Archive | websites RSS feed for this section

Evaluation of Blogger Software

By on April 26, 2007 in blogging, websites

If you are looking for a blog for your website, or just want a blog, the 2 most popular choices are:
Wordpress and Blogger.

Advantages of Blogger

  • Owned by Google; the biggest blog software, and it is Free
  • Easy to install and add to your exiting website. At Blog set up choose – "Advanced Set UP". You will need your FTP password e.t.c.
  • Can also be used as a standalone and hosted on Blogger’s servers, e.g. www.yoursite.blogspot.com
  • Easy to use and customise template.
  • Indexed very quickly by Google (not too surprising, since it is owned by Google. This is good for SEO
  • New features of www2.blogger include: blog labels. There are also hacks available, such as, teaser blog pages.
  • Google support group

Disadvantages of Blogger

  • With new blogger software hosted on external sites, I have frequently had blog publishing problems. (Sometimes takes a long time to publish, and then with errors – can be avoided by not having lables) Hopefully, these are problems which will be overcome soon, but it makes me reluctant to start more blogger blogs.

Other Blog Software to Consider:

WordPress – Good reviews, more features and plugins than blogger. Reliable software.

  • Example of WordPress Blog by Vasudevaservice CSS expert – John-Paul Gillespie
  • Free but does need installation, make sure your web host supports it. Not all do, some make it easy.

Type pad – Premier blog software, does cost though.

Comments { 0 }

Web Hosting

By on April 26, 2007 in blogging, websites

Finding a good, reliable web host is not easy.

It is important to bear in mind:

  1. How much traffic will your site have? – Most sites start off small, but if traffic increases, you may need an option with more bandwidth available. E.g. small packages may start from 2GB per month.
  2. Do you need optional extras? For example, wordpress blog.

Some Web Hosts worth Considering

  1. SiteGround – $6.00 per month.

Supports WordPress, High Bandwidth and disc space capacity.

  1. Small Orange tiny packages from $25 per year.

Supports WordPress and AWStats, Tiny package has small bandwidth, but can upgrade to higher bandwidth.

  1. Pow Web $6.00 per month

Supports WordPress, AWStats, High Bandwidth.

  1. Heart Internet from $5.00 per month

WordPress not available on cheap package, but is on more expensive.

  1. Streamline.net from $28 per year.

Cheap if you want unlimited bandwidth and disc space. WordPress is supported, but need to install yourself.

Comments { 0 }

Programs to help you build your website from scratch

By on April 26, 2007 in design, websites

This is actually an email response I sent to a friend who was asking about this sort of thing. It kind of complements Richard’s blog post below.

There are a number of programs out there to make the life of people designing websites much easier. Choosing the right one depends on what kind of website you want – so you need to ak yourself the following questions:

1. Are you designing a completely new site, or are you putting a new
design to an already existing site?

2. Is your site big (greater than 30 pages) or small (less than 30
pages)

3. Do you see the site as a project that will take a finite amount of
time (15-20 pages and then stop) or will it be an ongoing project and
pages will be added as time goes on?

For small, finite sites we recommend using a very easy to use design program called Dreamweaver, which is expensive. There are also free equivalents of Dreamweaver which Richard mentioned in his blog post.

However, these programs can be a little inefficient if you want to add
lots and lots of content very quickly – there are specialised programs called Content Management Systems that handle this much better – for
example the Plone program used to manage content on this very site (there are also other programs like WordPress (used primarily for personal sites and blogs), Alfresco and Drupal. The only problem is sites using Content Management Systems often start out looking not quite the way you envisioned them (and perhaps even a little ugly). With some technical expertise you can also make these sites as beautiful as Dreamwaever sites, but it will take longer to learn, especially if the people you have in mind to work on the project have no computer experience.

Comments { 0 }

HTML Editors

By on April 21, 2007 in websites

If you are building a website from scratch you will want a HTML editor to help create webpages.

Some of the best HTML editors.

  1. Dreamweaver – The market Leader but quite expensive. Dreamweaver at Adobe
  2. Microsoft Front Page – One of the most popular editors, it is now being superceded by Microsoft Expression Available for trial download.

Free HTML Editors

  1. NVu – OPen source html editor How to build a website using NVu
  2. Mozilla Composer

These HTML editors will enable you to upload your webpages using FTP transfer. However for optimal FTP transfer you may wish to make use of a dedicated FTP programme.

Cute FTP

Cheap Hosting and Site wizard – cheap webhosting with editor built in.

Comments { 0 }