Recommended Tools & Services

The following services and software are used by the U.P. Web Maestro, and/or recommended for clients looking for their own Web related solutions...

PayPal

Used by the U.P. Web Maestro and several clients for some time now. This is a great solution for someone who wants to accept credit card payments through their web site, but doesn't want to pay the big setup and billing fees that many other companies charge. Sign up for a Merchant's account for free!

Fotolia

A worldwide social marketplace for royalty free stock images, allowing individuals and professionals to legally buy and share stock images and illustrations. Great search tools and preview options.

ewedding

Offer online RSVP, collect best wishes in your own guestbook, upload unlimited photos, post events, dates, directions and much more.

Adobe Photoshop

A "must have" for anyone wanting to create or edit professional looking images for their web site. It's not cheap, but you might consider buying an older version from Amazon or Ebay—even the older versions are great to have!

TextPad

I hate to admit how long it's been since I created HTML on a Mac, but my early days were spent with SimpleText, happily churning out HTML all day. In college, I got hooked on the very affordable TextPad which is a simple but powerful text editing program. If you want to avoid the cumbersome bells and whistles of the WYSIWYG editors, try this.

Firefox

If you're still browsing the web with Internet Explorer, or worse—if you don't even know what you browse the web with, download and install this great web browser. It's more secure than IE, faster, and is the favorite of web professionals all over the place. It also comes with great pop-up blocking capabilities.

Skype

You can call anyone else on Skype, anywhere in the world for free. There are some other useful things you can do on Skype that aren't free (but they're pretty cheap, actually). Use SkypeOut to call from Skype to traditional landlines or mobiles. SkypeIn is a phone number your friends can call. You answer in Skype. Skype Voicemail takes your calls when you're busy or offline.