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?"

Comments

Any recommendations for a hosting service?

[unleashedgamers]

http://www.strikehosting.com/ http://www.surpasshosting.com/ http://www.1and1.com/ Are all good webhosts

Re:Any recommendations for a hosting service?

[ArmonR]

I've been using HasWeb for the past year, its served my needs and never had any noticable downtime! Defintly would recommend it! (www.hasweb.com

Re:Any recommendations for a hosting service?

[unleashedgamers]

HasWeb is a company of hostdime, hostdime is the same company as surpass. (Does this make sence?)

Re:Any recommendations for a hosting service?

[dolphinling]

I've gone with DreamHost* 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?

[F1_error]

I'll second DreamHost. I've used them for years and have just loved it. Support is good, and the price is as well.

Re:Any recommendations for a hosting service?

[ArcticFlood]

1and1 is pretty good. I use it currently, and though I have a few gripes with them, it's a different story. When 1and1 was trying to get into the American webhosting market, they offered 3 years of free hosting (5GB transfer a month, 500mb space). My only complaints are that they were somewhat slow and used to send a little spam.

Re:Any recommendations for a hosting service?

[jo42]

Full rack at the NAP of the Americas

:thumbsup:

WebGUI

[Pahroza]

Check out WebGUI.

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

Recommendations:

[Southpaw018]

Are you willing to hand-code your pages? I recommend you do - it's the only way to ensure that your site is absolutely standards-compliant (get the Web Developer extension for Firefox. It's a big help). I use Notepad++ (http://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-plus) because I feel it's a nice, simple, effective editor.

As for hosts, I highly, highly recommend Resiware (http://hosting.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:

[oiarbovnb]

ummm...you don't have a sig!

Re:Recommendations:

[Southpaw018]

Errr...the link in my header. The videogamemaps.net thingy. :)

Re:Recommendations:

[captnitro]

I was going to mod you up, but I'll comment.

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. 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:

[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!

Re:Recommendations:

[MindStalker]

But are there any good applications for helping you do this. For programmers there are plenty of great applications that will help you manage your code, while still letting you hand code yourself. Do this really exist for the web? Seems like there would be a market for them.

Re:Recommendations:

[rainman_bc]

DW is such a piece of crap. The CSS support is appalling.

Who the hell wants to see: .class1 {font-size:8pt} .class2 {font-size:8pt} .class3 {font-size:8pt} .class4 {font-size:8pt;color:red} .class5 {font-size:8pt;background-color:Navy;}

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:

[rainman_bc]

Also, give Zend PHP Studio a try. I love it. Find it way better than DW, and there's Linux support for it, seeing as it's written in Java. It supports editing over ftp like DW does. The function insight is better than DW's IMO.

Re:Recommendations:

[poopdeville]

BBEdit sounds like what you're looking for.

Re:Recommendations:

[solafide]

DW is great allaround, but for CSS, I recommend TopStyle Lite. bradsoft.com. Great coloring and suggeting, and integrated preview.

DW is great for the occasional coder, but I prefer Homesite+ or Topstyle Pro for hardcore coding. TP is good for CSS too. Of course, for Linux, I like Kate. It's the only one though that doesn't have autosuggest of tags.

If you don't care about standards, MS's Script WEditor is great. Go from Word, show toolbars with We b in the name, and click the colored infinity symbol. Great program for IE development. Also has JS autosuggesting

Re:Recommendations:

[dubl-u]

Bah. I'm a huge fan of Dreamweaver.

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 my eyes so hard I had to get an doctor to unstick them for me.

My tip for designer wannabes out there: use the fancy tools like Dreamweaver to speed along things you already know how to do manually. Clothing designers understand fabric and can sew. Print designers understand typography and the arcane details of n-color presses. Web designers do not get special permission to be clueless. Indeed, given how quickly web technologies evolve compared to other media, they have a special obligation to keep on top of the tech.

Re:Recommendations:

[ericspinder]

I took over one of their projects, so I started using it myself.

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 code, I'd highly suggest using Eclipse, (RAD is even better if you don't mind paying IBM for it).

Graphic Designers often use Dreamweaver quite effectively for intial design, but Web Developers know that 2nd or 3rd generation WUSIWUG code gets really nasty.

Re:Recommendations:

[mattyrobinson69]

you might want to try quanta plus, it comes with kde on most distro's, i think that has auto tag suggestion

Re:Recommendations:

[jaredcat]

Hey it sounds like you really know what you're talking about. If you do freelance, please email me at jyaffe@jyaffeconsulting.com for some information on a XHTML compliance project. Normally I wouldn't post this as a comment, but you turned off e-mail in your slashdot user profile.

