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Sales/Marketing Guy Needs Web Design/Edit Tool

Discussion in 'HTML & Website Design' started by jrbiz, Jul 6, 2015.

  1. #1
    Hi,

    I have had a hostgator account for over ten years now. Up until a week or two ago, I have used FrontPage 2003 to launch and edit new websites. Note that the websites that I do personally, are very simple; I mostly put up my friends' hobby sites, etc. I will buy an html template, put it on the server and use FP to edit the pages, add new ones, etc. HostGator recently stopped support for FrontPage, so I need to find a new tool. I need a combination of WYSIWYG with the ability to see the HTML code for slight tweaking (I am absolutely not a programmer in any sense of the word.)

    I first was looking at WordPress because I hear about it so much, but have been told that it is not WYSIWYG. I also took a quick look at KompoZer, but that may be old and unsupported.

    So, I am looking for recommendations as to what tool would be easiest for a non-techie like me to use in place of FrontPage?
     
    jrbiz, Jul 6, 2015 IP
  2. PoPSiCLe

    PoPSiCLe Illustrious Member

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    #2
    Oh my god. You haven't considered the fact that you know nothing of coding to be a detrimental factor in putting up websites to begin with? Sorry if I sound harsh, but seriously...

    Wordpress is not WYSIWYG, no, but it's INCREDIBLY simple - and as long as you can find a template / theme that does more or less what you want, it's really all you need.

    If you're adamant about putting up webpages without knowing anything about webpages (which mostly goes for anyone putting up webpages nowadays anyway), you always have Dreamweaver - which (albeit horrible in every way) is more or less similar to FrontPage in that it offers a WYSIWYG editor and also a text-editor for code-changes.

    That being said - it's really not hard to learn HTML and CSS - take some online courses, visit CodeAcademy and HTMLDog, finish the courses, and you should be on your way. A basic webpage isn't much more than the following code:
    
    <!DOCTYPE html>
    <html>
       <head>
           <title>This is a webpage</title>
       </head>
       <body>
         <h1>This is a website-title</h1>
          <div id="top">
             <div id="mainmenu">
                   <ul>
                       <li>Menu item 1</li>
                       <li>Menu item 2</li>
                   </ul>
             </div>
             <div id="content">
                   <h2>Here goes content</h2>
                   <!-- here goes content -->
                   <h2>Here goes more content</h2>
                  <!-- here goes more content -->
              </div>
         </div>
      </body>
    </html>
    
    Code (markup):
    Of course, there are quite a bit more you can do, and things you can add, but it's really not that hard.
     
    PoPSiCLe, Jul 6, 2015 IP
  3. kk5st

    kk5st Prominent Member

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    #3
    Generally, not bad advice, except; the div is unnecessary, redundant bloat. The ul is a perfectly good container for list items, and since a menu is a list, by definition, there is no compelling reason to relabel it. If you want to identify it to differentiate it from other lists, use id="mainmenu" on the ul itself.

    cheers,

    gary
     
    kk5st, Jul 6, 2015 IP
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  4. NetStar

    NetStar Notable Member

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    #4
    You have been a DP member for nearly a decade and you have never even had the slightest bit if curiosity to explore creating a web site by using code?
     
    NetStar, Jul 6, 2015 IP
  5. Conor O Brien

    Conor O Brien Member

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    #5
    lol pOPSicle I think you were very harsh on the poor fella, and i disagree with your comment on Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is for designers and developers who know how to code and know what their doing, WordPress, although good and useful if for nOObs :D , press and click , even grannies can use WP.
    and in regard to the original guys post, i have coded a CMS using HTML5 and it will allow yourself or your mates too manually create a page or a website with hooks already installed, so its easy for you just click and add etc and then allows you to save it too your servers root directory or download it as a zippppp :D Inbox me ill hook ye up!
     
    Conor O Brien, Jul 7, 2015 IP
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  6. jrbiz

    jrbiz Acclaimed Member

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    #6
    Absolutely not. Coding is a basic task best performed by those who are trained and/or interested in it. I am not interested in coding in the slightest and my skills revolve around sales and marketing which are very lucrative and my time is best spent on those activities. When I need an intermediate or advanced website, I hire professional programmers just like I hire professional graphics people to create pretty pictures or painting professionals to paint my house. For small, hobby sites, I have been able to put up my own with a minimum of fuss or bother with WYSIWYG tools.

