Thread: Web page software

Depending on what you need/want, Dreamweaver used to be a pretty good WYSIWYG web site creator, but if you're familiar with the Microsoft Office suite, Frontpage would be good enough. It's been a while since I've been in the field and have always done the coding by hand in a basic text editor, so I'm not sure what's out there these days for "the lay man".

Dynamic and/or database driven content is another story and I'd be happy to help out as much as I can depending on how big the job would be, but I could "tutor" you in ways to easily update text and images for your site.

Experience: 10 years professional work doing large scale commercial local and international web development work as a career...think Coles, Kmart, Target, World Vision etc etc blah blah...dynamic or static sites...owner driven content management for updates or simple "show off" sites that are manually updated intermittently.

Depending on what you want I'm sure that I/we could come up with something simple to get you on your way for next to nothing...if not nothing at all if you can be a little patient

PM me if you'd like and tell me what you'd like your site to do and where you expect to host the site and content (that's often the biggest factor), and see if I can't help you out somehow

If you're not reasonably computer literate AND prepared to spend a good few weeks learning the ins and outs of HTML, backups, security and so on, look at some of the pre-existing 'just add content' type sites. Even a simple blog site may be all you need.

See also - http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell and http://theoatmeal.com/comics/shopping_cart

The first is especially so, so, so true.

LOL The Oatmeal...it always speaks the truth

But yes...good suggestion...there are a number of free sites out there where you can easily manage content...Google's Blogger is the first that springs to mind and I've seen a number of folks use that for business purposes and requires very little learning.

I used Weebly (weebly.com) for my wife's website (www.rachaelscakes.com.au)

VERY easy, including the picture gallery (and other features). Cheap, including hosting. They have heaps of templates. Been with them for nearly 3 years and never encountered a problem.

One of the best features is that if you go to rachaelscakes.com.au from a mobile device, it automatically displays a mobile version of the site. Something to think about as web viewing from mobile devices is ever increasing.

Gee that was quick, talk about fast response time. What I'm after would be described as a advertising site with out the ability to do money transactions; from what little knowledge I have I believe when having a web site that is capable of money transactions the overall cost would be expensive.
Now I've heard about blog site's so how do they work ?

I second the "database driven" or "content management system" (CMS) approach.

One way of doing a website is to create all the pages, then upload them to a host. In this approach, you have to make sure you upload all the pages, make sure all your links are working, etc. etc.

The other approach (CMS) is to have software running on the host, which creates the pages automatically. You really just have to type in your content, and the website can be updated on the fly. Typically, you'll find Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress or similar included in most hosting agreements.

The small businesses I've helped get on the web had all started trying to build their own websites page by page, and were quickly convinced to switch to (in my cases) Drupal.

Cheers,
Andrew

Another CMS worth a look is Dot Net Nuke. There are hosting companies in Australia that do it like http://au.powerdnn.com/SharedHosting...2/Default.aspx and there are many more if you Google DNN hosting. From $20.00 per month or even less if you want less services.

I've been using DNN for about 12 years and you can start with with very little knowledge as it's all wizard driven. The suggestion above has a free 15 day trial so you can play with it before you commit to anything.

All you need is a PayPal account and you can easily do e-commerce as it's all buit-in.

Steve

Frontpage no longer exists and I would not recommend it's replacement, Expression Web, to anyone that I didn't have a deep feeling of ill-will towards

Much as they are anathema to someone like me, who hand crafts sites in native code, I would have to agree that your quickest route is a CMS like Wordpress. I won't recommend one because I have never used them, but Wordpress is very popular and there are thousands of plugins for it to do anything you could ever want to do. I have worked on a Drupal site and working on the underlying code, it was incredibly messy. But these sites are not meant to be hacked that way.

If you want it done properly, either pay someone to do it, or be prepared to spend the time learning. Someone asked me this same question the other night. I told her that if she was prepared to immerse herself in it, the outcome would be better because she would 'know' the site and not be relying on someone else to make every little change, which can get expensive.

The web is meant to be easy - that was the original idea. Unfortunately it has been co-opted by various interest groups and is way harder than it really ever needed to be. Keep it simple, don't have 10 zillion flashing graphics, focus on functionality and a clean, simple design - you can't go wrong whichever way you do it

Okay after reading each of the responses it looks as though I now spend some serious time in learning which is going to be the better option , which will allow me the ability to update effectively keeping me in control of the web site to achieve the best outcome for myself and future customers.
Thank you every one as you have all pointed me in the right direction without having made dumb mistakes; it's amazing how much we can all learn through this forum and many other like.

If you are looking at handling money online, speak to whatever bank your business uses as (at the very least) a starting point. This is one of those 'sooooo much easier to outsource' options, as doing it yourself correctly is difficult, time consuming, fraught with peril and all those sort of things. If you have your own dedicated accounts area, and programming team and security guru, feel free to use a DIY approach, but if you can simply redirect purchases to your bank's (or other) option, you'll save yourself so much extra worry. Just make sure that whatever shopping cart solution you use will work in with your payment processor.

In my opinion depending on what size businesses you are looking at get a professional to do it. So many wood working web sites are just awful. While the process might be possible by just about anyone getting really good design and usability takes skill. I have done many of my own sites and there OK but I'm a back end programmer the sites that front end designer guys i have worked with do are a league apart. If you want a site done by a good design company with static content then you looking at a few geand but it's well worth it. Especially if this is your shop front. If you do decide to do it your self I'd look into wix.com its really leading the front on easy set up sites.

Some very wise comments there and a couple things that I hadn't thought of, thank you.

I'm going through this exercise at the moment and from past experience I went to a professional for advice. Building a site that has a shopping cart and sells online was more than I wanted to worry about and I did not want to be constantly trying to fix bugs. In the big scheme of things I did not think the costs quoted were exorbitant at all.

Originally Posted by RedShirtGuy

Depending on what you need/want, Dreamweaver used to be a pretty good WYSIWYG web site creator, but if you're familiar with the Microsoft Office suite, Frontpage would be good enough. It's been a while since I've been in the field and have always done the coding by hand in a basic text editor, so I'm not sure what's out there these days for "the lay man".

Dynamic and/or database driven content is another story and I'd be happy to help out as much as I can depending on how big the job would be, but I could "tutor" you in ways to easily update text and images for your site.

Experience: 10 years professional work doing large scale commercial local and international web development work as a career...think Coles, Kmart, Target, World Vision etc etc blah blah...dynamic or static sites...owner driven content management for updates or simple "show off" sites that are manually updated intermittently.

Depending on what you want I'm sure that I/we could come up with something simple to get you on your way for next to nothing...if not nothing at all if you can be a little patient

PM me if you'd like and tell me what you'd like your site to do and where you expect to host the site and content (that's often the biggest factor), and see if I can't help you out somehow

Regarding tutoring I have no problem with that and I would like to think that I am a very patient person.
As for where I would be hosting the site/page from I'm not quite sure what you mean.