Thanks, Jared

Re:Recommendations:

[N3Roaster]

I like to hand code XHTML/CSS, but there is the big problem for any site that gets beyond a few pages: if you decide at some point to transition XHTML 3.0 or if there is some common content on all or a significant subset of pages (say, a navigation menu or contact information) that needs to change, it's a huge PITA to go back and hand tweak that (not to mention that it's highly error prone). I take care of some sites that range from about a dozen static pages up through several dozen (and growing) and what works great for me is m4. Anytime you have blocks that are repeated (possibly with content variations within those tags) several times on the same page or across several pages, define a macro to cover it. Then you just m4 macros.m4 source.m4 | uniq > destination.html (uniq is optional and requires a bit of care. It's just there for stripping out most of the extra blank lines and while there are better ways to handle that, uniq has worked well for me). This, of course, should be put into a makefile that takes care of preparing a directory with all of your pages, images, CSS, and the like ready to be uploaded. That gets you the advantages in hand written code (smaller files than GUI editors produce, markup that is still human readable and editable) and once you have the initial design of your site finished, adding new pages is much faster and less error prone. Rather than typing in or copy-pasting (both error prone) the stuff that is at the beginning of all of your files, it's just a __start_page called with an argument or two to set the document title and navigation menu status. The only potential pitfall is that apostrophes conflict with the default quoting mechanism of m4, so if you need an apostrophe inside a macro or inside an argument to a macro, you need lots of extra ugly marks ('`''`), but the impact is less than you might think from this. The method also plays nicely with PHP.

The above isn't really for everybody. I hear that programs designed for developing Web sites can address a lot of the same issues, but I've never had the patience to work with them as they don't work in the same way that I think about these sorts of things. I suppose it would appeal most to the sorts of people who use a text editor and command line tools to write application programs as opposed to those who use an IDE.

Re:Recommendations:

[zbuffered]

With synergy (see .sig) I have a six monitor setup, if you include this crappy iMac. My main box has dual 18" LCDs (HA! Had to one-up you didn't I?), one in portrait mode.

I'll look into Eclipse. Thanks!

Re:Recommendations:

[mattyrobinson69]

if you have common data on multiple pages, i find its best to write php scripts for those pages, and just do '@include common/menubar.php' or something like that. I wrote an entire site once where each page i would just do:

@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:

[legirons]

"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!"

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 my own favourite CSS editor (EMACS on SSH) for the classroom...

Re:Recommendations:

[N3Roaster]

You're having php evaluate that prior to uploading, right? Otherwise, this just slows down your server without need (why dynamically generate static pages?).

Re:Recommendations:

[MindStalker]

The slowdown is very small with includes, as its simply dumping a file in the middle of the output stream. Precombining these files makes updating much more difficult.

Re:Recommendations:

[N3Roaster]

How so? It's just a matter of running make when you make a change and put -r * to upload the changes. I guess I don't see the need to introduce extra places for something to break.

Re:Recommendations:

[magefile]

Amen. I'm the summer guy in a Dreamweaver shop, and I'm the only one who codes by hand. The code they've been creating generally validates, but thank $DIETY I don't have to touch it - they're doing a site redesign right now, but they're not re-coding from scratch. Instead, they're copying old pages, then modifying 'em - which results in horrible code (not just bad variables, which is obnoxious if you hand code, but classes that are identical, etc.). You don't really need a dual setup or $500 to code by hand (I don't have it, although I wish I did sometimes), but Dreamweaver is nasty stuff.

Re:Recommendations:

[greenlead]

AMEN!!!! I am a novice web designer and I have had one-too-many conversations with other beginners who roll their eyes when I mention HTML, and how they need to learn it. I use a GUI tool (won't say which, to avoid being mocked) to do most of the work, as it saves me a lot of time. I am not afraid to go hands-on with the code, and do any necessary programming.

Re:Recommendations:

[cecille]

I teach a beginner class too - we make 'em code it by hand...ha ha...suckers.

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".

That being said, this is NOT a web development class. It turned from this light-weight bird course to a farily rough little service course looking at computer basics (and some not so basics...how the prof managed to convince the admin that he needed to teach first-year non-computer people about chip architecture and web servers is beyond me, but it's a great class). At any rate, they learn a lot about how web programming works, but the sites are UGLY. If you're trying to teach the class about GOOD web design as opposed to just getting them to understand about how web pages work, then IMHO, I'd say to stick with dreamweaver. It's a very common tool, so the skills they learn in the class are tranferrable, and it's fairly easy to work with, while still offering the complexity for more advanced students. Plus, web pages done with dreamweaver are written faster, and usually come out better than ones done by hand (especially if you're new to this type of stuff). Speed is esential if you're looking to have them design real sites and look at design aspects, without getting bogged down in the details of how to get the code to cooperate and do what they want.

