A little advice on website building?

[leaford]

OK, I am going to try once again to build a website of my very own. I have a domain name, and Yahoo Small business webhosting. The free web site builders they offer are Site Solution and Site Builder, both of which look too limited. They also allow you to use FrontPage, which isn't free, and looks too complicated. They also have blogs, Movable Type and Word Press, and I would like to include a blog on my site, but they don't seem to have non-blog pages, so they're out.

So, can anyone suggest a good, free site building software? Doesn't have to be fancy. I want to be able to set up columns, tables, links to other pages, banners, etc where I want, not have to follow a template, but I want a simple interface for doing the layout that doesn't require me to know how the mechanics work.

 

[Any]

Hi leaford,

First, you will need to learn a bit of html.

W3Schools Online Web Tutorials is a great place to start.
You can also watch a youtube video that I recommend YouTube - Basic HTML and CSS Tutorial. Howto make website from scratch to get the basics down first.

I cannot recommend you a website building software but there are 2 tools that are essential in creating a website. They are:

1. Notepad++ (free): for code editing. I suggest you use this instead of any other code editing programs provided by your cPanel/hosting.

2. Filezilla (free): for ftp

For blog, use Wordpress. Create a directory for ex "blog" then upload it on www.yourdomain.com/blog and hyperlink that to your main page.

If you are interested in e-commerce, zencart and oscommerce are both strong programs with great support by a large community as well.

Hope this helps a little
It's alright to be overwhelmed when you're first creating a website as many others do.

 

[leaford]

I'm really hoping to avoid HTML coding. I built a horrible little website on Tripod over 10 years ago using HTML. I think I still have HTML For Dummies on my shelves somewhere.

I'm hoping for something in between templates and raw HTML, like maybe something with a tool bar of icons representing text columns, pics, videos, frames, menus, etc, that you can drag and drop where you want, then fill with content.

 

[Jaaxx]

As painful as it sounds, I'm afraid there aren't alot of drag and drop type builders out there for cheap. If I were you, I would use Joomla. Yes, you will need to start with a template, but there are zillions to choose from. Also, because it is based on PHP and not pure html it is more or less "modular." There are lots of plug-ins available and all your editing is done via web-browser.

Another more lightweight option might be using SMF (forum software, which you may or may not fully utilize) with the TinyPortal addon. TP allows you to easily arrange your frames and such in "blocks". Also, lots of plug-ins and all your articles can be written in your browser just like a regular forum post.

Good Luck!

 

[leaford]

Joomla, eh? I'll google that, thanks.