Best Web Authoring Application? 140
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?"
Any recommendations for a hosting service? (Score:1)
Re:Any recommendations for a hosting service? (Score:1)
Re:Any recommendations for a hosting service? (Score:1)
Re:Any recommendations for a hosting service? (Score:2)
I've gone with DreamHost [dreamhost.com]* and I absolutely love it. 120GB/month for only $8**, with PHP, MYSQL, easy installs of wordpress and various other things I don't use, email, Jabber, etc.
Unless you absolutely need to pay under $8 a month, I've looked around quite a bit and it seems to be the cheapest and also one of the best out there.
*(disclaimer: link gets me money if you sign up with it :-)
** Can you say "overkill"? I use about 100MB of that, so I split with a friend and we each pay $4 a month.
Re:Any recommendations for a hosting service? (Score:1)
Dreamhost (Score:2)
WebGUI (Score:2, Informative)
It's open source, configurable, easy to maintain, and easy to learn.
Recommendations: (Score:5, Insightful)
As for hosts, I highly, highly recommend Resiware (http://hosting.resiware.com/ [resiware.com] Their prices can't be beat and their hosting is rock solid amazing. See the link in my sig for the lil site we have hosted with them now.
Re:Recommendations: (Score:1)
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Recommendations: (Score:4, Informative)
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!
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
It's a good thing that you started to use the product, because you'd hate it if you had to edit by hand the pages it 'creates'. My advice...
Get your self a dual lcd setup (two 17" screens and a dual video card will cost just over $500). A good CSS book like 'CSS the definitive Guide' and your choice of text editors. Code on on screen and reload in a web browser on the other. If you are doing anything besides strait HTML/JavaScript/CSS c
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
I'll look into Eclipse. Thanks!
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
re: Dreamweaver ... lots missing (Score:2)
It doesn't even have PHP syntax checking! Every other text editor does code highlighting. I need bracket highlighting and syntax checking
Re: Dreamweaver ... lots missing (Score:2)
I've had pretty good success with it. A couple of annoying behaviors that I've ben too lazy to report, but in general it's a good thing.
Just my
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
Try looking for a mozilla extension (to the html editor) -- I think it's 'cascades' but I might be wrong. Anyway, that's got a fairly nice CSS editor (handles multiple internal or external stylesheets, has pages for specifying borders, colours, images, text, etc., and will still allow you to use properties that it doesn't know about.
Obviously I wouldn't recommend
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
Joking aside though, we've found that making them code things by hand gives a better understanding of how stuff actually works. We used frontpage a little while back, and found that the students were lacking a very basic understanding of how web stuff worked. We'd get kids coming in asking things like "where are my pictures?" and you'd ask if they uploaded them and their answer would be "why? they're right on the screen there"
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
Who the hell wants to see:
in their code. The text editor in DW is okay, but if all you need is a text editor, install Homesite + off the CD instead. Better editor with a much lighter footprint. DW can consume as much ram as Photoshop at times.
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
Re:Recommendations: (Score:3, Interesting)
I know some good people swear by it, but the thing that makes me crazy about apps like Dreamweaver and GoLive is that a lot of alleged designers use them as an excuse to remain ignorant of the underlying technology.
When I asked one designer to clean up her voluminous and chaotic markup and to fix the browser-related issues I had noticed, she told me that she was "a web designer, not a web programmer", and that she didn't really understand HTML and CSS so well. I rolled
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Recommendations: (Score:4, Interesting)
I say: if you're going for standards compliance, at this point, you almost *have* to hand-code your pages. If you're running Windows, go for TopStyle [bradsoft.com]. It includes HTML Tidy integration and a number of other features.
The problem is, if you're doing more than simple HTML -- and you plan to keep it updated by hand -- these days, Dreamweaver and similar products just boil down to fancy text editors.
Their CSS features are far slower than simply hand-coding the tags, unlike if you were doing this in 1996, where bold and italic and colors would cut it. Dreamweaver, for example, seems to have a horrid understanding of CSS and XHTML, that is to say, you can hand-code, or you can use its "features", but don't plan on both, it's a headache.
