A few short years ago your website could stand alone, an island in the sea of information washing around the Internet. Now, with the advent of web 2.0, social media, mobile internet, etc., your website can no longer survive alone. In fact, it would be foolish to ignore the latest technologies and try to do so. Indeed, these days some websites are becoming little more than a central point that lists links to online social media services.

Here is a list of the online services, most of them free, that I use on my website and that I find essential. It's not a comprehensive list of all the web services out there by any means, and there are several that I use but haven't integrated with my site yet, such as posterous and flickr, which aren't on the list. Anyway, in no particular order, here goes;

Twitter: Sign up to the famous micro-blogging service and use one of their widgets to keep your website updated with your latest tweets.

Facebook: Create a fan page to connect your website with the social media giant.

Twitterfeed: Get the new pages from your blog RSS feed automatically posted to Twitter and Facebook.

Twitpic: Take photos, email them in and have them hosted and tweeted.

IntenseDebate: Replace the basic commenting system on your blog with advanced social networking features.

Soundcloud: Free hosting for your sound files and a player to embed in your website.

Affiliate networks: Sign up to the affiliate networks to generate income from advertising on your website. There are links to the various networks in my affiliate marketing tips post.

Google Analytics: Knowledge is power. Find out how many people are visiting your site, where they are coming from, how long they stay and many other things by installing Google Analytics on your website.

Google Custom Search: Let visitors use the power of Google to search your website with a customised Google search.

Google Calendar: Create events in your calendar and easily add your calendar to your website

Google Maps: If you want to show a location the JavaScript API for Google Maps works very well.

YouTube: Upload, share and easily embed YouTube videos on your website.

AddThis: Let your users share the content they find on your website quickly and easily with the AddThis button.

Blogmailr: Update your blog by simply sending an email

Mobile Internet: The advent of affordable and reliable 3G mobile Internet access on your smartphone or laptop makes it possible to keep your website up to date when you are out and about.