James Simpson asked:


There are a number of applications out there that allow you to design websites using WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors. We’re going to look at the best web design software that falls into this category. We’ll also look at the benefits of using such software to help you decide whether or not it’s right for you.

The principle behind WYSIWYG editors is that whatever you see on the page is what you’ll get when your website is published. Basically it gives you an interface where you can build your website exactly how you want it to look when people visit it online.

The most popular web design software packages are Dreamweaver, FrontPage and XSitePro. Adobe Dreamweaver is the professional choice due to its massive range of features and ability to create dynamic websites. The downside being it’s difficult to pick up and use ‘out of the box’ and requires a lot of hours to learn just the basics, especially if you’re new to web design. It’s also expensive to buy.

Microsoft’s FrontPage has a lot of features but often adds needless code to the pages it creates. This can increase page loading times, especially for those who still access the internet using a dial-up connection. It’s not as user-friendly as Dreamweaver and pushes you in the direction of using Microsoft server technologies to build dynamic sites which won’t suit everyone’s needs. On the plus side, FrontPage costs less than Dreamweaver and is slightly easier to learn.

The third and final WYSIWYG web design software we’re going to look at is XSitePro from Intellimon Ltd. This is a relatively new application that has been developed with the novice or internet marketer in mind.

Because the majority of features within Dreamweaver and FrontPage won’t be used by most users, XSitePro has done away with them and left only the tools that novice-to-intermediate web designers need. It’s resulted in an easy-to-use application that can be picked up and used by just about anybody.

The downside to XSitePro is that it’s more difficult to create dynamic sites and has done away with the look and feel of traditional WYSIWYG website software. So if you’re used to working with Dreamweaver or FrontPage then you might find XSitePro hard to get used to.

When it comes to web design software, a WYSIWYG editor is really the only way to go. It makes production time far quicker, but you need to start with the right software.

If you’re a professional web designer and you want to create cutting-edge websites using the latest technologies then without a doubt you need to use Adobe Dreamweaver. It’s amazingly powerful and automates a lot of the common tasks associated with web design.

If you’re not after something quite as feature-packed as Dreamweaver and you’re a fan of Microsoft technologies and you’d like to use them on the web, then FrontPage might be for you. Just don’t go creating large pages as they could take an age to load!

If you’re new to web design or you’d like to get something that doesn’t have the learning time of Dreamweaver or FrontPage then XSitePro is for you. It’s quick to learn, easy to use and can produce truly beautiful sites very quickly. And like Dreamweaver, it automates a lot of the common tasks associated with web design.

Picking the right WYSIWYG web design software is essential to make sure you find web design fun and interesting and not a chore. You should choose based on your skill level and exactly what you want to achieve. That will give you the results you want and will make building websites something you can enjoy for years to come.

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Rip Savage asked:


In this tutorial I will introduce the concept of modular design of web templates. This is a way to create easily adaptable and maintainable web templates from simple ones right up to the most complex.

A website template is a framework for a website containing the code for web pages, graphic elements and a styling template. Most people think of a template in terms of it’s visual appearance but this is really the theme.

The two main parts of a template are the content management code and the theme. These should be kept separate so that the theme can easily be changed without affecting the structure. For example, the styles should be defined in an external style sheet and not embedded in the HTML code of the pages.

The structure of a website will be defined by a set of templates. It is good practise to make the templates modular rather than having page templates containing all the code for each page. This allows site-wide changes to be easily applied. For example, the footer may be mostly identical between pages.

We might divide a page template into a header, content, sidebar and footer where these are in separate files. The content will change most between pages, so rather than having a content file, we include the content into a page file which pulls in the individual template files and defines the unique features of that page.

The unique features of a page will be the title, description and article content. We can define these at the start of the page template with say PHP code to set the value of variables that are used by the other templates such as the header template. Then we assemble the page by including the required templates and inserting the content.

If we directly insert the content, we will create a new page template for each page of the site. But this is fine since we are not duplicating the header, footer and sidebar.

