Web site design software?

[Dan Henderson]

My fall project is to design a web site to display and market my photographs. I've never built one before, but I am reasonably computer literate, have the diligence to stay at a project until it is finished, and am an inveterate do-it-yourselfer

I'm interested in knowing what software other photographers have used to build your web sites, and the good and bad apsects of each.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Ian Leake]

If you want more than a templated site then I'd choose a professional tool. I use Dreamweaver (the older MX version not the new Adobe CS version). The big plus is that you can do anything you want (though it's very helpful to know HTML so that you can play with the page code), the drawback is that it's not cheap

 

[clay]

If you use a mac, one of the most simple and elegant packages I have used is Coda. It is not a WYSIWYG editor in the sense that you just tinker-toy your site together, but it has excellent file management and upload capabilities, a nice preview mode, and a code editor that is smart. It is also relatively inexpensive. For most of what you will need to do, it is more than enough. It also comes with a bunch of books-online documentation.

https://www.panic.com/

 

[SusanK]

I used FrontPage 2002 for my site. I'm an above average computer user, but I had to spend a fair amount of time reading a "how-to" book and a ton of internet tutorials. FrontPage has some interesting quirks to it. Someday, I'd like to redo the entire site w/ Dreamweaver. I've heard many good things about that software.

 

[ozphoto]

I too had to build a website when I undertook my Commercial Photography course and like Ian, found Dreamweaver to be an easy program to use. I read the SAMS book: Teach Yourself Dreamweaver in 48hrs and found the tips and examples a big help. I have used both Version 3 and MX. Either one will suit your needs. I was able to download a 30day trial version and used this to build my site. Plan it first on paper and then implement - saves time and allows you to follow links etc.

 

[patrickjames]

Dreamweaver and Flash are the ones to use. You may not need Flash if you want to keep it simple, but Flash is nice because there are no variables to it. Html has many variables and they will manifest themselves different ways on different computers. Flash will look the same on any computer that has the Flash reader installed regardless if it is a Windoooze or a Mac. I should also say that Flash is much more complicated to learn, but in the long run it would be worth it.

Patrick

 

[Sparky]

You may not need Flash if you want to keep it simple, but Flash is nice because there are no variables to it.

I'm not sure if 'variables' are anything that one might need to deal with - depending on the package you're using. What made me decide to nix flash is that you have to completely rebuild it all from scratch everytime you want to make a minor change. Links aren't searchable via google either.

 

[patrickjames]

I'm not sure if 'variables' are anything that one might need to deal with - depending on the package you're using. What made me decide to nix flash is that you have to completely rebuild it all from scratch everytime you want to make a minor change. Links aren't searchable via google either.

You don't have to rebuild it all if you build it right in the first place. I haven't used a timeline in a long time, which is what I am guessing you do. Everything is done in actionscript, and changes (even major layout ones) usually only take minutes. When I first started using flash about 5 years ago, changes took hours because I didn't know what I was doing.

Google can't search your swf's, but it can index the html that you are embedding it in. You are embedding right?

Flash is an amazingly powerful tool. It is like Photoshop for web design. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about the program, but I assure you it is incredible and flexible. Html by itself is a pain in the a@@ since there are so many different ways the pages can be rendered with all of the variables that exist.


Patrick

 

[Jon Shiu]

Hi, I am also researching how to make a website and I found a free flash viewer called simpleviewer:
http://www.airtightinteractive.com/simpleviewer/

example website:
http://studio391.net/paul_kozal/paul_kozal.htm

Seems like a good tool, but I have not decided whether to use flash yet.

Jon

 

[patrickjames]

Jon-

If you live in the area of Gualala you should stop in to the gallery. Paul's wife Carol is a webdesigner and pretty dang good one at that. her website is

Dead Link Removed

The link says it all.

There are quite a few tools out there like simpleviewer. The upside is that it is simple to do, but the downside is that your website starts looking like everyone elses. Do a search for them.

Patrick

Edit-
I just looked at the Simpleviewer website, and if you have Flash installed on your computer, it is fully customizable if you purchase the pro version. This might be a good simple way to do a site in Flash.

