Web site design software

[laterontoday]

Would one you of knowledgeable chaps or chappess kindly direct me to a simple piece of software for compling/designing and generally putting together a web site. Have volunteered to put one together for the kids swimming club and only after the meeting did I remember I just dont know how to.... ddurrrrrrrrrr.

I have found loads of different software ranging in price from £20-£30 upwards.

Part 2. Any recomemnded hosting sites. Loads found when searching through google but no idea if they are any good.

Many many many thanks in anticpation.

Steve

[Hoppy]

Part 1. You can do simple stuff in Word and save as HTML. Might be enough?

Part 2. I use Easyspace for a couple of sites of mine, have found them to be reliable and reasonably priced. site here

[Adrian Kelland]

Originally Posted by Hoppy

Part 1. You can do simple stuff in Word and save as HTML. Might be enough?

I can only comment on Word 2000, the HTML is full of guff. I hope later versions are better.

It is possible to do HTML in a text editor, but it is not WYSIWYG, but I suspect Word may not be either.

It depends on how complex you want to be. Not much I suspect. My first site was done in a text editor. I created a templete, and worked from that.

MS frontpage is probably the cheapest mass peice of s/w, but I have no doubt there is better around. YMMV.

Adrian

[johntemp]

Use a simple text editor like Textpad and avoid absolutely anything Microsoft.

Not that I dislike Microsoft, I once bought a nice mouse that was made by them

[RickG]

Originally Posted by johntemp

Not that I dislike Microsoft, I once bought a nice mouse that was made by them

Hey, be fair - that little calculator thing that comes with Windows is pretty handy!

Dreamweaver is probably the best WYSIWIG editor out there, but it's not really cheap enough to justfiy buying just for a personal site: Dreamweaver MX 2004.

Remember that the HTML standard hasn't changed for a good few years, so theres no need to buy absolute state-of-the-art software - if you shop around you might find last years editions of most programs for considerably less money (or see if your office has any lying around that they've upgraded and don't need any more )

[Phoenix]

Have a look at HTML-KIT from www.chami.com, it is free unless you want the "pro" bangs & whistles (then $55)

Ian

[NeilP]

I'll say use Dreamweaver for web design.

For hosting, Vispa is pretty good: Vispa

[Bunny]

Dreamweaver is very expensive for someone who just wants to set up a homepage. I used Frontpage, and only had problems because my site deviated from the norm. You can use their templates and have a site ready and working in about an 15 minutes if you have all your text and pages planned (you should plan your pages, links etc, before even starting to look at software, otherwise you'll be there for ever going round in circles).


But even Frontpage is way outside your budget if you're looking to spend 20-30 quid.

I suggest you have a look at Downloads.com It's a great site where people publish their newly designed software for people to try out, comment on, and purchase if happy with. I got my FTP software from there and it's great.

For hosting I use Internetters.com and am very happy with their support, given that when I started I didn't know my ftp from my smtp (or is it smpt?).

Good luck.

[The Purist]

The full Mozilla suite (from www.mozilla.org) contains a reasonable page editor which will let you do simple webby stuff. It's not fancy, but it's free.

Also Web Page Maker is free download (30 day trial) which will let you hang the basic framework together for later editing with stuff like Mozilla. It does stick a 'free trial version' label on your page, but that takes 2 seconds to remove from the generated HTML - it's available from http://downloads.zdnet.co.uk/0,39025...088457s,00.htm

If you're not looking for bells and whistles, spend your £20-30 budget on some nice 'accompaniments' to while away your page editing hours.

Names.co.uk do my hosting - so far they've given a quick response & were reccomended by my graphic designer chappie for small site hosting.

[Fathoms Down]

To be honest there isn't much out there in your price range. I use TextPad for all my stuff (and the stuff for other YDers ) but that means that you have to know your HTML (but the blank page template is pretty handy). Word is also an option (but creates very inefficient code) or FrontPage Express (same problem as Word).

There are other "professional" packages out there such as Front Page and DreamWeaver but most professional web developers don't use them as they are too limited in their scope and inefficient on the code front.