Re:Recommendations:

[ericspinder]

My main box has dual 18" LCDs (HA! Had to one-up you didn't I?), one in portrait mode.(Swing and a miss!)

Actually, I have two 19" Samsung 930b monitors. I just mentioned 17"ers because you can get them fairly 'cheap' these days. They're still fairly new, and I am just getting used to having them. One odd thing that I never thought of with the dual screen setup, is the amount of 'mouse travel' to get from one screen to the next.

web authoring system

[Kaamoss]

I'd suggest using php and an sql database alongside xml/css. Professional, relativly low bandwidth, and sexy/lightweight. But that's just me. If you felt a bit sadomasochistic I suppose you could use IIS and asp.NET because if it's not .NET you're nto conforming to the microsoft group think and that's baaad very bad. All kiding aside, I've used asp and I hate it but perhaps it has practical applications, I've just yet to see them. Find what works for what you need and go with that regardless of what's "cool" or "buzzword complient" these days.

Re:web authoring system

[geoffspear]

You want him to write his own web authoring system in PHP and store his files in a database instead of on disk?

Re:web authoring system

[Fr05t]

"IIS and asp.NET because if it's not .NET you're nto conforming to the microsoft group think"

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

[LouCifer]

I use HomeSite and have since its inception from Bradbury. Great software.

If you prefer something prettier, you can try Dreamweaver.

I believe there are trials of both available.

Re:Applications

[Anonymous Coward]

As a bonus, Dreamweaver uses HomeSite as its editor. DW is damn nice.

Re:Applications

[Larry Lightbulb]

After selling HomeSite the author carried on developing it, and the imporved version is now sold as TopStyle.

Re:Applications

[Segway Ninja]

Dreamweaver is great if you want to get into designing the pages, quickly, with almost no learning curve.

NVU

[forsetti]

I've just started using NVU 1.0PR, and so far, I really like it. It is extremely simple, and generates very good (HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 compliant) code. It won't do anything too fancy for you, but supports templates, javascript events, and external style sheets. I'd suggest giving it a whirl.

Re:NVU

[Otter]

My take on Nvu...

Re:NVU

[forsetti]

There is a Radio Button now, labeled "Retain Original Source Formatting" ...

Re:NVU

[forsetti]

Well, I can't figure out how to reply to your blog entry ... but, it sounds like you need to use CSS, instead of painting formats. Yeah, you have a pile of old, crufty, non-CSS stuff ... but if you get the conversion pain out the way once, future updates will be easy .....

vim

[metamatic]

Seriously, I know of no fancy graphical editor that can turn out a decent XHTML web page with style sheet. My usual test is to try to create a simple page with a heading, a few paragraphs, and a bulleted list, styled to taste. You'd be amazed how many supposed web editors fail that test--can't produce a heading, can't put together a complete HEAD element, can't apply CSS to lists, and so on.

So, get a content management system, and build your XHTML and CSS by hand. If you want, you can then use a web-based XHTML editor for editing the content that goes into the CMS.

Re:vim

[ignorant_newbie]

thank you. Why are people always trying to use some fancy wysiwyg crap? My wife teaches dreamweaver classes to her fellow employees at apple, but wont let them use anything but the editor.

it's not like (x)?html isn't human readable guys

Re:vim

[metamatic]

Why are people always trying to use some fancy wysiwyg crap?

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

[mattyrobinson69]

in my opinion, if you cant code html and css by hand, you shouldn't be pretending to be a web developer

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Why not an OSS CMS?

[gtrubetskoy]

Why not try an Open Source Content Management System like Plone or Mambo? 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, of course!

Re:Why not an OSS CMS?

[KingBahamut]

You make a good point.

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?

[js7a]

Beginners might be better off making html in notepad or an HTML editor like the one that comes bundled with Mozilla than a big system.

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?

[afd8856]

I find Zope a lot easier to install then mysql+php. And zope offers so much more with than lamp... but it's kind of apples to orranges.

Re:Why not an OSS CMS?

[digidave]

At the risk of turning this into a CMS flamefest, you should check out Drupal (http://drupal.org/). Not only is it a top-of-the-line Open Source CMS, but customizing it and creating your own modules is more straight-forward and more powerful than with Mambo. Mambo gives you a better package out of the box, though, as long as you're trying to build a site that it comes pre-configured to handle.

Drupal is the base for spreadfirefox.com as well as many other sites. It's a great base from which to build many things.

