Webpage building software

[slimmx]

Does anyone know any software for easy webpage building? Something that has preloaded templates and just takes you step by step. SOmething that will look half way decent, I need nothing fancy.
Thanks

[redwudz]

There's a bunch of them. Coffeecup is fairly easy and it's fairly cheap: http://www.coffeecup.com/

Or if you have the MS office suite, MS Frontpage works also.

I can tell you from my own experience, it takes a fair bit of reading to understand it all. If you are running IE 6 or higher, go to 'View>Source' on your browser right now and you will see the HTML for this page. Until you understand what a fair bit of that all means, you may have problems.

But try a Google search for 'freeware website building software'. That should give you some idea of what is available in freeware/open source.

The pay programs can get very expensive, to the point you might want to hire someone to make your initial page, then you can modify it from there.

[thecoalman]

I'll second coffeecup but the best solution to copy and paste would be a CMS (content management system). This would have to be installed on your server, most hosts offer such installs through the control panel but that too is going to have a learning curve.

Whatever the case there is no simple easy route no matter what you take.

[ks47]

If you want an easy way to create a website without the knowledge of HTML, one way to do it is like this:

http://pages.google.com/-/about.html#faq

There are WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) free version like WebDwarf or more sophisticated commercial version:

http://www.virtualmechanics.com/products/reviews.html

TS

[lordsmurf]

If you just want a site, do it yourself. Lots of options, most of them mediocre.

If you need a site (i.e., for a business), pay somebody that knows what they're doing. You'll get in over your head, and the rest of the business will suffer from your wasted time on something you don't understand and would only do poorly. Rates are often in the $500-5,000 range, depending on the needs (this assumes small business, not a mga site for a corporation, and no special custom applications). You'd also be expected to pay for any commercial licenses (vbulletin, for example, which runs $160), as well as domain ownership (about $15 from a good registrar, and there are many crappy ones there with lower prices).

I'm not being mean, but being in the freelance media business, I see this all the time, and I'm often bailing people out of their own messes. I try to cut them off at the pass, warn them now. Sometimes they screw up so badly it can't even be fixed, it has to be dumped, including even the domain names.

[Chris K]

I use Trellian Webpage. Free WYSIWYG program and it's working fine for me.

http://www.trellian.com/webpage/index.html

Webdwarf is also nice and offers more positioning capabilities but is harder to learn.
I like and use them both.

Chris.

[slimmx]

thanks guys I am gonna do some free trials now.

[ahhaa]

deja vu all over again- just answered this same Q on another forum!

A while back I used NetObjects Fusion 5 extensively and really liked it.
Just learned that Fusion 7.5 is available free; they just came out with 10, which has a 30 free trial as well.
http://www.netobjects.com/html/essentials.html

Fusion was bundled with Netscape Communicator back in the day, it has pixel accurate WYSIWYG & builtin FTP site managment which is really handy.

here's some more info on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetObjects_Fusion

[CobraPilot]

You might look at the free (and low cost) software available from Serif:

www.freeserifsoftware.com

WebPlus 6.0 is a free download; 8.0 is $9.99, also as a download.

The current version at www.serif.com is WebPlus 10.0 at $79.99.

I've used various Serif software for years (although not WebPlus--just never needed a website maker) and have been pleased with their features, value, and support. If you purchase something from them and opt for e-mail updates, they offer returning customers some very high discounts off the "official" website prices, sometimes 80-90%.