What's a good program to build websites?

I have this pipe dream of making a website to give some background information about some of the gaming crap i have laying around. What can you guys recomend for building tools?

I've used everything from Frontpage, Adobe Go Live, Director, etc, if it's out there, i've used it. Unfortunately, i haven't used it recently. The last webpage i built myself was about 2 1/2 years ago.

I'm fine with using HTML, CSS, Perl, PHP, and pretty much any programming language you can think of, but i'm looking for a WYSIWYG editor. I don't think i'll have a whole lot of time to devote to the site design, so i'm looking for something that i can use to throw a site together with. I've got the domain name, and i already have the hosting ($3.50 a month for 250,000 meg bandwidth and 5 gig of space?)

 

Dreamweaver. Easy enough to use, and pretty powerful. Avoid frontpage like the plague, unless you want to alienate all non-ie users

 

Yeah Dreamweaver is my choice, too. Powerful but pretty easy to use.

 

I'm using Frontpage right now (I'm in class), and it's hell. It's clunky, and the version we're using is buggy as can be. Half the time when I try to save something, the damn thing freezes. Don't use it.

 

Stone´s webwriter is one of the best , of what I have heard. And stones real name is Steen Hjelmstrand , and he is a dane.

 

Hot Metal Pro is very simple and effective, lets you swap between raw HTML and WISIWIG on the fly.

 

I use Visualsite Designer, and it works pretty well.

 

notepad. that is all you need (and maybe GIMP or some other graphics tool)

 

dreamweaver is simple and fast. though i find using golive is more like doing straight html code, not that i mind that. If you want most bells and whistles while having the least time to build a site, go for dreamweaver, if you want all the bells and whistles plus the kitchen sink, go for go live, or if you want total control notepad works best.

 

The tough thing about notepad is that its kind of hard to see what your result will be. I like the WYSIWYG editors, but thats just my preference. I was going to use Notepad initially, but my Mom went out and bought me an editor. It'd be rude and mean not to use it...

 

Another thing about notepad, it's hard to encode in different symbols, but that's not necessary for those only working under one language.

 

Encode in different symbols? What does that mean?

I personally used to use Notepad back in the HTML 2-4 days before the bloat craze, if I were to make a page now I still would use Notepad.

For those that need syntax highlighting, I suggest using an editor like Vi(m).

 

I found a good website for anyone coding in HTMl, it has quite a few tutorials on it,

http://www.w3schools.com/

note* they also have many other web based tutorials on it

 

I meant for the Roman Alphabet, Greek, Korean, Japanese, etc ;-)

 

I guess i should mention that i used to do web design professionally (it paid pretty well), i only ever used notepad. Unfortunately notepad isn't as quick as i would like and i don't really have the time to make anything really cool with it.

Thanks for the help folks, i wasn't sure what the latest tools were any more (am i getting old?).

 

Pace, im at a crossorads with where i want to go in my career, web design is something i find appealing, and i myself think im not half bad at it, would you suggest doing something like that?, is it worth it?

Ryan

 

I don't follow, if you have the appropriate IME, you can input characters just like a Roman, Greek, Korean or Japanese. I use Notepad all the time for unicode stuff.

 

Oh, its just whenever I did, it ended up looking something like:

uÅN‹»@Y



No problems now, since I now use Dreamweaver and Flash MX.

 

I'm not sure i'm the best person to answer that, as i left the field for two reasons. First, I got a new job. Second, i'm colorblind.

People liked my sites because they were qwerky, and at the time there was a huge boom in the internet. I could make something that stood out. The biggest problem was figuring out how much to charge people, i almost always charged too little. The best advice i can give you is to try a few sites as frelance, see how you are at sourcing new jobs, getting new clients. See how you like being told what to do by the customer. If you like it, and you think it's something you can support yourself with, then go ahead. But i wouldn't bet the whole farm on it.

The easiest way to start is to find some small business that doesn't have a site, and talk to them about building one. You should be able to offer hosting somewhere (hint, godaddy.com has cheep hosting if you can't do it yourself). The best part about covering the hosting yourself is if the client doesn't pay his bills, you can shut down the site. Otherwise it tends to be dificult to get paid sometimes.

Web design started as a way for me to make a few bucks in college, but considering how rural the area i was in, i was able to get plenty of work.

 

Thanks for the input, i was thinking about approaching a few local businesses without a site, could you if possible post some of the sites you worked on?

Regards

Ryan