[Paul B]

Right, for one of my final year modules we have to produce an electronic portfolio of our dissertation, group projects and a cv, for the rest of the course presentation seems to have won everytime over content and I was hoping to produce something fairly smart looking. Ive done a bit of HTML in the past but nothing overly fancy and was wondering if you lot know of any intuitive pieces of software that allow you to produce smart looking (flash maybe?) websites?
Cheers,
oh preferably free software or easily 'sourced'.

[Bubba]

Just learn to use XHTML and CSS.

Don't bother with Flash unless you're prepared to put a lot of time in - it's a very steep learning curve.

[squeek]

www.opensourcecms.com has a lot of free content management software you could install on a server that supports PHP and a MySQL database, if you access to those.  They're easy to install and put together a quick website.  you can have a play with demo installations on the website I've linked to.

[Paul B]

cheers people, any peices of software available that use a graphics based interface rather than code?

Do you think it will be a steep curve just to get some fancy looking menus and loading symbols? Apart from that its just txt and pics, with a few links to pdf's?

squeek: ill check out that link in more detail tommorrow, thanks.

[Control freak]

You can get Visual Studio web developer Express edition for free from Microsoft which is pretty good but you will need to know your way round visual studio

You can download a demo of Dreamweaver 8 from Macromedia and theres also a beta available of Microsofts new Expression Web Designer but Im not sure if you need a subscription to download it

Theyll all take some time to learn though Im afraid and as Bubba said, Flash takes a while to be able to produce something useful as opposed to just having some random shape move across the screen

CSS and HTML can let you produce something smart with not too much time. Get the Firefox web dev plugin and its lets you look at and change style sheets for any of the websites which you visit so you can see what effects the different elements have

Personally, unless you have to produce it yourself, Id go with squeeks option and try and find someting suitable which you can download from the net

Good luck!

[Bubba]

Forget Visual Studio - that's really for programmers.

Dreamweaver might do the job, but you're still going to have to learn some of the basics of html/css.

As squeek said, you could try one of the CMSs but many of them are actually quite complicated if you have no idea what you're doing.

[Monolith]

Just learn to use XHTML and CSS.
Don't bother with Flash unless you're prepared to put a lot of time in - it's a very steep learning curve.

Spot on. If you learn to hand code, you'll have a much better grasp of what you're doing and how changes in certain areas will affect others.

The best book ever written on designing with web standards is by Jeffrey Zeldman and is called Designing with Web Standards. Check out his page devoted to the book,and whilst you're there, take a peek through the rest of his site. It's one of the most viewed web design sites in the world and is simply ace.

zeldman.com/dwws/

With regards to online resources, there's plenty:

alistapart.com (outstanding site, with loads of easy to use tutorials)
stylegala.com (great resources, links and the best collection web standards design essays you will find)

good luck

[squeek]

zeldman.com/dwws/

From that site:
Web 1.0: Crap sites on Geocities.
Web 2.0: Crap sites on MySpace.

ha ha

It also looks like we're stuck on Web 1.0:
Web 1.0: Karma Points.
Web 2.0: Diggs.

In regards to the CMS software I linked to and Bubba's comment, they're not that straight forward to do, especially if you don't have the luxury of a website with something like Fantasico which will autoinstall it for you.  It will also probably take you a lot of tinkering to get it like you want.  They do use a graphical interface, but they have much larger sites for their target so by default may look quite cluttered.

If you do want something quick where you don't have to edit the code I'm sure there will be a freeware site maker, or one with a month's trial that you could use.  I never got on with Dreamweaver myself, it seemed to be like MS Word, good when it was autodoing things you wanted, but evil when autodoing things you didn't want.

[squeek]

From the "List of good freeware" sticky thread, here's some recommended freeware HTML editors:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm#15

[Paul B]

im more than happy to edit the code, and ive got until january to have it done so the time aspect isnt too pressing, found a good few template sites today however nothing that really stands out. I also tried one of those generic flash site making programs from download.com, it was pretty crap.

