Hello, I’d like to design a website that looks somewhat similar (or at least as professional) to another site. I was hoping you guys could give me some advice on what software I would need to do this. I have no experience with web site design. I’m looking for software that would make it as easy as possible for someone like me that has no clue what they’re doing when it comes to web design, to create a website. In fact, if there is software out their that could give me a ready made template of a web site with just some basic things that I could customize, that would be great. Then I figure all I would have to do is upload pictures and product information to the site. I’m willing to pay some decent money for software if it can make the process of creating a professional looking site easy.

Any info will be greatly appreciated.

Hello VitaminBoy,
Firstly, welcome to CompuForums. I hope that you can visit our forum often in the future and post - rather than just receiving our help and advice, and then disappearing. We provide our help for free, and all we ask in return is that you participate in our forum and refer your friends, or consider a premium membership.

You might want to try Serif WebPlus 6, which is free to download and use. It makes creating great-looking pages really easy. Get it from Free Web Site Publishing Software Download - WebPlus.
If you are planning on a website that lets you sell items and automatically keep control of stock levels, you may need something more complex. More information will help us with your query - e.g purpose of the site, whether you have any hosting yet, etc.

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Thanks Ash. Sorry about the huge link, not sure how it ended up like that

I'd be selling items(vitamins/nutritional supplements) on the website. At some point I'm probably going to need a program to keep track of stock. I don't have any hosting yet.

What do you guys think of electronic storefront software?

Why not just go for Dreamweaver? It's simple in Design mode.

or learn to code and use dreamweaver in developer view... better

I use Dreamweaver which I find very good, Im still learning how to use it in developer mode though

You could try Evrsoft First Page / 1st Page 2006 HTML Editor / Website Builder. It has a lot of good features and it's WYSIWYG. You could also try Nvu - The Complete Web Authoring System for Linux, Macintosh and Windows. It's pretty good as well.

I use Dreamweaver, but I can only use it in Developer View, as I know HTML, just not my way around the program

Hi guys. A few recommendations about web authoring software ...

I have just finished putting up a site using XHTML 1.0 Strict with CSS (see my signature). I first started with a design template I liked as a base. Then I stripped down the code and totally re-wrote it to suite my needs and style. It takes a little longer this way, and its not easy like a template where you fill in the blanks and upload, but you will have a better time learning and designing your own custom site, as opposed to someone elses.

Many free templates can be found at:
1. View Designs · OpenDesigns.org
2. Open Source Templates | Free CSS and XHTML Website Templates
3. Open Source Web Design - Download free web design templates.

Next, you can find Royalty Free public domain photos"
PD Photo - Free Photos And Pictures (public domain, stock pictures, wallpaper, royalty free, clip art, etc)

Finally, you can download a free WYSIWYG/text editor (and a very good one at that) from .:: NOTEPAD++ ::.

Note: all the software is free and you don't have to buy anything. There are so many free things on the web that many times out perform the cost-based ones. In addition, you want to be sure your web design software can write valid HTML/XHTML code with CSS so that it is cross-browser compatible.

I personally suggest that you use Photoshop to design the web page you want, then use Dreamweaver to code it so it looks pretty much exactly like how you designed it on Photoshop.

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