[Ms. Mia]

Hi, I want to build a one to four page, not amateurish-looking site for my family's industrial business. It will be to display its history, short product list and contact info only. No shopping and relatively few photos and links. I have no experience in this area but decent general computer skills and aptitude.

I know you hear this all the time, but I really *must* confine myself to choosing THE easiest WYSIWYG with which one can still end up with a reasonably professional-looking site as long as they are creative. I don't doubt that I could learn any number of more complex methods, but this is for the sake of my mental health and relationships lol. I get obsessive and addictive about even way simpler projects than this would be. But I do want to do it myself.

So which would be easiest/require the least learning: godaddy's "WebSite Tonight" online site building tool (or similar); or one of the popular standalone free or cheap WYSIWYG editors? (i.e., NVU, WordPress, CoffeeCup. Know nothing about them but saw them mentioned a lot.) By "easy" I mean the actual design aspect -- the closer in complexity to making pretty pages with Word, the better! I don't mean other aspects such as whether everything is in one place (e.g. editing tools, templates, ftp, hosting). The site doesn't have to be really unique or cool, just not home-made looking to the average business visitor.

We already have our domain registered at godaddy, so WebSite Tonight would be a logical choice if it is good. But I found relatively few comments about it here or on the web. At the least it seems that people aren't totally wild about it, and there are apparently some bugs. Like sometimes having to make several attempts before an edit takes. But if that's the worst, and it is still one of the simplest yet nice-looking methods otherwise, I could probably deal with it. (Using an online tool in itself wouldn't be an advantage, since I'm on dialup.)

FYI, as of now I only have a "cheapware" image editing program called jpeg imager. Has worked well for resizing, cropping, color balancing etc. Handles .png & .gif also. Am hoping to get away with using that for working with the images for the site.

Thanks tons for any opinions!

[ferrija1]

Nvu is a very good free, WYSIWYG editor.

http://forums.techguy.org/digital-ph...ree-photo.html

[Ms. Mia]

Geez, did it sound like I was just asking for a recommendation on a good free WYSIWYG (like a gazillion other people I'm sure )? I wasn't... Am hoping someone who is familiar with WebSite Tonight or knows someone who is can give me an opinion on whether that is the even easier way to go...

[Ms. Mia]

...also saw something that makes it sound like nvu isn't really for working with predesigned templates, which I'm pretty sure I do want to use. (I just don't mind having to find templates myself if necessary, as long as they're compatible with whatever I end up using, if I go the standalone editor route.)

[ferrija1]

I think a standalone program would be better than WebSite Tonight, though I have never used WebSite Tonight.

Nvu, and any other HTML editors, can use templates.

[namenotfound]

I sometimes use Nvu for quick table making, but that's about all I use it for.

It's a pretty good product.

[MMJ]

I would first get a template from openwebdesign.org and modify it with nvu

[Ms. Mia]

Thank you, ok I'm going to look at Nvu and those templates right now. (Guess WebSite Tonight isn't too popular, at least here, but if anyone drops in who has used it, please do post.)

Can anyone shed some light on these Nvu comments I saw: A lot of people say that it "mangles code," but then they would also say that this wouldn't matter to someone who didn't know or want to learn coding (like me). But how can it not matter -- I'd think that if the code was mangled, the page wouldn't display right? Does it mean if I can't get something to format the way I want, and I do try going into the code to figure it out and fix it, I won't be able to?

I also saw one comment that it is "abandoned (by its primary author or something) and obsolete." But apparently it's popular so most people must not feel that way. Could it affect keeping the site compliant or anything important like that? Thanks for your input!

[MMJ]

I never really used any WYSIWYG editor so I am not sure but I really doubt Nvu can be as bad as frontpage.

What they mean is that is generated some ugly/non-valid code but that is normal, 99% of WYSIWYG editors do that.

If you are not going to edit the code than you don't really have to worry about it.

[Ms. Mia]

Thanks mmj, if I don't need to understand it that's fine for sure! Using my existing logic it just seems like incorrect code would mean incorrect site display, and/or inability to correct any mysterious formatting problems.

I'm looking at that template site now -- whooooa, lotsa goodies! I wish there were more Sort choices, like only seeing only Highest Rated in the Business category. But I sure can't complain! I *should* control myself and kick this off by picking almost any template at all to start, then cutting right to the chase with Nvu to see if I'm going to be able to use it without a nervous breakdown. But it's hard to resist looking at all 178 pages of templates first! Heh heh do you wish you could recapture the excitement of being a website virgin lol! (I shouldn't speak too soon of course! Who knows how my "first time" will go!)

[ferrija1]

OSWD also has good templates and a great search feature.

http://www.oswd.org/

[MMJ]

Not necessarily Ms. Mai.

95% of sites have non-valid code, including this site. Nothing for you to worry about.

However do not go anywhere near frontpage, that program spews out non-valid code by the bucket... especially if you're not experienced with html.

[Ms. Mia]

Wow, this is amazing! Getting even harder to control myself and just pick a card, any card, to use as my guineau pig with Nvu for now! On that note... I see links for Nvu how-to and tutorials, but so far haven't seen them available as downloads, like .pdf or something. I do hope I come across a downloadable 'manual.' For now I'll try installing the newbie "Help" extension they have at Nvu, maybe that will be enough.

Ok I better make this work, I couldn't control myself and just called my bro to tell him don't put out the "Going Out of Business" sign quite yet, maybe we will move into the current century and at least get a website up!

[Ms. Mia]

Update: I ended up using NVU (actually KompoZer, it's unofficial bug fix) and a classy pre-fab template, and the site turned out gorgeous if I do say so myself! And no way would I have had as many customization options, and future options including portability, if I had used one of the online site builder templates. SO glad I didn't. Thanks again people!

[MMJ]

Great, its nice to know that we've helped.