Website Building Software

Website Building Software isn’t strictly necessary to build websites. You could buy stock website templates, or have a template custom made, and just add your text to them. Of course, you’re going to have to know how to use html code in order to get your text formatted. That’s not too difficult, if you have a little time – just navigate to a simple web page, click on “view” in your Internet Explorer toolbar, then “source” from the dropdown menu, and a notepad file will open with all the code for that page displayed. If there were no images, or css (behind the scenes code), you could drop the html into your own page, and publish it – and you’d have a duplicate of the page.

Of course, this assumes that you have your own domain name and web hosting, know which files you need to drop the code into, and how to publish pages. In fact the exercise has no merit, except to show you that html is just text with some code added to format it. I’ve built web pages this way, changing any images to my own images, and the text to my own text. It took me days to do it, but I learned the basics by trial and error. These days, if I want to do something similar, I drop the code into Dreamweaver, and manipulate it from there.

It’s not too difficult to build a web page this way, but once you begin to try to tie multiple pages together, in a coherent manner, i.e. try to build a website, it becomes tricky keeping track of everything.

Many early websites were built using Microsoft Frontpage. I’ve never used it, but from what I understand, this software adds extra code that isn’t required. It is still quite widely used though, mainly by people who learned to build websites with Frontpage, and have not moved on to more recent software.

One up from Frontpage is Macromedia’s Dreamweaver. I have a copy, and use it in a basic sense, but it was really built for web designers to use, not online marketers. I guess I probably use around 25% of Dreamweavers’ functionality. I would happily learn how to use it more, but for me, it’s something that I’d want to learn more about in a classroom, not online.

So it’s fair to say, that up until a few years ago there was a gap in the market. Internet Marketers were looking for a way to build websites themselves, without having to learn how to be a website designer. A number of developers designed their own website building software to fill this need. I know of only one that has stood the test of time, which I own and use. You’ll find my review in the website building software posts.

So what should you be looking for when you are going to buy website design software?

Inevitably, the less choices and options that the software allows, the simpler it will be to use. However this simplicity comes at a price – the ability to customise your website exactly as you would like it to be, and a footprint that identifies your website as being designed using a particular software solution.

So the first requirement is customisation options - but not too many

You also want a software that is easy to use, ideally it would be intuitive. I did buy one website design software that made this promise, and I was definitely sold on buying it due to the types of sites that could be produced. The reality was somewhat different though as I spent around 20 hours trying to build my first site without success. Support requests were answered, but either didn’t work, or required a degree in Geekdom to understand. I got a refund, after waiting a month for instruction videos that never came.

The second requirement is ease of use

Also high up on the list of requirements is a user forum. There are a number of reasons for this: You should visit the forum (assuming that it is open to people who haven’t yet purchased the software) and spend an hour or so reading the posts. You’ll get an idea of any problems that users have with the software, how quickly and effectively support questions are answered, and what degree of success users are having with the websites that they create.

The third requirement is a user forum

You need reliable support from the software creators. Should you encounter problems using the software, or a bug, you need to be able to submit a support ticket, and have it competently answered within a reasonable time period – say 24 hours maximum. An easy way to check out the level of support pre-purchase is to send in a pre purchase question, and make it slightly awkward. If you ever get even a slightly hostile response, be wary. It may just be that you caught them at a difficult time, or it may be that customer support issues are an irritant to them. Go back and check the forum again to judge whether this is an isolated issue, or an ongoing problem.

The fourth requirement is good support

Next on the list is updates, and again, there are a number of reasons why updates may be necessary. If the software relies in any way on accessing other platforms, for video feeds for example, or a search engine; the platform accessed from time to time may (and usually does) change the way it is accessed. Second, bug removing updates are fairly standard. Third, improvements and enhancements to the software are usually needed over time, as the nature of web design, and indeed the web itself changes. It’s debatable as to whether updates should be paid for. In general I find that most minor to medium updates are free, but major updates may require a payment. This seems reasonable to me.

The fifth requirement is software updates

Good user documentation / tutorials are a must have. Some software designers or developers think that all of their users are as familiar with website code (html, css, php etc.) as they are, and just don’t get that their user documentation needs to be step by step and absolutely clear. An experienced webmaster can skip the basic info, but it needs to be there for the novice user. My preference is for both video and text tutorials.

The sixth requirement is good documentation / tutorials

Next is the appearance / useability of the websites produced. A functioning website as the end product is obviously required, preferably with a clean code and linking structure, and a clean, user friendly appearance.

The seventh requirement is good websites produced

Last, comes price, or more accurately value for money. I have bought and used some software that I would happily have paid much more for, and others that I wouldn’t attempt to use if it was free. Factored into this will be whether you get a single domain licence, or can create unlimited domains with the same software. However if you are building a large authority site, reliability and ease of use would be of greater concern. The process of building good websites that rank well in the search engines takes time, often a lot of time. Saving a few hundred  pounds on the purchase price could prove to be a false economy if you run into problems when your site is established and providing your income.

The eighth requirement is value for money