Forum Moderators: open
As for setting up a store you might just be better off getting a Yahoo store. As far as designing sites for others, you are looking at a huge learning curve - probably two years plus.
first decide if you want to be a web developer or if you want to run an online store - unfortunately if the store is busy you cannot do both ...
you will need some one to run the store in the same way as a regular store.
you will need someone to develop the website which is also a full time job if you are serious.
one intelligent thing to do is learn all you can in places like WebmasterWorld and then give very clear instructions to a competent web developer for what you want.
...
if you really want to do it yourself, you need to consider this:
php or asp/.net basically if the store is to be dynamic then it needs to be scripted one way or another - straight html is not enough.
you also need to decide if you want to buy a shopping cart off the shelf or develop your own. both ways have advantages and disadvantages.
...
imho dreamweaver is fantastic for a beginner who is willing to put the effort in, not difficult but certainly intimidating to start with.
i'd go for dreamweaver 4 ultradev - this is now a few years old and can be bought much more cheaply than the mx series. it is much easier to use as it is much less cluttered and frankly until you are quite advanced the extra functionality of the mx series is not required.
the built in asp code building also works well and it is a very easy way to get a dynamic site up and running.
if you choose php then i'd get dreamweaver 3 as you don't need the asp capability, this is really easy to use and works very well - a computer magazine a few years back was even giving a free fully licensed copy away so you should be able to find it for almost nothing. - you'd need to learn php seperately though.
...
my top tip would be, don't worry overly much about design/coding as this will come in time (or not!), but REALLY make a BIG EFFORT to understand database design and useage. either the microsoft way or the mysql way - this is what underpins all good ecommerce applications ... you know those web stores that 'hang' when you try to check out or add items to the cart - very often this is due to poor db design and function.
finally, if you are not obsessive by nature, then don't even start! :)
Frontpage is an html page editor designed by and for student hackers -- people who don't really understand the web (or editors) but who like to see what they do appear instantly on the screen. If you use it on a website with more than five or so pages, you should start getting frustrated at the work you keep having to do over and over again. If you use it for more than twenty pages, you'll be a candidate for a padded keyboard. But anyone who has a strong stomach for very disgusting HTML may want to use it for whiteboarding. (The only thing I've ever seen that generated worse HTML was MS-Wurd.)
Dreamweaver is a website design program designed by and for people who will be creating medium-size sites, and want to begin separating content and layout -- but have too little mass of content and too much variety to want to attack the problem of a large site. You have to attack a website design problem the Dreamweaver way -- which is better than the alternatives. It generates decent HTML. Even if you're working on really large sites, you may want to use it to build your templates for your real scripting tools.
[Emacs is an programmer's editor equally adept at generating Perl scripts, HTML, and freeform text content. If you're the sort of person who enjoys building bridges with toothpick and tweezers, think of it as diesel-powered tweezers. If you're going to have your fingerprints all over a million lines of variously formatted content, it's incomparable.]
At this point in their development I'd have to say that FP and DW are all but indistinguishable from each other. Either one can produce just as good a site. Which ever tool you're comfortable with that makes your job easier is the right one for you.
It's pretty obvious that the previous poster has little experience with any version of FrontPage
I would have to agree with that. I have seen some very large sites done in FP. People seem to equate the fact that you CAN get a junky looking site up in a hurry with FP with the program and not the user.
That attitude though might explain why there are so many negative review sites listed in DMOZ.
taste and style - what ever works for you - try both - there are hard hitters for both DM and FP, personally i would suggest trying both and seeing what works for you best!
btw - i found FP harder to use than DW - but i also probably wanted that way - with my anti MS antitude though still loyally using their OS's in most occasions.
Whichever program you go for, make sure you understand coding in its own right - starting with HTML and CSS. These days, I do a lot of the coding direct, but integrate it with DW templates.
From what I have read I get the impression that Dreamweaver is really more of the professionals product but is more difficult to use.
Frontpage 2003 is a wonderful piece of software. It is easy to create pages, and easy is good. I am always creating many optimized pages using Frontpage 2003, and the validation does not seem to matter, I rank well. I tried dreamweaver just to see what its like. Both programs basically do the same thing, (dreamweaver can do a bit more regarding PHP) but frontpage 2003 is much easier to use for most people. If you like the Microsoft way to do things, I see no reason to turn to Dreamweaver. Vice versa of course.
I would personally recommend Dreamweaver, based on my own experiences, but I've heard of FP's latest improvements, so I do believe it's a whole different FP from the last version I used. I'm sure it's a good choice as well.
I think that you should try both out and see which you prefer. When I first tried out the demo, I didn't find Dreamweaver's interface to be all that hard or weird. It was a little different, but once I got into the swing of things I was thinking, "I MUST buy this, right now. MUST MUST MUST." I felt very strongly about Dreamweaver.
Switching to Dreamweaver was a really big step for me and it totally changed (and improved) my web sites. --Not that my web sites are *that* great, but they were much worse with FP than they are now with Dreamweaver. ;-)
I've been using Dreamweaver since it was an UltraDev. Nothing comes close to it.
Building a Yahoo Store in Dreamweaver is very easy.
As far as User interface in Dreamweaver, it only looks scary. You could very easily customize it to look the way you want to.
FrontPage 2003 Costs twice less, but there are things you could do with Dreamveaver....
my problems:
1)I have already built a large site using FP...however, recently i tried to check my site in Firefox and noticed a lot of alignment errors....I then checked its W3C validation and found a huge list of errors....
2)At this point in time, the site is doing reasonably well on SE's...however, I do want to learn how to create a site free of any code errors and one that has cross browser compatibility...
Sould I switch to DW of which i have little knowledge..or should I stick to this and try to remove code errors by going into the HTML?
I switched to DW after first using FP. I took a 2-day course in DW, and was glad I did. The FP site certainly did have a lot of errors when I validated it - mostly unclosed p tags and deprecated font size. But it may have been the way I was using FP.
kiwibrit, what is this 2 day course that you are talking about? Seems like something I need desperately :( Also what are the ways to validate an FP site (sorry if i sound dumb...I just need to know what to do now with so many errors!)
If you can't validate 'FP code' then switching to DW isn't going to make much difference. I suggest you head over to the W3C validator [validator.w3.org] and run your pages through. You can then simply fix the errors.
If you're comfortable with FP, then stick with it. I would suggest that you take a look at FP2003 though. It's a huge step up from FP2K in my opinion.
Some people use DW entirely in "design view" and are quite happy doing that. However, they are more likely to have problems validating their pages and understanding what is going on "underneath the bonnet" - in other words, what html, css and javascript the programme is producing.
Whether you use FP, DW or Notepad, if you do not understand the basics of the programme (and the basics of what it is writing) then you will remain restricted in what you are able to achieve with it.
One of the best decisions I made when I started using DW was to use it in "mixed view" (where you can see both the design and the code at the same time) to see what the programme was actually doing. It got me used to the concepts of html, css and some javascript and php.
That was a few years back and I probably now spend 50/50 time in the top (code) or bottom (design) view and don't have a problem with cutting or pasting or text-editing code.
If FP has the same functionality, I would heartily recommend doing the same.
If you look at the actual errors you are getting, you will see that most of them are actually FP comments and FP webbot code.
DW ... use it in "mixed view"That's one of the great things in FP2003. You can run in Split Screen mode with your code and design view active simultaneously. I use this mode the most and almost never use the design mode on its own at all. I really wish FP97 had this...it's a great learning mode.