And while we're on the subject, no discussion about OSS CMS is complete without mentioning Typo3 (http://www.typo3.com/). It's extremely powerful and entirely too complex for most people. If you want ultimate flexibility and are willing to work, Typo3 is probably the best solution around. Just be prepared to spend a couple months learning how to make it do what you want.

Choices some good , some not so good.

[KingBahamut]

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

Re:Choices some good , some not so good.

[myenigmaself]

Is eclipse a good IDE for web development? I thought it was tailored for Java, and I don't think this guy is doing Enterprise level JB or anything like that. Please enlighten me!

Re:Choices some good , some not so good.

[syynnapse]

Eclipse is really a basic kernal that runs various plugins on top. The java IDE is just the one that comes with it. You can find a buttload of eclipse plugins if you look, for every type of coding you could want to do.
I've used it in the past for java coding, and have been looking into using it for php, although I haven't gotten around to getting it set up. Just like any other high level app, eclipse can be difficult to set up.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Do your work outside of a box

[Enrico Pulatzo]

The first thing you should probably do is pickup a copy of The Non-Designer's Design Book. It'll give you a great head start on typography and the use of space and save you some considerable face later.

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

[yagu]

vim (syntax on, syntax html)

Re:best tool I've ever used for web development

[override11]

Ghey Ghey. You dont sound elite when someone invariably sais 'Vim' or 'Use Notepad', you just sound like an elitist ass. Dreamweaver is great, lately I find myself using Eclipse IDE with the CFEclipse plugin, and I am loving it. With the proper plugins it does any language you want with code suggest, color coding, shrinking comments or code sections (I LOVE this part, and missed it from Homesite), and it runs nice on any machine I have loaded it on (did I mention its free?) The only downside to Eclipse vs Dreamweaver is that Eclipse doesnt integrate as well into a FTP, SSH, or RDS server like dreamweaver can. Otherwise, Eclipse can do all that AND a bag of potato chips!

Re:best tool I've ever used for web development

[fm6]

Less coffee, dude!

Re:best tool I've ever used for web development

[Anonymous Coward]

Ghey Ghey. You dont sound elite

Thank you for summing up your personality so concisely, I didn't have to read any further than your first few words before understanding you are an idiot with nothing to say.

Re:best tool I've ever used for web development

[override11]

Posted by an AC. At least I have the balls to post what I really think instead of karma whoring it up. And I really do get sick of the same "I'm kewl because I answer either 'Linux, Notepad, or Vim'" to every darn question. You should read the rest of my post, maybe you would learn something.

Re:best tool I've ever used for web development

[Anonymous Coward]

Posted by an AC.

Oooh yes. So sorry "override11". I'm sure that's your real name.

At least I have the balls to post what I really think instead of karma whoring it up.

Yes. I'm pumping up the karma for the Anonymous Coward account. Get a clue, you fucking retard.

Re:best tool I've ever used for web development

[IpalindromeI]

Frankly, the post you originally responded to was much less pretentious and arrogant than your response. The AC was right, you're making yourself look like an ass when you start your post like that, not making the parent look like one.

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 Eclipse, he likes vim. Why does it have to turn into a flamewar? Are you that insecure?

Re:best tool I've ever used for web development

[tverbeek]

Are you that insecure?

Have you ever seen someone who calls people "ghey" (with whatever spelling) who wasn't that insecure?

I've got two words for you...

[musselm]

Notepad.

Re:I've got two words for you...

[Anonymous Coward]

God Lord man...what's the second word?? Don't leave me hanging like this..

It depends...

[brontus3927]

If your using Windows or OS X, I would recommend Macromedia Dreamweaver MX. You can download a 30 day trial here. 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. 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

[tomcio.s]

http://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 /

Re:Drupal

[override11]

wow, looks like your comment has slashdotted em! Maybe time to find a new host =(

Re:Drupal

[tverbeek]

Um, his link has a typo. This will work better.

Re:Drupal

[shibbydude]

Dud, you got your link wrong. http://drupal.org.

Re:Drupal

[Godeke]

I'm going to agree with this one... Drupal with a couple of modules added (I personally use "node privacy byrole" and "wiki", both of which I modified by a line or two to get exactly what I wanted) makes for a very flexible and nice environment. I can add public content, private content (by customer) and I can use an import format that is appropriate for each entry independently. Over time I plan on a bit more customization, but this has been the most usable CMS I have tried.

My Reccomendations

[infernalC]

Hosting - canaca.ca
- 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

[bluGill]

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

[larien]

I'm not going to enter an editor flamewar; I use vi, but gvim is nicer. The main thing is to find one which supports syntax highlighting, it'll help you find that tag you left open which is breaking your page...

