Website Design & Publishing

[anjasola]

Any recomendations for easy to use website design and publishing software ?
Is Serif WebPlus X2 a good choice ?

Sorry for the questions.

[Soquili]

Hi Anjasola,

Welcome to Talkgraphics.

You will probably get many different recommendations as others reply to your question and mention their favorite program or plain text editor.

I think you are wanting something more than a simple text editor like notepad or wordpad that at least one of our members prefers over anything like FrontPage (now replaced by Expression Web), Dreamweaver, Cold Fusion, Coffee Cup, or Serif's Webplus.

I have used all of the programs I mention except Serif's Webplus so I cannot compare to any of the other programs.

Coffee Cup has ranked very high on many reviews since it was initially released. It is also inexpensive, and very easy to learn.

If you have not already done a google search for web editors, the following will return over 200,000 hits. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22web+editors%22

[anjasola]

Thanks for the swift reply and welcome, i feel at home already.

Looking for something really simple to use with facility to upload site when finished Serif WebPlus X2 seems to fit the bill from initial investigations but i always like to hear user feedback rather than company sales talk.

I will follow the link and keep looking, any suggestions would be greatley appreciated.

Thanks again.

[RTK]

Looking for something really simple to use with facility to upload site...

Just to clarify. Are you looking to "publish" your own content or to "design" for the sake of designing for yourself and others? What's your main goal? Is it:

(1) Getting your content online easily and quickly? Use any (of the many) CMS or blog backbones. Many are free and you can install them with a few clicks with all hosting companies that run standard Cpanel/Fantastico. You'll be on your way within minutes and you may grow it and change things around as you (learn) pick up on things.

(2) Designing for yourself and others using common tools... Soquili has it pretty much covered.

(3) A simple mom and pop site (ano 1995) with a few pages, sure, notepad might do the trick for you. However, you will be spending some time learning to code even the most basic and rudimentary website.

Knowledge is a goofy thing... The more you learn, the more you realize what you don't know.

Again, what's your main goal?

There are some members here that create more advanced websites (I'm not one of them) that are familiar with a great number of platforms and different types of code, if they know exactly what your goal is... They might be able to help you more.

I'll chime in on the welcome to Talkgraphics!

I humbly appologize if I confused the issue.

Risto

[anjasola]

Thanks for the reply Risto.

I want to create my own website and upload.
Serif WebPlus X2 is the type of software i am looking for.
WebPlus X2 gets some good reviews and is apparantley easy to use which is essential for me.

Can any users of WebPlus X2 assure me the reviews are correct ?
Can any one recommend similar easy to use software?

Thanks again.

[Fin]

If you do not already have a hosting site, you might take a look at BlueVoda from VodaHost. BV is free but proprietary, so you have to host it with VodaHost. It's not expensive and comes with a lot of good things (eCommerce stuff for example), has 6000 gb bandwidth and 600 gb server space, a very active forum and lots of video tutorials. You can download and play with BV all you want, making pages and previewing what they would look like on your browser. If it works for you, then you sign up.

I should add that BV is wysiwyg but very capable of "doing it all" so that your site looks like you want. If you're used to any drawing program you'll find BV easy to grok. BTW, VodaHost will give you Soholaunch which is great for giant eCommerce type sites.

Tom

[fredbassett]

I've used Serif WebPlus X2 for a site and it's very good IMHO. I would say it's my favourite web site design program! Over the years I've tried many many other programs including Dreamweaver and Namo Webeditor, on the Mac I used to quite like Freeway. The best thing about Webplus is, so far, when I design the page and then open the page in Firefox or IE it looks like it's supposed to look, in the world of web editing this is not normal...!

People get snobby about wanting to edit the HTML code directly. How would you feel if - to get documents print-ready in Xara, for example, you first finished the drawing, saved it, then opened up the picture in a text editor and shifted some symbols and numbers around, then saved that. After this process - sometimes - the average viewer of your picture saw the picture that you originally created, a few percent saw something a bit like it but squiffy. That's the world of web-authoring ;-)

So yes I would get WebPlusX2, there are ways to get it at a cheaper price, like upgrade prices etc, worth checking out.

[haakoo]

Hi,

I recomend wwb5 http://www.wysiwygwebbuilder.com/
It has a lot of external extension to completely build a site

Hans

[daveslanders]

Dreamweaver, Cold Fusion, Coffee Cup, or Serif's Webplus.

Another consideration is what programs you're using in tandem. Obviously dreamweaver is good if you'll be exporting a lot of pics from photoshop or the like, due to the streamlined nature of the creative suite, but then again if you had CS then you'd probably already have dreamweaver and thus would not be asking the question...

[suunto]

just took a look at webplus and it looks quite good, and the price is a good surprise too