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Ok so it's Monday and somehow ... despite a day of really hard work yesterday ... I've managed to arrive at the beginning of everyone else's work-day week feeling enthusiastic and ready to make some money.

So how are you feeling this fine Monday morning?

I thought I might start this week on Rated Hot with a few links to some helpful online tools that just about any webmaster should find helpful.

Color pickers
To begin with let's look at two handy color pickers that will help you come up with some good color schemes for your websites.

You don't have to be long in this industry before you being to realize that some color combinations that might work in your head as you're planning a site simply don't work in reality and there's nothing worse for conversions than a crappy color scheme that makes people feel ill rather than encourage them to buy what you're selling.

The first color picker I originally saw recommended by a well-known mainstream affiliate marketer and I've seen it recommended by several other people since then. It's Color Schemer Online V2 and you can find it at colorschemer.com/online.html.

I have to say that the interface looks a little plain but it's easy to use.

The second color picker is Color Scheme Designer and if you want a tool that looks impressive then this is probably the one you will choose. You'll find it at colorschemedesigner.com

Adobe also have a color picker that looks interesting. It's called Kuler and you can play with it at kuler.adobe.com but the interface isn't all that user-friendly so if you want to come up with a color scheme quickly then the first two I mentioned are definitely the ones you want to look at.

Page layouts
If you're building basic galleries and free sites then the page layout is pretty much a done deal before you start but if you're building something a little more complex then you'll want to spend time getting the page layout right.

While I like to mock something up using Photoshop and Steve tends to use something as old-fashioned as a pencil and a piece of paper there are some interesting tools out there that will help you get your page layout right.

For a multi-column layout tool you probably can't go past YAML Builder. It's easy to use and there are options that allow you to customize your designs. You'll find it at builder.yaml.de

WordPress themes
If you want a WordPress theme that's different to everyone else but you don't have time to sit down and learn how to build your own them then there are a couple of simple tools out there that will help you build your own simple themes ... just remember, I did say 'simple'.

The first is Templatr and it uses a visual editor so you can see what you're getting. You can find it at templatr.cc.

The second is called WordPress Theme Generator and you can find it at yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/ ... don't expect a lot from it but if you want something that's simple in design and function then this tool should do the job.

CSS
If you believe all the hype that's coming out of the mouths of CSS gurus these days then CSS3 is upon us ... even though it's not fully supported anywhere just yet.

However if you want to dabble with CSS3 but don't have time to learn the background coding there are a few CSS3 generators out there that may be worth looking at. CSS3 Please! is one that's worth looking at and you can find it at css3please.com

If you want those lovely curved corners in your page design without going to all the hassle of doing it with graphics then CSS Border Ratio is probably going to be your friend. You can find it at border-radius.com.

Drop-down menus created with CSS are something you should probably be looking at too. Just remember though that drop-down menus can sometimes obscure important features on your web page.

However if your page design can accommodate a drop-down menu then CSS Menu Generator could be your friend. You'll find it at cssmenumaker.com

Pure CSS Menu does a very similar job and you can find that one at purecssmenu.com.

Of course, as with anything related to CSS, just be sure to test whatever you do in a variety of browsers ... both new and old ... because not everything in CSS is supported and these CSS generators may not give you the work-arounds you may need if what you've just generated isn't supported in all browsers.

And that's it for me today ... see you all again on Thursday.