If I wanted to design a very basic web site i.e. a home page with links to perhaps four or five pages of info & pics,what software is there available? It would have to be WYSIWYG type as we have no expertise in proper design (nor to be honest much interest) and possibly free!

Suggestions gratefully accepted.

TIA

I created mine using Outlook Express! - and it works a treat, mind you it's just a single long scrolling page with links rather than separate pages. Total website cost for two years = peanuts. You need someone to host it for you, though.

cap 'n chris said:

I created mine using Outlook Express! - and it works a treat, mind you it's just a single long scrolling page with links rather than separate pages. Total website cost for two years = peanuts. You need someone to host it for you, though.

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Interesting. And the URL would be?

If you're prepared to learn some basic HTML (which is very easy), then you could just write your site using notepad and test it in your normal browser.

Otherwise I'd recommend getting the 30 day trial of Dreamweaver and using that.

Steer clear of Microsoft stuff like Frontpage or Word imho....

Steer clear of Microsoft stuff like Frontpage or Word imho....

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Frontpage seems ok - but I don't use wysiwyg side of it.. As for Word - god NOOO...

As for others - I've heard that Nvu and Coffee Cup are ok for that kind of thing but have no personal experience with them.

Word - no no noooo
frontpage is fine for knocking up the structure, you tweek the html after.

Did you get sorted with some software Stu?

Look out on PC mags for software, and also stuff to dogger-up your site design, such as flash etc.

Bravenet www.bravenet.com do loads of free stuff for webdesigners might be worth looking at.

If your wanting to put small pics on your website and cant be ar*ed to resize them all manually, use EZ thumbnailer by www.fookes.com -its a free download

Good Luck!!!

ps u probably get free webspace from your isp

Cheers dear's. Got that web design stuff rom the DVD. It is very easy isn't it, but not stupid easy, allows you to do a bit of dabbling. Ta

Stu,

You should also be able to find many page templates for the type of site you are planning on the web.


Dave H: Site www.cavesurveys.com is all database driven (including the multilingual aspects) and creates the pages on the fly using serverside Perl scripts. I just use a normal text editor for all of this (although Cyrillic fonts are a pain to input, and consequently it's taking me ages to get the Russian translation just right) The actual viewer I wrote in Java, as is the back end survey compressor and encryptor (ported from my C++ original as an exercise)
Sad software/hardware geek

Oops! The site (www.cavesurveys.com) search doesn't work quite right in Firefox at the moment.

Either look for a particular area using the graphical option from the home page or do the search with IE. You'll find quite a few for the Mendips (the Fairy Cave Quarry survey compresses down to 19K - compare that to a GIF or JPEG! The lack of survey quality is intentional to force you to contact the publisher to get the real thing.) - and some for Gozo and Thailand.

Try IE and do a search - select "Include only those with surveys" and "Search caves" (no need to enter a name), press the search button and all the surveys on the site should be listed. Clicking one should allow the survey to be displayed (along with a link to the publisher)