Software to make simple website

victor2 · 8 January 2011 at 9:32PM

If you've got something like MS Word, it can save documents as a web page. Simple, but that's all you said you want and saves you learning html.
Does create somewhat bloated site files, although not as bad as Frontpage.
Dreamweaver is nice if you want to seriously get into the development and have full control, but it has quite a high price tag.

RealGem · 8 January 2011 at 10:24PM

If you use Wordpress, it is totally free, and has thousands of free templates, and thousands of free plugins.

Don't worry - you can customise the site with your own header image. And it requires no coding at all, unless you want to.

Although it is a blogging platform, you can customise WP to have a static page, so it looks like a normal non blog website. And you'll have a matching blog within it, which is good for driving traffic if it's kept regularly updated.

They also have lots of help pages and a good support forum. Wordpress.org isn't like the free hosted Wordpress.com where you don't need a domain name. You will still have your own domain name and host it yourself.

Here are some free themes all with customisable headers. Just create one exactly the same size.

Here are some more non blog sites powered by Wordpress, though they have probably paid someone to build a custom theme.

Also, because it is so popular, there are thousands of free tutorials. And YouTube has tons too. Absolutely anyone could learn to be a webmaster with Wordpress in only a few weeks, there is so much stuff out there.

Good luck!

WhiteChristmas · 8 January 2011 at 10:40PM

Kompozer for WYSIWYG with lots of online support, YouTube tutorials etc.

buglawton · 9 January 2011 at 11:58AM

Yes Kompozer is a quick free solution but not nearly so WYSIWYG or as intuitive as Frontpage was.

esuhl · 9 January 2011 at 4:24PM

victor2 wrote: »

If you've got something like MS Word, it can save documents as a web page. Simple, but that's all you said you want and saves you learning html.

Oh my Word! HTML documents produced by Word are simply abominations of HTML! There's so much un-necessary junk that it makes it almost impossible to edit by hand, and more and more junk will be added each time you use Word to edit it!

victor2 · 9 January 2011 at 5:16PM

esuhl wrote: »

Oh my Word! HTML documents produced by Word are simply abominations of HTML! There's so much un-necessary junk that it makes it almost impossible to edit by hand, and more and more junk will be added each time you use Word to edit it!

Absolutely, but you don't have to understand HTML to produce them, and it's not as bad as the garbage Frontpage produces - and requires Frontpage extensions on the hosting server!

buglawton · 9 January 2011 at 5:56PM

I've never needed Frontpage extensions on the server. Have to agree about the junk aspect though.

coinchaser · 9 January 2011 at 10:58PM

Great advice there - have the day off on Thursday so will look at your answers in more detail, but pretty confident now that I can do it

Thanks

jolizzie · 10 January 2011 at 1:42PM

Thanks, I'm trying to create a simple web site for our one room B & B. Have limited knowledge, where do I start

JamesJamz · 10 January 2011 at 1:52PM

Best thing would be to get a web host that has free install website packages, such as word press or drupal.... these are usually on a "one click install" you then visit your site and you have a blank website, all you need to do is pick a theme and add content.