technical

• PHP - a widely-used open-source general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML.
• MySQL - the world's most popular open source database.
• "Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of web development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page.
• "SmartFTP: an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client which allows you to transfer files between your local computer and a server on the Internet."
  This is how I upload my web work. A free, fully functional Ftp manager.
• "WordPress is a state-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. What a mouthful. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time."
• "Coppermine Photo Gallery is a multi-purpose fully-featured and integrated web picture gallery script written in PHP."
• Flash Player - get it here. It is for free, and will download in only a minute or two. The best sites use Flash!!
• Download Accelerator Plus - a download manager that offers a "resume download" feature that can save you much frustration with larger downloads.
• Very dry, technical documentation - but they do have the final say over everything to do with HTML, XHTML, CSS and more...
• Share and comment on pages on the internet.
• The website for "for people who make websites" - some of the most knowledgable, experienced web-designers write articles discussing the web: past, present, future.
• WebDeveloper.com. Great forum that I like to use to test my HTML, CSS, and PHP skills...