Hi All, Without learning how to code a website what are the best options of building a website so to speak? And the best hosts? Thanks in advance for the replies. Bill
dreamweaver or frontpage.. or depending how advanced you want it - word or if you want a blog use something like wordpress. there're plenty template sites you can use as well , stuff like http://www.freecsstemplates.org/
Have a look HERE I use this lot for mine and it's all done with templates, no experience needed. Have a look at the link in my sig. There are other totally free ones about but you don't get domain names and and direct links, but if it's just for personal stuff or showing pics to mates or family they are ideal.
+1 to Wordpress. Most of the sites I host run it as it's 5 seconds to install, easy to use and very powerful.
Weebly - its drag and drop. Dead easy and free. Have a mess with it. I buy my URLs from 123 reg - about 8 quid for 2 years. C
+1 for weebly used it a couple of times, one for all my stuff i was selling when moving back from Cyprus and the other was a sort of project/DIY/ How 2 guide for my vectra. Easy to use although the templates are basic.
There are two kinds of wordpress site. One is a free blog like tumblr etc The other is Wordpress site that is hosted elsewhere. That way you have a larger hosting space. Direct video upload etc which is all hosted for you. You have full control of the images video. But it is still linked to wordpress as a whole. Wordpress.org is the plugin installed which allows direct access to admin of your account.
Sorry, as per usual, I didn't make myself clear - always rushing! Yes. Referring to the latter, a proper wordpress site hosted elsewhere; which is what I would want if I were to set-up a website. Now obviously, I'd like to be sure I can actually put together a decent website using Wordpress, before I fork out for a years hosting to just test it out. So what I was asking in essence, is: How can I use the Wordpress plugin/template/content management offline, for a mock-up, before I've arranged any proper online hosting for the real thing if the results are half-decent? Thanks in advance
Sorry STB I get what you mean. Unfortunately when you login on the admin panel of your hosted Wordpress you are using your Wordpress account. There is no way of getting into that admin panel without going through that. You can try Wordpress for free without paying for hosting. http://wordpress.com/ You have the same admin panel, posting ability it's just not paid for and you have limited amount of hosting space. At least I think so anyway. Free Blog Domain Name & Mapping 10GB Space Upgrade No Ads Custom Design VideoPress ]The free blog comes with the free account but the rest has to be paid for. Or you could buy offsite hosting. You can have some form of choice in the layout and design of your blog. But you can't create your own directly.
How long will you need to find out if wordpress is good enough for you? I can probably get you a month free hosting if that's long enough to muck around with.
wix.com Wix is a do-it-yourself website builder: a free online tool that lets you create and customize your own websites. Built with a powerful, user-friendly interface, Wix gives you total control over your web design without knowing the first thing about fancy coding or programming.
You could always just install wordpress on your local computer to try it out. Though this is a bit involved if you've never setup a web server.
EEWWWW... Fasthosts is a dirty word for most people I know. Having worked with ex-fasthost employees and customers I've not heard good things about them. I'd also recomend just going to basics and using blogger or tumblr to get a site up quickly. I know with tumblr you can use your own domainname for the site instead of using the normal <site>.tumblr.com method. There are loads of templates out there for tumblr and at least you can be up and running a basic site in no time. If you want to get your own hosting space and domain and do it that way then I can recommend dreamhost as a provider. It's about $125 per year but you can host as much as you like with them on the one account. Plus they always do deals for the first year so you get it cheaper. Annother place I hear nothing but good things about is squarespace, but I have nver used them personally. Once you get your feet wet with shared hosting why not take it to the next level and get a vps? Big learning curve but it very rewarding and will boost your *nix skills. lowendbox list lots of lower spec VPS providers that are capable of running a few sites each. I've used quite a few over the years that were recomended by LEB.
coding websites is so 1995. Everything these days is run on CMS like wordpress, Joomla, Drupal etc. There's no point in being the jack of all trades, use a cms like wordpress as already mentioned to just focus on your content.
