Software for Creating Webpages?

[EZC-Boston]

I'm sure there are plenty of people here with experience in creating webpages. Back in college, 10 years ago now I guess, I used to mess around in HTML but I know some people like Frontpage instead. I'm guessing the technology has come a long way in 10 years and that my best option would be using a software program rather than starting from scratch.

 

So can anybody here suggest a good program? Freeware would be cool but I'd be willing to spend a few bucks too. I want to start playing around at first but I have a few business ideas as well.

 

Thanks!

[Dan]

I use HTML-Kit for all my playing around. It's freeware, which is good. It has lots of plugins and just about all the features you'd want. IMO, its not a great graphical editor like Frontpage, but I prefer to work with the code mostly and check the layout periodically rather than the other way around.

 

Another suggestion... If you're going to work with server side scripts, php pages, sql, etc., a great application is WampServer. It allows you to emulate an Apache server on your computer without being online. It's great for trouble shooting scripts and such! It's also freeware and well deserving of a donation.

[drnykterstein]

You are probably best off just learning a CMS. I'm guessing you don't want like 1 page with some text and images. You want like forums or image galleries or a blog or whatever. So building those is complicated. A CMS solves that.

 

Drupal I think is really great to learn. Plenty of modules and themes to download and install.

Joomla is also really good.

And I think Wordpress is really stepped up from the simple blog software it used to be.

 

There's a few other good ones out there, but those are ones I've used and respect. The biggest thing you want is a good community of support. I think all three have that.

[damj]

You are probably best off just learning a CMS. I'm guessing you don't want like 1 page with some text and images. You want like forums or image galleries or a blog or whatever. So building those is complicated. A CMS solves that.

 

Drupal I think is really great to learn. Plenty of modules and themes to download and install.

Joomla is also really good.

And I think Wordpress is really stepped up from the simple blog software it used to be.

 

There's a few other good ones out there, but those are ones I've used and respect. The biggest thing you want is a good community of support. I think all three have that.

Agreed ... static html pages is so 90s. I use a phpbb forum with a CMS (mxbb, now mx-publisher) over the top of the phpbb. It's not as polished as the others, but it's powerful. Unfortunately, they're stuck at phpbb 2.0.x ... they're beta testing a version to work with phpbb 3.x, but it's not production ready yet.

 

I tried Drupal, Joomla and some others, but couldn't get the hang of them ... but to each his own.

[gmac17]

the real question is - what do you want to do with it?

 

If it's just throw up 10 pages for whatever, using a CMS would be totally unnecessary.

 

If you want to run a big website, then that is what you need.

 

Wordpress is good for both blogs and websites, but if you want really simple and pretty decent looking - try www.weebly.com

[EZC-Boston]

the real question is - what do you want to do with it?

 

If it's just throw up 10 pages for whatever, using a CMS would be totally unnecessary.

 

If you want to run a big website, then that is what you need.

 

Wordpress is good for both blogs and websites, but if you want really simple and pretty decent looking - try www.weebly.com

 

Had to look up CMS but I think this is what I'm looking for. Thank! I'll check out weebly

[gmac17]

if you had to look up CMS, a CMS probably isn't for you

 

Weebly is dead simple - i recommend it to anyone who just wants to get stuff up online.