We have covered the basics of coding a web site in the last few pages
but there is a very good reason that we have not gone into an incredible
amount of detail and that is that there is software that can do allot of
the work for you. You can of course do it yourself using a basic text editor
but the software makes it much easier, it is very much like
using a word processor and just using simple menus to create your pages.
The software is quite expensive though and so you really do have to bite
the bullet here, the software will make it much easier to create web sites
and will pay for itself many times over with the time that you will save.
When you are successful you will have to set up a company and you can then
also class it as a business expense and therefore it becomes much cheaper.
You need to buy the full version and not the upgrade, you can only use the
upgrade if you have an old version of Dreamweaver that you wish to upgrade
to the latest version. Also ignore the studio packages as these contain lots
of software that you do not need and is also very expensive.
The software that we recommend is Dreamweaver and we have listed it from
Amazon on the right, I suggest that you buy a copy and get it installed as
soon as possible as this is the main tool that you will use to create web
sites.
Dreamweaver handles all of your web design software needs and is an excellent
tool, it contains full FTP software which will be explained later as well
as the full web design software.
Dreamweaver comes with some excellent documentation but we will run through
the basics here. Dreamweaver has an excellent layout which allows you to
view in design mode or code view and you can also combine the two with the
split view which is very useful. In design mode you see roughly what the
web page will look like in the browser and as you edit it it changes so that
you can see how the changes you are making are going to affect the look of
the web page. In code view you simply see the HTML code and you can edit
this as you like, the split view is best though as you can edit the HTML
code and see the changes instantly in the design view which makes working
on the page much easier. There is then a file area on the right which lists
the files of your web site so that you can open them and upload them to your
web space, we sill discuss this later on in this web site.
The great thing about dreamweaver is that it works just like a word processor
or other simple software and has buttons and menus that are very easy to
use. Instead of having to type in the code for your web page you can simply
press the button for the feature you require and the HTML code is inserted
into the web page automatically, this makes creating web pages much more
simple and most features are very basic and easy to understand.
When you install Dreamweaver it is best to read through the documentation first
to work out fully how to work the software, you could also buy a book on Dreamweaver
if you wish and this will give you a much more detailed knowledge of the software.
This is not essential though and you can make simple web sites very easily
with Dreamweaver, throughout the rest of this web site we will refer to Dreamweaver
and so it really is an essential tool for your online business.
© Earn Online.org.uk 2007.
