Software...

[wrrock]

I have $3,000 dollars to spend on software to create a web site. I included Adobe web collection, Microsoft frontpage, Internet access, hosting, and backup. I still have over $1,000 to spend. Am I missing any software necessary for making web pages? Are there any good consulting companies for promotion?

Thanks much,
Wes

[maelzx]

anything from Macromedia ?? Dreamweaver is a MUST (if Me).

[creole]

Essential Items:
-= Photoshop
-= A HTML editor (NOT FRONTPAGE) like Dreamweaver
-= A good plain text editor such as EditPlus, UltraEdit, TextPad, HTML-Kit, etc.
-= A good FTP program. A great free app is LeechFTP, or you can purchase one such as BulletproofFTP, or CuteFTP.

"Good Idea" items
-= IrfanViewer - good for previewing images. This app can open ANY sort of graphics file. It can also do bulk renaming of files.
-= WinGRAB - or any other screen capture program. This makes it easy to capture colors, text wrapping, and other things which you can then import into Photoshop for your layouts.
-= Illustrator - If you're getting the Web collection then you'll already have Illustrator. But, it's still a good bet. Illustrator can do things that Photoshop can't. A great package for any designers toolkit.

As you can see, you could easily get away with less than $1500 worth of software. If this is YOUR money, then instead of buying more software, buy a second monitor and video card. Dual monitors make life SOOOO much easier when you're designing. It allows you to have a browser open on one monitor and Photoshop or Dreamweaver open on the other, among other things.

If it's your company's money, then buy only the necessary pieces and tell your Boss that you just saved the company over $1000.

[moonman]

I use Corel 10 aswell. It's not vital, but I use it for graphical design.

[fabienf]

Do you plan to spend 1000$ on promoting your site?
If you are short in cash I suggest you manually add your site to search engine. If not, you can buy targeted keywords on overture (goto)

[moonman]

Plus a listing on Looksmart and Yahoo. There's $600 gone straight away.

[Technosailor]

I agree. Go short on software (DW4 Ultradev is $300 and Homesite 5 is $100), get your hosting and everything for the year for a couple hundred at most, and use the rest in marketing...

If I had $3000 and I had zero in the way of capital investments, this is how I would use it:

Dreamweaver Ultradev 4 - $299
Homesite 5 - $99
Photoshop 6 - $649 (I think)
Illustrator 10 - $400 (I think)
Cute FTP Pro - $50 (I think)
1 year of basic hosting (Linux, PHP, MySQL) - $125
1 Domain 1 year - $15
$1400 marketing, ads, radio time(?)...whatever....marketing!

Sketch

[Neon]

Creole, you can capture the screen in both photoshop and psp too. You don't need a porg for that.

In photoshop; just click the print screen button, make a new pict in photoshop and hit crtl+v and you have it

I don't use psp so I don't know how its done there

[creole]

Actually, you can't capture the screen with Photoshop. You capture it with the OS. That is true, you don't HAVE to use a screencap program, but since WinGRAB is free it doesn't really matter. Plus it offers more options that just capturing the screen.

It can:
- Capture the full screen or just the current window
- Export the screen caps as JPG, BMP or TIF
- Capture a series of screenshots using a timer
- Capture the window with the cursor and without

[wrrock]

Hi everyone--

Thank you for your replies. This proposed website is funded by my college to accomplish any dream. I thought it would be nice to spend a summer building a website. I have a few more questions related to this topic.

- Most people I talked with online claim that DreamWeaver is better than FrontPage? All the web hosting sites I visit say their solutions are optimized for Microsoft FrontPage. Why the conflict?
- What is the difference between Adobe LiveMotion 2.0 and Macromedia Flash? They both claim they are better than the other.
- I will buy the Adobe Web solution, which includes LiveMotion. Is it worth the price to add Macromedia Flash to my shopping list?

Thanks much. I appreciate your help.

Wes Rock

[Neon]

I think dreamweaver is much better because it makes the files much smaller (not adding a lot of code you dont nead). If you take a look at a page made in Frontpage and a page made in Dreamweaver, you will see that there is a lot more coding in Frontpage. Most are useless.

The reason for Hosting companies to add this little extra thing. Is that Frontpage have an uploader in it self. But I wouldn't use it. It's wierd

[Lucifer]

Here's a thought for you http://oneandone.co.uk
Their hosting is well priced plus they throw in Netobjects Fusion (much better than FrontPage), Picture Publisher 10, Wise FTP and a few other programs all for free.

[Majglow]

Both Frontpage and Dreamweaver suck!!
(ok, I'm going to get flamed)

But seriously, why waste time with WYSIWYG when you can do it by hand? It'll take a week at most to learn what you need, and your code will be sooo much better.

Ok, here is my question. Is the $3000 ONLY for software? Or is it for the website generally?

If it is only for software, then go for the big names, otherwise, if it isn't, unless you know what you are doing with Adobe Photoshop, you'll be wasting your money. Spend it instead on promotion!

Have you considered GIMP? I mean, you can do a lot with it.... and it's free, can't beat that.

What I suggest (but I'm a programer, not a Graphic guy), this suggestion is assuming you do not have any specific training with any programs:
- EvrSoft 1st Page 200 - $0
- Gimp - $0

That's all you need, maybe some other smaller programs, but I never spent a buck on software for making websites (granted, I would pay for a good php IDE, but there are none).

Check out free software before you spend an excesive amount of money on big names

But, it all depends what you want to end with? Are you making this website to learn all the software? Or are you making the website to have a good popular website?

If the former, go for the software, if that later, save the money for PROMOTION. I would much rather have a site with less good graphics, but a huge amount of traffic, then have a site with a little better graphics but nobody sees it.

Oh, and spend money on a high quality host. Verio maybe? I don't know...

Disclaimer: I am not saying that big name software is not worth the money. Far from that, but I know personally that I, without having any TRAINING, with the software, have spent lot's of time attempting to master it, but have not ended up with a final product worth what I spent.

-cARL

[Scud]

My personal choices for software are:
Adobe Photoshop 6
Adobe Illustrator 10
Macromedia Dreamweaver 4 (UltraDev)
Macromedia Flash 5
Macromedia Homesite 5


Photoshop and Illustrator for designs/layouts and special effects for the Flash elements. Dreamweaver for putting it all together, and as an hand coder, Homesite.