SEOMoz Keyword Difficulty Tool- I want the ability to enter multiple keywords at once instead of one at a time. I would even pay for this service on a credits kind of basis sort of like how the new Nichebot is run.
4. Fast Remote Backups- I am afraid I won’t get my wish here. The very nature of secure, encrypted online backups ensures slowness. It just kills me to have to wait forever. Since my post about my original frustration with remote backups, I have received several emails from online backup providers. While all seem to be good products, they are ALL still slow.
5. Task Tool and RSS Reader interoperability- When I read something I want to write about later I either bookmark it or flag it from within my RSS Reader. I then go back and cut and paste the links to my task management tool. I would really, really like the ability to have an “Add As Task” button from within my reader. This would then add it to the Task Tool I have specified in some Admin Option somewhere. Talk about a time saver!
6. Better way for Text Link Ad publishers to approach advertisers- Currently, with most services, advertisers search for publishers. Why can’t it also be the other way around?
7. No more bloated software- I know this is a stretch. I am not just talking about operating systems either. I like things that are lightweight, take up few resources, and less space.

Internet Explorer 7 Review

I took the plunge and decided to update to Internet Explorer 7.

I had two immediate thoughts:

1. It took too long to update and install. Downloading and installing either Firefox or Opera took a heck of a lot less time.
2. It looks a lot like Opera

I initially thought the length of time it took to install was due to software bloat. However, the final installed directory is only 3.5 MB. The problem is probably with Microsoft’s install mechanism. I wonder too if the heavy integration with the underlying OS creates installation complexities.

IE7 diverges from the traditional browser toolbar. While not exactly the same as Opera, they both took a divergent path to redefine the toolbar. Firefox 2.0 keeps the traditional placement of the tool bar with Front, Back, Refresh, Stop, Home, Print all in a row starting to the users left. IE6 used similar placement. Since IE7 diverges from IE6 on this point, users will have to relearn the placement of key buttons. I have already found myself mousing over to where the home button should be only to find the space tidied up for a longer address bar.

I am not an expert on web standards nor can I speak to the standard rendering of CSS across browsers. However, I can say that IE7 renders padding and margins a little differently than Firefox and Opera. I had a problem that showed up only in Firefox (Opera and IE6 rendered it as I wanted it.) My fix to the problem solved the issue (sort of) in Firefox, but it displays a tad differently in IE7.
It is literally one of those “screw it” moments where I am tired of trying to work around three different browsers. It is not how I want it, but at least it is adequate in all three.

The release of IE7 does raise the issue of a web standard compatible browser. Many were hoping IE7 would come closer. From what I have read, it has made strides but is not as close as Firefox or Opera.

The usability difference between IE6 and IE7 is my major complaint. Most will not like the fact that all their buttons have been moved to a different location on the toolbar. Beginners in general, who generally hate things being changed,will dislike the new look of IE7. Those used to a more modern layout like Opera, will like the new physical changes but will still have a distaste for its lack of web standards compatibility.

[tags]ie7, internet+explorer, firefox, opera, microsoft[/tags]

The free website monitoring service that doesn’t suck

…so states the tagline to Montastic (the fanTASTIC MONitoring tool).

The service will monitor your website and let you know whether it is up or down.

Cool stuff:

• Free
• Monitor more than one website (up to 100)
• Cool Yahoo desktop Widget if you want to use it
• Email received when website is down
• Email received when website is up
• See status via RSS feed
• Service checks every ten minutes (this beats most free services by at least 50 minutes if not more)

via pirillo

[tags]website, monitoring, montastic[/tags]

Site Profile Interview with Shari Horne of Sharilyn Horne Business Concepts

The first Site Profile is about a site I found not too long ago. I often pay attention to the bottom of webpages to look for “who created this” kind of info. I came across one of the sites she designed (which was a very solid look and feel) and decided to visit her site. My first thought: Well done. This woman has some pizzazz and personality. Shari Horn is an independent web developer and designer which makes her an ideal candidate for my first Site Profile.

