Thread: Need Suggestions For a Website Building Program

I am in need of a new website building program and need some suggestions. I built my current website using Microsoft Frontpage but my web hosting company no longer supports Frontpage which means I cannot process any updates or make changes to it. And due to a crash of the computer that contained my entire website build, I need to rebuild the site entirely. Luckily, I can use my existing on-line site as a template and get the coding from it.

I bought Adobe Dreamweaver about a year ago but the learning curve on it is pretty steep and will require more time to get familiar with it than I prefer. It's considered one of the best programs available but it's fairly intimidating to work with considering I have only built one website in my life. Frontpage was a very easy program to work with and I'm looking for something that is similar to Frontpage again in terms of ease of use. The program doesn't need to be very fancy but it needs to be a program that is universally recognized by web browsers, I need it to allow me the capability to work with the HTML coding, and I need to be able to view what the site layout will look prior to publishing. My web host which is Yahoo has a site builder tool but from what I understand sites built with it will only appear on the Yahoo engine so that option is out.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

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Life after iWeb: The state of Web design on the Mac | Macworld

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I work on a PC.

Originally Posted by Nick Ostrowski

I work on a PC.

Many hosting companies let you make your own website and turn it into a PDF. You upload the PDF and it changes it to a web page

Try Small Business Web Hosting, Web Design & Domain Names . You can use their website builder. You can also upload PDFs to yoour build and it changes it to web pages.

There website builder has little learning curve. Pretty easy and they have tons of designs.

I use Inspectors Edge...NO problems, edit all the time, almost like i knew what I was doing.

Nick, I'm in almost the same situation as you! My host(HostMonster - Web Hosting) still supports Frontpage, for now!

I no longer have the program it has been lost over the years and I too have it on an older machine that I'm just waiting for it to die.

I have not tried it but I was told that Dreamweaver is a fairly easy program to work with.

Originally Posted by Scott Patterson

Nick, I'm in almost the same situation as you! My host(HostMonster - Web Hosting) still supports Frontpage, for now!

I no longer have the program it has been lost over the years and I too have it on an older machine that I'm just waiting for it to die.

I have not tried it but I was told that Dreamweaver is a fairly easy program to work with.

Whoever told you that Scott, ask them to come over to my house and help me. I spent $350.00 on that software and the learning curve on it appears to be as steep as the price.

I may look into Expression Web Professional 4 which is the Microsoft replacement for Frontpage.

Our website is built with Joomla. It's incredibly easy to update content.

My funky website was built with Frontpage and is hosted by Netfirms for about $10 a month. I have not heard that they wish to change anything, so Frontpage is OK, AFAIK.

You change your page, upload it, and the old page is overwritten with the new. Or load up new pages.

I would like to stretch it out, but my old program doesn't support the wider screen.

Top ranking all over the place as they are templates customized for inspection.
Plus it is Dominic...eh.

Home Inspector Website Hosting

I just wrote a check....screaming deal at 10K
We're actually re designing it at this moment. New site to launch J-1.

Originally Posted by Marc M

I just wrote a check....screaming deal at 10K
We're actually re designing it at this moment. New site to launch J-1.

10K for ??????????

Originally Posted by Ted Menelly

10K for ??????????

Tell me about it. We have another 5+ after that.
Heres the new site

Originally Posted by Marc M

Tell me about it. We have another 5+ after that.
Heres the new site

Is this company out of California

Originally Posted by Ted Menelly

Is this company out of California

unfortunately, yes.

Originally Posted by Nick Ostrowski

Whoever told you that Scott, ask them to come over to my house and help me. I spent $350.00 on that software and the learning curve on it appears to be as steep as the price.

I may look into Expression Web Professional 4 which is the Microsoft replacement for Frontpage.

Nick O,

I had some similar hiccups a few years ago when I had local PC failures and my website base was there (not well backed up). I had built it in FP as well.

I had my site rebuilt after I relocated from Houston to Dallas areas and I continue the maintenance of it using FP until it just went away (FP that is).