I use to use Fireworks for a lot of "automated" web graphics, now I hand-code everything and use Fireworks for the design elements, but no table-based graphics. Web authoring has become so, well, complex -- it's not just HTML any more -- that no product made for the Old Web really cuts it any more than notepad. I'd die to have a program like Fireworks that would export my raw graphics as properly coded CSS, that compiled layers into divs properly, and that -- say I used a rounded corner with 75% transparency -- would write out the CSS3 tags for corners and opacity and have the code degrade properly for browsers that don't support it. Unfortunately, this requires more of a web-document compiler than generator, something more intelligent, that just doesn't exist right now. But someday.
Re:Recommendations: tidy?? (Score:2)
With JEdit I get suggestions from tidy everytime I save a file.
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
@include header.php
html markup goes here
@include footer.php
header.php would include a css stylesheet and draw the top menu and do the stuff. footer.php would draw the side/bottom menu and end the html document
Re:Recommendations: (Score:2)
Resiware (Score:2)
web authoring system (Score:2)
Re:web authoring system (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:web authoring system (Score:1)
I'm sure that was just an uneducated low-blow/joke, but really ASP.NET and C# are very nice to work with and can easily be run on *nix with Mono.
Applications (Score:2, Insightful)
If you prefer something prettier, you can try Dreamweaver [macromedia.com].
I believe there are trials of both available.
About your .sig (Score:2)
NVU (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:NVU (Score:2)
Re:NVU (Score:2)
Re:NVU (Score:2)
vim (Score:2)
So, get a content management system, and build your XHTML and CSS by hand. If you want, you can then use a web-based
Re:vim (Score:2)
it's not like (x)?html isn't human readable guys
Re:vim (Score:2)
Because lots of ordinary people want to maintain web sites, and for ordinary people XHTML and CSS are a bit beyond them.
I wouldn't have recommended hand-coding with vim for an ordinary person, but the guy specifically said he's a programmer, so...
Re:vim (Score:2)
Why not an OSS CMS? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why not try an Open Source Content Management System like Plone [plone.org] or Mambo [mamboserver.com]? Being a technical guy you will probably find that the only way to produce a good looking site is to do it by hand, learning the intricacies of HTML/CSS and latest graphics tricks, and that's a lot more work than meets the eye. That's why those things are nice - they give you a more or less professional look to start with.
Oh, and for hosting I recommend OpenHosting [openhosting.com], of course!
Re:Why not an OSS CMS? (Score:2, Interesting)
Mambo is a good LAMP solution.
Plone require Zope, but once you get past that, a very good solution as well. Actually for that matter, I think AngelineCMS has the Plone Look and Feel, and its a LAMP CMS. But for that matter, just do a Wiki, like MediaWiki the project that runs WikiPedia.
Re:Why not an OSS CMS? (Score:2)
Re:Why not an OSS CMS? (Score:3, Insightful)
But I don't object to making them read the manual of such programs while they are thinking about which one to buy.
Re:Why not an OSS CMS? (Score:2)
Drupal is the base for spreadfirefox.com as well as many other sites. It's a great base from which to build many th
Choices some good , some not so good. (Score:3, Informative)
http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/ [openoffice.nl]
http://www.nvu.com/ [nvu.com]
http://www.eclipse.org/ [eclipse.org]
http://quanta.kdewebdev.org/ [kdewebdev.org]
Re:Choices some good , some not so good. (Score:1)
Do your work outside of a box (Score:3, Interesting)
After that, what I usually do is take a piece of paper and draw out your initial ideas and from there, use a trial version of Dreamweaver to codify your design. Then save it as a template and purchase a copy of Macromedia's Contribute to make pages and keep them up-to-date.
If coding by hand's more your style (it is for me), I'd still highly recommend using Contribute to keep your pages up-to-date. It's easy to use and (more importantly) is hard to royally screw up things with.
For inspiration, look at sites you like, but realize that flashy isn't necessarily the best user experience.
