When you are developing E-learning you need a lot of different things in order to end up with a good product. I have created this resource page to show the resources that I normally use in my projects. I have only listed things that I have used and / or use myself and that I can vouch for.

This page will be updated on a regular basis.

Images/Photo/Graphics resourcesites:

First of all you need some good high quality images/photos. In many cases the company ordering the E-learning course have some images they want you to use or maybe they even have an imagebank that you can access. However, most of the times you still need some generic images.

http://www.istockphoto.com – Istockphoto have around millions of royalty free files for sale. They have photos, vectorgraphics, videos and flash components. The prices are fair and you can buy the images in different sizes to fit your needs. You purchase credits on their site by using a credit card and everytime you purchase an image it will be deducted from your balance. They have some great photos and some really nice vector designs and icons here. The flash components you can buy here are very cheap, but the quality of the components are not the best to be honest. This is a great site when you need to buy photos and vector images but if you need flash check out some of the other options first.

I mainly use images from Istockphoto in my projects. I know that there are many other image sites but in my opionion I get the best selection (and the best search engine) when using Istockphoto.

Clicking the banner below will get you 10 free credits when signing up, which you can use to buy 10 small size images.

Another site that I use frequently is http://graphicriver.net. Here you can purchase graphics in the form of vectors and PSD files. This is really a great site where you can find some very nice pieces for graphical work and the fact that you get the Photoshop PSD source file makes it possible to change the graphics to your own liking. Prices vary from $2 to $20 depending on what you are purchasing.

Stock Flash resourcesites:

Secondly you probably need some flash components of some sort. If you have the skills you can develop the flash you need yourself, but most of the times it’s quicker and cheaper to buy a ready-made component and adapt it to your needs. I do it all the time and it saves me a lot of time.

As for Stock Flash Components there are a lot of different sites out on the web. The quality of the components vary quite a lot and also the amount of components available. My personal favourite is Activeden.

http://activeden.net – This is the site I use most often. They have more than 6000 flash files so there is a lot to chose between. The files range from preloaders to full websites. Activeden have some pretty strict rules for the quality of the files that are uploaded so normally you get pretty well commented actionscript and some decent help files. In most cases the authors are also pretty good to help with basic support and most accept freelance customization jobs. They also have an active forum where you can ask for help and ideas.

Again there are a lot of other Flash Stock sites on the web but I haven’t really used them since I have been happy with Activeden so far.

Webhost:

Depending on how you are going to host your courses or your site then you will need to have a good web host. I have tried a fair share of the webhosts out there over the last many years. In the last 2 years I have switched webhost 4 times for this site alone since the old hosts simply didn’t cut it. Typically you are promised free bandwidth, high performance servers, skilled 24/7 support but it hardly ever turns out to be true.

Recently I switched to a new host yet again called Inmotion Hosting. This site have been running on their servers for the last three months and it has really been a massive improvement compared to the other hosts I have had. First of all everything is faster. Their control panel (cpanel) has a ton of options, you get 50 MySQL databases, unlimited subdomains and a lot of other good stuff. I have talked to their technical support one time and I was surprised to find out that they actually knew what they were talking about and also fixed the problem quickly.

They also offer a professional VPS hosting solution if you are into that sort of things.

Therefore – if you need a webhost I would definitely recommend that you take a look at Inmotion Hosting.