Here are a few pieces of open source software that would fall into the category of website accessories. To date, I haven’t come across very many of these but will that change?
This is a web-based code editor that you can host on your own website. The concept has me wondering if it wise to go making code changes to a live website without testing them offline first but it sounds interesting for those times when you are carrying over tested code or need to fix a glitch in an implementation.
A PHP library for re-using RSS feeds in web content.
The point of this tool is to manage advertising. While that means that I may never get to using it, that’s never to say that there aren’t others who might.
There may be a myriad of file storage providers on the web but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a place for a self-hosted alternative of your own. After all, some providers may not be as robust as you’d like them to be so it’s always good to feel that a little more control can come your way. That is where ownCloud comes in and it is not dissimilar to other web applications with its dependence on PHP, MYSQL and so on. DIY approaches are not dead and gone just yet.
This is something that I use: a self-hosted website analytics engine. Using Google Analytics and Woopra is all very fine but they are implemented using JavaScript scripts hosted on other parts of the web and that can slow down page loading as well as giving blockers of JavaScript something else to do. The latest version may not work on the servers hosting websites for me but, given that the previous provides all that I need, there’s no incentive in upgrading.
Essentially, these are open source counterparts to what powers Twitter. If you ever have used identi.ca, then you’ll have been using one of these and there’s nothing to stop you running a site of your own like it, either.
This is a self-hosted analogue to the now doomed Google Reader. There may be other options in the cloud like Netvibes but there is some additional security in having an option almost entirely under your own control.