Good Luck.
best tool I've ever used for web development (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:best tool I've ever used for web development (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re:best tool I've ever used for web development (Score:2)
Re:best tool I've ever used for web development (Score:2)
Re:best tool I've ever used for web development (Score:2)
Unlike you, the post you responded to did not make disparaging remarks about someone else's opinion. Perhaps in the future you should remember that different people have different views of the various tools available, and that isn't a bad thing. You like Dreamweaver and Eclip
Re:best tool I've ever used for web development (Score:2)
Have you ever seen someone who calls people "ghey" (with whatever spelling) who wasn't that insecure?
I've got two words for you... (Score:1, Insightful)
"Build with Notepad" is so 1996 (Score:1, Insightful)
It depends... (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Drupal (Score:3, Informative)
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:
Re:Drupal (Score:2)
Re:Drupal (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Drupal (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:Drupal (Score:2)
My Reccomendations (Score:4, Insightful)
- SSH, FTP, PHP, ASP, IMAP/POP/SMTP, 10 gigs bw, cheap
Editing - emacs, tidy
- no more powerful editor out there
- you already said you weren't scared;
we'll see if you should be
- use tidy to clean your markup
Language
- Do all you new pages in XHMTL 1.0 Strict and
style them with CSS2.
- Server-side script in PHP.
- Avoid client-side scripts.
Browser
- Get Firefox.
- Test in IE and Firefox.
- VALIDATE!!! validator.w3.org
- my 2 cents
Re:My Reccomendations (Score:2)
I would avoid PHP for server sides scripts. Python is a much nicer language. Ruby on Rails gets a lot of good press from programmers I tend to trust. (I have never used Ruby) PHP is just painful. It works and has support for some of the things you need, but it falls down quick if you want a nice language.
Personal opinion, of course, but I have come to hate PHP. I think you will too, so I recommend you stay away, or at least evaluate the alternatives first.
Re:My Reccomendations (Score:2)
Client side scripts aren't bad provided their loss doesn't hamper the site. For instance, input validation prior to submission to the server saves time and your bandwidth, even though you should be checking at the server as well.
As for browsers, validate in Opera, Safari and Konqueror if you c
Linux web authoring app? Quanta! (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I use Quanta Plus (http://quanta.kdewebdev.org/ [kdewebdev.org]).
It's an excellent environment once you get it configured the way you like it. It has four MDI modes (like GIMP's every-window-for-itself, or all in one window, and different styles, etc), it has a colour picker (which sooo many web authoring apps lack), it supports dozens and dozens of syntaxes (scripting, programming, markup, etc.) and it's excellent in terms of project organization.
It's made for KDE, though. So you might have to get a few dependencies here and there (- understatement if you don't run KDE). But I feel it's worth it (albeit I DO run KDE).
I use is solely for source editing, but it also has a visual editor. I don't know how competent the visual editor is, but the source editor is excellent. It has autocomplete and all that jazz.
I never really got into vi and emacs and all that, but I think this is much better for the task at hand.
- shazow
Re:Linux web authoring app? Bluefish (Score:2)
Cat got your tongue? (something important seems t (Score:2, Informative)
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
Re: Cat got your tongue? (something important seem (Score:5, Funny)
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>
<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">>
<META NAME="ProgId" CONTENT="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
Response to vbrtrmn
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</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="BLACK" LINK="BLUE" VLINK="RED">
<DIV CLASS="slashdotresponse">
<DIV CLASS="quote">
& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;
<FONT NAME="Arial" SIZE="12pt">
<I>
<FONT NAME="Arial" SIZE="12pt">
Since you don't know, DON'T USE FRONTPAGE!!!
</I>
</FONT>
& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;
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<P CLASS="response">
& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;
Why not?
& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;
</P<
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</DIV>
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</HTML>
Dreamweaver + Interakt (Score:1)
I use Dreamweaver, then I immediatly installed Impakt (interakt.ro.)
It's not free by any stretch, but it lets me create PHP websites in record time. Spend your time tweaking your styles and layouts, not calculating tr's/td's by hand.
It uses ADODB, so the PHP that it generates can be used on just about any database. But to get you started, MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL, Post
Convert already (Score:1)
IANPWD (I am not a professional web developer), but I see no reason not to use Emacs. For everything. Start out by making it your start-up shell, and go from there.
Geeklog (Score:3, Informative)
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.
Re:Geeklog (Score:2)
Does anyone have suggestions?
