[X-Newbies] web design software info

[Tony Johansen]

On 11/10/2005 2:53 AM, "Al Poulin" <alpoulin at cox.net> wrote:
> My wife wants to start working on a web site.  So as a casual newbie
> watching this thread with interest, I noticed this following comment by
> Richard, the original poster:  "What
> ever I end up doing I don't want to come back a year
> from now and have to redo the whole site."
> 
> Are you locked into the package you begin with?  Or is it easily
> transparent to move from one design package to another?  In other
> words, if you start with Composer or any other package, and then decide
> to use another web designer, are you getting into complexities?

There are 2 ways to look at this.

(1)If Richard learns along the way as most of us do he is likely to become
dissatisfied with earlier efforts and make a few tweaks as time goes by.
This has nothing to do with the program, and everything to do with his skill
levels.

An expert with a simple program can make a miracle, a novice with
dreamweaver is likely to make a mess. And no you are not tied to a certain
program. I use more than one program in the same project because no program
is perfect, and there is no need to tie oneself to a particular program

(2)Also few beginners realise that continual update and tweaking is good for
a website. Create a site then don't change it is a recipe to be ignored by
the search engines. The spiders that crawl the web for the engines love
finding change. As far as they are concerned change is the mark of an active
site and an active business. Sites that don't change could easily be for
businesses that went bust. There are millions upon millions of them and the
spiders look for evidence of dead sites.

And then, tweaking is your way of refining a site and helping it rise
through the search engine results.

You don't need to get expensive software, you need to learn what is
required. Get a book like "Sam's Teach Yourself To Create Web Pages" or an
equivalent, get an affordable WYSIWYG editor, Learn a few things, then down
the track you will have the self knowledge of whether or not you need to buy
Dreamweaver and Flash. Chances are good, if you enjoy web design, that you
will. Although, if you only make the one site, all that money was a waste.

Tony,
http://www.tonyjohansen.com
A Life In Art