I've been testing out a ton of free tools and scripts available on the Net. Listed here are the beginnings of a massive list with my reviews on each - including banner rotators, free counters, site announcers, guest books, and more!

Banner Ad Rotators

Whew! This was an adventure. Originally I tested out AdsRotation - a free service (sort of - they took 10% of banner views) - which worked out great for a while. I'd only been testing them for about a month or so when they sadly announced they were shutting down. (That may have explained the many hours many of my pages didn't have any banners showing at all.) They no longer had the funds to run it. We will miss you guys. BTW, by mistake they sent out an announcement showing all email addys in it and I was nearly spammed to death! That's when I got my own spam free account at Time4me.Com.

Now I'm testing another free service (well, sort of free - they take 20% of banner views) called Banner Orbit at CGI.net. The rotator works great. Unfortunately something appears to be wrong with their stats. My summary reports showing total click-through for subcodes is working and adding up. The individual banners in each set are not. This makes it almost impossible to adjust which banners to drop in each campaign. I would have been upgrading to premium service had the testing gone well. Still, as a free resource, and if the information isn't as critical for you on the individual banners you are running, you can't beat this one In My Humble Opinion.

In October I plan to move to a paying service at AdPush. Testing begins at the end of September. I can't afford to make guesses when it comes to my ad campaigns. Not when I currently have over 1,000 pages hosted on various sites all over the Net! I've heard many great things about AdPush and I've already seen what their service is capable of.

Be sure to visit the Graphics Page here at the WebGuide for some great free banner and button maker sites available on the Net!

Site Announcers

A site announcer is a script you can put into your web page to send an email to a friend letting them know about the site you saw. Take a test drive and tell someone about this site below.

I've tested a couple out but have found the one I like best at CGI.net - it gave me the most flexibility, plus extra customizing options such as full HTML thank you pages (thank you for telling a friend) and more.

They insert their banner on all thank you pages - which is ok. They have to make money to help pay for their services somehow, right? I highly recommend this one! Did I forget to mention it's FREE?
 

Web Site Counters

There are a ton of sites out there offering free counters for your Web Pages - however - make a note! If you have a high traffic site eventually you will be forced to go with a paid service. Why do I say this?

Well, for example, I was using LinkExchange counters on a new site I built early this spring called Time4me.com and the counter really started flying. Personally I knew the site would be successful, but even I didn't know it would be exceeding 10,000 visitors per month so quickly.

Well, guess what happened to my counter? One complete day it wasn't loading - the next day it reappeared - docked 800 counts. I wasn't sure what was happening. The next time it happened was only a few days later (5 or 6 days) during a week of incredibly intense traffic to this site. We had over 24,000 visitors and counting - averaging 600-700 unique visitors per day! This time the counter disappeared and later (24 hours later) reappeared - docked by 10,000!! That's when I discovered the fine print at their site. Higher traffic sites need to get a premium account for their counter to work. I started shopping around and found most sites out there do charge if your site receives more than (*insert thier number here*) visitors per month.

So, a word to the wise, if you do have a high traffic site either host it on a service which offers free counters or better check into paying for one. Unless you're one of these incredibly smart tecky types and know how to write your own scripts and excecution files - then get a hosted site that offers cgi bins in the package.

Meanwhile, here's a list of a few of the sites out there offering free counters. There are many more.

LinkExchange - free service if traffic does not exceed 10,000(? - may be slightly lower now?) per month. Stats emailed weekly of total hits only. different designs to choose from - neat and small.

Hitometer - part of the WebSite Garage and RegisterIt! and provided free if traffic does not exceed 10,000 per month. Stats emailed weekly include total hits plus average per day hits. Upgraded accounts include much more intense stats including browser used by visitors, etc., etc. I use this counter on certain pages for which I need the increased statistics in order to fully apply my marketing campaigns.

BeSeen - provided free. They don't really give you much information regarding min/max hits though. Cool designs to choose from and easy to set up! No follow up stats provided, unfortunately. Just the numbers of hits which you go to your page to check. Also, a bit unreliable in that the numbers could easily be incorrect since it doesn't count unique visitors, but rather page loads - every page load so if someone keeps hitting the back button to an index page (for example) you could end up with 200-300 hits a day not really visitors.

MyFreeOffice - along with the entire suite of free tools they also provide counters for all your pages free. (It's actually quite amazing how much you get for free here!) Ummm... no traffic limits here. In fact, the higher the better! They encourage successful sites - not punish them.

Guest Books

I think everyone should have one of these on their sites if they have no other means of contact with their visitors (such as message boards or contact boxes). Just my humble opinion.

Here's a few free services I've tested. There are many more.

DreamBook - Maybe because this is the service I started using first, or maybe it's because of the name, I dunno, but gee, I like them! You can fully customize your guest book (or Dream Book as they call it) to match your site content/background, has good management controls - deleting spammers is quick and simple - plus their email notification system is superb - sending each visitors post directly to your email box complete with the message they left for you. Stores up to 60 messages at a time before older ones start being removed as new ones are added. You may wish to set up more than one to keep archives.

CGI.net - A good one, but no real customization features. Visitors messages are automatically sent to your email too. A quick and easy set up and management controls for quick deletions if needed.

BeSeen - Ok, truth is, I did get the codes from them to test one out, but never did have the time to do it. So, you be the judge and if you do decide to use them, let me know if you're happy with it, ok? Thanks.

More Coming Soon

There's a whole lot more coming to this section of our site. Stay tuned! Every second update you will find new reviews and free script products out there which I've personally tested. (Wait till you see the new mouse roll-over codes - they are the coolest! They can even make noises when you click. Testing next month.)

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How The Site Announcer Works
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