I've been using Expression Web ever since. EW can be a bit tough to learn as well, but I'm not doing too bad at all. I am currently using EW v4

I've been considering rebuilding from the ground up as well, but then I'm also considering retiring late next year so don't know if it would be worthwhile ... save for the experience and challenge.

I host my site at Go Daddy and have been very pleased with their services for the past 10+ years.

.

Originally Posted by Marc M

unfortunately, yes.

There are just some things in California life that don't need the work done in Cali. Just the most (maybe) expensive state to live and work in and tax rates to choke a horse.

By by California.

Going Down for the count (maybe)

Originally Posted by Ted Menelly

There are just some things in California life that don't need the work done in Cali. Just the most (maybe) expensive state to live and work in and tax rates to choke a horse.

By by California.

Going Down for the count (maybe)

Oh yea.., this place sucks for sure.

Home inspection pro
Dom ROCKS

Nick,
Check out Kompozer, it is an open source website builder that allows you to create your website without having to know how to write code while giving you the option of inserting your own code as needed. The learning curve is pretty low from my prospective. When I built my own website, I didn't have any experience and found it to be pretty simple. I just used the online instructions along with the video tutorials. This format seams to be accepted by most host servers. I created the website using Kompozer and uploaded it to Go Daddy using the open source version of Filezilla. What I like most is it allows you to use templates or create you own unique layouts. I hope this helps.

Originally Posted by bruce m graham III

Home inspection pro
Dom ROCKS

Dont all his sites look the same?

Originally Posted by Marc M

Dont all his sites look the same?

The template sites do, but he will also do custom sites. Our chapter website is a custom site Mid TN ASHI |

Originally Posted by Scott Patterson

The template sites do, but he will also do custom sites. Our chapter website is a custom site Mid TN ASHI |

I see, that one look pretty nice. I notice when I enter a site from HIP they all have that "look" that makes them all somewhat similar.

Originally Posted by Marc M

Dont all his sites look the same?

No to depress you! And I am sure your site will look wonerful in the end!

The hosting company that I am with has a website builder pro that you can build your own site and you could have built it for only................................

Well, I just won't mention the almost non existent number.

Just sayin!!!!

No, my site does not look like yours but it could have.

I think between the hosting (under 100), website builder (43.00 every 6 months) and domain name (10.00) I am under ......200.00 a year. Sorry, I did not mean to mention the price.

I submit my site thru the company myself to the top for search engines. Optimization easy as pie. etc etc etc. Did I mention extremely easy to use. You can even just go into the html and change things....but if you do the next time you go into the builder you lose the html upgrades. I just copy the page and paste it back into the builders page to stop that from happening. Then I add my new items under the website builder.

Damn. I could have used 10,000 ++++++++

Originally Posted by Ted Menelly

No to depress you! And I am sure your site will look wonerful in the end!

The hosting company that I am with has a website builder pro that you can build your own site and you could have built it for only................................

Well, I just won't mention the almost non existent number.

Just sayin!!!!

No, my site does not look like yours but it could have.

I think between the hosting (under 100), website builder (43.00 every 6 months) and domain name (10.00) I am under ......200.00 a year. Sorry, I did not mean to mention the price.

I submit my site thru the company myself to the top for search engines. Optimization easy as pie. etc etc etc. Did I mention extremely easy to use. You can even just go into the html and change things....but if you do the next time you go into the builder you lose the html upgrades. I just copy the page and paste it back into the builders page to stop that from happening. Then I add my new items under the website builder.

Damn. I could have used 10,000 ++++++++

I know its alot, but our designer is amazing. His work + seo is the reason why we expand even in this crappy market. Plus I dont have the time to worry about designing a website.

Originally Posted by Marc M

I know its alot, but our designer is amazing. His work + seo is the reason why we expand even in this crappy market. Plus I don't have the time to worry about designing a website.

I understand. Nothing wrong with that. I shy away all the time from marketers because I get a couple, 3, 4 or who knows how many calls somedays. Monday thru yesterday I was busy and nothing today (car show) and one inspection for tomorrow so far. Good week since there have been several not so great weeks in the past couple months.

