Website Software

[Jafo]

I need help and input please! I have been given the task of rebuilding the website for the company that I currently work for. I have only dabled in web design a little before with cheap shareware and am not sure where to begin undertaking this task.

I am looking for quality software that I can buy, or high quality shareware that is user friendly and capable of updating on a regular basis. From what the owner tells me now, we use Microsoft Frontpage for our website. I know absolutely nothing about it, but I wanted to get opinions on it.

I need to be able to post completed job lists and be able to incorporate a good deal of photographs. This does not have to be free software, I am looking for something that will give me quality and professional results. I also really need something userfriendly for a NOOB to use and learn on.

[Jafo]

You mean to tell me none of you guys know anything about websites? I thought you guys were all knowing and powerful. :doh:

[Malice]

OK, well here is the deal. If you want a forum type website or kind of a personal type website there are things like phpbb, vbulletin (what this site is built on), Joomla and others. But the truth is, if you want a website that is dynamic and custom, you have to build it. And that takes a LOT of time and effort even after you read 20 books on the subject. As for building custom sites, I use Dreamweaver. Building a good website is more art at times. I guess we need to know what type of site you are planning on doing. Can we see what you have currently?

Frontpage is like Dreamweaver, it doesn't really have canned websites you customize, it allows you to write the html code and design the pages from scratch. I don't know what a completed job post would look like and I assume you just want a gallery of work you've done for photographs?

IMO, bottom line is your company should contract the work out to a professional web developer. And remember, you get what you pay for. I'm sure you have many other valuable skills that you bring to the company that would surely suffer while you spend 3 to 6 months making a half way decent site. Consider that lost income for the company while you do that and thats money they could have just payed to have someone else do it who already knows what to do. Even if you do get a website to look like you want, there are all kinds of non obvious security things you must personally take care of to avoid being hacked or being a delivery mechanism for spyware and other nasties.