[Monolith]

As a general word of warning, I'd stay steer clear of using a template. Even the decent templates out there can be quite complex, and hence can be somewhat of a problem when you come to edit your content.

Given that you have until January, you could make quite a lot of progress in a day if you follow some of the listapart tutorials. And the stylegala forum folk are always helpful. I'm not sure exactly what you're doing, but a simple 2 coloumn site should be well within your grasp for starters.

Also forgot to post one of the best links before

dezwozhere.com/links.html

It acts as a great compendium of all css and xhtml knowledge.

It took me a while to cotton onto them, but bookmarklets are a very useful design aid. By dragging a java link into your main shortcuts bar, you can simply click the bookmarklet for its specific function. For example, if you obtain a 'show divs' one, you click on it and it frames all names all of your divs.

Zeldman will explain all!

[Bubba]

Have a look here for some nice open-source CSS based templates: http://www.oswd.org/designs/browse/

[unclesomebody]

I didnt say this, but you could just steal someone elses website that you quite like the look of and make a few changes. Of course, this is morally questionable but it is a possible solution.

[Jim]

I didnt say this, but you could just steal someone elses website that you quite like the look of and make a few changes. Of course, this is morally questionable but it is a possible solution.

who did then?
don't tell me, it was your mate on death row. right?

[Bubba]

It's probably easier to use an open-source template than convert somebody else's site tbh.

But morally it is a bit shit, even if you are just about to get a lethal injection - remember that site that totally ripped off this one?

[Johnny Brown]

Just discovered my new pc won't read my old cd of dreamweaver 4, in fact it locks the whole machine up just putting it in the drive, bizarre.

I knew my way round it reasonably, so should I try to get a newer version or is there a better alternative? I wasn't a huge fan of DW, it was clearly powerful but not hugely intuitive, though that could have a lot to do with me knowing sweet fa about what I was doing... it did the job though.

I could also do with an easier & quicker way to get personalised galleries for clients online and within my site without building em by hand myself. Any ideas? Bear in mind I am a chump in these matters, it takes me about an hour to build them then the rest of the day to get them to work... Ideally I could export straight from Lightroom but I haven't a clue what I need to achieve this tbh.
I'll have a look at the freeware above in the meantime, any help appreciated, ta.

[Paul B]

you can download the dreamweaver 8 trial from adobe for nothing (30days only) to check if you like it or not.

[Johnny Brown]

aggh this is driving me mad, getting nowhere. The free Nvu above seems good but doesn't appear to support frames, the word doesn't even get a result when searching the help. Am now reduced to trawling the web for something similar to what I want so I can copy the code. Destined to be a f*cking nightmare and waste another day......

The trial Dreamweaver is 60mb, too much for dial-up. How long does broadband take? Ordered mine ten days ago...

[Bubba]

Do you definitely need frames?

What are you trying to do?

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

JB I've PM'd you.

There are several tools listed here...

http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/webgalleryfreepc/

Coppermine looks pretty powerful but not sure if its what your looking for.

http://jalbum.net/index.jsp might be more like it. Looks pretty easy and gives a nice result.

[underground]

It's probably easier to use an open-source template than convert somebody else's site tbh.

But morally it is a bit shit, even if you are just about to get a lethal injection - remember that site that totally ripped off this one?

Err, vaguely, but no not really. Point well made.

[Johnny Brown]

Cheers Obi, I'll check em out.

Bubba, one page of my website uses frames at present, I'm going to try to do with out them in the future but it'd be nice to be able to edit what I've already got. What I'm doing is putting together preview pages for clients, ie just simple galleries.
It would appear several folk have friends in jail who can get me dreamweaver, though I'm keen to check out alternatives first. At some point I need to go straight on all this shit, Lightroom may be the start, its all tax-deductable anyway...

[Jim]

now thats just crazy talk