 

[jd callow]

Do you want a site that looks like something that is already out there or do you want a site that will fit a specific need and andy you aren't sure what it will look like or how it will work? If its the former, look to see how it was made and choose the tool accordingly. A front page site will often have a meta tag that says something like: <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 5.0"> Other tools will also use this same tag where content = is the name of the application.
Dreamweaver developed sites will have dreamweaver scripts which tend to be named like this: function MM_rest of the function name()
Flash sites will use an embed tag, but the best will use something called SWFobject which is a bit of javascript that manages most of the failings of the embed tag, flash plugins and browser incompatibilities. It also makes passing variables to the flash file easier (google ‘swfobject’)

If you are going to learn flash the learning curve is much steeper, you'll still need to learn some html and actionscript is a close relative of javascript.

Flash has a good many short comings (SEO, and maintenance being two large drawbacks) and good many upsides (its flashy and works well in most instances in most browsers), and it is probably easier to learn than xhtml, css and javascript which is what you'd need to learn to do the same thing without it. On the flip side creating an elegant site without the bells and whistles will be easier to learn and do than either flash or a full blown dynamic site.

If you have an agenda or a purpose to your site you may be betters served by choosing the tool and format that will best meet your goals.

 

[ijsbeer]

Hi
I've built some websites for my own purpose all in basic html with a few programes. My main programming tool is Quanta but that only runs on a Linux machine. It's like dreamweaver and html kithttp://www.htmlkit.com/. The goodness about these programs is that they let you work in the code. Altough the code may be a bit chinese at first html is not very difficult to understand.

My experience with programs, that are doing al the work for you, like frontpage are very bad. It's very difficult to change someting in a later stadium of the design or when the site is already operational. this is because the program is generating a lot of code, making directories and creating things like stylesheets where you didn't asked for.

My advice is look at some website's an especialy look at the code of that website. then borrow some code from that website and go fiddling on your own computer. see what happens when you chance the text, icons, etc.you/ve got to know a tiny bit of html for this way but that's easy fixed with many online howtos, tutorials etc

hope this helps a tiny bit.

 

[payral]

I used GoLive for Mac to build mine. It was quite easy and very intuitive. I didn't know anything and first pages were up at the end of a week-end.
It was very easy to add pages later and make some enhancements.

 

[Murray@uptowngallery]

I got bits & pieces of CoffeeCup software & recently changed hosting companies to one that happened to give me access to all the CoffeeCup s/w products.

I got tired of reading more and more things about how I wanted a site to look & paid for a template that we think will do what we need...the cost for something that was ready to go & came with setup instructions was obviously less than all the hours I spent screwing around trying to figure out far less complex code.

I rationalize that if I STILL want to make it look fancier, I can put my time into modifying an existing site that will already have functionality-in other words, I can resume the DIY effort at a higher level. The copyright speaks to quite a bit of modifications and omissions I don't think that's a problem.

It's not as slick as many I've seen from users here, but it made sense for me. I can also look at an integrated template that includes multiple features I struggled to integrate from scratch.

 

[kevin_c]

I've mainly use M$ Expression Web now, I did use Frontpage, whilst fairly easy to use, it seemed to have a code standard all of its own!, Expression web is much, much better and all sites I have made using it pass validation, which is more than can be said of Frontpage!!

I have also use Dreamweaver but because I never spent much time with it, never really got the hang of it properly - It does seem to be the 'industry standard' but a very complex (and expensive) piece of software.

Other options are to install 'Wordpress' on you web server (you will need php/MySQL installed etc.)
This is designed for 'blogging' but can be easily adapted to virtually anything with a small amount of work on the templates.
There are hundreds (thousands?) of different themes freely available in various formats.
You simply enter all your words and upload images through your web browser, but you need to know a little about web hosting and full access to your web server to use it.

 

[Dan Henderson]

thanks to all for your advice. My good friend Clay Harmon recommended Coda. I downloaded a trial version and worked with it for awhile, but working directly in HTML takes lots of time if you don't know the language well. Clay is lots smarter than me.

I'm a Mac guy, and as far as I can tell, FrontPage isn't made for Mac. Dreamweaver sounds nice, but I'd rather spend $400 on camera gear! (And don't really expect to have that fancy of a site, at least initially.)

A little more research led me to Sea Monkey Composer, part of the Mozilla project. It is a free program, and has a nice little WYSIWYG editor, and also lets you see and work in the underlying code. A page started coming together for me lots sooner.