    I may have posted this question in the wrong section or perhaps on the wrong forum. :)
     
    jrbiz, Jul 7, 2015 IP
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  7. ketting00

    ketting00 Well-Known Member

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    #7
    Cannot agree more. If you are a noob, you have no place here.
     
    ketting00, Jul 7, 2015 IP
  8. malky66

    malky66 Acclaimed Member

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    #8
    Congratulations, you qualify for the stupidest comment of the day!!
    Designers and developers who know what they're doing and know how to code sure as hell don't use crap like Dreamweaver to build sites, it produces bloated outdated markup that's just utter garbage, jeez this isn't the 1990's.
     
    malky66, Jul 7, 2015 IP
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  9. PoPSiCLe

    PoPSiCLe Illustrious Member

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    #9
    True - the div surrounding the list for the menu isn't strictly needed, but can sometimes be good to have - it depends on what you want to do with the container, if anything. If you don't need or want to do anything with the container, your suggestion works 100% - but if you want to do something that can't be done with a single container, then you need to add a wrapper on the menu - one could use a div, or nav - depends on whether or not you want to use HTML5s new containers. I don't think of that particular div as excessive bloat - if there's no styling attached to it, it just adds a few bytes to the HTML - not a deal-breaker. Of course, if you keep adding containers to everything, all the time, then you'll have a problem :D
     
    PoPSiCLe, Jul 7, 2015 IP
  10. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #10
    Sheesh, I must be rubbing off on people. Don't worry, Mean Mr. Mustard is here.

    By it's very nature WYSIWYGS are the antithesis of sane and rational design, and I would dare say that on ANY forum regardless of area you should get similar reactions to your question. It is such a mind-numbingly stupid way of building sites and so utterly and completely broken in concept ALONE, that if you do find a forums that pats you on the back and slaps the rose coloured glasses on your head on the topic -- WORRY!!! You're being led down the garden path to failure.

    ... and that includes Dreamweaver. As a dearly departed friend used to joke, "the only thing about Dreamweaver that can be considered professional grade toos are the people promoting it's use!" - and pathetically DW is one of the BETTER ones. (possibly the best of the lot -- but that's like being the best car ever built by British-Leyland)

    Simple fact is what you see is guaranteed NOT to be what everyone else gets -- with the plethora of screen sizes and resolutions concepts like fixed widths, fixed heights, fixed font sizes, and a host of other "Designer" artsy fartsy bull, it's ignorant of what HTML is, what CSS is, and what websites are supposed to do. While this is even more true in the age of responsive design, it's been true all along no matter how many art faygelahs and willyfully ignorant site owners stick their heads in the sand over the simplest concepts of accessibility like semi-fluid elastic design.

    Gets even more important if the site is anything more than a blog for grandma where the only visitors are going to be family, since search engines are penalizing sites for accessibility woes, failing to be mobile friendly, and just plain being slow. (Even if Google's method for ranking on the last of those has been turned into a giant scam for selling CDN space or their own alleged "speed" service that just makes things worse).

    That you also mention using off the shelf templates (itself a giant nube predating scam) just means that you have no interest in actually building websites that users will ACTUALLY find usable or have the slightest interest in. The concept of starting out with some goofy artsy-fartsy appearance BEFORE you have even determined the page content, then shoe-horning content into it is equally back-assward... just as back-assward as the goofball nonsense of dicking around in photoshop before one has same.

    I mean, you claim to be all about sales and marketing, but are you aware of the impact usability and accessibility has on those when it comes to a website? Just look at that networking cable website in your siggy! Mobile unfriendly fixed width layout, broken non-mouse navigation thanks to an utter and complete lack of semantic markup or even logical use of headings, uselessly undersized fixed metric (pixel) font measurements, gibberish on screen readers thanks to again the lack of semantics mated to the equally dumbass tables for layout -- it's a laundry list of how not to build a website and methodologies we've been told NOT to use since 1998!

    ... and entirely typical of what one could expect dicking around with some goofy WYSIWYG, a buggy broken train wreck of decade and a half out of date methodologies that were NEVER actually valid or even rational development in the first place.

    As I often say, if you don't know what's wrong with two decade out of date code like this:
    <body marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" topmargin="0" bottommargin="0" leftmargin="0" rightmargin="0">
    <!-- header //-->
    <!-- header //-->
    
    
     <table width=100% height=100% cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 align="center" > 
      <tr><td class=he>
       <table width=766 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 align="center">
    	<tr>
    		<td colspan='7' width='100%' background='images/m02.jpg' height='120'>
    			<table width='100%'>
    				<tr>
    					<td><a href='http://www.netcablesplus.com'><img src='images/netcablesplusLogotr.gif' border='0' style="height: 110px;" /></a></td>
    					<td align='right' valign='top'>We Accept <font face="Arial" color="#808080" size="1">
    			<img border="0" src="/images/logo_ccVisa.gif" alt="netcablesplus accepts visa"><img border="0" src="/images/logo_ccmc.gif" alt="netcablesplus accepts mastercard"><img border="0" src="/images/logo_ccamex.gif" alt="netcablesplus accepts american express"><img border="0" src="/images/logo_ccdiscover.gif" alt="netcablesplus accepts discover"></font><br />
    Code (markup):
    Maybe you're just not cut out to be developing websites... since done PROPERLY with semantic markup and separation of presentation from content that would likely be:

