It's Dreamweaver for me...great program and WYSIWYG interface.

The software you use isn't that big a deal, although some site designs can be extremely hard to manage manually. I like Dreamweaver because:
It helps manage your site. You can check links if they're broken, you can rename files and it changes all the links for you, it has templates.
It is a WYSIWIG editor and lets you manually edit your code too.

2- Find a template you like and tweak it a little bit. This is probably the easiest way to get a good-looking design. You might want to put some graphics into it, to make things nicer.

webhostingtalk.com has lots of useful info on web hosting and some info on web design stuff, including where to find free templates.

Three main approaches depending on how you want to go.

1. Do it yourself, writing your HTML directly.

PRO
you don't need to buy any software, Notepad or nearly any word processor is all you need. Save documents in .htm or .htlm format, FTP up to you ISP and you got a basic web page.

Visit W3C for a vast assortment of how-to http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/

CON
Takes time to learn, is getting more complex, can become tedious, typos can cause errors, depending on brower, no support for layout automation.

2. Use a HTML editor

PRO
Many aspects automated. The better ones give you a choice of jumping back and forth between seeing the HTML code or keeping it hidden. You create your HTML by selecting from menu choices. Easier to learn. Will save time.

CON
Can create excessive, overly cluttered code, applications can be trickly to use for more involved designs.

3. Purchase templates. Do a web search for "HTML Templates"

PRO
A basic shell is already created. You only need to customize. Many common designs pre-designed, can get a site up in hours.

CON
Limiting, can get expensive, help if any, weak.

If you plan on having a fairly extensive site, then getter a "better" HTML editor may help. I use Dreamweaver. A little pricy.

A must is also learning the basics of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/

These replace many of the older, depreciated HTML tags, like font color and size and make it possible to globally make instant changes to ALL you web pages at once, if you use external style sheets.

So if you got 50 pages done and you decide you don't like the font size or font family instead of changing every web page you only need to change one line in the external style sheet to effect all linked web pages.

Picking the right ISP and/or hosting company is almost as important. Things have changed a lot since I first started doing web sites. (no you haven't really seen any of mine, the two tutorial sites weren't designed at all, just quick and dirty, bing, bang, boom, to get sometime up on the web) so if you want a lot of bells and whistles, you got to do your homework. This is more important if you want a INTERACTIVE site that allows visitors to interact, ie, online shopping, filling in forms, that kind of stuff requires back end scripting, (commonly CGI) which presents some security issues for the ISP so some limit or totally ban such things for their security.

Dreamweaver used to be quite difficult to learn, but the MX2004 version is greatly improved in this area. If you get one of the good books like "Visual Quickstart" you could easily be up and running with a nice-looking web site over a weekend.

Frontpage has thousands of templates available, but unfortunately they all look the same. Frontpage creates crappy HTML, although I hear the very latest version is better (I have used FP 97 through FP2002, the 02 is semi-acceptable but not great.)

Dreamweaver has templates that look far nicer, for $20-$100 typically.

Dreamweaver or something like it is probably the best tool for most people.

If you want to get down to writing your own html, or xml, I have found the free editor
TSW WebCoder to be very useful. If you want documantation and full support, there is an option to pay, but I haven't needed that yet. This is an editor for the low-level html code but with lots of assistance built in.

I also found the extension "Web Developer" for FireFox to be very useful for examining my own work and seeing how other pages are constructed.

BB mentioned CSS which lets you control the look and feel of sites in a structured and layered way. I started using it recently and while it seems great in theory, in practice I found compatibility and implementation problems between browsers. If you generate css through Dreamweaver, it should be transparent, so not a serious issue. I was coding my own and had problems only looking at it with Firefox and IE. In one case I had to abandon my approach to one page because I could never get a certain css coding to work right.

I'd add two more:

1. Use a Content Managementn System, which lets you fill in your content and customize the look, but manages the pages for you. This is more useful if you have a lot of content that needs to be served up dynamically.

2. If you have a background in programming (or if you'd like to learn), write your own PHP scripts which will decide the basic layout and behavior of the site, not to mention (if you design them) forms for adding new content quickly. This way's a bit more advanced than just writing HTML & CSS (though you'd write those, too), but without getting a full-blown CMS, which is often more than is needed for a personal website.

But whatever you do, please use CSS for your formatting. ;-)

Rob

Thank you so much for all the responses. I am sure this is more than enough to get me started.

Regards,

John

I'm putting a site up soon and wondered if anyone has a favorite host? I've looked at a few but wonder what host some of you are using. I know one member uses Globat but I just found out they don't support streaming video.....

Keith

I use Adobe golive for the preparation software and would not recommend it. I can now get it to do what I need but it is difficult and not at all like vegas (shades of premiere perhaps?)

I use godaddy for my host. Not a true streaming site but quick on downloads, reasonably priced, and great marketing!

Good Luck

dreamweaver mx 2004 all the way!! used it on my site.. and the one i did for my parents resort, http://naniboujou.com

i love it!!!
give'er a try! its the best one ive used!
good luck!

pj

> I've looked at a few but wonder what host some of you are using

I’m using www.lunarpages.com. I don’t know if they support streaming but for $7.95 month you get 1Gig of web space and 40gig of bandwidth. I’ve put up several sites with them (and recently my own www.johnrofrano.com) and I’ve been very happy with their service and support.

~jr

The best-kept secret, in my opinion, is an inexpensive program called "SiteSpinner", which is amazingly intuitive to learn to use. It, too, is WYSIWYG, but more importantly, it's not text-based, but rather object-based. You know how easy it is to create objects and move them around in Powerpoint, as compared to MS Word? That's what SiteSpinner is like.

