What should I download to build my own website

Hey peeps,just made the final decision to be a penny pincher,so in short I want to download a free program that will make my job easier,or until I really know enough to be able to throw 150+ on a professionally built website.

I am currently Pre W3 school(been BSin alot,yeah I know thats bad) and will eventually be focusing more on my work this week.I know that before I focus on adwords,PPC or landing pages(money) I will have to really know the basics or my whole foundation will fall.

Please help...thx 44

 

Just use a cms, like Joomla or PHP-Fusion.

 

A free program to help you code websites? Like a WYSIWYG? I would recommend Dreamweaver although I have never used it, a lot of people seem to like it. I code everything by hand

 

Oh something like that yeah use Dreamweaver it's really good

 

Other than dreamweaver isnt free?

For true penny pinching use notepad

 

Try Aptana Studio.
Hands down the best free DW alternative (sort of) out there.

 

use notepad if u cant purchase dreamweaver

 

try dream weaver its better to create a new website

 

Wow, i am sorry no one with insight has really helped you much.
First off, if you buy dreamweaver, you'll want photoshop, and if you want photoshop you'll want illustartor. Your not talking $150 your talking $1400-2000.
Anyways you need to learn alot more than just that to build a website.

But for coding use http://nvudev.com/screenshots.php for design get gimp with http://www.gimpshop.com/ plugin installed that way when you transfer to photoshop your not compleatly screwed.

- John

 

Honestly, if you're money concioius, and without software, I would just turn to a good host provider, assuming you're not doing this yourself. There are many that offer free templates (usually thousands to choose from) and a WSIWYG editor to boot. I have chosen one that offers these tools, and it only cost me around 10 bucks to get started. Granted, this is a monthly fee, but much better than the hundreds or thousands you'd have to pay for software just to get started. If you want me to give you a good host let me know...I didn't want to post their name here as I wasn't sure if that was allowed.

 

Yea I was a notepad user when I was on Windows. Can't go wrong with that, only for the true hand coder though. Which I do suggest you learn at some point if you haven't already.

 

You may want to try

CoffeeCup Free Editor

or

AceHtml Free Editor

 

For basics though when you want to learn to code or are new to it Dreamweaver works well in creating basic sites and or creating more complex ones with the designs they have accompanied with it. It does help with faster deployment with sites but it can be a little expensive. I also used Frontpage too (names changed now I think) but mainly for it's code highlighting users back in the day. Frontpage seemed to add unnecessary code to the document which I didn't like.

Notepad is good for coding but it'd probably be better to try something with a code highlighter as it makes things significantly easier. For that i'd recommend ConText as it's always worked well for me whenever I code.

I'd say the best path (and quite slow, but what I eventually did) would be to just focus more on learning html and css to a point where you can create all your sites from scratch. But till then something such as editing open source or free templates should suit you well as it's very simple and it'll improve your understanding of it all. Check out the OSWD website for some templates to suit your page style if you want to take that path.

 

Thx for all the replies people,I really appreciate it......

Please keep em coming,and feel free to add anything that has not yet been added.Cause I will definitely be coming back to this thread lol.....

Thx 44

 

It gets pricey. It really pays off to have Dreamweaver, Photoshop & Illustrator.

 

Try CNET's Download.com to try out different software. You'll find reviews of many different choices of software from Free to Try and Buy.

Follow the menu and look for Website Creation tools.
Download > Windows > Developer Tools > Web Page Creation

DJ
Boise, ID

 

Tredosoft Multiple IE Standalones
Firefox
Opera Browser
Safari 3 Beta for Windows (Assuming you're using Windows anyway.)

And a text editor. Oh, and a graphics program (Paint.NET is a freebie if you can't afford Photoshop and can't stand the look of The GIMP)

Now, my question to you is how much experience do you have making Web sites? Do you know what semantics are, the different roles of HTML (structure), CSS (appearance) and JavaScript (behavior/advanced interaction/form pre-validation), as well as accessibility, usability and SEO?

If not, then go to your local public library and ask them if they either have or can get on loan a copy of Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS by Ian Lloyd. Work through the book (it's not a "sit down and read" type of book - it will make you work, though in small, managable and bite-sized chunks), and learn what you can from it. If you have any questions afterword, feel free to ask on the forums either here or at SitePoint (I'm a Mentor on the Design Team over there, so you KNOW I'll be able to answer any questions you have about it) and I'm sure someone will respond with some solid advice and/or a solution that works.

 

Thx for the great info dude,I really appreciate and I will definitely look into the book you mentioned.

But I also have questions about Xsitepro

 

I like Nvu. It has a lot of good features in it. I like how the GUI looks. It does have a somewhat steep learning curve though.

 

I'd rather use notepad... it will be little bit harder to code everything by hand but the result will be better - cleaner, better organized code and easy to modify as you'll know your own code pretty well.

But Dreamweaver is pretty good.