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Creating Your
Web Site with an HTML Editor
In order to create
your site, you will need some way to code the pages. You
can either hire someone to make your pages or learn to make
them yourself. If you hire someone, it can get pretty expensive.
This route is probably fine for a person with an offline
business and who only has a small, infrequently updated
web site. But if you plan to make a living from your web
sites, it is cheaper and faster to learn how to code your
web pages yourself.
Some people like
to learn HTML and make their web pages with hand-coded HTML.
But these are usually hard core programmer types. Most people
will use a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor
to create their HTML code. For most of us, using an editor
is much faster than hand coding and makes the code less
error prone. When you use an editor, you just type in the
words you want to appear on your page like you were using
word processing software, and the WYSIWYG editor generates
the actually HTML code for you "behind the scenes".
Some of the more
popular WYSIWYG editors are:
1. Dreamweaver
from Macromedia. Dreamweaver is probably the most commonly
used WYSIWYG editor by most web designers. It is relatively
easy to use and learn. I learned Dreamweaver from a one
day class at a local college. The downside is the retail
cost at around $400. If you take a college course in Dreamweaver,
you may be able to purchase it at a deeply discounted student
price.
2. Frontpage
by Microsoft - Front page is probably the most popular
WYSIWYG editor who have hobby and home page sites. At a
cost of around $200, it is significantly less than Dreamweaver
and may be a good choice for those of you just starting
out with making web sites. While many professional web designers
would stick their noses up at Frontpage, I've seen some
very well ranked web sites created with it. SO it is certainly
possible to make a very popular and well ranked web site
with this software.
One caution is
that with Frontpage there are special scripts called extensions
you can use to add extra features hit such as counters,
, e-mail processing, data collection and database processing.
However not all web hosts support these extensions. So if
you do use Frontpage extensions, be sure to check with your
web host to make sure they provide the proper support. One
of my relatives spent a lot of time making a site with Frontpage
and using all of the extensions, only to find out that the
extensions were not usable with the free hosting account
he got from his ISP.
3. Mozilla's
Composer - this is actually a pretty good HTML editor
and the best part about it is that it is free to download.
I learned how to use Composer from a community college course
on creating and designing web pages. If you are short on
time and money to start up your web business, it is possible
to learn composer just from the tutorial on the Mozilla
site.
4. Web site builders
included at hosting companies. Some hosting companies will,
for an extra monthly charge, include a user friendly WYSIWYG
web site builder suitable for novices. Usually the monthly
prices on these types of web hosting accounts are significantly
higher than for more "bare bones" web hosting.
The plus with this option is that technical help may be
available for these web site builders by the same staff
that supports your web hosting account.
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