A list of useful links and resources for web designers and other internet based wizards

There are some site you use that you take for granted. Sometimes these disappear, sometimes you wonder if you'd imagined that one existed. Here's a list of my most useful resources for designing & building sites. Some are purely to save me some time, some are so incredibly handy I don't know how I would cope without them. If you think I've missed off something very obvious to you, let me know. I've started with my number one and worked down.

1. Webagogo
   I love this site. Checks your site for accessibiliy, markup, stylesheets, seo and scores you out of 100%. You can view a breakdown of where your site is failing so you can fix things accordingly. This beaut helped me fix a lot of accessibility things I wouldn't have thought about doing before. I've improved from my first test (64%) up to my most recent result of 90%. Woop woop, etc.
2. W3Schools CSS Reference
   With the amount of info that I learn, and the consequent amount that I forget in doing so, a quick handy reference is always good to help you "remember" things you already know. The W3Schools site also has a load of other handy little guides and tutorials for other useful web stuffs you might need to know.
3. A List Apart
   There's always something handy on here. Best practices, guidance, little tit bits and so on. A good place to read up on the latest goings on, usually plenty of very helpful articles.
4. Dynamic Drive: Favicon Generator
   I think it might just be me, but forgetting to put a favicon.ico in the root folder of a site is always something I forgot to do, and when i did do it, I never go had a quick easy way to get a proper .ico file created. Huzzah! This site is the shrine unto which all .icos doth traverse! It's quick, handy & spot on if you ask me.
5. Backlink Watch
   Put in your site's address, then off it goes to check the wonderful tinterweb for links back to your site. Helps you keep a good track of your search engine visibility.
6. Stripes Generator
   Stripeyness in backgrounds is a nice little touch when used properly. Making a nice stripe isn't always easy though. Stripe Generator does the leg work and you just download the image at the end, for guaranteed perfect tilable effect. They've even got a tartan generator for those who like that sort of thing
7. Smashing Magazine: Excellent Free Font Resources
   A bunch of top drawer freebie font stuffs for your designy needs. That is all that needs to be said here.
8. Mod Rewrite Wizard
   When i rebuilt this site I had to figure out MOD Rewrite. Or should I say, I had to find a way to make it work, without necessarily understanding how I did it. Here is the answer. Works like a treat.
9. Dezinerfolio: Design Resources
   Some quality bits & pieces available here for free download. I especially like the linked to page with web 2.0 layer effects for photoshop. Rather nice they are too.
10. 24 Ways
    24 Ways to Impress Your Friends turns up once a year with something new to try out for every day of december. I've included it in here because this is where I found a pretty good stylesheet switcher, and a bunch of other helpful stuff. The longer it's there, the more there'll be. You can't lose.
    
11. Google Ad Sizes
    If you ever need to fit some advertising into a site, and don't know every single measurement off the top of your head, this site is your friend. All the standards ad sizes Google use are listed here with an example for you to see.
12. QuirksMode
    This site has a grid which tells you what browser supports which CSS bits and pieces. Not an every day handy site, but useful if you can't figure out why > doesn't work in IE6. And so on.
    
13. HTML Character Reference Guide
    A list of all the encoded entities you can use in HTML. If you didn't understand that, or you don't write any web content / templates without a WYSIWYG editor, this site will be useless to you. To everyone else, this is bloody handy.