Last week someone asked me how to develop good websites using Front Page 2003. The only answer I could come up with was, “Stop using Front Page 2003.”
Over the weekend, one of my favorite sites, Lifehacker, did a round-up of free WYSIWYG web design tools. WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get, meaning the way the page looks as you design it is the way it will look on the Web. In other words, you don’t have to know HTML to use these tools. One in particular, is free and highly rated, and worth a look if you need create a website. It’s called KompoZer and it lets you switch back and forth between design mode and HTML mode, which is nice because if you know a little HTML you can tweak the design.
While I’m discussing site design, I want to rant on a few things:
– It’s almost never a good idea to include Flash. iPhones and iPads can’t see Flash, and neither can search engines. There would need to be a compelling reason for me to include Flash in the design of a website in 2010. “It looks really cool” is not a compelling reason. Maybe Flash could be used to show a demo of how a product works, but even then, why would you not just upload a video to YouTube and embed it instead?
– It’s almost never a good idea to include animated GIFs. I would only say include them if it’s a “picture is worth a thousand words” type situation that helps your website tell a story. Including animated GIFs simply for the sake of “I have animation on my site, how cool is that!” makes a site look amateurish.
– Scrolling news tickers should also be avoided unless there’s a compelling reason. If the news ticker is well integrated into a site’s design, and is used to direct a reader’s eyes to important, can’t miss items, that’s fine. However, many of the ones I see on websites seem to be included simply for the purpose of “I have a scrolling news ticker on my site, how cool is that!”
The problem with FrontPage 2003 is, it encourages the use of these animated GIFs, scolling tickers, and other garbage to make really bad websites. I can’t tell you how many websites I’ve seen in 2010 that were made with FrontPage 2003 and look like they were designed in 1997.
One more comment… consider a content management system rather than designing a website from scratch. WordPress just released its version 3.0. It’s completely free and it has caught up with other CMSs like Drupal and Joomla. It allows you to create web content using an editor similar to Microsoft Word, and you can apply templates known as “themes” to display the content the way you want on your site. Thousands of free themes are available for you to use. You can download WordPress from wordpress.org and host it on your own site, or you can have them host it for you at wordpress.com. (Disclaimer: WordPress.com sponsored my BBQ team, how cool is that!)