What software should I use to build my first website?

Hi All,

I'm looking for some information and guidance on what software I should choose to use to create a website.

From the list of applications available to me, I'm not sure which solution is best.

I have purchased the mini virtual hosting plan from host head.
http://www.hosthead.com/virtual.html

My site will be for a vacation rental property. I just want something simple for now -- a home page that includes content, pictures, contact us mail form, and links to other pages for a calendar, events, and general information.

This solution should require very little coding, will assist me in designing a basic site, but is advanced enough for my site to evolve and capability for me to later add dynamic documents and content.

What solutions are available to me and which one would be best for my short term and long-term requirements?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts and/or recommendations.

Mike

If I were you i'd learn to code using XHTML/CSS and create a website myself. Theres loads of advantages to doing this; you gain experience, your code can be easily validated to W3C standards and to have a website that you've created yourself from scratch (or even starting using a free template) bares no resemblance to using dreamweaver or some other awful excuse for a design tool. In my opinion, they almost always churn out crap webpages.

Heres some free template websites to get you started;
http://www.oswd.org
http://www.openwebdesign.org

I've found that Frontpage is the easiest to start with, but as soon as you want to start tweaking, then ditch frontpage and go for dreamweaver.

Frontpage is great for the novice, but after a while microsoft thinks it knows what you want and makes changes in the code for you. It doesn't matter if you changed the code because you didn't want a particular thing, ms frontpage knows best. The WOW starts now LOL.

You can also try SWsoft SiteBuilder (http://www.swsoft.com/sitebuilder)

It's an easy to use, scalable web application designed to create and manage websites.

Click to expand...

It's a web-based application and I guess it's really an advantage for you

smtalk,

SiteBulder appears to be a program for webhosting companies to buy/install for their clients. Unless oneten's stite with HostHead has it included, I don't think he'll be able to use it.

And ... looking at the site in your link, if they created it with their package... well it doesn't work with Firefox 1.0.2, anyway .

cbservers,

FrontPage, and FrontPage Server Extensions, have both been discontinued by Microsoft, and it's unknown how much longer we'll be able to get FPX on new systems, or even maintain them on old servers, as Microsoft no longer allows installation on new MSIS systems, and they no longer allow the company that developed it for them for linux/unix, to offer it.

Jeff

Yes, it's a product for hosting companies. The site isn't created with it No problems with Konqueror 3.5.

smtalk said:

No problems with Konqueror 3.5.

Click to expand...

Nor with Opera. But neither are used as much as Firefox .

Jeff

Get some books and use dreameweaver.

Joomla or other CMS

If you want ease of use, dynamic content, and such, you should give serious thought to using a Content Management System (CMS) such as Joomla (www.joomla.org).

It's open source, free and there is plenty of support available.

It's also one of the Installatron options, so you will have one click application upgrades when you need them.

I am churning out Joomla sites by the boatload these days. Customers love them and for your particular Vacation Rental app, there is a component called Jomres, which I believe is free for properties with under 30 rooms. (Check out extensions.joomla.org).

Joomla is a fork of the old Mambo system.

No coding is necessary... and there are literally thousands of site templates available for free (www.joomlaos.de).

Of course, once you get ambitious, you will want to look under the hood too, and tinker with it. And yes, there are plenty of beautiful commercial templates available from places such as www.joomlashack.com and www.rocketthemes.com.

It features several WYSIWYG editors, it comes with TinyMCE, but I recommend you install fckeditor. This means, no frontpage, dreamweaver, etc. until you really need them.

You will be very glad, when you need to expand your site in the future. In addition, it is very search engine friendly when set up correctly. My joomla sites consistently rank high in the search engines for their subject matters.

Enough evangelizing, go get your site up and running.