Originally Posted by Marc M

Tell me about it. We have another 5+ after that.
Heres the new site

So, do I add this up correctly.......you will be out $15K when the dust settles on your website?
Shazaam........If you are getting more than $15K in business from your website, then I'll have to reconsider my very low opinion of website advertising.
Which reminds me that yesterday, I was searching for a work shirt and got a banner from some Denver home inspection company offering $20 off for clicking their banner. That seemed like odd banner placement but hey, it appears that I don't know near as much about this as I thought I did.

Nick, I use SiteSpinner by Virtual Mechanics. $49 for the standard package and $99 for the Pro version that also produces mobile access pages. Let's you drag and drop or use HTML. I need to do a complete update on my site this winter if there is enough slack time. I started using it back in the beginning when I was working on my first web site. They had a version that was free if you put their Logo and link on the front page. I used that for some time and then registered with the purchased version to obtain updates to the program. They build in an FTP program to upload the pages to your host but I've used SmartFTP for years.

Originally Posted by Lon Henderson

So, do I add this up correctly.......you will be out $15K when the dust settles on your website?
Shazaam........If you are getting more than $15K in business from your website, then I'll have to reconsider my very low opinion of website advertising.
Which reminds me that yesterday, I was searching for a work shirt and got a banner from some Denver home inspection company offering $20 off for clicking their banner. That seemed like odd banner placement but hey, it appears that I don't know near as much about this as I thought I did.

Well, no. I actually have 3 websites and one forum site. I dont know...if I was to add up what I've spend it would easily top $30K

I've created several websites over the years, some complicated one based on Open Source Joomla and simple ones using BasicPages which is another open source web builder.

JoomLa is a Pro Level tool we use for our main corproate sites but will cost you several thousand to get set up.

Basic pages is simple to use and would probably meet your requirements unless you have a sophisticated site with e-commerce etc.

BasicPages installed directly on the hosting company server (I prefer BlueHost) and is created and edits online from the web browser.

Here is a link (GloDetailing) to a simple page I create for a friend in about 30 minutes, not counting the time it took to round up the pictures.

Good Luck

Pat

Originally Posted by Marc M

Well, no. I actually have 3 websites and one forum site. I dont know...if I was to add up what I've spend it would easily top $30K

So, since you are anteing up, you must believe that this investment has paid off or are you gambling that it will pay off?

Originally Posted by Lon Henderson

So, since you are anteing up, you must believe that this investment has paid off or are you gambling that it will pay off?

Paid off by far. Like I posted in another thread,we've been able to reverse where our money derives. We went 80% agent to 80% internet now. We also added another inspector just for our internet calls. So, yea..i'd say it pays off.

We have 40 themes but they're very customizable and like Scott said we have guys with custom themes as well. For example The Home Inspection Man | Home Inspections in Chicago, Naperville, Elmhurst, Aurora, and Surrounding Areas , We inspect for YOU | Home Inspection Company We inspect for YOU | Home Inspection Company are all the exact same theme. We have guys that are #1 on Google for San Francisco, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, Brooklyn, Queens and almost every other major city in the country. The best part is, they did it themselves using our DIY system and attending the classes I teach. Costs them $25/mo and their time.

I know companies that have brought in over $100k this year through their website.

If you want someone to do it all for you talk to Brian that runs this site. He does custom sites for people.

While we're on the topic, go to Website Poll and vote on your favorite design for our new site. I paid $750 to get 58 designs from over 30 different designers via designcrowd.com. Then I'll make it into a template for our site system. That poll has the final 5.

Originally Posted by Dominic Maricic

We have 40 themes but they're very customizable and like Scott said we have guys with custom themes as well. For example The Home Inspection Man | Home Inspections in Chicago, Naperville, Elmhurst, Aurora, and Surrounding Areas , We inspect for YOU | Home Inspection Company We inspect for YOU | Home Inspection Company are all the exact same theme. We have guys that are #1 on Google for San Francisco, Denver, Dallas, Chicago, Brooklyn, Queens and almost every other major city in the country. The best part is, they did it themselves using our DIY system and attending the classes I teach. Costs them $25/mo and their time.

