intro | design software | page elements | site structure | measurements | fonts | images | colours | layout | tables | templates
the studyzone | web design | course tasks: 1 | 2 | 3
background
ways to make your own site
Microsoft Office Live
Currently free and they are including a nice web address or domain name that you can use. The templates aren't brilliant but they are neat and tidy and the tools are fairly intuitive. You may have to put up with Microsoft ads. Many useful features included that would require quite advanced skills otherwise.
Google Sites
Still one of their 'Labs' products but looking good and could be a powerful tool when you use some of the many google gadgets that are easily incorporated. Worth playing with.
CoffeeCup software
Very reasonably priced and ready-made templates enable almost anyone to create a reasonable looking site quickly. You need to buy web space and a domain name and the software.
Serif WebPlus
Popular now in schools and even being used by professionals who want to put a site together quickly, especially as the software included things like shopping baskets and forms which are difficult to do otherwise. Even if you use Dreamweaver for the main site work, Serif could be useful for the e-commerce or feedback-gathering sections.
nvu | Komposer | Dreamweaver | 1st Page
These are all quite similar in the way they work and provide the tools for sites ranging from the simple to the very complex. Dreamweaver is the industry standard still but it isn't cheap and not at all user-friendly. Once you've learned the basics, though, you'll be able to use any of the others.
Pageflakes | Protopages | SiteKreator
Quite different types of site creation here, utilising very recently developed software that enables you to work directly on the web pages you create. No code knowledge involved and impressive results can be achieved but, as yet, the site address can't be your chosen domain name, being something like yourname.pageflakes.com or whatever, not to everyone's taste. SiteKreator is very clean and tidy but they now charge for all but one template. .
PBWiki
(PB = peanut butter sandwich, their motto being as easy as a peanut butter sandwich).
Another of the recent entrants to this field that uses Web 2.0 technology and allows you to create pages on-line that are there as soon as you do them. Free for 'educational' use but they are starting to charge now for commericial use. Many users think PBwiki is great and it is certainly one of the simplest tools to get on-line with.
Blogger
Another Google product that is probably the simplest way of all to create an on-line presence. Free and without ads, even if you don't feel it is suitable for a main site it could be a useful additional part of it for news updates.
Alternative software links and samples
Microsoft Office Live site | example
Others:
nvu * | Komposer | Dreamweaver |1st Page
*nvu's own site appears to be unavailable but you can still download the software from download.com. It is very similar to Komposer and it may be that the latter will supersede it.
