Web site building software is not needed but it sure helps

The web site building software that you already have on your computer is all you need, if your time is of no value to you. Computer software is designed to make life easier for you, and to do things faster, but you can often get by without it, if you can spare the time.

Click in the right column to discover some of the helpful possibilities, and some of them are even free.

Website Software Helps Every Part of Website Design

You can just look at the buttons on the main home page of this make own website creation to see the steps in building a website, and software can help every step.

If you are using Windows, then Notepad is all you need to write your web pages! That would be far too much work for me, so I use one of the free web editors. I've a video about it for members, because I've been very happy with it for the years that I've used it.

Microsoft provides FrontPage and even Word can be used to create HTML pages. Don't use either of these if you want to make money, because they used to be (and possibly still are) designed to create pages that could only be browsed by Internet Explorer, to discourage competition. They may have discovered now that it drove people away from their HTML code instead. You don't want to lose visitors who are using Firefox, or Opera if you are in business.

Ecommerce Software

If you need shopping cart software, under no circumstances should you try to design your own, even if you are a first class programmer. Hackers are out there trying to find every little fault in the software so that they can scam the shopping carts. It's not brilliant programming that you need, but bitter experience of online thieves.

I won't show you any of this software, because I prefer to use a payment company that does all the work for me, such as Clickbank, Paydot, PayPal. If I use ecommerce software, I have to look after all the shipping and refund details myself, and I have better things to do with my time

Online Website Tools

There is some free websites software that you can run at the provider's own website. One of the best known is provided by Google at
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal for doing your keyword research.

I'll mention other such tools in pages where I describe how to use them.

Freeware Website design software

Don't get the idea that it can't be much good because it is free! These programmers are motivated by a sense of rivalry to produce better software than anybody else. The competition is fierce to produce the best web design freeware! Note: you shouldn't confuse genuinely free website software with shareware.

Shareware website building software

Millions of dishonest people use Winzip and Eudora as if the were free. They are both shareware, which means that they are free to try, but you are ethically required to pay for them if you like them and continue to use them.

Many of these programs nowadays don't rely on your honesty. They record the time at which you install them on your computer, then stop working when four weeks have gone by.

I recommend download.com and www.tucows.com for finding useful programs. Many of the programs that they offer have to be paid for, and some need to be paid for after a trial period, but some are really free. Just read through all the information until you find out which type of offer it is. Of course, you should have a good antivirus program, to make sure that you aren't installing a free trojan virus.

You should in any case have a good antivirus program if you are going to make your own website, so that you don't give a virus to your visitors. Year after year NOD made by ESET tests out better than well-known competitors such as Norton.

Software Package

Site Build It offers a total package of web building software accompanied by overwhelmingly full instructions, and a great forum of users, and a support group that is really well clued up. I used it for many years, and only moved away from it when I had enough experience not to need their help.

Bad Software Instructions

Many wonderful free programs have instructions that are almost impossible to understand. There may even be no instructions at all. That is because of the attitudes of the programmers that I described above. They only care about writing better programs than their competitors. They don't care about writing instructions. Somebody else can do that.

Well, somebody else usually does do that. For instance GIMP is free graphics software that is as powerful as the expensive Photoshop, but you need to buy a book that someone else has written to understand how to use it.

Joomla is powerful software that will build your own website to your own design. You just tell it how you want the pages to be laid out, then you tell it things like what item you want to put where, and what filename to use, and it does all the technical work of publishing your articles. You don't even need to know any HTML with this web site building software. But you will need somebody else's instructions! Click here for instructions.

The first program you'll probably want is an html editor, and this one is free.