I know companies that have brought in over $100k this year through their website.

If you want someone to do it all for you talk to Brian that runs this site. He does custom sites for people.

While we're on the topic, go to Website Poll and vote on your favorite design for our new site. I paid $750 to get 58 designs from over 30 different designers via designcrowd.com. Then I'll make it into a template for our site system. That poll has the final 5.

Can Brian do wordpress? I need another site built..

I'm not sure, you'd need to ask him. I have discussed sites with him but am not sure which CMS he's using.

Almost every hosting company has an associated site builder program. Most of these offer many, many templates and the templates can often be modified to some extent. This would be the way to go IMHO.

You are a Home Inspector, not a web developer. Why do you feel the need to take on another profession that you will rarely need or use? Poor use of your skills and time unless you just want to do it for grins. Just like we do, I recommend using an "expert" do do the things we are not qualified to do. Use a template or pay a qualified site developer to build one for you.

There is a wonderful resource available called Fiverr.com that I have used for many things in the past and currently still do. I run a training website and have used the folks at Fiverr to generate logos, banners and to do advertising things and have been quite satisfied with the result and very low cost. (typically $5, hence the name)

I downloaded a trial version of Expression Web 4 to play with and feel OK with it. It doesn't seem to be a huge change from Frontpage from a design standpoint. It looks different but the design, code writing, tools, and preview features all seem to be there and that's what I want. My current site has a lot of content and along with my coding, this is what I feel has helped me achieve good search engine rankings considering I built it myself.

I'm going to play with this trial version a bit more but so far, I'm liking what I was able to figure out with it in less than 1 hour of trial and error.

Why do your own web site?
Because I know how and I care about my business, the information provided, and how it is projected. A commercial web builder doesn't. If you spent 10K on a web site, how much time did a software engineer spend with you developing requirements?

Just look at a LOT of the web sites out there. Basically a page, with a name and phone number. No real information but a lot of canned phrases and info probably copied from another web site or the same thing is shown on every inspector's page that that particular outfit sold. I have first hand experience of a web site where the offshore "developer" blatantly copied my pages, word for word, font by font. They just changed the name and contact info.

I want to design my own website because I'm a bit of a control freak as well. Plus, things are a bit slower now so I have the time to put into it.

Excel makes it easy to create a simple little website.

Originally Posted by Nick Ostrowski

I want to design my own website because I'm a bit of a control freak as well. Plus, things are a bit slower now so I have the time to put into it.

Originally Posted by Nick Ostrowski

I want to design my own website because I'm a bit of a control freak as well. Plus, things are a bit slower now so I have the time to put into it.

You should try my SEO guys...they can change that

Originally Posted by Marc M

You should try my SEO guys...they can change that

I don't have $10K much less $30+ thousand to spend on a website. I am blown away that you've dropped that kind of coin on your website. At the same time, you've certainly convinced me to re-access my low opinion of the effectiveness of a website for this business. Around here, there a lot of HIs with aggressive websites. I have gotten some business from my tiny (and free) website, but that business has been geography related. My impression is that it might require dropping the kind of money that you have, to push my way to the top of the website heap here. And then, some other guys would probably respond by upping the ante.

I have a pretty good business, now. I know from many conversations with other HIs in the Denver area, that I am, probably, in the top 5%, but the top 2% are much busier than me.

So, you have given me some food for thought. I'm a little like Nick. I am very much a hands-on kinda guy and would probably try to do my own website, too. I understand "opportunity costs" but I value the education I get from doing these things myself.

Originally Posted by Lon Henderson

So, you have given me some food for thought. I'm a little like Nick. I am very much a hands-on kinda guy and would probably try to do my own website, too. I understand "opportunity costs" but I value the education I get from doing these things myself.

Lon,
I totally agree with Nick and yourself. I try to follow the advice that a wise man once gave me back when I was a green eared pup. He told me "Learn as much as you can in life, because experience and knowlege are the two things in life that can never be taken or lost". By practicing this mantra it has led me to be the man I am today. I am always of the belief, why pay someone to do something that you can do yourself. (j.m.o.)