To reduce the number of page templates, we can store our content in a database and use a page ID to identify which page content to insert. This ID is usually appended to our URLs of the website. If we do this, we are creating what is known as a Content Management System (CMS).

Where the theme is likely to be changed often or people are encouraged to design new themes, a separate directory can be created to hold the various themes. A read me file could be included to credit the designer, or this information could be added to the start of the style sheet as a comment section.

For this to work, we now need to create master page templates that pull in the templates from the current theme. The master page templates will power the site. The code that these templates use is best kept in separate files in say an includes directory.

In summary I have covered the concepts of modular website template creation from the simple to a complex CMS.

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Elija James asked:


Designing a good website takes a lot of effort on the designer’s end especially if the web designer is working alone. If you don’t have these skills, the next best thing would be to ask a professional web designer to do it, but that designer could charge you a fortune depending on the size of the project.

Those that don’t want to go that route end up looking for tools that the professionals use so that they can become professionals as well. The one major tool that is used is Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 and everyone knows how expensive that product is. Fortunately there are some cheap website design software options so you can create your own websites using an aid that doesn’t cost you very much. The best thing about these programs is that they can all be tried for free before buying.

Microsoft Expression Web 2

Microsoft’s successor to the popular Microsoft FrontPage costs roughly $300 which may seem like a lot, but it is $100 cheaper than Adobe Dreamweaver. For a fully-featured web design software that rivals Dreamweaver, this is not a bad choice and deserves to be one of the cheap website design software.

CoffeeCup HTML Editor 2008

CoffeeCup HTML Editor is a much cheaper option priced at $49 and can be downloaded rather quickly totaling just 30 MB. This cheap website design software may not have many templates and tools to make speedy professional designs, but it does fall under the category of WYSIWYG website editors and it does have a code editor for advanced designers that enjoy coding in HTML. Project management is supported as well so it should be capable of handling big website projects.

Xara Web Designer

Xara Web Designer is another $49 cheap website design software that takes an entirely different approach to designing website pages. This software lets you freely create mockups of your website that is smart enough to export your mockup and generate all the necessary HTML code to create a webpage that looks like the one you drew. The results aren’t always accurate, but Xara Web Designer remains as one of the more flexible tools to use that allows speedy website creation. There are also plenty of professional templates that you can work with.

Older Adobe Dreamweaver Versions

Remember that Adobe Dreamweaver started way back when former company Macromedia had control of the product. In fact, Adobe has released an older Dreamweaver version which you might still find for sale at cheaper prices. There is a good chance that you won’t need the CS4 features as the earlier CS3 version and even the Macromedia Dreamweaver 8 version had plenty of tools that were powerful enough to create fantastic websites.

You are not by any means forced to buy any expensive software as there are cheap website design software alternatives around along with some free website design software. Be sure to evaluate these programs first and see if they perfectly fit your website designing needs.

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Mike asked:


Im starting my own company using a custom made CMS (Content Management System) designed by me, it allows a 5 page website, what should I charge for a 5 page basic website with a CMS?

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soph3gurl asked:


I’m currently in a Web Design class and I have to make a website. I was wondering how to create a layout and a logo using macromedia fireworks/flash, etc. To create a logo, do you need an image? Help me, I have no idea what I am doing.

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mixer28 asked:

www.gsinc.co.uk 6 mistakes ECommerce businesses make and how to fix them. SEO Internet Marketing tutorial by Gareth Davies GSINC Ltd. For more ECommerce tips and videos visit www.gsinc.co.uk

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Chuck Brown asked:


Designing and publishing a website that you’re proud of is not as hard as you may think. Especially nowadays, because there is software available that automates much of the work that used to be relegated to the webmaster (which is you!).

It used to be that in order to build a website from scratch, you had to know HTML, or “Hyper Text Markup Language.” And truth be told, you are still better off knowing at least the basics of HTML. Nevertheless, it’s not required. Especially if you find easy web design software that takes care of this for you. Now, every single HTML editor on the planet now features a “WYSIWYG” interface. (What You See Is What You Get.) So, theoretically, you shouldn’t have to know the first thing about HTML.

