Building a website.

[Lee]

Following on from my hosting thread, I now have hosting in place, so my next step is to design and build a decent landing page and integrate some kind of cart software.

My question is, to those who have built sites before, what is your preferred site building software and what other things is there to consider? I used to use an old version of Dreamweaver but times have changed since I last built a website. I do have a free one installed but I'm at work and can't remember the name of it.

[Tim]

If building a landing page then pure html/ccs for speed. Muse can be used but the code is bulky and slow.

Or you could use a shopping cart like magento

[Lee]

I'm thinking of magento for the cart Tim, just want some form of landing page to start with.

[Tim]

What style landing page, post some examples and I'll see if I've got anything similar

[Lee]

I'm thinking of magento for the cart Tim, just want some form of landing page to start with.

[Tim]

Yea but what style landing page? Like how do you want it to look?

[Lee]

Modern, clean, catchy, all the usual things. I have a rough idea in my head, and I reckon I can do it, just pretty unsure on software at the minute.

[Dave]

Software for graphic design? Or software for coding pages?

My every day use arsenal of programs is:
-Photoshop CS4
-NotePad++
-SmartFTP
-ExpressionWeb
-Firefox (w/Developer Addons)

[Lee]

I've got aptana studio, filezilla ftp, and Photoshop at the minute. I managed to install magento cart last night but the DNS is taking ages to propagate which is frustrating.

[Lee]

I take that back. It's done, just need to clear the cache in my browsers.

[Dave]

Cool, I've worked on a couple of Magento installations for clients briefly, seems well rounded software to be honest. If you need anything, let us know.

[Lee]

Cheers fellas. As always I'll be seeking your opinions as I go on.

[Tim]

The programs Dave put up are great if you know code, notepad++ and gimp are about all I use to make landing pages now however if your don't know code they can be difficult to use.

Muse is quite good for making a basic site however like I said before it does depend what kind of page you want to start with, if you can post an example the liklehood is ill either have that style page saved or be able to point you in the direction of it. Unless you just want to use magento as the main page which, depending on what you're sellong, may not be a bad think.

[Lee]

I've not tinkered with magento yet but I'll probably just use that providing it can be customised.

[Dave]

One of its biggest assts is the customisations and themes/packs available for it. I'm sure you'll find somethign to suit or be able to modify something that laready exists. Good luck