Want to build my own business web site

[what..the?]

I downloaded some free websiting building software but it was so cheap it was not very user friendly. So I am happy to buy some software for the right price. But I am not sure what to buy.

It would have to be very easy to use but produce a professional looking website. I have an apple laptop at home which would be ideal to use in my spare time however I only have dial up at home and I have not yet attempted to connect this laptop to my computer in the office where I have xpl and broadband so I cannot see how easly it would be to get it off the laptop and on my work pc as that is where I will manage/maintain it once it is published online.

I due to this apple - pc problem maybe I would be better just working on the site on my office pc to start with. Therefore the software needs to run with xp.

Site will be basic 'about our business and what services we offer' 'contact us' kind of thing a handful of pages with photos and a couple of links.

I want to build it myself as a learning curve, but have no idea how it gets published on the web, whats the cost and are the free website publisher sites which really crap - does it mean that your web address is really long winded due to having to go through their site to get to yours etc. To have a good address do you have to buy a domain name, and what does that mean??

I know that I must sound completely stupid as I havent got a clue but if someone can explain to me how it works it would be great.

[OBonio]

Professional websites have their own domain which you can purchase from a number of places. You would be better getting an 'all-in-one' package where your domain, hosting (where the website files will be stored) and email (if you need it) are all managed by one place.

I've used these guys a couple of times and they are pretty good :

http://uk2.net/

As for software, I would heartily recommend < haref="http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/">Macromedia Dreamweaver (now owned by Adobe). This is the WYSIWYG (why you see is what you get) designer of choice for web developers and is very intuitive and straight forward to use.

[OBonio]

Sorry, bad bit of typing there. This is the Dreamweaver website :

http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver/

[vehelpfulguy]

Remember that a badly designed website can look bad on your company.

Dont publish the first design you come up with. Design it, and then throw it away and design it again, throw that away, then design it again.

By the third time it may start to look good.

Make sure you design it for a web browser of 800x600. If someone is using a bigger one, no problem.

Many people sit at a 19" monitor, design for that, and it looks awful on an 800x600 browser.

Dont use too many different colours.

Dont use too many different fonts.

Dont have any large images that take ages to download.

Try to use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

By a book like Web Design for Dummies (Make sure you get the new full colour one).

This will give you some things to think about when designing your site.

http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=0471781177

[treacle-tart]

Hi What..

I used Serif WebPlus 10 - I am a complete novice - I wouldn't say it was easy but easier that anything else I tried to use. http://www.serif.com/

I used Hyve to supply the Domain and Web Hosting - They have been very good and quite helpful. http://www.hyve.com/

I didnt even know how to put the site on to the host but between Serif and Hyve it was quite easy in the end.

If you need anything specific just let men know.

Bekki

http://www.bekki-g.co.uk/

[cascarelli]

Dreamweaver's good but it's probably got about 10x what you need for a simple website. If you can afford it buy it and you might expand into it and use more of the features.

For a business, buy a domain name and web hosting, theyre fairly cheap. Once your web site is complete Dreamweaver can up load it for you to your web space.

Dreamweaver has loads of templates too to base your design on. Alternatively, find a web site you like, a simple one, go to Page - Source in the menu and save it, then you can play around with it, adding your own images etc to see how it works.

You could do everything at home on your Mac. When it was complete take your Mac in and it should connect on the PC network (if youre on OSX). Or you could just burn the files to CD when theyre compete and take them in. Doing changes at work would mean having software on your XP so you'd need to consider this too - depends where you want to do the work.

Dont worry, it'll all fall into place quite quickly. We all have to start off somewhere!

[pingu748]

www.1and1.co.uk ...

more than happy, simple to use, you can get the site name from them and they set up the software so that when you want to design the site its already to allocate to whatever site you design ...

[Thiksha]

If you wanna build the website make use of this site http://www.tucktail.com/tt/website-tonight/
It will be very much helpful for you , using the tools you can build the website & gain solution ..
Its provide tools at cheap cost .. Make use of it .. Media URL: http://www.tucktail.com/tt/website-tonight/
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