The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5)

Simple site builder

My brother wishes to build a family website, and the host does not provide one of the free "build your site..." Does anyone have a suggestion that may work for a novice that will not require tech support ;) on my part?

I have the power tools, I am looking for the "build a site for dummys" software or a site that someone here has used.

Anonanonanon
Tuesday, April 27, 2004

http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk

CityDesk!

Michael H. Pryor
Fog Creek Software
Tuesday, April 27, 2004

CityDesk seconded.

Sassy
Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Thirded.

RP
Tuesday, April 27, 2004

I CALL GUERILLA MARKETING!

Geesh, when will these guys stop spamming our message boards with their contrived questions and pre-packaged answers....wait a minute....

<CARRIER LOST>

.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Nahh, not Citydesk for a newb. There are too many concepts to understand - the concept of a template, etc., and the user is pretty much responsible for the raw HTML.

How about Mozilla's Composer? The price is right...

Bored Bystander
Tuesday, April 27, 2004

You're saying that templates are hard, but using FTP with Moz Composer isn't?

Ankur
Tuesday, April 27, 2004

If not Citydesk, Mozilla Composer or anyother tool like that. Check out Lycos.

http://www.tripod.lycos.com/campaigns/landing/free/ (features blog) 20MB

http://www.tripod.lycos.co.uk/taketour/ (features PHP4) 50Mb

So your brother could take the last one and install a php portal software and that should handle all the difficult tasks.

Both support frontpage extensions.

However where I live all ISP's that I know of gives free 50MB webspace (apache). Use this with the free blogger tool. www.blogger.com

nobody
Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Citydesk doesn't make you use HTML or templates if you don't want to. It has a wysiwyg editor. The sample site it comes with looks okay, just get your brother to add content to the site.

Matthew Lock
Tuesday, April 27, 2004

vi is what I use for quick and easy dev

Unix Grandma
Tuesday, April 27, 2004

www.w3schools.com

Fame and fortune acquired via knock hockey
Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Yahoo! SiteBuilder is free and is easy to use (as far as I can remember).

It isn't as sophisticated as CityDesk, but not everyone needs scripting and templates, etc.

Steve Jones (UK)
Wednesday, April 28, 2004

"My brother wishes to build a family website, and the host does not provide one of the free "build your site..." "

How about switching to a provider that does?

Just me (Sir to you)
Wednesday, April 28, 2004

www.nvu.org <--pretty good

But, if you want it real easy, just export a word or excel document as HTML. The arent exactly 100% valid HTML4.0 but they render ok in IE and Mozilla usually.

Eric Debois
Wednesday, April 28, 2004

If I recommend hotscripts one more time I will .... :-)

But seriously though, if you have access to php/mysql on the server, check out what you can get here.

http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Virtual_Communities/index.html

http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Content_Management/index.html

http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Blog/index.html

You install, and he has browser interface (less for him to break and it's all already online so no ftp)

Give a bit more detail about what he wants to achieve.... family blogs? Image galleries? Subsites for family members? Your choices are limited only by your imagination.

Tapiwa
Wednesday, April 28, 2004

NotePad

Snacky
Wednesday, April 28, 2004

With CityDesk there's always this option if your brother does not like the default look: he get's you to set up another look and feel (using some of the "geekier" features of CityDesk) then he just has the easy job of adding the content.

Another option is CuteSite Builder: http://www.cuteftp.com/cutesitebuilder/ Unlike CityDesk, its not a content management system with support for multiple users; its just a single-user site building tool. Configuring the look and feel is supposed to be an end-user task, although as a geek with web development experience, I still found it a bit of a challenge to get the look I wanted. You don't have to make your own look and feel though, since you can choose one of the existing templates.

My impression is that publishing new pages to a well-set-up CityDesk site is probably a bit easier than adding new pages to CuteSite Builder, but that CityDesk might be a little harder to set up (if you don't want to use the default look and feel).

John Rusk
Wednesday, April 28, 2004

What's wrong with Front Page?

Stephen Jones
Wednesday, April 28, 2004

>>What's wrong with Front Page?

Does it let you use templates so you can include common item in all the pages that make up the site, eg. header and footer? Otherwise, it's just another word processors, that happens to use HTML.

Fred
Thursday, April 29, 2004