Website grading tool

I recently found a neat little tool to determine your site's 'grade' based on a number of factors includng google page rank, traffic, etc.

The tool is called Website Grader (http://website.grader.com).

All you need to do is enter your site address, email address, and, optionally, the address(es) of your competitor(s).

The site takes between a couple seconds-minutes to calculate your rank, then sends the report to you in an email.

Above is a screenshot of a sample report (click here for the full sample).

The report consists of things such as:

• The number of images on your site
• Your site's 'readability level'
• Domain age, expiration date
• Google PageRank
• Google Indexed Pages
• Last Google Crawl Date
• Inbound Links
• Competitive Info

If you are webmaster, blogger, or site owner, I seriously suggest checking out this tool. Not only does it provide some interesting statistics, but it can prove extremely useful in many situations.

The future of online publishing?

With many web applications, such as Google Docs, emerging to form what we may know as 'web 2.0', there's a lot of interesting apps to check out.

One such app is SynthaSite, a free site creation system. You've likely seen things like it - there are many companies offering 'WYSIWYG' editors that use templates. Serious web developers such as myself often look at such applications, and sneer in disapproval.

Not so with SynthaSite. Well, okay, I did at first, but after taking it for a test drive, it just might be the program I'm looking for.

One thing I like about it is that I can work on my sites anywhere that I have web access. Just launch your web browser, log in to your SynthaSite account, and work away.

Currently all sites created with the app are stored on the SynthaSite servers, but when the app goes public (it's currently in limited beta), you'll be able to download your content to your PC (or Mac, if you prefer), then upload via FTP to your favorite host.

Of course, not everything is free. SynthaSite will be launching what they call the 'DIY superstore', which sells templates, widgets, etc.

Again the sneers. Who needs templates, right? Well, you can also start with a blank page and create from scratch, which is what I did for most of my hands-on time.

Adding images and other content is a breeze. Simply select a component from your toolkit, and drag it onto your page. Images work like this: you drag an image onto your page, then give it a source via the component options - source being the url the image is being pulled from. Hopefully the ability to use images stored on your computer will be supported soon.

I know I said 'drag', but this isn't exactly what you might think. As far as I know, currently you can't just 'drag and drop' anything wherever you please, but I hope this will become supported, as it's just what I need to position my images with ease.

Another feature I'd like is the ability to edit HTML. Most users likely won't even know what the term means, but I for one would like to use SynthaSite to do mostly everything, then customize it all with HTML, or even code my site in HTML then use SynthaSite to make it exactly the way I want.

People curious in SynthaSite can view a video demonstration below (click here for a high resolution), or sign up for the beta at http://www.synthasite.com/