What Web Design Program Should I Try?

[Shawnee]

Our website is hosted by FutureQuest. We had someone do some work to it a while back, I think they used FrontPage. We want to beable to work on it ourselves. I don't know anything about web design though, so I need an easy to use WYSIWYG program. I don't want a total redesign, just beable to make changes, updates, additions, etc., possibly some redesign. Several free programs I have looked at online only work if you host with that company. I can buy a program if needed, just didn't want to spend a ton of money on a program that would be much more than I needed. Any suggestions? Our website is www.homesteadtshirts.com

[gayne]

Last year I started to self teach myself web design with very little previous computer knowledge. I downloaded NVU free and am quite happy with it , although if I had the money to spend would think about Dreamweaver. I believe it is more stable.

The only thing is, I spent several months reading everything I could on the subject before diving in. I found www.thesitewizard.com a very useful starting point. I also found studying the code on a specific page and experimenting with it invaluable. Don't forget to save it first!
Good Luck

[Andilinks]

I used 1stPage2000 when I first began:
http://www.evrsoft.com/
It is free and includes lots of features for beginners. There is a later version (2006) you can buy if you like the free version. $89.95

As gayne says, read everything you can...

[oheso]

An easy-to-use program to design a website is not necessarily the same thing as an easy-to-update website. You might be better served in the long run by a good content management system such as Joomla or Drupal, even if you need to pay someone at the start to tailor it to your needs.

[frankc]

A friend of mine is very much happy with a program called SiteSpinner from Virtual Mechanics, http://www.virtualmechanics.com/. I just downloaded it...seems nice so far.

[mromero]

The industry leader is Dreamweaver. Cannot go wrong with it. Several top notch companies such as Project Seven have cool plugins that work within Dreamweaver in much the same way other companies make plugins for Photoshop.