Windows web site creation?
September 19, 2010 9:09 AM   Subscribe

I need a simple code-free web site creation tool for my girlfriend that combines some basic CMS features with a WYSIWYG editor.

My girlfriend wants to create a small (static) business web site to be hosted on her own domain. She has a Windows PC to do this and wants to have wide-ranging control over the look of the site without learning HTML/CSS. I'm surprised I can't seem to find a tool that matches her needs.

Basically, I need something that allows me to derive pages and a site structure (ie an autogenerated navigation sidebar and common header/footer stuff) from templates and includes an editor for said templates.

Things we've tried and found inadequate:

- Goldfish, which is about what I want, but it crashes about once per minute on her PC, and its creators only offer support if you cough up 200 dollars for the Pro version first.

- KompoZer and Seamonkey have WISYWYG editors, but apparently don't support any template/CMS features, so you'd have to manually update each page if the sidebar got a new entry? That seems slightly ridiculous in 2010.

- DreamWeaver is way too huge, expensive and assumes knowledge of HTML/CSS.

If there is no Windows software but I'm missing an amazing CMS that allows WYSIWYG editing of its templates as well, anything that I can install on a Linux host is also fine. Free is good, but cheap (<100 USD) is also okay.

I've seen the various previouslies, but the results were either useless or are really outdated by now (I thought I'd like NetObjects Essentials for a while, until I found the references to special feature available only in Netscape4/IE4 in their manual).
posted by themel to Computers & Internet (12 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Have you checked out Squarespace? This includes hosting, too, though, and is not free.
posted by FlyByDay at 9:26 AM on September 19, 2010


If you're capable of doing some minimal coding for her I'd suggest mojomotor. It's perfect for brochure style sites. It's a case study for what you want.
posted by cjorgensen at 9:32 AM on September 19, 2010


Seconding Squarespace. There are lots of ways to do what you want to do (Wordpress would work just fine) that don't require installing/maintaining software on your own computer. I'm not sure why you'd want to do make your "static" site on your own computer and then upload it to your domain if you don't have to. Also- your site isn't really static if you want to have a dynamically generated sidebar. Let the people who have solved this problem already do the work for you.

Squarespace- see if it will work for you. I'm sure you can also find some codes online to drop the price significantly (though, for a small site it's not at all unreasonable).
posted by jz at 10:17 AM on September 19, 2010


Wordpress. It's dead easy to set up, there are thousands of templates around, and building the page or adding content is very straightforward. Check out wordpress.org for the software and install instructions, and do a Google search for "wordpress CMS" to find all kinds of tutorials about building the page.
posted by philosophygeek at 10:34 AM on September 19, 2010


Response by poster: For everyone who suggested Wordpress: I don't see how she would be able to work on changing layouts without messing around in PHP templates, which is simply out of the question. Am I wrong?
posted by themel at 11:23 AM on September 19, 2010


My answer to every question is pretty much "WordPress" but I did not suggest that here because yes, it's not going to give her the layout control with no code.

Back in the day the answer to this question used to be FrontPage. You could design and create pages and all your content in a WYSIWYG editor, upload them to a host and be done. The problem is that FrontPage used tables for layout and we do not do that any more; we now control layout with CSS. Any templating system where you are not working with pre-loaded templates ala Squarespace is going to require you to know CSS.

I do not believe that what your girlfriend wants exists any more. The two options I can see are compromises:

1/ Use SquareSpace. There are 60 templates. They are editable. You can control EVERY element of the layout - fonts, colours with a color picker, margins, column numbers, nav bars, all of that. I cannot believe you cannot turn out a very satisfactory 5-page website with Squarespace.

2/ WordPress. But as much as I love wordPress, she will have to at a minimum learn to FTP in order to swap out graphics in the layout and minimal CSS to change colours and I don't think that's what you want.

Tell us why Squarespace isn't sufficient and maybe you'll get more information about it or some other suggestions.
posted by DarlingBri at 12:31 PM on September 19, 2010


Hmmm... I wonder if Concrete 5 might be worth a look. You'd need to install in on a (Linux) host. As far as most CMS go, it's looks pretty simple to edit pages in their WYSIWYG editor, but I'm not sure how flexible that is in terms of layout or how much code would be needed to get to that point. I've never used it or seen anything more than their intro video, but it's been on my list to research further should the need for such a tool arise.
posted by dirm at 1:32 PM on September 19, 2010 [1 favorite]


I'm not sure why you're saying Dreamweaver requires knowledge of CSS and HTML. That's simply not the case. And the thing about updating every page if you added an entry to the sidebar is easily handled with the use of server-side includes -- but is understanding includes too much like learning code?

I think your problem comes down to this: "wide-ranging control over the look of the site without learning HTML/CSS". I think you need to pick one of those two things.

If you're someone who doesn't know code, then maybe you can't have wide-ranging control and you should get someone who does know code to set you up with the templates you want, and stick with them.

There are lots of things to dislike about Dreamweaver, but it has pretty comprehensive templating and overall site-management features. And it's a WYSIWYG editor.
posted by AmbroseChapel at 1:50 PM on September 19, 2010


You can usually get a 30 day download of adobe products. Perhaps you could do that, layout your site, and them make future tweaks using some of the free options you list. (If it's just a matter of editing text you can use a text editor).
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 2:30 PM on September 19, 2010


Weebly should do the trick.
posted by earth oddity at 2:56 PM on September 19, 2010


Laterally: If she doesn't know any html or css, or have any experience creating a website, she's better off finding a good looking template designed by someone who actually knows about this kind of stuff than excercising "wide-ranging control over the look of the site".
posted by signal at 5:27 PM on September 19, 2010


It might be worth it to take a peek at this thread from earlier this week on website building (and specifically my comment which covers basic CMS/website builder-y stuff) should help.

To address something that might be confusing your search -- it's not really normal to find a local software (something you install on your computer) that is WYSIWYG and has CMS features. CMS basically requires that it runs on a server or is a hosted service.

And to contradict what some folks have been saying, you can have some relatively fine-grained control of layout and styling without CSS/HTML through any relatively modern online website builder.
posted by polexa at 9:01 PM on September 19, 2010


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