Best Web Authoring Application?

NotHereOrThere asks: "I want to setup a small business web site and I'm trying to choose a web authoring application. I'm a software developer, so technical complexity doesn't scare me, but I've never developed for the web other than some very simple HTML pages. My main requirements are ease of use and presentation quality. What do Slashdot readers recommend? Any recommendations for a hosting service?"

WebGUI

[Pahroza]

Check out WebGUI [plainblack.com].

It's open source, configurable, easy to maintain, and easy to learn.

Choices some good , some not so good.

[KingBahamut]

http://www.vim.org/ [vim.org]
http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/ [openoffice.nl]
http://www.nvu.com/ [nvu.com]
http://www.eclipse.org/ [eclipse.org]
http://quanta.kdewebdev.org/ [kdewebdev.org]

It depends...

[brontus3927]

If your using Windows or OS X, I would recommend Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. You can download a 30 day trial here [macromedia.com]. Also available in trial form is Studio MX which has Dreamweaver, Flash, and a suite of other Macromedia products.

Another route if you are running Windows 2000 or XP Professional is to download Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express 2005 beta 2, available for free download [microsoft.com]. MS VWDE2005 is bundled with Microsoft SQL Server Express, which is a free, stripped down version of MS SQLServer. This route may be a better idea if you are going to be building a website built on asp and SQL Server hosted on a Windows Server. Visual Web Developer Express will run on XP Home, but SQL Server Express will not. It has built in support for an Oracle DB, but not for MySQL.

Before choosing a host, decide what language you are going to script in. If you are going to use asp and/or .net you will need a Windows host. Most hosts will only offer php on linux servers.

Re:Recommendations:

[zbuffered]

I only know a few professional web developers, but they all use Dreamweaver. I took over one of their projects, so I started using it myself. I have to say, it's probably the most complete web development app out there. I've been using it for a year and have only scratched the surface of it's capabilities. It presents itself with a simple interface to begin with, and gets as complicated as you like. It's also got the best CSS editor I've ever used.

If someone knows of a better CSS editor (and by better I mean easier for newbies; I teach a class on web design to beginners), let me know!

Drupal

[tomcio.s]

http://durpal.org/ [durpal.org]

very vibrant community, many plugins, breeze to deploy and maintain.

I currently run my site on it. The initial setup and deployment took a little bit less than an hour.

http: // neversayforever [dot] homeip [dot] net /

Cat got your tongue? (something important seems t

[vbrtrmn]

Since you don't know, DON'T USE FRONTPAGE!!!

I've been using Dreamweaver since version 1.0, excellent program. I actually don't use it anymore, I hand code everything, with UltraEdit.

Web Development: Macromedia Dreamweaver
Content Management: Macromedia Contribute
XML/XSLT: XML Spy
CSS: TopStyle Pro
General Programming: UltraEdit
Language: PHP
Database: MySQL
Server: Linux/Apache

Geeklog

[molnarcs]

You might want to use some CMS - take a look at opensourcecms.org, where you can try out some.

My favorite is geeklog, which has medium complexity, and it is easy to develop your own plugins for it. It has a good user management interface, and you can do almost anything with the built in static page plugin (a misnomer, for the pages are just as dynamic as the rest), like running php scripts for instance. Also, geeklog is written with security as a priority (even though you need register globals on). An example for a geeklog site is groklaw.net - a pretty good reference, no?

My own tftpanel.hu [tftpanel.hu] runs on geeklog, as well as another site [unideb.hu] I maintain. Hosting requirements are pretty good for geeklog: mysql (if you have access to only one database, that's fine) and php support, plus works on windows as well.

There are lots of CMS out there, ranging from pivot (simple) to typo3 (overkill) - so you might look at them at opensourcecms.org before you decide.

How about two?

[wolf31o2]

Windows: Dreamweaver

Linux: Bluefish

Personally, I'm not one for WYSIWYG editors, but I've heard good things about Dreamweaver, and was impressed with it the once or twice I took it up and used it. The first time I used Bluefish, I fell in love with it. It is a fairly simple interface, and can help you once you start to learn what you're doing, without being braindead and making asinine assumptions for you, which is definitely appreciated.

Re:Drupal

[tverbeek]

Um, his link has a typo. This [drupal.org] will work better.

Choices...

[paploo]

I prefer to write all my CSS and HTML by hand when I can. I always get clean, managable code that does exactly what I want. The only problem is that as a site grows bigger and more complex, some of the commercial offerings help you to manage the intricate connections and automate the link validation for you. It is also nice to have WYSIWYG editing on occasion, usually when I can't remember how to do something I haven't done in awhile.

For straight-up hand editing I use SubEthaEdit, which is a really clever Mac OS X editor. It has a realtime updating web window that uses WebKit, so that you can see the results of your edits.

For general site management, and as a result, for a lot of my editing, I end up using GoLive. This is mostly for historical reasons: I had been using GoLive since long before Adobe bought it. Actually, the first Adobe offering of it was super buggy (never trust the first version of an acquired product, the devs usually don't know what they are doing). The latest versions seem to be stable though.

However, that all being said, most people I know seem to use DreamWeaver. I haven't bothered locating a copy to futz with since way back when, when what was to become GoLive was better, so I can't really say anything on comparisons, but I'd certainly look into DreamWeaver if I were you, since it seems to be the favorite among web devs.

wysiwyg's and text editors

[thegreatimposter]

Well, I'm not as seasoned as many who post here, and I have to admit that I used to be a dreamweaver evangelist. Although I never really enjoyed having closing tags written out for me when I type, nor do I appreciate waiting MINUTES for the application to start up, and, to be completely honest, I've never used the built in ftp software, ever. After years of Dreamweaver web development, I've switched to the much simpler Notepad++( http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm [sourceforge.net] ). It seems that as my confidence grows as a developer, the less I really need an IDE - and the more I appreciate the simple text editor with syntax highlighting. Notepad++ has every language I develop in, I highly recommend it.