How big can xara website be?

[ewraysure]

I've got a lot to learn here.
My experience was that having a site with 30 pages slowed everything down - but I'm thinking what I constructed was unrefined.
There's obviously far more to Xara than I got from the official 'Help' section of the program - and looking at the forum has opened my eyes to my ignorance.
Yesterday I went to bed frustrated and fed up. Now, thanks to you guys generosity and help, I feel back on an even keel and able to forge ahead.

The whole WebPlus experience when Serif pulled the plug was a bummer. I won't be around fairly soon and I just want to leave a local history website and my family history story on the internet as a sort of memorial that my kids could keep ticking over. I hope Xara is the way to go and that it will continue to be supported and compatible with whatever drives the web in the future.

[Acorn]

I've got a lot to learn here.
My experience was that having a site with 30 pages slowed everything down - but I'm thinking what I constructed was unrefined.
There's obviously far more to Xara than I got from the official 'Help' section of the program - and looking at the forum has opened my eyes to my ignorance.
Yesterday I went to bed frustrated and fed up. Now, thanks to you guys generosity and help, I feel back on an even keel and able to forge ahead.

The whole WebPlus experience when Serif pulled the plug was a bummer. I won't be around fairly soon and I just want to leave a local history website and my family history story on the internet as a sort of memorial that my kids could keep ticking over. I hope Xara is the way to go and that it will continue to be supported and compatible with whatever drives the web in the future.

ewraysure, I'm sure you'll be around for a long time. Long enough to see your efforts in a Xara approach will be worth it.

Keep plugging and come back with questions.

You need to consider if your material is more a book that is read from beginning to end or one that has specific chapters, which can be looked at in isolation.
The former could be a Supersite, effectively one long page, a bit like a scrolling PDF. Its advantage would be in searching the whole thing at once. It still allows you to jump to headings and you can create Table of Contents.
It is what I would aim for if I was researching a history.

Acorn

[ewraysure]

ewraysure, I'm sure you'll be around for a long time. Long enough to see your efforts in a Xara approach will be worth it.

Keep plugging and come back with questions.

You need to consider if your material is more a book that is read from beginning to end or one that has specific chapters, which can be looked at in isolation.
The former could be a Supersite, effectively one long page, a bit like a scrolling PDF. Its advantage would be in searching the whole thing at once. It still allows you to jump to headings and you can create Table of Contents.
It is what I would aim for if I was researching a history.

Acorn

Thanks for your kind thoughts!
My understanding of what a Supersite is, is wrong from what you say.
My website is a series of articles on specific subjects. And what you said about a Search facility is one of the questions I have about sub-sites. A Table of Contents is like a Site Map?

[Acorn]

A Table of Contents (TOC) is a automatic list creator using Headings 1-9.
I think, sadly, in your case, it is only part of Xara Designer Pro X.

Alas, Xara doesn't automatically do Sitemaps either in the sense you are thinking (Like Gary's diagram).

You can use something like a web search tool (I use DuckDuckGo Search Box (https://duckduckgo.com/search_box)), which will find everything across all web pages, Conventional or Supersite.

A Supersite, in Xara's words is:

the whole site in a single HTML file) which lets you present your website with animated transitions between pages, or as a vertical or horizontal arrangement of pages, which users can swipe through on mobiles and tablets.

There is nothing to stop you setting up a clutch of buttons for each article/subject in a graphical layout and have that as a Home page with a simple Home link on every other page.
Each Subject could have a simple NavBar to related Aticles.

Acorn

[ewraysure]

A Table of Contents (TOC) is a automatic list creator using Headings 1-9.
I think, sadly, in your case, it is only part of Xara Designer Pro X.

Alas, Xara doesn't automatically do Sitemaps either in the sense you are thinking (Like Gary's diagram).

You can use something like a web search tool (I use DuckDuckGo Search Box (https://duckduckgo.com/search_box)), which will find everything across all web pages, Conventional or Supersite.

A Supersite, in Xara's words is:


There is nothing to stop you setting up a clutch of buttons for each article/subject in a graphical layout and have that as a Home page with a simple Home link on every other page.
Each Subject could have a simple NavBar to related Aticles.

Acorn

More thanks, Acorn!
Thinking about it, my thought processes have been blinkered by thirteen years of using WebPlus and I've found it difficult to get to grips with the workings of other programs like WordPress and Xara. And again, it's probably me, but I've got several Magix programs and find it hard to understand their instruction manuals. Are they translated from German - 'cos they feel like they are written in an alien language to me (although I understand Xara was not originally a Magix product). One example is that I'd like to know more about Xara's web hosting, but I can discover nothing about it on the Magix/Xara websites (should have looked on this forum) - probably me being thick.
I don't want all the "we've got templates of web sites that you can adapt to your needs" stuff. I get that this makes designing a website easy and quick for the amateur, but I want to create my own site from scratch (and it probably shows). I think of WebPlus and Xara as DTP programs for websites - it's the way each connects the pages which I've found difficult to reconcile.
But I'll get there in the end.
What I find frustrating is that the Xara blurb says "Web Designer is unlike any website creation tool you've seen before.....There is no easier solution". "Unlike" - it's certainly that! "Easier solution"? Don't think so.
And now I read that several reviews say it's liable to crash/freeze at any moment. Well, that's just great! A program with bugs.
And you guys seem to have a gift/knack for working round problems by experimentation, and come up with solutions which ain't covered in the instructional manual - something that's way beyond this mortal.
I salute you!

[ewraysure]

Is there any mileage re: large websites in creating a Home Page and Site Map in WebPlus and then linking to individual pages created using Xara as separate websites. I've done this for a few articles already and it works well, using the Xara free one-year web-hosting facility.

[Acorn]

Until I can see your content, it is hard to offer specific advice. I would stick with one program.
The power of a Xara design is its portability across platforms and media. One day it is on the web. The next I offer a USB version or run a presentation form my laptop.

Magix does not own Xara, it markets it for Xara Group Ltd. Xara has a German director and each bills the other.
Xara is still UK-based with 17 staff at its lowest and then Xara Cloud came along and allegedly 40 staff into Xara GmbH.
You need Venn Diagram skills to understand who is doing what.

All programs are buggy. The "fight" over how Xara handles these with its "fall back" approach rolls on.
If you are new to the program, and are using v16.3, then it is relatively clear and well up for the work you are aiming for.
If you bought in less that a year ago, you are entitled to a free upgrade to at least v17.0. Did you know?

acorm