Website design software advice

[Robski]

Last year my big bad bro died, suddenly and way before his time. Without going too much into the emotions of it all, my brothers and I, his sister, his vast legions of very close friends and especially my mum miss him terribly. His loss has left a big hole in our lives.
In order to have a central place for his family and friends to remember and celebrate his life, we've decided to put a website together - a resource where people can check out photos and videos of the man in action (he was a poet and a fairly..... errrr..passionate one, it has to be said), as well as post messages, memories, photos, maybe videos (though I know that video is shocking on bandwidth, so it'd probably be favourite to put Youtube links in in much the same way as people are able to do on YD if that's possible).
Being the IT type of the family, I've managed to talk myself into putting it all together.


There is a problem here. I do networks, domains, security policies, databases and all that sort of thing for a living, but I haven't the faintest idea how to put a website together and am frankly terrified, cos I suspect it's a big ask.

Can you guys and gals out there give me some ideas/hints/tips on what software would be best to use in terms of simplicity and versatility, and the things to go for/avoid when putting something like this together?
I have both PCs and Macs so OSs are not an issue, software wise, whatever works best.

Any useful hints, do's and donts would also be very gratefully received.

For info I've registered a domain name and have a limit of 500MB of space and 5GB/month of traffic to play with.

Many thanks
Rob Evans. (Yes, that pain in the arse)

[annatrnr]

Sorry to hear of you loss I will ask around and see if anyone I know can offer some help/advice

[big_si]

Hi Rob,

Sounds like a really lovely idea!

I'm no expert and haven't done a website for a few years but I like using Dreamweaver. Pretty easy to use.

MS Frontpage is another possibility. I've not really used that though so can't really comment.

Best of luck,

Si

[PeeBee]

why not use something like "myspace.com" they will host a few pages for nothing (I think) and provide all the tools for building fairly decent sites, it's not like you need anything sophisticated in the way of e-commerce etc. My kids were building their own pages on there at 13 and 14 so can't be rocket science.

[bigfeller]

Nvu - Nvu Downloads
Nice little wysiwyg app for putting sites together. Not used it much but it seems to be dead easy.

JAlbum - JAlbum - the free web photo album software and photo gallery software
Great little app for putting together albums. Absolute doddle to use - will resize you photos, create thumbnails - everything.

And both are free!

[Silent Diver]

Take a look at this questionnaire it helps decide what software is right for you:

Web Design Software: Which One is Right for You?

[abucksdiver]

Originally Posted by bigfeller

Nvu - Nvu Downloads
Nice little wysiwyg app for putting sites together. Not used it much but it seems to be dead easy.

I've used NVu before... as long as you want simple stuff, its good (It can't handle frames, however!)

Andrew

[David P]

Originally Posted by abucksdiver

(It can't handle frames, however!)

I think you meant "thank goodness" rather than "however"...!

(Does anyone still use frames? Hateful things in every respect.)

[lloydwatkin]

Hi Rob,

Sorry to hear about your loss, and your idea sounds like a nice tribute

Best bets would be to get yourself a wordpress install with a flickr plugin. Takes five minutes to set something up. Find a decent template from the wordpress template gallery and you're off.

Site can be edited, updated, changed by someone completely non-technical. YouTube vids are posted using the embed code (copy and paste) that youTube provides. Flickr gallery link allows you to include loads and loads of photos and albums without costing you on bandwidth (Flickr Pro is $25/year).

If you want some advice on getting this set up just give me a PM and I'll sort you out.

Cheers, Lloyd.

[CotoChris]

Sorry to hear of your loss, words can not explain the pain in ones heart for such loss.
I signed up with Windows Web Hosting - windows hosting solution where you can register a domain name and do a site. Although I did this a year ago I have not had time to actually doing it. With some thought I don't think it will e too hard.

If you need assistance with some of programs I use a company called Online software tutorials, training CDs, Photoshop Tutorials, Dreamweaver Tutorials, Apple Tutorials from vtc.com for online trainning. Be patient with some of the strong American accents but I found them very useful. Good luck