You can get a trial version to play with here, and you can see the website I created for my daughter's choir here.

boomhower, if you want to do some in-depth research check out webhostingtalk.com
The forums there are very good, and I suggest you search through them.

Clips will stream if you encode them right. Some hosts may provide streaming server technology, but it isn't necessary and doesn't really do all that much. Quicktimes and windows media files can stream by themselves.

General web hosting tips:
A- It's a good idea to keep your domain registration seperate so your domain can't be held hostage. namecheap.com is a popular recommendation at webhostingtalk.com You need to wait 60 days before you can transfer a new domain (some web hosts give a year to you free).
B- It's a common practice for web hosts to oversell the web hosting. Often, you can't or are very unlikely to use all the things they give you. Bandwidth is one thing you may want to watch out for. If you exceed the limit, there may be overage/overuse fees of $1-$6/GB. Some hosts will just shut your site down, which is better. If you host video files, you might actually use a lot of bandwidth so it might make sense to take advantage of overselling.
C- Generally, the more you pay, you will get better:

uptime and server speed- many hosts lie about this... 99.9% uptime guaranteed (i.e. 95% of the time) is unrealistic with cheap hosts. monitor your site with siteuptime.com
server speed: sometimes the site may be up, but very slow. my friend has a canaca.com account (I'd avoid them), the control panel runs like molasses.

service. Again, advertising may be misleading if they say "24/7". search webhostingtalk.com forums

2- Personally right now I am with dreamhost.com Their 777 promo is a very good deal. First year for $10.
http://forums.redflagdeals.com/showthread.php?t=107696
Be sure to switch domains after 60 days and before your domain is about to expire, and to set your website to cancel instead of auto-renewal. As well, turn on bandwidth throttling in control panel just in case.

I use Netobjects Fusion. Netobjects and Dreamweaver used to go back and forth for editor's choice.

Netsobjects is also fairly inexpensive.

Sites I've built with it include:

www.cri-austin.com (Michael Dell's education grant site)
www.chanimal.com (my industry software marketing site)
www.videobackstage.com (my video site)
www.coolpianoteacher.com (my family piano teacher's site)
www.zebraimaging.com (consulting job - holograms)
www.topchoicehl.com (friends side business)
www.southsidepawn.com (friends pawn shop site)

Plus more. From the top to Zebra all have streaming video.

Relatively easy to use. Great site management. No need to learn HTML. Progressive publishing, etc.

Regarding hosting:

- www.successfullhosting.com ($7.95/month - 2 gig space, 50 gig transfer, 7 domain names, etc.). Host Zebra there.

- www.startlogic.com (similar). Used for my videos and also used by Jay Gladwell.

Mine was done in Dreamweaver MX2004. Pretty easy to get your head around. www.crestvideo.co.uk

Again thanks to everyone who responded. This has been incredibly helpful for me.

John

Riredale,

SiteSpinner seems like a really great tool for people who don't want to dive into all the complexity possible. Great price too.

I noticed the code uses absolute pixel positioning, which is a feature some pros suggest to avoid for compatibility reasons. Have you had good experience with this?

It certainly simplifies things quite a bit.

"I'm putting a site up soon and wondered if anyone has a favorite host?"
I have a few sites hosted with ICDSoft Great prices, never had any problem with them in the years I've been using them.

Craftech, one other thing I forgot to mention:

I love visiting websites where I don't have to disable my firewall security settings first.

I suppose there are reasons to stuff sites full of features that require me to turn off Zone Alarm's cookie control, ad blocking, and mobile code control (my credit union is one such website) but if all you're doing is sharing info and perhaps some vid clips / still images, WTF?

Just my 2 cents, for what it's worth. Please don't forget to let me know when your site goes active.

I use the HTML editor associated with the free Mozilla suite. It's pretty intuitive, nothing fancy, but easy to learn and gets the job done. It also has the advantage of authoring in straight HTML, which makes it more accessible to a wider variety of browsers and platforms.

If you're just starting out with web page design, keep it simple. Minimize the exotic fonts, and use tables to organize things on the page so they stay where you put them. I need to learn about CSS, though, this may make formatting much easier -- I just haven't had the time to delve into it.

Like PossibilityX, I much prefer websites where I don't have to disable anything, download anything or do much of anything to my browser in order to view it. I detest Flash for this reason. There are some interesting guidelines for website accessibility (especially for those using assisting devices for visual handicaps, etc.) on the W3 consortium website. See:
W3C Accessibility Guidelines.

Thanks for all the hosting tips. I'll check them all out. Right now one company called powweb.com has an offer that gives 300 GB transfer at 10 GB per day...all for 7.77/mo seems too good to be true so it probably is.

I'll check out the hosting forum mentioned as well.

Thanks again,

Coursedesign:

So far I've had success working with SiteSpinner with IE6, Firefox, and the Apple Safari browser. One thing I like to do with my web pages is to have them always centered, no matter what browser or screen resolution.

I'm not fluent in HTML and have never done a website in raw HTML, so I'm not sure I understand what you are asking. But if you're asking whether the SiteSpinner pages play nicely with various browsers, I guess I'd have to say yes at this point.

Incidentally, SiteSpinner incorporates an ftp transfer methodology to get the pages up to the server, but I've fallen in love with an alternative ftp product called FTP Voyager. With it, I can make changes to my master website here on my local drive, and then have FTP Voyager just upload the changes to the remote server. Again, I'm not fluent enough in all this stuff to know whether this is standard procedure with all the other software products out there.

Now that my latest documentary project is finished, I will spend more time fleshing out the choir website with photos and streaming video of performances.