I would highly reccomend that you don't go with a WYSIWYG editor. In my opinion the websites don't come out very well. Your best option would be to hard code some templates of your own and have the customer choose a template then you can spend a small amount of time modifying it to their specification. If you make 10-20 templates you should be able to attract quite a few customers and not have to do a whole lot of work.

With XHTML, CSS, and &#106avascript you should be able to make some awesome templates.

Quote:Original post by I_Smell_Tuna
I would highly reccomend that you don't go with a WYSIWYG editor. In my opinion the websites don't come out very well. Your best option would be to hard code some templates of your own and have the customer choose a template then you can spend a small amount of time modifying it to their specification. If you make 10-20 templates you should be able to attract quite a few customers and not have to do a whole lot of work.

With XHTML, CSS, and &#106avascript you should be able to make some awesome templates.

...I agree totally!

Dreamweaver has been the only editor worth the bother, until I got that, I was using NotePad.

If you're tired of starting from scratch each time, the as I_Smell_Tuna suggests, you should code standard templates that can be re-used over and over.

Also consider writing &#106avascript and CSS files to do common things as you would with Object-Oriented programming.<br>For example;<br>- A &#106avascript file to update your windows status bar<br>- Or a CSS file to alter the plain text/color/alignment of common HTML tags, like &lt;p&gt;, &lt;a&gt;, &lt;h1&gt;, etc.<br><br>Then all you have to do is link them each time you want to use them.<br><br><!--QUOTE--><BLOCKQUOTE><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><table border=0 cellpadding=4 cellspacing=0 width="95%"><tr><td class=quote><!--/QUOTE--><!--STARTQUOTE-->The thing is, I &#111;nly know basic HTML. I learned from a book published before the XHTML standard came out, so I would need some relearning. I don't know any &#106avascript either. None of these web sites are very big or complex either, so I just want something that gets the job done quickly. I &#111;nly charge $20 for a basic website and 5$ a month for updates, so I don't want to really waste too much time.<!--QUOTE--></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE><!--/QUOTE--><!--ENDQUOTE--><br><br>You wouldn't be wasting your time learning a bit of &#106avascript (it's a very simple language, but difficult to be good at as it's a bit messy), and there aint much difference from what I've seen between XHTML and HTML, so I wouldn't worry about that.<br><br>Daed.

See if you can spot which sites use templates purchased from Template Monster. The download counts are so low.. I bet you can't.

Seriously, at this point, if you are not a serious web designer than don't waste your money trying to duplicate a professional web design. Just purchase a template for $50-$60 and customize that. It's substantially easier to present an array of choices to the customer so they can be satisfied with what they are getting.

Template Monster

It's almost analogous to coding your own engine each time you want to make a game. So many templates exist that you probably will stumble upon one that matches your tastes.

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Michael Tanczos

Quote:Original post by sSimontis
I love Dreamweaver, but it is out of my price range by far. I am looking for software that is under $100, the cheaper the better.
...
As a high school student, I am eligible for an academic discount on programs.

I got Dreamweaver for like $100-175 with my student discount.

XHTMl is very easy. In a nutshell XHTML is a very strict version of HTML. You have to use propper coding, make sure you use closing tags, quotes, etc. CSS is also very easy just a bunch of formatting tags. The best guide I have found is www.w3schools.com The people who put that website together literally made the standards. (www.w3c.org)

Give PHP Designer 2005 a try! It's fast, free, and really nice! It comes with a preview pane, functionality tools, and so much more. Try that first before consider buying anything. [wink] Oh and BTW it says PHP designer, but it's more of just a Web Designer application, it supports more than just php with extras and the syntax hi-lighting.

I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade, but academic discounts usually stipulate that you can't sell what you make with the software. Educational use only.



~BenDilts( void );