Decent Freeware or Open Source software for web design? Must be non technical.

T

Threepwood

Senior Member
Joined
Aug 27, 2007
Messages
806
Reaction score
0
A friend of mine is setting up a business website, but needs some free or open source web design s/w, must be allowed to use for a business site obviously.

He needs to build the site off-line and then upload it later.

So far he's tried Komposer, and it's not really gelling well with him for some reason. I haven't seen it much myself, one thing he brought up is that he can't place images nicely with it.

If you know something that's really easy to use for someone who has basically no HTML/web related knowledge, please suggest.
 
I recently went through the process of searching for a user friendly Freeware Web Designer... and while there are some good ones out there... I ended up using...

NOTEPAD.... seriously... for me was the easiest.

There is just nothing that is top notch for Web Design... at least nothing that I was happy with. Everything wanted to stick their own proprietary crap into my web page and re-render it how they thought it should look. Was a very frustrating experience.
 
It depends. Does he want to write a site from scratch? Or does he want to create something in say drupal, and then upload the result to a hosting company?
 
AFAIK there aren't many freeware tools for we developement for non-coders...
Anything with a WYSIWYG is gonna cost you
 
I used notepad some time ago for some simple web pages, but ja with that is the requirement of learning html, I know it's not all that difficult but something very GUI/point and click based is required.

The friend doesn't really want to spend whole lot of time learning stuff, as the business is pretty involved.

I'll try out some of the tools in those links posted, that Nvu one looks interesting on the cover.

He doesn't really need to create the whole thing from scratch, he was initially trying to find some kind of template thing that he could edit. I think he would probably need to get some frames and stuff going.

What's drupal?
 
Threepwood said:
I used notepad some time ago for some simple web pages, but ja with that is the requirement of learning html, I know it's not all that difficult but something very GUI/point and click based is required.

The friend doesn't really want to spend whole lot of time learning stuff, as the business is pretty involved.

I'll try out some of the tools in those links posted, that Nvu one looks interesting on the cover.

He doesn't really need to create the whole thing from scratch, he was initially trying to find some kind of template thing that he could edit. I think he would probably need to get some frames and stuff going.

What's drupal?
Click to expand...

Drupal is a content management system like Joomla, etc.

rather a bit difficult for your friend to go that route unless someone is going to set it all up for him.

I also went to template route.... I found a nice template on the internet... opened it up in notepad and customised it from there.
 
Kompozer is NVU just more updated, so if your friend don't like Kompozer he wont like NVU.

I also searched for tools like this a while back... and to be honest I couldn't find anything, Kompozer is the best one out there IMHO. But I only wanted open source software, so maybe you will be lucky with a freeware application.

But if you find something nice please post it on the thread, because I'm sure somebody else will find it useful.

Regards,
 
Threepwood, I realize that if your friend is setting up a new website, he might also be busy setting up a new business and working on a shoestring budget. If he does have approximately R770 ($99) spare I suggest that he takes a serious look at Microsoft Expression Web 2. The upgrade eligibility states that you can upgrade if you have any version of MS Office, which most people should have. I use Adobe Dreamweaver but had a look at Expression Web 1 when it was still in beta and it was quite impressive. Give the trial version a try ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X