which site maker?

[StevieB]

I am about to embark on building my own web-site, I would really appreciate your views on a good program to build a web-site with. Being a complete novice, to web-building, would you recommend "CuteSite Builder"? and would it work well with Xara Webstyle4?, or does anyone have a better recommendation? Any feedback would be much appreciated.joyceandstevieb@eircom.net

[John Rayner]

if you want it to work, dreamwever I think is the program that most users here play with. I have been playing with web pages for about 8 years. Basically before any of these fancy programs came out, so I know the code and sling it. My web design tools of choice are wordpad and xara. Everyone else thinks I am nuts to still be slinging the code tho.

[StevieB]

Thanx for ur reply John. I can understand why u prefer wordpad, as u have total control, but I fear I may be too old, and not enough patience to learn all the HTML tags etc to write my own. I'll check out Dreamweaver.
I only asked about CuteSite Builder as it was a program suggested to me.

[John Rayner]

Sorry StevieB,

Can not help you there. I am not a good reviewer of that type of software. Will find the capabilities and limitations of any of them within 5 minutes.

[stlewis]

StevieB

I think most of the budget-end tools will be much of a muchness - they will all have strengths and all have weaknesses. Webstyle is less of a building tool - it is good however for creating a design that you then finish off and build in, for example, Dreamweaver. I used Hotmetal for years (sadly defunct? Version 6.0 was the last.) AceHTML is one that inspires love and hate!

You would be best to use whatever you can get at a decent price, learn it, dip into the html as John says, learn to make the graphics in XaraX as you are doing. And then when you hit that "I wish it could do" moment, dig deep into your pocket and buy Dreamweaver. Avoid thinking that another budget product will solve your problem - instead it will introduce more!

Good luck

[John Rayner]

Hello Simon,

I might be thought nuts, but I have yet to run into a "I wish it could do moment" with wordpad.

[StevieB]

Thanx a lot for ur input Simon, I think I will buy Dreamweaver straight-off, rather than get dis-illusioned with the budget packages. Thanx

Also, if you read this topic again John or Simon, maybe you could recommend any books on learning HTML, (for dummies probably). All info is much appreciated, as I think it's time for this old dog to learn some new tricks.

[stlewis]

John

Even with a text editor!!! Perhaps the "I need to change 999 pages on the same site; if only it was template-driven." OK; you may be able to do a find/replace, perhaps even with a macro or two, but there are *some* tricks that Dreamweaver can pull.

I know I'll never convince you!

[John Rayner]

Hi Simon!

I totally rebuild 11 meg worth of web pages the first 15 minutes of every workday. (it is a wonder what you can do with a simple database and wordpad. (in this instance I used wordpad to create a perl script that builds all the pages in about 60 seconds. example) Try again my friend... http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

Or maybe 2000 pages on 3 sites. BHD, BHP and SDP. Total build time for all web pages about 180 seconds. Let's see dreamweaver do that on a 500Mhz PIII. Takes longer to get the data out of access than it does to build the sites.

Olorin: Email me and I will email you the best books I have found on HTML, CSS, Javascript & PHP. You while have to scrounge up you own copy of a good PERL manual.

[Soquili]

Stevie,

Just to give you another program to consider. I've heard good and bad about Net Objects Fusion. My experience making web pages is very basic so I use techniques similar to John, except WordPad has too many bells and whistles so I use the less powerful notepad http://www.talkgraphics.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

John, if you don't mind sharing that list of books, I could use some good references. My memory isn't as good as it used to be so I need all the help I can get.