I have placed her own words in blockquotes.

Shari created her first website a decade ago in 1996:

I had a boss who asked me to put some problem sets up on the web – I worked for a math textbook publisher at the time – and I had no idea how to create a web page. He gave me a copy of Claris Home Page to use, but I quickly cast that aside in favor of hand coding. (Those pages are still up at http://mathforum.org/key/nucalc!)

I taught myself everything I could, and I soon created my own personal site. By the fall of 1997 I took a job coding HTML on a site for Apple Computer’s sales channel. I was there for about three years, moving into a role as the Content Production Manager for the same site (managing the HTML coding process by others). I’ve been working for myself since 2000.

I found the process of developing web pages appealed to me on a number of levels…I liked the immediate results I saw, I enjoyed the problem solving aspect of figuring out code problems, and I could be creative in ways I never knew were possible.

Her site, Sharilyn Horne Business Concepts, is the web presence for her business. It is currently in its second incarnation.

I had known for some time that the original site I had developed in 2001 was no longer cutting it. While it was aesthetically pleasing and technically functional, it was not a reflection of me or my approach to my business. I struggled for almost two years before I finally launched my new web presence in August of 2005.

From the to the look and feel to the platform to the content, I approached the process very methodically. If I was going to put myself out there, then it had to be perfect.

The site, obviously, promotes her business.

[the website primarily serves] as a source of information about what I can offer to potential clients.

My blog, Solopreneurial Tendencies, is integrated into the site. In it I
ponder the highs and lows of running my business, how it impacts my life, along with the occasional non-sequitur.

The website itself is her motivation.

My site is the best part of my design portfolio! Having a site that garners so much praise is a huge motivator!

Putting together a website comes with its own set of frustrations. Shari is no exception:

Deciding exactly how I wanted to put it together…I spent over a year just trying to find the right font for the header!

I also decided to put the entire site on the Movable Type platform. I knew a blog would be a big part of the site, and I had seen several sites using MT as a low-end CMS.

Of course, I decided that when I really didn’t know a thing about MT. So the learning curve was a little steep there…

Now that the website is up and running, there are some frustrations with maintaining the site:

For me it’s having the time to update things. I’d like to make some major changes to some of the static content, but I just don’t have the bandwidth.

I also don’t update my portfolio as often as I should. I launch several projects throughout any given month, and it’s always a struggle to try to keep the portfolio up-to-date.

I will be asking each interviewee a series of five questions about their greatest challenges: greatest technical, creative, business, traffic and topic challenges. Here are Shari’s responses to each.

Greatest technical challenge:

Learning Movable Type enough to use it as the platform for my entire site and then rigging it to work the way I wanted it to.

Greatest creative challenge:

I worry that the site is the crowning achievement of my creative life, and I might not be able to come up with anything really cool again…

Greatest business challenge:

Keeping up with all the work I have!

Greatest traffic challenge:

Just getting known once I had launched. Applying all of the information I had gathered.

Greatest topic challenge (her topic being her web development business which is very infused with her own personality):

My topic is me in terms of my business, and my business itself. I don’t always keep things up-to-date as I should.

And maybe her greatest challenge:

I was working with myself, so that was a nightmare at times. I’m very, very picky. Did I mention picky?

We all go through periods of time where the work on our website is going well. Other times where we feel like tearing it down. So I asked Shari about her work ethic:

[I work on the website]…at least 5 days a week, whether it is a blog post or doing some back end maintenance.

I work for myself, and I have a great deal of client work at any given time. Finding time to work on the site can be challenging. I’m working on getting better organized, developing a series of processes for my business, and building in scheduled time to work on the site. It’s important to keep it updated, since that’s the first place most potential clients see me.

Ultimately, is she a disciplined person?

Not as much as I should be. That’s an area for improvement that I’m tackling head-on.

Her goals are simple:

To build and grow my business!

And what about meeting her goals?

I’m definitely meeting them right now. My business is doing quite well. I’m struggling with the growth aspect of things, on how best to expand and bring in support when my business is so much a reflection of me.

