OT: Web Site Design

Champs1963 · November 3, 2006 2:39AM

I know a few people on here are pretty good with website stuff and I was hoping to get some advice. I run the fan site www.ramblermania.com and currently just write my own HTML and use an FTP program to upload everything. This is kind of time consuming and also doesn't allow me to do very much with the design since I'm not that great with HTML.

Anyways I was wondering if anyone here could suggest software or something that would help me be able to change the design of the site and also make things a bit easier on me, so I don't have to write HTML anymore.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

JOE

Ramblermania

Bunker · November 3, 2006 2:49AM

I can't help you with the tech stuff, but I like your site. I have always wanted to learn to do that and have several failed attempts under my belt.

ajmoeller81 · November 3, 2006 2:57AM

From my experience, Microsoft FrontPage worked very well. Basically you just design what you want the site to look like and FrontPage writes all the html for it behind the scenes. Easy enough that anyone could make a web page using it.

CDsNuts · November 3, 2006 3:00AM

If you want to get really invovled, you can learn Flash. I took an online tutorial and spent a month playing around, and I finally was able to build a website for my company (vino101.com). It took about a month. Flash allows you to do some really cool things.

Short of hiring somebody else to do it, I don't think there are any shortcuts to web design.

Lee

Griffins · November 3, 2006 3:14AM

Lee-
Are you happy with Flash? I had a flash site for my business for the last 4-5 years and just pulled it down in favor of an html based site. My reasons:

You can't meta tag flash and search engines don't pick up on it as much as html
Flash loads slower
you can't bookmark individual pages, since it's all part of a seemless sequence

Also, for me it was a lot tougher to update images (which is what my site is about, basically) so the site was a bit stale all the time.
Flash was the big thing for my profession (advertising photography) a few years ago, but there seems to be a significant backlash now. It does cool stuff, but for me it just wasn't worth it.

Joe-
I just design the pages the way I want them (I do the layouts in photoshop, since that is what I know) and then find someone to code it all. Craigslist is a big help, but you have to wade thru all kinds of people to get to someone really good.

larryallen73 · November 3, 2006 3:15AM

I still use my old version of FrontPage '98 which is 8 years old. Works like a champ for basic stuff. I still use FTP to upload.

pandrews · November 3, 2006 3:37AM

try Dreamweaver.. it seems to be much better than FrontPage..

Webhead1968 · November 3, 2006 3:46AM

dreamweaver is good, front page is old. If you know html then it shouldn't be a problem to update your site.

I think what you are looking for is something that yahoo offers, you can get hosting and webpage design tools.
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/?p=PASSPORT

Also if you don't like writing html, you could go a very easy route by doing everything in word, saving as a webpage and right click to view the source, all you code ia already written and you can modify it anyway you need.

I hope this helps.

CDsNuts · November 3, 2006 3:53AM

Griffins- Yeah, Flash vs. HTML is turning into a big debate mostly because of search engine results, which certainly benefits HTML. Rumor is that the major search engines are coming up with ways to read the text within flash, so it may not be a problem 5 years from now. With my business, there isn't a whole lot of competition when it comes to our keywords, and we're on the first page on most of the searches we were targeting. If we get some marketing money, we'll probably just buy high rankings.

I think you really have to take it case by case, and decide where your priorities are. For us, it was having unique navigation and a memorable website.

Lee

coachh · November 3, 2006 3:56AM

All of my sites, school related, are in Dreamweaver. I have had a lot of success with it.

80sJunkie · November 3, 2006 7:12AM

I use front page and it works like a charm. Understand your frustration I spent 3 months building my first website from scratch and a html for dummies book

Now front page makes it a lot faster

DooF · November 3, 2006 1:43PM

<< <i>I know a few people on here are pretty good with website stuff and I was hoping to get some advice. I run the fan site www.ramblermania.com and currently just write my own HTML and use an FTP program to upload everything. This is kind of time consuming and also doesn't allow me to do very much with the design since I'm not that great with HTML.

Anyways I was wondering if anyone here could suggest software or something that would help me be able to change the design of the site and also make things a bit easier on me, so I don't have to write HTML anymore.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

JOE

Ramblermania >>

To be honest.. I use a canned template on my Military Police site (a link in my sig) It is free software (PHPNuke) & it is easier to update and administer. I also have a blog style site ( www.DooFs.net )
if you need any info let me know. (the flash banner was added)

helionaut · November 3, 2006 3:17PM

FrontPage has improved greatly in the past couple iterations. It used to be really bad, creating poor code with poor apearance. But I applied for an intranet webmaster job this summer with AMD and was surprised to learn that they use FP in-house. I suspect that's more due to their close relationship with Microsoft than anything else, but the results were good. The standard for web developers is Dreamweaver, but that has a fairly steep learning curve and it can be confusing when the layout in the design window doesn't look exactly as it will on the web. Also, it allows you to create sites for Contribute users and it has a lot of powerful code development tools that you probably would never use. So for a basic WYSIWYG tool, I'd have to say FP is probably OK, but you might go to tucows.com and see what are the user recommendations for tools there.

OT: Web Site Design

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