My site has ranked on the 1st page of Google for the major keyword searches in PA for home inspections for the past 7+ years and I didn't pay anybody to do it for me. There are a number of home inspectors in a similar boat as me who have done the same. If you do some research and spend the time, you can achieve good search engines ranking. The problem I'm having now is that since Yahoo webhosting has dropped their support of Frontpage built sites as of September 2012, I haven't been able to process an update in over a year. And within the past couple months my rankings have slid a bit. Most are still on page #1 of Google but I can see a difference in calls and inquiry volume being at the bottom of page #1 vs. being in the mid to upper part of page #1.

I ordered Microsoft Expression Web Studio 4 and am going to get to work on copying my current site and save it in Expression Web page-by-page as soon as the software gets here. I could have bought the download only version but I like to have the disk in my possession just in case anything happens to my computer.

Originally Posted by Lon Henderson

I don't have $10K much less $30+ thousand to spend on a website. I am blown away that you've dropped that kind of coin on your website. At the same time, you've certainly convinced me to re-access my low opinion of the effectiveness of a website for this business. Around here, there a lot of HIs with aggressive websites. I have gotten some business from my tiny (and free) website, but that business has been geography related. My impression is that it might require dropping the kind of money that you have, to push my way to the top of the website heap here. And then, some other guys would probably respond by upping the ante.

I have a pretty good business, now. I know from many conversations with other HIs in the Denver area, that I am, probably, in the top 5%, but the top 2% are much busier than me.

So, you have given me some food for thought. I'm a little like Nick. I am very much a hands-on kinda guy and would probably try to do my own website, too. I understand "opportunity costs" but I value the education I get from doing these things myself.

So was I...You think I wanted or ever thought I’d pay that much for a site? Heck no! But it just happens. It started at 5K for a site. Then redone at another 5K. Then web videos by "real actors", not us. $$$$ so on, so on...
We were worse off than you are or were. We didn’t even rank in the top 10% Rarely ever seeing so on, so on...
At the time my wife couldn’t conceive of the idea of dropping coin on either SEO or a new site. But now, we have an office, employees and were operating on a whole new level. It was progressive, but looking back I am amazed at the transformation. I was the guy who was always saying, "man, how do those companies grow like that", referring to multi inspector firms.
Trust me, 5-10 internet calls a day is absolutely possible.

Originally Posted by Nick Ostrowski

My site has ranked on the 1st page of Google for the major keyword searches in PA for home inspections for the past 7+ years and I didn't pay anybody to do it for me. There are a number of home inspectors in a similar boat as me who have done the same. If you do some research and spend the time, you can achieve good search engines ranking. The problem I'm having now is that since Yahoo webhosting has dropped their support of Frontpage built sites as of September 2012, I haven't been able to process an update in over a year. And within the past couple months my rankings have slid a bit. Most are still on page #1 of Google but I can see a difference in calls and inquiry volume being at the bottom of page #1 vs. being in the mid to upper part of page #1.

I ordered Microsoft Expression Web Studio 4 and am going to get to work on copying my current site and save it in Expression Web page-by-page as soon as the software gets here. I could have bought the download only version but I like to have the disk in my possession just in case anything happens to my computer.

Our SEO guys have us on some type of proprietary system that automatically adapts to search engine criteria and keeps us current. Don’t know how it works but then again I really don’t care. If the calls stop, then I will care.

Originally Posted by Marc M

Our SEO guys have us on some type of proprietary system that automatically adapts to search engine criteria and keeps us current. Don’t know how it works but then again I really don’t care. If the calls stop, then I will care.

Uhm,,,, you never answered my private message

Marc, can you post a link up to one of your websites or shoot it to me in a PM?

Originally Posted by Nick Ostrowski

Marc, can you post a link up to one of your websites or shoot it to me in a PM?

Why, is it easy to copy? Send me one too.

I am not feeling sorry for Marc. He needs to spread the cash around to stimulate his local economy, and it is all tax deductible.
I wish websites drove a larger portion of my clients to me, but we seem to be 10 years behind California up here.