The reality, however, is that not all HTML editors (or “web design software”) does WYSIWYG well. Little annoying problems tend to crop up. For example, say you typed the following sentence using your handy HTML editor:

“Discover the best places to SCUBA dive in the Cayman Islands.” You want “best places” to be italicized and “Cayman Islands” to be bolded, as shown. The way it’s supposed to work is this:

Behind the scenes, your HTML editor is supposed to ‘type’ the phrase as such: Discover the < I >best places< /I > to SCUBA dive in the < B >Cayman Islands< /B >. (I put extra spaces between the tags for this example, in order to keep the article publishing software from parsing it like normal HTML.)

But instead, this is what you get: “Discover the best places to SCUBA dive in the Cayman Islands.” Even though you highlighted the words “best places” and clicked the little graphical icon on your html editor’s toolbar that represented italics, your phrase comes out non-italicized. And/or your bolded words are not bolded.

Well, in this instance, you’d have to go to the “Source View” of your HTML editor and manually insert the above HTML tags to make these things happen. This is a very annoying problem with too many popular web design software titles nowadays.

Another problem that will have you pulling your hair out, is seeing a totally different result in the web browser than you see in your HTML editor window. For example, your formatting changes are (apparently) taking effect as you type–just as it should (remember it’s supposed to be WYSIWYG)…

However, they don’t show up when you publish the page to the internet! I don’t know why, but this problem still plagues most web design software.

Fortunately, there are a few (very few) shining stars that work for cheap, while doing all the other things to make your website pretty and (if you’re so inclined) draw customers.

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Jeffrey Norris asked:


If you’re marketing online, you’ll no doubt need at least one site, if not now, at least in the near future. Most marketers actually have the need for multiple sites eventually. Also, unless you already know HTML, CSS, PHP and even some of the other programming languages, you’ll find that having to learn it all is a lot to take on to your already busy marketing schedule.

I’ve found that instead of having to learn to build Websites manually (coding), there’s a much better way. A good WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Web design software program is one of the best investments the online business person can make. Instead of having to spend countless hours learning to program, or spending a great deal of money every time that you need a site built, or updated, a good point and click WYSIWYG program is worth it’s price many times over.

One of the most popular offerings is Adobe’s Dreamweaver, and is the choice of many professional Webmasters. However, it is a relatively expensive piece of software, and does have a steep learning curve. It is a very capable package that has been around for many years, and being manufactured by Adobe has also added to it’s great popularity.

However, if you’re wanting something that is probably a little more geared for the affiliate marketer or anyone needing to create full-featured, easily built Websites, there’s another fantastic software package called XsitePro, now in version 2. It’s a very robust program that includes practically any option that the user could want or need. Whether you’re an Internet Marketer needing sales pages or full content niche sites, a hobby user, someone needing a personal Website, or a professional needing to build a full blown corporate site, this software can do the job at hand. XsitePro2 is very reasonably priced, but yet has everything you could possibly want.

Some of the features include…automated Amazon and AdSense ads, easy audio and video insertion, top-notch SEO analysis, a project management function that allows the user to have multiple projects with each having multiple Websites, and hundreds of available templates allowing the user to change the look and feel of a site in just seconds. These are just a small sample of the many wonderful capabilities of XsitePro2.

For the price, features, ease of use and versatility, XsitePro2 is at the top of the heap when it comes to WYSIWYG Web Design Software programs.

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NacMac asked:


I have html files for a website that I was asked to edit. **What software should I use?** Nothing seems to make them open correctly? And what are some good tutorials online that I can use?

All the html information files are scattered and I am having trouble seeing how they are linked and what goes where!

Any help and advice? Thanks!!

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nationalwebdesign asked:

Making a web site using a Content Management System. A step-by-step web design tutorial using the worlds favorite database driven web design system, Joomla! [Original Video created by National Web Design]

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