Recommendations for web design software

YorkshireTraveller

I maintain the website for our micro-car club Micro Maniacs and have been using Microsoft FrontPage as the website design software. Although rather old, FrontPage has served me well over the years. I’m comfortable using FrontPage to upload text, photographs, internal and external links and the odd bit of HTML code (providing that this is given to me!).

I’m looking to give the website a revamp to try and give it a crisper, more up to date look and so am thinking of getting a new web design package. [Or perhaps I should just leave things as they are and be confident with my ability to use FrontPage!]

I’m not a ‘techie’ but am OK at finding my way around a keyboard and using programmes such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint and can follow instructions provided they are clear and not too full of jargon.

I have seen sites designed using Serif WebPlusx6 which gives good results – is this to be recommended or can Forum members suggest alternatives that will not break the bank?

Many thanks.

Icey370

Iv never been keen on website design, but when I was required to create a website for Uni, I would always use adobe Dreamweavs and Flash in conjunction with Photoshop.

They can be quite difficult to learn if your not use to them, but once your get the hanger of it, they are all very powerful

railbuff

I was an avid FP user and designed many small sites using FP, but as more and more hosts are now disabling FP extensions on their servers sites designed with FP will not work, so now i use Adobe Dreamweaver which works well. You could also use Microsoft FP replacement Microsoft Expression Web

cjldragon

I have used FP and Dreamweaver but for the last few years I design sites with Wordpress. Wordpress is suitable for all types of sites not just blogs. If you have a little skill you can modify the many free themes to make your site your own design. It's worth a look.

YorkshireTraveller

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions - lots of food for thought.

Looking at the comparative site as suggested by 23n1th and the recommendations by Icey370, railbuff and cjldragon Dreamweaver does seem to be the preferred option - however £350 is a bit out of my price bracket.

I'll check out some of the alternatives, though perhaps sticking with FrontPage may be a sound option!

Thanks again for everyones help and suggestions.

railbuff

Yorkshire_Traveller wrote: »

I'll check out some of the alternatives, though perhaps sticking with FrontPage may be a sound option!

Thanks again for everyones help and suggestions.

nothing wrong in sticking with FP, just make sure your web host still provides FP extensions.

YorkshireTraveller

railbuff wrote: »

nothing wrong in sticking with FP, just make sure your web host still provides FP extensions.

I don't think that I use any particular FP extensions (being honest I don't really know what they are!)

LucianH

You may want to have a play with Adobe GoLive CS2 - according to wiki, it was Adobe's web authoring software before they acquired Dreamweaver.

You can download the 2005 version from here - you can install and enable with the key provided for free (although there is some debate about this!)

booler

Have a look at Kompozer. This is Open Source software (free) that may be just what you need. I haven't used it myself, (I use Dreamweaver) but it gets good reviews.
http://www.kompozer.net/

railbuff

Yorkshire_Traveller wrote: »

I don't think that I use any particular FP extensions (being honest I don't really know what they are!)

FP Extensions is what shows up in cpanerl control panel when FP is enabled on the server. If the server does not have FP extensions enabled then FP sites may not work.

thedrumdoctor

In hindsight, Front Page was possibly one of the worst web-authoring tools ever to surface. Great for bringing simple web-creation facilities to the non-technical, but an even bigger dream for the hackers who quickly exploited its inexcusable server-extension vulnerabilities. Plus by the time web browsers (reluctantly) finally started trying to render pages with some sort of W3C standards compliance, it was a rotting dead fish floating on the water.

I do some web design (note the term design not development) in my day job and whenever I've worked with serious .NET developers and talked about Front Page, they try and pretend it never existed! In the professional web dev world, it was 'of its time' and has long been superseded.

Dreamweaver is expensive, yes, but you may like to consider the free Microsoft Expression which is a WYSIWYG editor:

http://www.microsoft.com/expression/

However, there is no longer any official support for it. You can get Microsoft community support though.

Other than that, I think you would reap the benefits of learning some basic HTML & CSS and maybe look into transferring your site to WordPress. You can happily use WordPress with tons of free themes and never encounter any code, but if you learn a bit of HTML/CSS you open up the possibilities for tweaking your theme.

I cannot say enough good things about WordPress as it has put the power of self-publishing on the web within the grasp of millions of non-techie people and it's free!

Drupal is also supposed to be fantastic, though I have no experience of it so cannot comment further..

A word of caution though; nothing is unhackable and whilst I applaud WordPress from the rooftops right now, I may well be eating my words when/if a new PHP/MySQL vulnerability is exposed that affects the platform.

Whatever way you choose to go, getting away from Front Page will be the best thing for your site as nothing stays still in the web world.