Software to Build Websites: Microsoft Expression WebThere’s a bit of confusion about choosing software to build websites and what these programs offer, which software is easier to use and what can get a website up and running in a matter of hours.
It’s easy to build websites if you have some basic knowledge of HTML and CSS, but frustrating if you have no idea even what HTML is. For absolute beginners, you need to use a WYSIWIG (“whizzy-wig”) or “What You See Is What You Get” approach to build your website. But that isn’t what you’ll find in this software application.
Microsoft Expression Web is a professional design program for creating and maintaining dynamic websites. This is the replacement to FrontPage 2003, which is what many of us used when we were first starting in web design years ago. In this newest application of software to build websites, Expression retains some of the ease and simplicity of FrontPage but unfortunately doesn’t offer much in the way of help features for the absolute beginner.
It does offer the site and page templates to make it easy to build a website for CSS and XHTML compliance so a beginner can still use this software to build websites with relative success. And advanced users will appreciate things like its real-time standards validation, as well as full scheme support, that is, it builds the appropriate code, automatically checks compatibility, and highlights non-conformant code. It’s seamless in its management of XHTML, Cascading Style Sheets, and XML, and the software easily works with sites built with Dreamweaver.
New Features
The Expression Web software goes one better than FrontPage and offers behaviors which are small JavaScript code snippets. With these you can easily create mouse-over effects, dynamic menus using DHTML scripting (dropdown menus), and many other advanced tools to make your website pages look like they were custom built by a pro.
If you’re familiar with Frontpage, you’ll also recognize the continued use of Master Pages included in this software. To build websites quickly you only need to design the template or master page and can effect site-wide design changes with one key stroke.
Finally, you can add forms and design the input elements, and even create ASP.net pages. Just a few short years ago you had to either contract a programmer to create dynamic pages or had to know how to work with server-side scripts. Expression does that for you.
Which Software to Buy?
Dreamweaver
Priced at around $299 (with a 30-day free trial), Expression Web Designer is below the $399 retail cost of Dreamweaver, the industry’s top software to build websites used by many webmasters and web designers which requires at least a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS to create a website. Expression Web Studio is an excellent, professional design package, not as comprehensive as Dreamweaver, but it’s a step up over FrontPage and will handle most design needs.
XSite Pro
An alternative for beginners is XSitePro which makes it easy to build a professional looking website with its Multiple Page Creation Wizard. The cost to build a website with XSitePro is around $199 and it creates static websites, not the advanced dynamic pages of DW or Expression Web. This software is a good choice for affiliate marketers who only need to build SEO friendly landing pages.
SiteBuildIt
Beginners looking to purchase software to build their affiliate website can also try SiteBuildIt on a risk free trial basis. SBI’s block building tools make it easy to build your first website and the fee is bundled with a year of hosting, the domain registration, and tons of other stuff. If you feel you’ll need e-commerce features, a storefront, or database connectivity, SiteBuildIt includes all of these features and more. You won’t need any other software to build websites and in addition you get hundreds of hours of tutorials, which the stand-alone programs mentioned here do not.
How to Build a Website for Your Affiliate Business
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