Web Site Creation Software

[Jukie]

Can anyone recommend or advise on any suitable software that doesn't cost the earth (£100 or less)? E.g. EasyGen2 or Namo's Webeditor are two I've heard of

It's not for anything commercial. I've been asked to investigate setting up a website for my church. I'm IT literate but have no development skill, so it needs to be simple!

TIA, David

 

[PJH]

Some versions of MS Office include FrontPage, does yours?

 

[Jukie]

Some versions of MS Office include FrontPage, does yours?

PJH,

I may have it, I'll have to check my CDs. It's certainly not installed on my lappy.

How easy is FrontPage for complete beginners?

 

[andy_k]

I'd recommend Microsoft Publisher 2003 it's a really great piece of software that will comfortably build sites for you and do an awful lot more. Either from it's range of templates or starting with a blank page. It's well supported with loads of internet resources and you can pick it for less than £100. If you are looking for a decent DTP package then there's very little can touch it - it's one of my favourite bits of MS software

Amazon .com is doing it for $79 if you can persuade them to ship to the UK or there is an Amazon.co.uk Marketplace vendor offering it for £75.

HTH

Andy

 

[Jukie]

Cheers, Andy & PJH.

Should have mentioned in my original post that one of the features the site will need is a "Guest Book" / comments section.

Can the all/some of the above-mentioned software provide that, do you know?

 

[andy_k]

frontpage isn't very easy for beginners (well not in my eperience). Guest books can be downloaded for free from the internet and if you choose carefully you can find one without popups try here. All you do is copy there code into your web page and you are up and running.

HTH

Andy

 

[Stratman]

If you have Microsoft Word on your computicle one of the File>Save As..... options is Web page *.html

Try that first. It may be all you need.

 

[pluggers]

I did my site using notepad (nice and cheap)

 

[Kinky]

I used notepad too ..... and I flag the meta-content as "MS-DOS 6.2 Edlin"

K

 

[Ashley]

I came across a major seo issue in the software I was using so I have been looking for a replacement myself. I have decided to go with a CMS (content management software) solution, I am going to install the one I have chosen today on a test domain. I will let you know how it goes.

 

[Sp!ke]

I came across a major seo issue in the software I was using so I have been looking for a replacement myself. I have decided to go with a CMS (content management software) solution, I am going to install the one I have chosen today on a test domain. I will let you know how it goes.

]

What issue was this? Are we taliking the inability for google to correctly index php pages correctly?

 

[Ashley]

no it was all in HTML and if it was in php I would have had it appear to be html.

My issue was very simple but really bugged the hell out of me.

my.domain/this_page.html

needed to be my.domain/this-page.html and it could not do it,

after publishing I could/did alter the URL and I wrote a 301 that replaced _ for - on missing pages but ever time I published a page or update I had go and do them all again.

How many people search for this_page not many lol. I am a graet beliver in well formed URLs for seo (as can be seen on www.hfuk.org.uk) and could not live with the underscore in my URLs (for those that do not know search engines see underscores as one word where as the dash is seen as a separator).

 

[Ashley]

I have been playing with Joomla CMS bloody hell I will need to go back to school. I have got a test site up now I have rewritten the dynamic php URLs to appear as static html pages. But to be honest at the moment I have no real idea how it works (Joomla).

BTW In the last post I mentioned if it was PHP I would use a rewrite to show HTML, I jumped the gun a bit. I did not think SEs had a problem with PHP pages (I was thinking about dynamic v static urls in my last post).

Am I right in thinking you believe SEs prefer HTML over PHP even when both are static, I would be interested in your views.

I'm asking as more and more I am seeing PHP sites for what I consider should be HTML, I was presuming it was lazy developers using a CMS to save time writing the page (and I can see with my little play today just how easy it is to use a CMS, once you master it). I am not very well versed in PHP and never felt the need to learn until recently .

 

[Bobby Dazzler]

Joomla is very well regarded in the open source community. There is an outfit set up in Birmingham (http://www.openadvantage.org/) that has some form of funding to help local businesses use open source technology, and I went on a couple of courses - I think they did a Joomla session. Might be worth having a snoop around to see if there's anything similar in your area. If you're struggling try dropping openadvantage an email - the main guy I dealt with (Elliot) was a good sort, he may know of something more local to you.

 

[Ashley]

I have been chatting to guy in the US tonight on Skye (and yes we got onto Iran ), and I have started to understand the basics now and I have got a guy in Argentina who is going help to set up the basic look for me and I will be watching to see how he does this (he has said we can do it together using Skye).

But as I got more confident I think I may have a go at a bit of coding with it, it will also give me a bit more of an opportunity to understand PHP. I would love to get more involved in I'm some of the open source projects but I am out in the sticks and need to go to night school before I can add anything of value to the party. I have done loads of beta work in the past and though it got plenty of free software from it (although that has never been my motivator and most of it was GPL stuff anyway).

How did you find the courses?