Better planning and processes, I think [would help meet those goals].

The questions then turned to writing and the connection between and creating a quality website. I asked whether she considered herself a good writer:

Yes. I have a number of years of writing and editorial experience, and I’ve offered content development services in the past. (Yes, it’s still on my site…grrrrrr)

I think the ability to express oneself in writing is very important, especially when you have a site that is content-rich. If you’re going to put yourself out there and expect people to read what you’ve written, you have a responsibility to be thought-provoking or witty or at the very least readable.

On improving her own writing:

I read a lot. I was a total library nerd as a kid. I always take notes when I come across something I’d like to address, whether through my static content or my blog.

I keep a dictionary, The Chicago Manual of Style, and Strunk & White’s Elements of Style within easy reach of where I sit. I don’t even need to stand up to get any of those books down, so I have no excuse NOT to look something up.

Once a website is up and running, we are want that T word. Traffic. Her thoughts:

I have the great fortune of getting wonderful referrals from some fairly high-profile folks in my niche (life coaches and other solo professionals), so I have a steady flow of traffic.

Of course I’d like more! I need to practice what I preach to my clients and be on top of visiting and commenting to other blogs.

Finally, three final bits of advice to beginners:

The job is never finished…there is always something that needs to be updated, added to. Make sure you have the ability (or can retain someone who does) to keep your site up-to-date.

If you’re not a good writer, get someone who is to look over your initial content. Just running spellcheck doesn’t cut it…there are people who judge how you express your ideas, and the mechanics of the content, and one of them could hold the key to bigger and better things.

Make sure your content is a reflection of who you are. The original site for my business gave no hint at anything about me or my personality. The goal for this site was to be as authentic as possible. I knew that would turn some folks off, because I have a “big” personality. I decided being true to myself was more important, and that I probably wouldn’t want to work with someone turned off by my site anyway!

I want to thank Shari for giving her time to write her responses to my questions. I will post tomorrow with a few reflections and summary of some of her sound advice.

Ten Things Text Link Brokers Can Improve

1. More robust searching for publishers advertisers should be able to search for publishers by keyword, category, various ranking criteria, and PRICE.
2. More variety in the kinds of advertising. Text link advertising is too home page centric. Sub page advertising is also essential, especially if there are pages that see more traffic than a home page. Most text link brokers are geared towards presenting a site as a whole rather than presenting a single page to advertisers. The reasons for this are connected to statistics. It is hard for third party services to present stats on a single page, while it is easy to present some level of statistics for an entire site (i.e. via Alexa)
3. Stop using Alexa. Using Alexa as a means by which advertisers can assess publishers seems a little off base. The inaccuracy and unreliability of Alexa has been well documented. While we need to admit we all check our Alexa ranking, for we are addicted to those kinds of stats, it still does not justify using it as a means of judgement and assessment.
4. Let publishers add their own stat information. Yes, people can lie. However reputable sites stand out and less reputable typically fall to the wayside.
5. Help Sellers too. There is a general emphasis on helping link buyers (for indeed this is what provides the revenue), however Link Sellers need help too. Don’t forget them!
6. Create other means by which advertisers and publishers can meet each other – blog, forums, etc. Here’s one idea: you know those group writing projects Problogger initiates? Use the same idea but apply it to pairing up advertisers and publishers. For example, place a call out for all websites that are about pets and want to add some advertisers. Challenge them to write a post about what their site has to offer (content, visitors, readers, etc.). Post links to all these posts. ADvertisers can then easily check out all the potential sites. Do this for all the various categories. Maybe do it once a month. Don’t fear the volume to be overwhelming. I am willing to bet only about 10% of those who are currently signed up for your service that would qualify for the topic would take the time to write a post and submit it before deadline.
7. Improve the user interface for both advertisers and publishers. Some do a great job, others need a little help.
8. Make the code minimal. Makes it easy for publishers to publish ads without a lot of code. In particular, beginners shy away from complicated code that has to be added to their site.
9. Provide one on one service to those willing to pay for it. You might be surprised the amount of people who would pay for one hour of time to help them get off the ground with text link advertising.
10. Continue the process of education. Do not cease in educating your members.