    <body>
    
    <div id="top">
    
    	<h1>
    		<a href="/">
    			Net Cables Plus
    			<span>-</span>
    			<small>Internet Cables Plus a Whole Lot More</small>
    		</a>
    	</h1>
    
    	<div id="acceptAndContact">
    		<h2>We Accept</h2>
    		<ul>
    			<li class="visa">Visa<span></span></li>
    			<li class="master">Mastercard<span></span></li>
    			<li class="amex">American Express<span></span></li>
    			<li class="discover">Discover<span></span></li>
    		</ul>
    Code (markup):
    EVERYTHING else belonging in the CSS, a separation that dicking around with a appearance in a WYSIWYG will NEVER provide since that's screwing around with what it looks like BEFORE you have semantics, and doing so without leveraging semantics, or caching models, or providing accessibility.

    The very NOTION of a WYSIWYG is such utter and complete nonsense, that they continue to even exist can only be chalked up to ignorance or outright stupidity... and if you actually care about sales and marketing, you should be aware that pissing off visitors to your sites is bad marketing and costing you sales.

    If you are unwilling to take the time to learn that, then stick to hiring others to do it for you -- and honestly it might be time to review what sales and marketing is in the process. You are setting yourself up for failure by falling for scams and nube predation.
     
    deathshadow, Jul 7, 2015 IP
  11. jrbiz

    jrbiz Acclaimed Member

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    #11
    LOL...my goodness, have I set off a firestorm, or what? :) I did not realize that my simple question would be so controversial...

    While this may be apostasy for this group, it turns out that some websites are not worth spending the time and/or money for them to be professionally coded. The good news is that I have gotten the guidance that I was looking for, so all is well.

    The comments about sales and marketing are amusing. Here's a Sales 101 fact: there are many, many successful businesses in markets in which websites are not really important to the sales and marketing process. Here on DP, websites are pretty much everything for everyone. Simply not the case in a lot of industries.
     
    Last edited: Jul 7, 2015
    jrbiz, Jul 7, 2015 IP
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  12. CyberconTom

    CyberconTom Peon

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    #12
    Going back to the original post, Wordpress would probably be your best choice. Just set up a Wordpress account and buy a template and run with it. If you dedicate a little bit of time and just watch some tutorials on the internet, you should be plenty equipped to do the simple websites you want to do.

    But, if your heart is still set on FrontPage, you could explore the option of purchasing a virtual server from hostgator, then installing Microsoft onto that server, and then setting up FrontPage.
     
    CyberconTom, Jul 7, 2015 IP
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  13. PoPSiCLe

    PoPSiCLe Illustrious Member

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    #13
    It doesn't have to be "professionally coded" - a teenager hacking together code in his/her bedroom would create better HTML code. Probably not perfect, but it WILL work on phones and tablets (come on, only thing kids nowadays use). The point is - dismissing an entire profession as something you can do with a WYSIWYG editor and minimal skill is a bit arrogant - there's a reason web-designers exist - there are very few really good ones, that is true, but there are some. Saying that all you need is no understanding and a program is a bit like saying you can do a heart transplant because you've been playing a lot of Operation (the game).

    The reason people are coming down on you so hard is that you seem like all you want is to continue being an ignorant fool using WYSIWYG editors, instead of dedicating perhaps a couple weeks to just learn the basics. It doesn't have to become your life, but a sliver of a grasp of understanding would be welcome by those of us who have a bit more experience, and who advocates proper coding.
     
    PoPSiCLe, Jul 7, 2015 IP
  14. qwikad.com

    qwikad.com Illustrious Member Affiliate Manager

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    #14
    How did I miss this one? Wow. I think I should suggest to @digitalpoint to have a "best-of-digitalpoint" thread (just like craigslist has "best-of-craigslist") and start moving all threads similar to this one over there.

    Meanwhile, @jrbiz you should enroll your son at a software / graphic / design school and when he's out in 2-3 years you will never have to ask anyone for help.
     
    qwikad.com, Jul 9, 2015 IP
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  15. Towab Muhammad Yusuf

    Towab Muhammad Yusuf Member

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    #15
    In this case I think Wordpress is better for you.
     
    Towab Muhammad Yusuf, Jul 10, 2015 IP