Advice on good website builders?

[Anonymous]

I am working on building my own site, but it's been a while and my software is pretty old. Any good free website builders out there, and where is the best place to get reasonable templates? Thanks!

[justinpowell]

Some hosts (like Homestead) include web site building tools as part of their package. If you don't already have a host lined up, this might be a good way to go.

You may also want to check out Nvu (http://www.nvu.com/), which is a free open-source web building tool sponsored by Linspire, one of the big providers of the Linux operating system. Nvu is cross-platform and works on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I haven't tried it yet, but it looks like it might be pretty good.

If you are a Mac user, I'd also highly recommend RapidWeaver. It is about the simplest way I've seen for making professional-looking sites and it only costs $40. Although it won't do the heavy lifting of GoLive or Dreamweaver for large commercial sites, Rapidweaver can address the needs of most small businesses. I've used it for some quick-and-dirty projects and absolutely love the program.

Hope this helps and let me know if you have any other questions.

[sabpadilla]

Thanks! I recently downloaded NVU, I do already have a site and hosting - too bad I didn't check to see that they had a builder before I signed on!! So that's been my problem, finding a site builder that I can transfer to another host. I guess I'll work on NVU, and I 'll let everyone know when it is ready to be critiqued!! Thanks!

[Lori]

You might consider finding a host that has wordpress available on it. Unless you need shopping cart functionality... but a content management system might be the way to go.

Lori

[justinpowell]

Who's your host? If they support PHP, you can download & install Wordpress (http://www.wordpress.org) for free like Lori suggested. There are also some other good content management systems available as open source (i.e., free) software: phpNuke (http://phpnuke.org), Mambo, phpWebSite, postNuke, etc.

You can get information/downloads for these at SourceForge.net (http://www.sourceforge.net). I use phpNuke for one site and am extremely happy with it. Please bear in mind that some of these systems may not be very user friendly to install and configure on your host's server.