Create a website using builders

Writing HTML code for a multipage website can be tiresome. Especially if you take into consideration the various page decorations such as colors, fonts, placement of page components etc. the amount of work needed is not to be taken lightly. Good news everyone (Futurama), there are various tools that can help us with that and make our job pretty much a drag 'drop procedure. You will have to do some things manually but nevertheless you 'll do most of the work with some WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. This is very important because you see exactly what the webpage will look like while you are creating it. Think of it like a word processor that its output is a web page instead of a document.

There various tools out there that can do exactly that. Some of them are free while some are commercial. As is the case with all pieces of software some are better than the others, especially for particular tasks. Do not worry though 'cause I will show you what you need to get started right away.

What tool should I use for my website?

The answer at first seems a difficult one to answer, but believe me it is not. So lets talk about some tools and see what happens.

Dreamweaver

The most powerful, most used tool, out there to build websites is, without a doubt, Adobe Dreamweaver. It is a complete suit of tools to create beautiful dynamic websites with complete support for your website's decoration, excellent editor for your code (be it HTML, Javascript, PHP etc.). It is a complex tool though , with many functionalities, that even professionals struggle for years to utilize all its power. It is definitely not a tool for beginners. Most importantly though, it is commercial...and not a cheap one. It will cost you several hundred dollars to purchase a license. So, unless you are a company that can invest 600+ dollars for it I do not think it such a good idea. Dreamweaver is available for Windows and Mac OS X. There is no version available for Linux, so if you are a Linux user you are without luck.

Microsoft FrontPage

Our next option is a very popular one in the Windows world; Microsoft Office FrontPage. It is a complete suit that provides you with a WYSIWYG editor to create websites quickly and easily. It is very easy to learn and use it to create rich pages with decorations. In addition it allows you to publish you website directly from the tool while you are working on it and also features database support. On the other hand the code it produces is near unreadable which will make it difficult to maintain your code and perform simple changes manually. Sites developed with it often won't work on a standard web server; they require a server with special "FrontPage extensions" installed. Furthermore, FrontPage sites can only be maintained using FrontPage, so as soon as you start using it, you're stuck using Frontpage forever. In addition it is not very friendly to browsers other than Explorer. This is very important because you want your website to be accessible, and look the same, in all browsers and not just Explorer. You need Firefox, Opera and Safari users to be able to visit your site and share the same experience with Explorer users. On top of that Frontpage is commercial and will cost you, as a standalone version, around 150 dollars. A BAD choice

Nvu

Hmm...ok, we ruled out the two main players in the field, So now what? Well, now comes the good part. The tool that you will use; Nvu (pronounced n-view). Nvu is a completely free open-source tool developed by the open source community that will help you create your website quickly and painlessly. It is a complete suit that has a WYSIWYG editor so that you can view how your website will look like. In addition it offers a very good code editor for all your manual coding. The WYSIWYG editor, actually, produces good, readable code so you will have no problem with that. In addition you can publish you site directly from the tool so you will not have to upload the files manually. It contains all you need for the decorations and placement of the page components and it is very easy to use. Nvu is available for all major Platforms(Windows, MAC OSX and Linux) and you can download it for free here. The cherry on top is that you will never need to buy any books to learn how to use Nvu. As with any other opensource application it is supported by the community. On its web site you will find a support page and a very active forum where you can post your questions and discuss about the application and how you can utilize all its features.