Software for Website Building

[cluelessidiot]

What software do you guys use to put together your websites? Thanks for your replies.

[Chuck Engels]

I will let Ron give the final answer but he does most of the coding the old fashioned way.
We started with a template that you can buy on the internet for a few $100s and Ron made the changes.
He also incorporated other software like the bulletin board/forum, the gallery and others.

I have worked with Dreamweaver and Frontpage as well as some free stuff I found on the internet.
Even though I have some experience Ron has done all of the work here and will continue to, he does such a great job.

[Ron]

As Chuck said, I code everything by hand in text editors. I can't really recommend any software as I don't use any. In my early days, I used Front Page, but don't know anything about it today.

[Rockdoc]

I use Dreamweaver. I do fairly straightforward pages, with pictures and video embedded. I like the fact that you can work in design mode, and switch to the coding mode to adjust what you want. You can know relatively little about html this way, and modify templates (which you can find almost anywhere) to get it looking exactly the way you want.

There is a little bit of a learning curve, but if you can handle Premiere Elements, Dreamweaver is certainly within reach.

[Doreen L.]

I am also using DreamWeaver but, as Jennifer has said, there is a learning curve (I'm still learning). When I first started my website a year ago, I used SiteSpinner. At the time, it came with a free year of webhosting. If you're not familiar with website design and hosting, this is a great software to start with.

[Gooder]

Another Dreamweaver user here

When I first started with this big application I thought to myself how on earth will I be able to create a site.

Reading the manual, purchasing a good book and having a big mug of tea or a drink of your choice and then, slowly trying things out I came up with creating 5 websites within a few months! Although, I still have many more things to learn if I want to reach Ron's standard.

Seriously though, it is a very good piece of software and it can do some truly amazing things!
I am using MX 2004 along with a few other applications.

Cheers

[cluelessidiot]

Yeah, I got a free trial of Dreamwaver CS3 but I couldn't figure it out. How do you change the color of the bars in the navigation bar so it looks professional and doesn't just look like a rainbow?

[Chuck Engels]

Any image you see is a graphic, you can create them with Photoshop Elements.
The graphic is placed somewhere on the page, you can change the graphic to another one.

[Chuck Engels]

I've used this one before Clueless
http://www.pagebreeze.com/free-website-builder.htm
It is a nice little program for starting out, and it is free

[Gooder]

And if Dreamweaver is to huge of an application to start off with you can always install a trial version of other software! Once you find one, free or paid for, you will know that one is for you!

I started out with a great starters package and everything was Drag & Drop!
Just do a seach in google for "Coolpage"

Cheers

[Jayell]

I found Front Page to be good beginner software (although haven't seen it recently). So when I moved to Dreamweaver, I had a pretty good concept and found it easier to figure things out (it is very complex). I think Dreamweaver is the best .. but starting with something simpler might be a good idea.

[Doreen L.]

It's nice too see some of you are using DreamWeaver. Now I know to come here first with my questions.

[Steve Grisetti]

Dreamweaver is THE WYSIWYG html editor, in my opinion.

It's easy to use, powerful and has none of the goofy code you can get from Front Page.

[Greg mgm]

I'm trying to design a website, and gave "Sightspinner" a try after completely getting no where with Godaddys site builder. The Sightspinner program was easy to figure out and works for me at the moment. BUT, on my computer I have Adobe Illustrator CS2, InDesign CS2, ImageReady CS2, GoLiveCS2, and Photoshop CS2. Should I be learning one of these to design and build a site? Which one is recommended for a newbie like me? I don't know code, and don't care to learn to be honest. I already know Photoshop. Thanks in advance. Hopefully I'm not hijacking the thread....but adding more program info to it.

[ed]

GoLive is perfect for people that are not programmers; a lot of drag and drop and has SmartTags so you can drop in objects from Illustrator and othe Adobe programs. After awhile though you will want to move to DreamWeaver if you stay with Adobe products.