I’m building a website, and I am in need of some recommendations for hosting/editing/management services. The site will mostly just contain things I write that some people will want to read, with perhaps the ability to send me questions or subscribe to an email newsletter.
I want an all-in-one solution that provides hosting along with on-line editing tools so I can add and change content myself, without having to send it to anyone to do for me. I don’t need fancy graphics, video or other hoopla. I don’t want to learn programming languages either. I might want to add links to other places (eg, sponsors).
Get yourself some web authoring software like Adobe GoLive or MS Frontpage and it is quite easy to do your own authoring and updating. Then find someone to do webhosting for you, which it sounds like could be very inexpensive for your needs (included in your AOL account or $50 a year at .MAC). etc. and go for it.
It is really a piece of cake if you don’t need to conduct business, and even then it is not impossible if you have any computer skills.
I’ve been warned off of Frontpage and the like since I’ve been told it’s not as easy as it sounds. I might be naive, but I want something about as complicated to use as Word. Julian don’t wanna learn no html.
I have been using Dreamweaver MX for my web site. I do all of the stuff on the site myself, so it’s nothing too fancy. It could be a lot better if I put it in the hands of an expert, but that costs money
I got the software, bought a $30 how to book on Dreamweaver and self taught myself.
I set up a website for my kids’ swimteam using Frontpage about 2 years ago. www.ypacswimming.org I was a total web novice when I started and I did not find the basic process of setting up a site or creating and maintaining it with Frontpage to be hard at all. I did a lot of research before I got started and it seems to me that to the extent there were beefs against Frontpage, they came from professionals who were doing very sophisticated things, particularly with graphics. I’m only using about 5% of the abilities of Frontpage but I find it works great and is easy to use for what I am doing.
The basics of getting stuff up on the web are pretty easy. If you want to get text up on the web Frontpage will be easy to use. Once you have your site set up, to get a link Word document up on the web or to put the text up as a web page takes literally 30 seconds and only about 3 mouse clicks.
Our site is hosted by Thinkhost - www.thinkhost.com We pay $14.95 per month. I can’t remember how I found them but our site has been up for 2 years and we’ve had no problems.
Maintaining a site is very easy (unless its Amazon.com or something IMO the only reason to hire a pro is if you are looking for a very professional graphics look, particularly if you are trying to sell something. Otherwise, I found doing it myself to be easy and a lot of fun.
I use Front Page to build my sites. Front page is very easy to learn and does some pretty nice stuff. For hosting I use a place called Godaddy http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/default.asp?e=com. Godaddy is cheap and pretty reliable. Check out www.triteamsw.com
In my experience, FrontPage is usually the easiest for novices/non-techies to use, because you can just type in your text and drop in images. I use Dreamweaver MX/2004 now, and while it is a much more powerful tool for web page editing and site management, I think it is also a lot more difficult to use.
As a server-side coder, I do most of my work at the code level(because much of my work is server executed Java or JSP that generates HTML) but think that either FrontPage or Dreamweaver will serve your needs.
Assuming that you have hosting taken care of with a service provider, just point Dreamweaver at your space and you can do your work, then upload changes whenever you want with the click of a button. (FrontPage is probably the same, but I haven’t used it in a couple of years.)
