I'm a newbie to the world of web page creation. Any suggestions on what software I should use? *The site I'm building: I'm a freeance writer. Just looking to create a simple, professional-looking page that has my portfolio, resume, clips, movie reviews, celeb interviews, etc. *My current experience with this kinda stuff: nil. *What I'm willing to spend: $200 or so, if need be. I downloaded the free Yahoo Sitebuilder, but that seems a little clunky, and, well, Yahoo-ish. I don't need too much horsepower, I suppose, since my needs are faily simple, but I do want a site that doesn't look junky. And I'm willing to invest the time to learn how to do it right. Any thoughts would be great! Thanks in advance.
I think Dreamweaver is the best. It's kind of expensive but I went to a file sharing site and downloaded it for free.
Well, frontpage is pretty much the easiest professional web building software out there. It creates a lots of junk codes, but it works well for entry level website builders such as yourself.
I knew nothing about web page design and ended up using http://www.coffeecup.com/ Very nice user interface and you get a free 30 day trial.
I started out learning web design using Front page...it will honestly do everything you need it to do if you are just starting cuas eit makes everything easy... After i got better at HTML and different designs i moved up to Dreamweaver and i have been using that every since
Thanks guys. Is there a legal, free way to get Frontpage? Or am I pretty much out the $200 (or whatever)?
Dreamweaver is the best, but for your needs, you might do just as well with NVU. It's completely free, and pretty good. Not quite in the class of Dreamweaver and Frontpage, but it's not THAT far behind. It sounds like Nvu would be great for what you are looking to do. It's the spinoff of the Mozilla composer, which was Mozilla's HTML editor before Mozilla basically went to Firefox and Thunderbird. http://www.nvu.com/ Oh, just another note -- the website says a lot about Linux on it, but that's only because it's sponsored by Linspire -- Nvu works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.
There used to be "Frontpage Express", which was a stripped down FrontPage. I don't think MS makes it any more, but you can find it around if you google. But check out Nvu -- it might be what you need . . .
You might also try buying a template and plugging in your own content: http://www.templatemonster.com/
Nothing comes close to Dreamweaver, but it is complex. Adobe GoLive is the next step down and a little easier to use. FrontPage is the beginner, but is a real pain in the ass because of how it jacks up all of the code. But, for just starting, it is probably a good way to go.
Dreamweaver is definitely the best. But for $200 or less, I'd just go with Nvu as well. It will produce either HTML 4.01 Transitional, XHTML 1.0 Transitional, and soon XHTML 1.0 Strict. I have FrontPage 2003. It does a better job with code than previous versions, and it is probably easier to use. But I'm using Nvu instead.
Oh, and you might also want to check out the Open Source Web Design site. You might find a design there you can use. It saves a lot of time. They have some ugly designs, but they also have some pretty good designs as well. You can download and use any of them for free (again, they're open source) and edit them with Nvu (which is also free and open source). http://www.oswd.org/ http://www.nvu.com/
Bah! If you were truely 1337 you'd be using Vi! GVim for windows is actually quite nice as a text editor.
Exactly what Jeff said. Just use Front Page, It has 3 tabs, one what you're actually doing and moving stuff around, the second with the html code (which you can edit out all the freaky FrontPage code stuff Jeff mentioned and the third is a preview tab. Super easy man! Dreamweaver is for super smart geeks unlike myself. Hey it wouldnt hurt to buy a small paperback book on the basics of html. I did that about 6 years ago and actually made my first webpage TYPING IN THE CODE! Then I realised they have crappy programs that do this for you, but nonetheless a good experience to see how this stuff works. LOL!!!