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 can. Depending on your audience, lynx and mobile browser are worth a quick once-over as well.

Re:My Reccomendations

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suggest you do NOT pick canaca.ca

Before moving my (kind of busy) website to their shared hosting I asked them if my stats are too much for that plan. They assured me everything would be alright. It was not. My site was suspended after only couple of weeks for "too much resource use"

I've also read horor stories about them on webhostingtalk.com (forum with lots of reviews)

Re:My Reccomendations

[Anonymous Coward]

I would avoid PHP for server sides scripts. Python is a much nicer language.

This is a newbie we are talking about. They'll be at the mercy of whatever hosting company they go with, they won't be setting up their own server. Practically all hosting companies provide PHP. Most of them don't provide Python, let alone anything to ease the pain like mod_python. The same goes for 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.

Again, this is a newbie, not a language connoisseur. He won't be building big things with this, he'll be slapping together a few simple pages. The most he'll probably use is include().

Personal opinion, of course, but I have come to hate PHP.

So much so that you will lead a newbie away from what is almost certainly the most appropriate choice.

I'm moving away from PHP and towards Python. I agree that it's a much nicer language. But PHP is far better for newbie web developers.

Re:My Reccomendations

[Anonymous Coward]

As for browsers, validate in Opera, Safari and Konqueror if you can.

That's not validation. That's browser checking. Validation is checking the syntax of your code. You can have valid code that won't work in any browser and invalid code that will work in every browser.

A newbie needs to use valid code because, apart from the normal reasons to validate, they don't know what are important errors and what are "safe" errors. So the best option is to write 100% valid code.

On top of this, they need to check in browsers they care about. Most people should care about Internet Explorer 5.x, 6.0 on Windows, Internet Explorer 5.2.x on Mac, Firefox 1.0+, Mozilla 1.0+, Netscape 6.0+, Opera 7.0+, Safari 1.0+ and a text mode browser like Lynx. This will show up practically all "real-world" errors above and beyond syntax errors.

Don't forget the different screen resolutions and text sizes - and don't assume people maximise their browser and don't use any sidebars.

Don't assume checking in one version of Internet Explorer is enough. The rendering engine is completely different between Windows and Mac, and various bugs crop up that can ruin a website that appear in 6.0 that don't appear in 5.x and vice-versa. Internet Explorer is crippled, you need to give it extra care.

Linux web authoring app? Quanta!

[Shazow]

For some strange reason, everybody thus far decided to suggest numerous windows applications.

Well, I use Quanta Plus (http://quanta.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

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

"Build with Notepad" is so 1996

[Anonymous Coward]

Just goes to show that some people aren't smart enough to realize that vim and emacs run on Windows.

Dreamweaver + Interakt

[alta]

Everyone has their preference... IDE's, Languages, platforms. Mine's no better than anyone else's but I like it, and I think others will to.

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, Postgres...

Coding by hand is perfect for learning from scratch.

Convert already

[melikamp]

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.

Re:Convert already

[applef00]

I see a really good reason not to use it: It's overly complicated and incredibly bloated.

Re:Convert already

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhhh... how is that flamebait? It's a valid opinion about a piece of software. It's also true.

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 runs on geeklog, as well as another site 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

[poopdeville]

I was looking forward to trying the site you mentioned, but unfortunately I was redirected several times and ended up at OpenCMS's site. This is a bit frustrating, as I've been trying to choose a CMS for my own site, but have no idea what criteria I should be using to evaluate them.

Does anyone have suggestions?

Re:Geeklog

[llefler]

That's because it's a COM, not an ORG. opensourceCMS

Re:Geeklog

[molnarcs]

Ooops, sorry about that :(

Thumbs down to DreamWeaver MX

[Anonymous Coward]

Several other posters have suggested Dreamweaver as the best. I'd like to counter that.

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 falls apart.

The WYSIWYG part of Dreamweaver can't cope with floating divs, and other complex constructs. The WYSIWYG rendering became a complete mess. The code was still OK, but really, the whole point of using Dreamweaver is the WYSIWYG abilities. So Dreamweaver is reduced to an average editor and IDE. Ho hum.

So now, I've returned to the traditional text editor + preview in mozilla, and I'm faster now than I was in dreamweaver.

I guess what I'm saying is that I outgrew Dreamweaver, and alot sooner than I expected. SO before plunking down the cash for dreamweaver, download the trial and make sure it can handle everything you intend throw at it.

xoops all the way

[jho1]

Im in favor of XOOPS content manager, IMO its alot easier then Nuke and Mambo. As for hosting i recommend http://www.ecwhost.com/ which gives you free SQL/PHP hosting for subdomains and for private domains, its just a small small fee. I am currently using them to host my website along side with XOOPS. More importantly the themes are gorgeous, although not as nice as Mambo.

