website design

[gettingmy1stmac]

i'm a teacher and am now required by my school district to create and maintain a personal webpage. i need to get some good software that i can use to create my page that is easy to use and will make a nice looking page. the web-based application that comes along with the websites we have SUCKS...

i was thinking dreamweaver but wanted to get some input from some others before committing to buying it

 

[thejadedmonkey]

Why not iWeb? It's free and on your mac.

 

[sickmacdoc]

I have to agree- there is a STEEP learning curve to programs like Dreamweaver which are best suited to professional/commercial websites. Great if you have the need to become a full site developer and have lots of needs, but not so great if you just need to develop sites like you describe.

iWeb on the other hand does not have nearly the capability of a Dreamweaver class application, but does a very nice job on what might be considered "personal" websites (that is, no ecommerce etc). The current version (which comes on late model Macs and in the iLife 08 software suite) should do a nice job on what you have described and maintains the ease of using a Mac too.

To check out a BUNCH of sites developed with iWeb, check out some of the sites listed here: http://www.iwebusersites.com/Home.html

Of course the quality of them varies widely depending on the skill of the designer, but that should give you a good overview of iWeb possibilities.

 

[gettingmy1stmac]

problem with iweb

i can't use ftp to upload my iweb page to the host of the teacher websites

the page editor on the host site uses a picture based (super crappy and generic) or html based page editor...i need something that will allow me to design a page visually and take the underlying html code and copy it into the html editor on the host site

does that make sense?

 

[CanadaRAM]

You should be able to get an educator's price on Dreamweaver. It will allow you to design a page visually, and then copy and paste the HTML to your system.

 

[gcmexico]

I say go with iweb...like they said it's free!!

check out my site for my history class...all done on iweb

www.gchistoryonline.com

 

[Neil321]

Rapidweaver is a pretty easy to learn before stepping up too dreamweaver

 

[Hates]

i can't use ftp to upload my iweb page to the host of the teacher websites

i need something that will allow me to design a page visually and take the underlying html code and copy it into the html editor on the host site

does that make sense?

Yeah, that's fine, you can still use iWeb. Publish it to a local folder and then you can open the html files using any text editor.

 

[Nicolasdec]

If you are looking for something like Dreamweaver but you dont whant to pay, I recommend Nvu.

 

[gettingmy1stmac]

many thanks

Yeah, that's fine, you can still use iWeb. Publish it to a local folder and then you can open the html files using any text editor.

thanks for the tip, you may have just saved me $200!

 

[sickmacdoc]

thanks for the tip, you may have just saved me $200!

While what Hates said is true, iWeb does include several .js (JavaScript) files along with the html files upon purblishing even the simplest sites to a folder, so you will have to make sure that you have a method to transfer complete .js files as well as the html (and of course .png files that iWeb uses for border elements and such) too.

An iWeb site without the corresponding .js files will not unfortunately work!

 

[SnowLeopard2008]

Or if it is just a simple website, code it yourself using HTML and a text editor. I used TextWrangler to code all my projects for my HTML/XHTML class.