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Free How-to Sites

While WriteThru seeks to help journalists learn about the huge variety of technology options out there, there are more than enough topics to go around. Fortunately, there are plenty of mainstream sites that provide free tutorials as well as educational videos.

A relatively new player called Howcast, for example, offers short educational videos on a wide range of topics, reports The New York Times. While the site does not have a lot of depth yet, it is growing quickly.

Of course, the focus of WriteThru is technical knowledge, so after you have watched Howcast’s most popular video, How to Have Sex in a Car, there are also more relevant topics such as How to Install Google Analytics on Your Blogger Blog and How to Make Free Flash Animations.

How To Do It Creating Forms with Wufoo

While there are plenty of online options for building forms, Wufoo.com is fun and easy. Why do you need form-building software? Well, if you want to collect information from readers, leads or customers, it’s a lot easier to use pre-built software than learning HTML forms from scratch.

 What kind of forms can you build? By using a “Contact Us” box, you don’t have to openly post your email address on the web.  Or you could create an event registration form. Look at these samples, which can be used as templates, for some additional ideas.

Getting Started – Create an Account

1. After going to Wufoo.com, click on Sign Up for Free.
2. Click on Sign Up! (The link at left will skip step 1.) Note: When you pick a Wufoo account name, consider using your website name. In visual example I entered WriteThru.