If you’ve ever used a ‘full-blown’ HTML editor, such as Dreamweaver from Adobe (or Macromedia before it was bought out by Adobe) or Expression Web from Microsoft, you’ll know they are not easy software tools to master.
The price you pay, apart from the cost, is a steep learning curve as you attempt to use the features the sales page had you drooling over. The Industry standard HTML editor most professional website programmers use is Adobe dreamweaver, but did you know you can get a ‘dreamweaver look-alike’ for free?
NVU is an open source HTML editor and it’s excellent. It’s a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor with visual design mode and code view, so you can design your webpage and tweak the HTML code simply by switching views. It’s called a web authoring system, but I know it as a HTML editor.
Nvu makes creating web pages as easy as using a word processor and rivals such programs as Adobe’s Dreamweaver and Microsoft’s Expression Web, only for free! With Nvu’s built-in site manager, connecting to your website and making changes is a snap.
Downloading and installing it on your PC is easy. The download page has several options as it’s available for Apple and Linux operating systems. If you choose full installer, it does everything for you. When it’s done, open up the NVU icon or use the start menu. Our featured video this week is a short 9 minute tutorial on building web pages with NVU.
It shows you the different view modes and works on a ’squeeze’ page. This is just a simple web page to promote a free report or giveaway in return for your visitors name and email address, which is added to your prospect list. The video will give a feel for working with NVU.
Even if you don’t program your website but use the services of a professional programmer or freelance web designer, you are likely to save both time and money by learning some basic HTML and how to tweak your webpages. There are many times when I’ve needed to make small changes to the HTML code on my websites.
If you’re not familiar with HTML, here is an excellent HTML tutorial. It’s from w3schools, part of the w3c working group who set the standards for HTML, CSS, accessibility and much more. So you know it’s accurate and it takes you through learning HTML in a step-by-step sequence.
When your page is ready to be published, NVU can also upload the changes to your website with site manager. Or you can use another excellent open source FTP program called filezilla. Filezilla is easy to install and simple to use. And if you don’t yet have a webhost there are plenty to choose from. Perhaps even too many.
Visit web hosting geeks for advice on the top providers. From my own experience I can recommend hostgator and also 1and1 hosting. Both have proved to be reliable and very affordable. Hosting doesn’t have to be expensive with so much choice.
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