web authoring tools

[Ron_Adam]

On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 05:14:47 GMT, "Brandon J. Van Every"
<mylastnameruntogether at mycompanyname.com> wrote:

>As is easily noticed, my website sucks.  Enough people keep ragging
>on me about it, that maybe I'll up and do something about it.  However,
>I currently have FrontPage 2000 and I hate it.  Ideally, I would like an
>open source website + html design tool implemented in Python, so
>that possibly someday I can fix whatever's broken about it.  That said,
>I would like a tool that actually saves me work as a web designer.  I
>don't feel that FrontPage 2000 does this.  I'm saying there's a certain
>level of maturity that has to exist in the app, it can't be some "alpha
>quality" thing.  If you know of such a beast in Python, please
>let me know.

I've always found a html aware text editor works best.  Programs like
front page tend to try to insert things when and where you don't want
them.  So you end up fighting the program and/or having to get their
bugs out of your web site.  I'm sure there are probably some good
visual what you see is what you get editors, but Just have't found any
I like.

I would use commercial software package if I was doing an internet
store with an inventory database, and shopping carts.  That's a
situation where you want your web sight to be in a standard proven
format. But you hand over a lot of design freedom also.

>Here are some examples of reasonable website designs for my purposes as
>a game developer or consultant: 
>
>http://www.igda.org/seattle/
>http://www.cyphondesign.com/
>http://www.alphageeksinc.com/
>http://www.gamasutra.com

These top three where done with text editors. If you view the source,
you will notice the formatting has good consistent indenting and there
isn't a lot of extra tags or other information needlessly inserted.

They make good use of CSS for formatting also.  If this is the type of
thing you want, save the pages and study how they did it.  Use your
own text and graphics of course.

The fourth one in your list uses something called SiteCatalyst, which
I'm not familiar with. The web site to it is listed in the source.
You'll notice it has empty spaces and inconsistent indenting due to it
being assembled from templates.

>I'm not sure if I want a blogging capability, or something more like
>Gamasutra.  That's a quality vs. quantity issue.  I don't know if I want
>a web forum.  I generally don't like web forums and I've tended to let
>Yahoo! Groups do the mailing list job.

Since you're unsure of what you want, you should probably follow the
rule, 'if in doubt, leave it out',  you can always expand or add
features later.

>I believe my webhost can take either Unix or Windows stuff.  My local
>machine where I do all development is Windows.  I'd be interested to
>know about Linux solutions too though.

Here's a good place to start, to find python web site software.

http://www.python.org/topics/web/


Hope this helped,

Cheers,
Ron