The website creation program is used to create your web pages and manage your website. These programs come in all different price and feature levels and come in several different flavors. Currently, the most popular type is the what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) editor. Many of these have a user interface similar to a word processor or page layout program. Another type is the HTML editor. These are designed for people to prefer to create there web pages in HTML markup directly rather than through a visual interface.

The other essential ingredient is the image editing program. At a bare minimum, you will need a program that will allow you to resize your images and save your images in "gif" or "jpeg" format. Resizing images in you website creation program is a real no-no and is one of the most common reasons for "page bloat". For a review of "gif" and "jpeg" and why you need to care about these go to optimizing images.

More advanced image editing programs allow you to do full blown image creation, editing, optimizing and will even generate "roll-over" effects for you.

Web Site on a Budget

Word Processors: If you are creating a personal website and don't want to spend any money, you still have some choices. You could use your word processor. Word 97, Word 2000 and several versions of Word Perfect allow you to save your documents as a web page (i.e. and HTML document). Please note that your word processor will generally create bloated pages with HTML that is not compatible with older versions of Netscape and Explorer, so watch out!

Front-page Express and Netscape Composer: As an alternative, you can use Front-page Express, that comes with most PCs or Netscape Composer, which is built into Netscape Communicator. These programs are bare minimum in features, however they are free.

Image Editing on a Budget: There is also a good chance that your computer came with a simple user friendly image editing program such as PhotoDeluxe. This program is more than adequate for the basic requirements of resizing your images and saving them in either gif or jpeg format. Alternatively, you could use shareware or freeware programs. You can find many of these at winfiles.com.


Midrange Software

If you plan on building anything more than a simple site you will want to use a website creation program. In the under $100 range you have many choices. Here are a few.

Symantec Visual Page: This program is has a clean, simple user interface, is easy to use and has a very nice tutorial to get you started. It has a very good core feature set: (What You See IS What You Get) WYSIWYG page layout, HTML editing, and good site management. We highly recommend this program.

Microsoft Front-page: We have mixed feeling about this program. Front-page 98 has many features of a professional program but has some serious short comings which cause us not to recommend it. Unless you build your site from scratch, you will find it very difficult to modify or customize the built-in themes. Second, Front-page produces web sites that require special extensions that need to be included in the Server called Front-page extensions. Note that Acquired Knowledge Systems Supports Front-page extensions if you plan on using Front-page Third, many of the whiz-bang features create pages that are not compatible with Netscape, and there is no indication which features these are !

Front-page 2000 overcomes these objections. You can turn off Front-page extensions, there is a browser compatibility check, you can modify themes and create your own. If you want to use Front-page, our strong recommendation is not to use Front-page 98 but instead to use Front-page 2000.

Professional Software

If you want to use the software that professionals use and don't mind investing some money you can't go wrong with either one of the following combinations:

Macromedia Dreamweaver / Fireworks (versions 2.0 or later)
Adobe Go Live / Photoshop 5.5 or later

Both sets of programs have similar feature sets. Both combinations have been used to build some of the finest sites on the web. Both Dreamweaver and Go Live give you object oriented editing (like a page layout program), WYSIWYG editing, and HTML editing. Both have excellent site management tools. Both are run on either PCs or Macs. The differences are really a matter of taste.

Dreamweaver and Fireworks: The Dreamweaver/ Fireworks combo (both versions 2.0 or latter) are well integrated and extremely powerful and easy to use once you get past the initial learning curve. Fortunately, both programs have extremely good video tutorials to get you up and running quickly (see www.lynda.com).

Fireworks was designed by Macromedia from the ground up as an image editing and creation program specifically for the web. Fireworks integrates many features that once required several programs to accomplish. This includes both vector (shaped base) and raster (continuous tone) image editing, editable text, effects and very user friendly image compression. Fireworks also works with many Photoshop Plug-ins (programs that run inside Fireworks or Photoshop that enhance its functionality). Both Fireworks and Dreamweaver work harmonious with another Macromedia program called Flash. Flash allows you to build compact fast loading animated presentations and web sites

Go Live and Photoshop: Photoshop is the number one image editing program for bit map images. Recently, Adobe has incorporated text editing and user friendly image compression in order to compete with Fireworks strong web features. Photoshop is much more costly than Fireworks ($600 vs. $300). Since Photoshop was originally designed for the print world, you can also do your non-web based image projects as well.

Before Dreamweaver came along, Go Live was the web site creation tool of choice of many professional design firms. Go Live has most of the same features as Dreamweaver. Here are the differences: sports the Adobe look and feel, better HTML editing, less customizable and less extensible.

Software For Creating Dynamic Pages

If you plan on doing an type of e-commerce yourself such as a webstore with on-line shopping or you want to have information generated on the fly, such as automatic responses to forms that your customers fill out you will need additional software.

Generally, web stores run specialized programs on your Internet Service Provider's Server known as "shopping cart programs". Automatic responses are generally created by small custom programs running on the server. These are often known as CGI scripts (CGI stands for common gateway interface). Large web sites (from hundreds to hundreds of thousands of pages) are often database driven. This means that all of the information is stored in a database. The pages are created on the fly by filling a page template with text and images stored in the database.

Creating Dynamic Pages from Scratch: Creating dynamic pages from scratch requires programming still. You will need to know SQL (Structured Query Language) to access the database and a server side scripting language such as Perl or PHP3. As an alternative, you can use a program called Drumbeat 2000 which allows you to create Database Driven sites without programming. This program has a fairly steep learning curve.

A Simpler Alternative: If you want to do a webstore yourself but don't have the time or inclination to learn web programming, we offer a simple alternative that requires no programming experience or web design skill at all. Our full featured webstore creator allows you to create an attractive webstore which will allow your customers to purchase with their credit cards on-line over our secure server. The powerful site administration tool allows you to easily add or subtract products, change prices and retrieve customer orders. Click Here for more information.