Some areas are a little more progressive with using the Internet to find inspectors. Our corner of Pennsylvania happens to be one of those areas. The Yellow Pages are still a good source of getting work in some areas. Around here, a Yellow Page ad is a good way to flush money down the toilet.

No problem, here ya go. The new site is supposed to be up January 1.
Mazza Inspections | Home Inspections Santa Clarita | Home Inspections Valencia | Home Inspectors Santa Clarita

Wordpress! I spend less than $10 a month for everything I need for a website at GoDaddy.com

Domain name - $10/year
Hosting - $7/month
Wordpress - FREE

Wordpress has thousands of free templates (themes) that can be customized. It works much like MS Word (or any word processing software)

Even if you are going to hire someone else to build it for you, WordPress gives you full control if you want to add/change/delete something without having to pay someone to make a 5 minute change.

I had FrontPage... WP seems works better for me.

Good Luck!


Andrew Constantine
http://InspectProHomeInspections.com
Home Inspector in Charlotte NC

Originally Posted by Andrew Constantine

Wordpress! I spend less than $10 a month for everything I need for a website at GoDaddy.com

Domain name - $10/year
Hosting - $7/month
Wordpress - FREE

Wordpress has thousands of free templates (themes) that can be customized. It works much like MS Word (or any word processing software)

Even if you are going to hire someone else to build it for you, WordPress gives you full control if you want to add/change/delete something without having to pay someone to make a 5 minute change.

I had FrontPage... WP seems works better for me.

Good Luck!


Andrew Constantine
http://InspectProHomeInspections.com
Home Inspector in Charlotte NC

Your site looks nice Andrew. That site was all done with Wordpress, correct?

Nick,
Just wondering what you finally decided to do?

Originally Posted by Lon Henderson

Nick,
Just wondering what you finally decided to do?

I went with Expression Web 4 and published my first website update in 1.5 years tonight. So far, so good. I went from having dropped down to the bottom of page #1 / top of #2 on Google before-update up to middle of page #1 and the #1 position for some of the major keyword searches in my area post-update. And this all took place over the course of 5-6 hours. Once the updates took, my rankings started to climb. I'll see how things shake out over the next few days but I like what has happened with my site rank in such a short amount of time. I was surprised I remained on the first page of Google having gone 1.5 years without publishing any updates.

I spent quite a bit of time working on rebuilding the site and reacquainting myself with SEO and HTML code. I feel I know a little more now than I did the first time around but many of the same precepts about SEO still hold true as when I built the site in 2003.

My site still needs a full style revamp and layout update but my primary concern right now was being able to process an update and keep the site current. Visually, it's OK but I know it needs polishing.

I am using Expression Web 4 make some major changes to a site and for updating a site. I am an inspector, not a web site guru and this software is time consuming and a pain in the a@# to use. Other than that, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

I hear you Darrel. Expression Web 4 is quite a departure from what I was used to with Frontpage. When I would run the code/compatibility check, it would lock unless I ran it in Site View.

I'm no expert by any means but if I can be of any help, let me know.

Well it appears my sudden jump in site ranking is a mirage at least for now. I noticed that I got different site rankings on different computers. It seems Google has some type of feature that recognizes your most recent/numerous searches and will rank the sites based on your browsing history. After searching in private browsing mode which disables any of Googles cookies, I got the true rankings which are what they were before I published the update. I'll have to wait for the web crawlers to reindex and update site rankings to see if anything changes.

Hey Nick, as far as the Yahoo site builder goes that's what I built my site with, I believe it's easy, I haven't used any others. I've had no problems with getting posted on any of the search engines and am always close to #1 spot on page 1 of google.
The continued maintenance and addition of relevant content to the site is I've found, all important once built.

Originally Posted by Greg Filian

Hey Nick, as far as the Yahoo site builder goes that's what I built my site with, I believe it's easy, I haven't used any others. I've had no problems with getting posted on any of the search engines and am always close to #1 spot on page 1 of google.
The continued maintenance and addition of relevant content to the site is I've found, all important once built.

I agree Greg that regular updates are important. That was the problem I had when my web host pulled the plug on support for Frontpage. This update was my first in 1.5 years.