Re:Geeklog (Score:2)
Thumbs down to DreamWeaver MX (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm primarity a C++ application developer who one in a while is tasked with making a website (or rather the frontend to a application I'm developing). Having zero graphic design skills, I tried Dreamweaver.
At first I loved it for its WYSIWYG capabilty; the code it produces is relatively clean. For a while it was great. Then I started doing more complex CSS stuff, like floating divs, etc. That's where Dreamweaver fa
How about two? (Score:3, Informative)
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.
VI / Emacs only way to go (Score:2)
Re:VI / Emacs only way to go (Score:2)
Generally, I'll use NVu to rough out a page, then switch to TopStyle to work out how I want the CSS to work, do the bulk of the coding in Emacs, then back to TopStyle to polish up the CSS. So far, I haven't found an equal to TopStyle for CSS. Especially the immediate feedback. NVu's CSS is painfully modal by
Quanta Plus (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't have any problems maintaining source formatting either, and will assist in the generation of XHTML compliant code.
The developers are working on making Quanta Plus a Dreamweaver killer and at the moment, I think it's one of the best Linux applications going.
CMS: Mambo (Score:1)
My Two Cents (Score:2)
I'm tired of using non-standard tags and I'm also tired of making webpages with VI so I've started using Nvu. It's a true WYSIWYG editor but since it's not production-grade yet I run the pages through HTML Tidy to clean up the excessive tags and markups that might get left behind in Nvu.
It has a few nice tools and since it's Gecko-based it renders in Firefox exactly like it does in the editor.
For my javascript and php work I try really hard to use
UML/VPS recommendations? (Score:2)
Any recommendations?
Thanks!
Frontpage w/ InfoStructure (Score:1)
vim+web dev extensions for firefox (Score:1)
as for hosting, i use www.dailyrazor.net and they're really good. their support is amazing, people will respond to your emails at all hours of the night and on weekends, and they go the extra mile to figure out problems (even if they're not their own - they helped me find a problem with hibernate). my site(s) are all hosted from them, you can see them at www.terrbear.org.
good luck!
AVOID MANAGED.COM (Score:2)
I've never had such downtime, or such aweful support than my couple months using managed.com
Durring my time there, our leased server was down more than up, we got ignored for days on end, and lost all the data we had on the server. No chance ever for backups, since the machien was never up.
If ylou need further proof, google it up. I am not alone in my pain.
Pay someone (Score:2)
Seriously it's better to pay someone to do this. I'm a developer too and I have even done serious web-site development in the past. It is tempting to do it yourself. However, it's so much easier and nicer just to pay someone else that actually spends a lot of time caring about what a site should look like, using modern design, and testing on all platfor
money or no? (Score:2)
If you're doing more or less HTML/JavaScript and some light PHP/JSP/ASP/CF/whatever it depends on how much money you want to spend.
If you don't want to spend any money check these out [sourceforge.net].
If you want to spend money I recommend Dreamweaver [macromedia.com] if you don't want to know what's going on or HomeSite [macromedia.com] if you do want to know what's going on.
GoLive (Score:1)
http://www.adobe.com/products/golive/main.html [adobe.com]
Choices... (Score:2, Informative)
For straight-up hand editing I use SubEthaEdit, which is a really clev
My opinion (Score:2, Insightful)
I taught a 13 year old how to code websites by hand. We got through basic HTML in a few weeks, and he wasn't having any serious problems. He was able to use tables and organize his layout in a clean and efficient manner - We didn't have time to tackle CSS and standards compliance, but
wysiwyg's and text editors (Score:2, Informative)
Two Apps and Two Extentions (Score:2)
Mozilla (the firefox kind)
Dev Edge Sidebar [lachy.id.au] Personally, I don't wysiwyg. Code is simply too bulky. Better to code the hard way. You will really know how to code that way anyhow. Throw in Mozilla Web Developer ext and you are laughing
web host (Score:2)
The support is great, i once emailed them asking if it would be possible to install mod_ruby and they emailed back very soon after telling me its installed and i just have to log in and enable it.
Dreamweaver; if you want flexibiltiy (Score:2)
As with other programs Dreamweaver also has an integrated ftp function and al