Types of hosting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you know what type of web hosting you want it's easy to find hosting company.

But before you decide do hit http://www.webhostingtalk.com and read reviews and customer feedback about your choice.

Good luck

How About Ruby On Rails?-))

[Anonymous Coward]

Ducks!-))

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.

VI / Emacs only way to go

[josh_freeman]

Really, you can't do web development without one of the two. GUI's will only slow you down in the long run, the code will be crap, and you will spend hours and hours debugging some piddly error introduced by a WYSIWIG editor that threw some crap in because it thought it was a good idea.

Re:VI / Emacs only way to go

[Aumaden]

I half agree with you. I generally use NVu, Emacs and TopStyle Pro (running under wine with the help of winetools). A couple of posters have mentioned Bluefish, so that's compiling right now (Gentoo).

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 comparision. I've done CSS in Emacs, but it's a lot more work (Change, save, refresh browser, change, save, refresh). Yuck.

I do have to agree with your comment on WYSIWYG's adding stuff that doesn't belong. NVu seems particularly fond of break tags (<BR>) and non breaking spaces (&nbsp;).

Re: Cat got your tongue? (something important seem

[Anonymous Coward]

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>
<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">>
<META NAME="ProgId" CONTENT="FrontPage.Editor.Document">
Response to vbrtrmn
</TITLE>
</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;
</DIV>
</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>
</DIV>
</DIV>
</DIV>
<DIV CLASS="quote">
<FONT NAME="Arial" SIZE="12pt">
<P CLASS="response">
& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;
Why not?
& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;
</P<
</FONT>
</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>
</DIV>
</DIV>
</DIV>
</BODY>
</HTML>

Quanta Plus

[jregel]

I have developed a fairly small PHP/MySQL driven site using Quanta under KDE. As an HTML editor it is extremely polished. The ability to publish a project to a website works very well enabling me to synchronise my local copy with the web server.

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

[slashflood]

What you need is a CMS! Mambo is very easy to install, easy to learn and does all you need.

My Two Cents

[Universal Nerd]

I'm currently using Nvu and HTML Tidy to build my sites.

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 KWrite, it looks just like Notepad++ and is pretty neat, and vi ('cause I'm an CLI old-fart).

UML/VPS recommendations?

[dalutong]

I am looking for an affordable and reliable Virtual Private Server/User Mode Linux host. I am using jvds.com currently, but have found that when I'm abroad their site is slow. Even when I'm in the states it's slow.

Any recommendations?

Thanks!

Re:UML/VPS recommendations?

[Larsie]

Linode.com, total freedom, great support, nice customer forum. Apparently they will upgrade to XEN in the near future, which looks very promising. (Disclaimer, I am not affiliated with them in any way, just a satisfied customer).

Re:UML/VPS recommendations?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty happy with redwoodvirtual.com, though I've been unable to reach support the couple times the host box went down. I've also used Linode, but I was having severe performance problems, so I switched.

Re:UML/VPS recommendations?

[RegularFry]

First port of call: http://www.bytemark.co.uk./ Great service, groovy boxes. I've never had any complaints.

Frontpage w/ InfoStructure

[steveargonman]

You could use InfoStructure (http://www.mind.net/ and use FrontPage! :)

vim+web dev extensions for firefox

[hammeredpeon]

is probably the best way to ensure standards compliance and get what you really want.

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

[Leroy_Brown242]

Whatever you do, no matter what, AVOID MANAGED.COM.

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

[Cthefuture]

First off I'm assuming this is for an externally visible business web-site and not some intranet thing or personal site (if it is then ignore this post).

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 platforms.

Sites done by people like yourself generally are not very good. They're usually not real bad, but not as professional as they could be. It's not that you can't do a great job, it's just that it takes a lot of time to get it right and you have no experience. Your web-site may be the first thing people see concerning your business, it needs to look professional. Modern web-sites are a lot more complex than they used to be, especially when you get into CSS and similar which is the thing to do nowadays.

A couple thousand bucks is probably even cheaper than your time working on it anyway.

money or no?

[spoonyfork]

If you're going to be doing web app development you'll want an IDE that supports your chosen technology... like Eclipse or something.

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.

If you want to spend money I recommend Dreamweaver if you don't want to know what's going on or HomeSite if you do want to know what's going on.

