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

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:

[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:

[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.

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.

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.

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.

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/

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)

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.

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?

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

[tverbeek]

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

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

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

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.

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: Cat got your tongue? (something important seem

[Anonymous Coward]

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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">
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<FONT NAME="Arial" SIZE="12pt">
Since you don't know, DON'T USE FRONTPAGE!!!
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& nbsp; & nbsp; & nbsp;
</DIV>
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Why not?
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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.

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.

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)

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.