web page building

[monster]

Looking to set up a web page that firefox friendly, have seen web serif x2, does anyone have experience of using this system, how easy is it and are there any problems with it.
Many thanks folks.
Dave
PS Should I have put this thread elsewhere?!

[kevinrbeech]

I'm assuming that "Serif" is the company as in "Web Plus" by Serif.
I use web plus 8, which I bought a couple of years ago, 3 or 4 even, maybe. Serif sell in the stores and when you try to register the product they expect you to upgrade to the latest version, if you do it'll cost.
I've used various Serif pruduct since the days of windows 3.1, they do an ok job but are not IMHO up there with the top boys, however if you are only doing a personal site with not too many clever bits you'll find it relatively easy to use. I had Page Plus years ago and was using it to produce artwork for a print job, when it started crashing I phoned for support and established that it could only handle 150 bitmap images as that was the size of the index, so I upgraded to Pagemaker 6.5, that has been the "bees knees" ever since, and that was bought in 1997.

Kevin

[monster]

Many thanks Kevin but you lost us on the IMHO!!
We have a site built with MS Frontpage- very easy for I.T challenged folks like ourselves, but we are frustrated with the lack of compatibility and other niggles.
We are hoping to 'transfer' our info. from our old site to our new one (couldn't face writing it all again!).
Looking for the easy and cheapest option basically. Not sure buying something that requires expensive support or upgrades will suit us.
Any further tips are welcomed.
Dave

[CornishDaddy]

Hi Dave - when you are down our neck of the woods I can run you through dreamweaver. Not sure if it's what you are looking for but it might be ........

[pdriver]

Hi Dave,

Dreamweaver is by far the best product out there, although it comes at a price and has an equally steep learning curve. As with all the Adobe stuff, Dreamweaver is very much the professionals choice, although at an introductory level it comes preloaded with plenty of ready to go templates which will get you off to a good start.

I looked at Serif WebPlus for a client recently and thought it looked pretty user friendly and a good option for somebody wanting to get up and running quickly. Why not download a trial version and see how you get on with it - follow this link http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/sof...us/default.asp

Don't forget that you'll also need a graphics package such as PaintShop Pro or Fireworks. Digital photographs for example will need resizing so that they fit within your layout. Moreover, it's often necessary to optimise them so that they download quickly.

Instead of building a website from scratch, many people choose to create a blog instead. Not only are they free, they also have the advantage of needing no design or coding experience and are very easy to update from local internet cafes along your way! For photos you can link your blog with a free online photo hosting service such as Flickr.

Good luck

Paul Driver
www.guesswhereweare.co.uk

[mailking]

maybe you guys want to take a look at drupal? Free, large based community, cms, database based, if you like what you see, go for it.

[monster]

Typical- just after we purchased the serif option, Drupal comes up!!
It looks great and if serif proves too hard for us we can fall back on the drupal site.
Great tip sea stories- as always, many thanks!!
Dave

[4WDTraveller]

Coffee Cup; it's the best of the almost free products out there. HTML, WYSIWYG, FTP, and more...Dreamweaver is for large corporations/design professionals when need every bell and whistle.

[Dakota]

You might also want to look at Joomla!. It's a fairly easy to use powerful content management system (free to download) and there are lots of Joomla templates on the net.

My hubby set his website up in less than half an hour - Welcome to Smokin' Lizard Adventure Motorcyling Resources but he did take most of the content off my website, which is static html.

[TravellingStrom]

Hi

For a total free experience, you could try the following. Run a Blog.

I am using Wordpress, this is a free site. Once I tested it and saw how easy it was to run on a daily basis, I ended up buying my own domain name and paid this site $10/year to map the name across. This was for personal reasons, read vain , but there is no need.

I also use a free photobucket account, to store my blog photos online, for easy linking.

I also use a free program called Irfanview, this is what I use to resize and brand my photos, before uploading to Photobucket.

When I was on the road recently going around Australia I had intermittent access to the internet. I could write my daily story around the photos I wished to use, then when I had online access I could update all the daily pages at the same time. Uplaod speed was the only inhibiting factor, trying to get all the photos up, movie uploads took the longest.

If you have a decko at my blog site below, pick any calandar day which is highligted blue, and you can see what you can achieve, without learning HTML.

Cheers
TravellingStrom

[monster]

Hey- nice web page. Just shows what can be done without HTML. Being the lucky devils that we are, we have several options now and are trying them all out to see what suits us best. Biggest job is pasting and rearranging old site text onto new format!
Many thanks to everyone for all the great suggestions.
Dave

[Alexlebrit]

I'd recommend a blog too, I've used Blogger before, and been very happy with it, There's a whole bunch of templates and with next to no knowledge of any web-writing skills you can tweek these to suit. All I did was Google things like "how do I change the colour of a blogger template" and got a bunch of answers.

It integrates with Google accounts so if you've got photos, it automatically puts them in a Picassa account for you, no need to upload the photos first and then insert them in your blog. Just do it straight from Blogger and it's all done for you.

Oh and for times when you're on the road and don't have a lot of time or good internet access you can also e-mail in your entries, complete with photos, and they're all put in as if you'd gone to your Blogger account.

I tried WordPress first and I'm sure it is better if you know what you're doing, as I know it's more versatile and has many opportunities to customise. But I found it assumed I knew more than I did, and the answers on the help fora again seemed to assume I had knowledge of HTML, CSS etc which I didn't. If you don't know what you're doing, I think Blogger is easier and quicker to set up.

I'd definately recommend Irfanview for it's speed, simplicity, and the fact it's free.

[monster]

We have finally finished making our web page Fire fox compatible. We transferred our data over from Front page to Serif and it was a hell of a job. We won't miss front page! Thanks for all the above advice folks- lots of great ideas. So far Serif seems to be easy enough- fingers crossed!
If anyone has a problem accessing the new format- let us know.
Cheers!
Monster

NESSIESADVENTURES

[ngummow]

Using notepad (HTML), online script reference libraries, a sensible directory structure, SnagIt (for graphic creation), paint and windows for picture resizing/editting - we produced this - MoroccanAdventure@hardmeier.net - Zurich-Tiznit-Zurich or BUST!!!

It was a ballache getting it to be multi browser compatible - Opera/Firefix/IE/Safari would fail at different points. IMHO never build a website for IE - always use one of the others.

[joshoisasleep]

Hey hoping it's not against forum rules to mention this here but...

I'm a very broke overlander trying to make my way home who makes web pages from time to time.

If anyone's looking to set themselves up an overland trip site and has a small amount of money to put into it, for a few thousand km's worth of diesel I'll do you one up. Have a look at my own site... there are a few things I can do (most specifically in the seemingly simple but actually complicated "little red line across the whole world" department) that you can't DIY without some reasonable coding skills.

Josh