GoLive

[ratsg]

I haven't seen anyone mention this one yet, but I have used GoLive on MacOS and MacOS X for several years with good luck.

http://www.adobe.com/products/golive/main.html

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.

Re:Choices...

[acidblue]

Wow, ya know, I have had SubEthaEdit for about 2 years now, and I never realized that the latest had the WebKit integration. That is freakin' sweet for CSS editing and experimenting.

I wish someone could write a client for Windows so I could collaborate with those people at work. This is such a great tool for pair-programming.

Emacs

[Anonymous Coward]

not XEmacs either, (sorry jwz). The latest Emacs for Linux has a great new sgml-mode that does XHTML. Also I use css-mode and javascript-mode.

nothing beats the new XHTML mode.

If you get the win32 version, get the sgml stuff from the latest version.

Sure it doesn't have tab-completion, but if you still need that, then, well... really...

My opinion

[SocialEngineer]

As a person who has been doing web dev contracts for about a year or so now, I would suggest you hand-code all your websites in a simple text editor (w/ code highlighting - in Windows I use Notepad2, in Linux I use Nedit).

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 if a 13 year old can hand code websites, surely an adult programmer can hand code standards-compliant websites. It isn't that tough.

My process is simple: Come up with a layout concept in Photoshop, code the layout structure (using HTML 4.01 Strict w/ CSS), extract images from the photoshop concept, and then put in content (CMS-based or otherwise).

There are numerous CMSs out there to ease updating and managing of the template, but it is my belief that in order to get the most efficient and secure CMS, you need to code it specifically for your own needs. The more features you have/greater the complexity, the higher the risk of error/compromise.

(note: To those of you who checked my website using the W3C validator, you will notice it isn't standards-compliant.. I'm overhauling the network right now, so hush :P)

Resiware

[angle_slam]

The offer on Resiware's site seemed to good to be true (unlimited storage and bandwidth for $12/month). So I googled them and came up with this page noting that they got out of the hosting business. Do you know anything about that?

re: Dreamweaver ... lots missing

[pbhj]

DW is OK but it's really frustrating as it has alot of things missing. Number 1 has to be a reasonable rendering engine. I design standards compliant XHTML / CSS with quite a bit of PHP. Even allowing for the PHP none of the pages look at all like any current rendering engine ... this is the latest version (MX2004)!

It doesn't even have PHP syntax checking! Every other text editor does code highlighting. I need bracket highlighting and syntax checking ... like JEdit or PHP Editor. DW often screws up on the PHP in html situation too and (like alot in Win) relies too much on file names ... so no PHP highlighting in .html files!

I've turned to JEdit more recently (as I prefer a Linux environment and it's portable). It's a little slow but has cool features via plugins. XML and PHP syntax checking (on-the-fly!). XSLT features. A comprehensive search and replace; programmability via very basic scripting allowing (eg) wrapping tags around multiple lines (but you can do that with the column highlighting!); ...

Basically, other than the "WYSIWYG" which is massively borked, JEdit has nearly everything I find useful in DW.

JEdit could learn from the ftp interface for DW and the locking and commenting features

The CSS sucks a big one ... I use the web-editor extension in Firefox. That's how DW should work!

If there's an app like DW that does what it's supposed to and produces standards compliant XHTML with CSS using divs (not tables) for non-tabular layout that can add-in some cross-browser hacks and has a code-locking feature like DW (for collaborative dev) LET ME KNOW!

[I come from using pico on Unix and notepad on Win95 when I started out ...]

Re:Linux web authoring app? Bluefish

[pbhj]

Don't forget bluefish too ... http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/

Re:Recommendations: tidy??

[pbhj]

Lot's of apps include tidy integration, I think this is in Quanta and Bluefish and it's certainly in JEdit (my current choice).

With JEdit I get suggestions from tidy everytime I save a file.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Linux web authoring app? Bluefish

[Shazow]

Ooo looks neat, I'll check it out (Quanta is a bit heavy).

Thanks.

- shazow

Re:Recommendations: tidy??

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but this was the only one I could remember.. :) I use it so much now I can't think of anything in any other product..

MAMBO!

[diamondmagic]

For an easy-to-use site, you want a content managment system. Hands down, mambo, found at http://www.mamboserver.com/ is the best and most flexable CMS around.

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 ). 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.

Vim

[pestilence669]

Vim is a great editor for HTML handcoding. Unfortunately, WYSIWYG editors are just plain awful. It's taken years just to get them usable. It'll take more years to create a decent replacement for handcoding. GoLive, @#(*&!! horrible, will hopefully be discontinued soon so that no one else has to buy it by mistake. Frontpage is and always will be a joke. That leaves you with Dreamweaver. It's *ok*, but the WYSIWYG mode should be called YMMV. I'd recommend firing off an angry email to every tool publisher out there then hire some starving college student for pennies on the dollar. It'll save you the tremendous headache of using a tool that's not even close to ready. Better yet, try implementing a pre-built template for Wordpress or Mambo. These not only manage content for you, but include rudimentary HTML editors.

