Website Building Software
You don’t need to be a programmer or buy expensive website design software in order to create stunning web pages. The lastest generation of website building software works much like the word processing software you’re already used to. You’ll be easily building personal or business websites from scratch or from a website template in no time without writing any code.
For years I had been using FrontPage Express. Like myself, many webmasters cut their teeth on FPEx, but a time came when I needed something a little more robust so I bought the full version of FrontPage. Not long after that Microsoft stopped bundling its free FPEx with Windows and left a lot of people hanging.
Years later FrontPage evolved into Expression Web. Built from the ground up, it took advantage of cascading style sheets and quit building bloated source code. Expression Web was far superior to FrontPage, but it still depended upon Microsoft proprietary hooks called FrontPage Extensions. FP extensions have to be installed on the web server in order to take advantage of some of the features of the product and its publishing capability.
FP extensions were always a headache, mysteriously “not installed” even when they were. I was constantly uninstalling and reinstalling them. They also interfere with WordPress installations on the same domain. I imagine web hosting companies don’t like them much either.
If you’re ready to find new website building software, here’s a list, no extensions required!
XSitePro2 – This is probably one of the most robust, feature-packed website builders for the money. Every time I look at the feature list I find something new.
Ewisoft – Build template-driven websites. That means you can change the look and feel without affecting the content of your pages. It’s good for beginners or for content publishers.
Artisteer – I love Artisteer. It’s not a website builder, but rather a theme/template builder. I use it exclusively for building my WordPress themes. In fact, the site you’re on right now is built using Artisteer. Download the full version for free and try it out for 30 days. That’s what I did. It only took me two days to realize that I HAD to have it.