[tags]text+links,text+link+ads[/tags]

Ten Text Link Advertising Pitfalls

Beginners eager to make some revenue from their website will find text link advertising to be attractive. Here are ten potential pitfalls. Think about these things carefully before jumping into text link advertising.

As an Advertiser

1. Buying a link from most publishers is just that: a link. Only when purchased from high volume sites does a text link become a means of visible advertising that people actually click on. In other words, don’t expect much traffic to come directly from that link. You are simply buying the benefit of having someone link to your site. You will receive some traffic, but from most sites, it won’t be bucketloads.
2. Don’t overspend. You can very easily spend too much when your website is generating very little. Work into the process slowly.
3. Buy a link from a quality site. Learn all you can about the site from whom you want to place the link. Visit the site. Is this the kind of site you want your website associated with?
4. Buy your first link from a homepage. Even though you may not see direct traffic from the site, it will begin to give your site some level of name recognition and presence. Plus, homepages tend to provide better weight to the relative “value” of your site.
5. Take the time to develop well worded anchor text. This will potentially affect your position in the SERPs for those terms.

Recommendation:

Buy a single low cost link from a decent home page. Hold onto that link for three months. Don’t buy anymore links during that time. This will do four things: 1) if your site is not currently crawled, it will be, 2) give you time to learn more about text link ads, 3) give you time you work on what counts: your website 4) keep you from overspending.

As a publisher

1. Advertisers look at website traffic as one criteria for placing a link on your site. This is a hard one for beginners to overcome. While you maybe able to offer an attractive price, most advertisers want the benefit of being SEEN along with the paid link. Low traffic sites don’t provide the ability to be
   “seen”.
2. Advertisers look at link popularity to assess the viability of a website. Taking time to build quality links to your site before you even begin to offer adspace is probably time wisely spent.
3. Dont overestimate the value of your website. Start with low cost reasonable pricing.
4. Place the ads in visible places on your website. Again, while your advertisers may not see much direct traffic, it boosts their confidence in your site if they know their link is highly visible.
5. Remember that text links advertising is just one possible means of revenue. It is not by any means the only means. So be patient when advertisers are none or few. In time, they will come.

Recommendation:

Wait until you can consistently reach 3000-5000 pageviews a month before you try to offer adspace. Build several quality links to your site. Find a text link broker that works for you. While I recommend a particular text link broker for beginners, by all means try them all and find the one that works best for you.

Further reading: Read our recommendation on text link ad brokers

[tags]text+links,text+link+ads[/tags]

Google renames Sitemaps to Webmaster Central

Google recently renamed their Sitemaps website to Webmaster Central. The original sitemaps functionality still exists but they have now added a lot of functionality to it.

Here’s the key functionality:

• Diagnostic
  • Web Crawl – errors Google found while crawling your site
  • Mobile Errors – if your site has a mobile version, errors found crawling that site are listed here
  • robots.txt analysis – copy and paste your robots.txt file to find out if Google can read it
  • manage site verification – ensure your site is verified with Google Webmaster Central
  • preferred domain – tell Google what version of your domain is the main one
• Statistics
  • Query Stats – queries that most often returned pages from your site plus queries that resulted in clicks to your site (this is interesting)
  • Crawl Stats – misnamed in my opinion. This page displays the ratio of Pagerank for all your indexed pages.
  • Page Analysis – various stats displaying what the Googlebot sees – I’m not quite sure how to best use this this tool. More on this later.
  • Index Stats – links to various Google functionality like allinurl:. Frankly, this is sorta lame. It opens up another browser window and displays the info like you would if you manually entered the command. Make the tool more robust by having this information already in the database for the webmaster to see, with stats, etc.
• Sitemaps – the area where a site map is submitted to Google, more on this in a separate post.

SEOMoz has a visual rundown of Webmaster Central.