Two Apps and Two Extentions

[JPyObjC Dude]

Text Editor (Ultra Edit on Windoze)
Mozilla (the firefox kind)
Dev Edge Sidebar 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 :] JsD IE == WhyE

I've got one word for you.

[kc32]

Edit.

Programmer's advice

[Anonymous Coward]

Separate form from content. Look up CSS Zen Garden and study their examples.

Design your pages with everything divided and organized into labeled, logical hierarchies, making everything render nicely in a text browser like lynx, and then use CSS for form.

I haven't designed any web pages myself but I have used the above technique to reimplement existing webpages, whose code was so bad that it was amazing they would render at all, so that you couldn't tell the difference.

web host

[mattyrobinson69]

i use freepgs, its a one off payment of $3 for the basic service, which comes with mysql, php, ruby support.

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.

Re:Recommendations - Learn to use templates!

[cerebralpc]

If you decide to go for Dreamweaver I Highly recommend you investigate Templates.

Bascially you setup a template that all your other pages are created from.

It makes the web site much easier to maintain - but more importantly all the pages look exactly the same - with web sites if a table is out by 2 pixels the human eyes DOES notice and small inconsistances over a 30 page web site really bring down the overall effect of the web site.

Dreamweaver; if you want flexibiltiy

[WebHostingGuy]

I use this tool to do a lot of work. It is very flexible in that it allows you to split the graphical and code parts so whatever you need to do you can edit and go back and forth with. It also integrates well with backend databases for testing and can help with some of the scripting languages as well. However, you can't program in ASP.NET, ASP, Cold Fusion, PHP, etc. with Dreamweaver if you don't know how to do it to begin with.

As with other programs Dreamweaver also has an integrated ftp function and also you to sync files. It will also upload dependant files. Some other features include a sophisticated CSS interface and support, secure ftp and cross browser checks. And it allows you to import Microsoft Word and Excel files. Dreamweaver has a free trial. Try it, you will like it.

As for a hosting service, shameless plug below...

a minimalist's view

[Hoohoodilly]

vi or emacs works in almost any coding situation including web development.

One web tool is not enough.

[iJavaJoe]

I use or have used a number of web authoring tools. I hand code and create pages with WYSIWYG tools. I've used: GoLive, Dreamweaver, Flash, NotePad and Freeway. I find myself using Freeway first, then GoLive and sometimes Flash. Take note: the learning curve on many of these tools can be somewhat steep. Overview: Freeway is the fastest tool for creating web sites. I can WYSIWYG 95% of the web site in 1/5 the time of hand coding. The output file is pretty small and the time I save is worth 1000 times the extra 2 or 3 seconds that you might save by handcoding. The files created with Freeway work with all most all new web browsers. Firefox, MS Exployter, Navigator, and Safari. (Those are the only ones I test). Freeway is very powerfull, extensable and freindly to work with. (Try to hand code text flowing around a graphic, Freeway has a plug-in for that). The HTML is good as is the CSS. (Learning curve, what's a learning curve, pretty shallow) GoLive: If I can't do it with Freeway I use GoLive. Here I can hand code the file and easily look at the code. I can create JavaScript and recompile the HTML and CSS simplifiying the code as I see fit. (Watch the learning curve on this one.) Flash: Using both Freeway and GoLive I can add sound and movies, but to REALLY add animation I create Flash files. These can easily be added to a web page or completly replace a page with a Flash animated page. (Watch the learning curve here) If you only use one product you won't have the flexibility, speed and capabilities you need to create ANYTYPE of web page you want. If you are doing a buisiness working with web pages, SPEED, portability and deadlines will be your enemy. If your really good at it, and you are only creating pages for your own edification, then hand coding may fit your needs. But when you have a client with veins pounding in their forhead you need to show progress NOW. They want to see what your doing, they want to approve the progress you make and it needs to be done three days ago, you must use a good WYSIWYG tool.

Dreamhost

[objekt]

I'll third Dreamhost, but click the link under MY name instead ;-)

Re:Dreamhost

[echo465]

Fourth it, been with them for a year, and they've been great.

Re: Dreamweaver ... lots missing

[anomaly]

jEdit has an ftp/sftp plugin.

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 .02. YMMV

About your .sig

[anomaly]

Who, pray tell, should not fear hell?