Best program for building a website?

[diydemon]

DD needs to build one to advertise herself as a musician - for weddings and similar events

She'd want to upload at least audio clips, preferably video too - although could upload video to YouTube and link to it of course.

Any advice on easy, preferably free or low-cost, software to use to build the site?

And also advice on ensuring the site is picked up on a Google search?

We've already registered a domain for her.

tia

Depending on who your ISP is you may very well have a certain amount of web space already.

For small business and hobby users such space is usually perfectly sufficient, and you're already paying for it so why not use it.

So check through your ISP documentation and see if you've got anything.

That won't help you actually build the content though. Mac's come with some pretty nice web page generation software as a part of iLife but I'm not sure about PCs.

Thanks - You're right, she will have enough webspace.

It's more about what she uses to build it - something not too fiddly preferably. But it will be on a PC rather than a MAC and I'll undoubtedly need to help her build it plus work out how to optimise the site for search engines.

"You're right, she will have enough webspace."

It's not just about "enough" space but about how often it's accessed. ISPs will often place limits on how much people can download from your own personal web space. So if it's too popular the site could hit that limit way before running out of actual space.

However that said I've not seen that happen, as said I've seen many people run hobbies and small businesses from their personal ISP provided web space.

I'm really not sure about PC web page editors, I'm one of those who still does HTML by hand.

The MrSite package has been recommended to me by friends setting up a small business, but its not free. About £20 or £50 for the professional version, have a look on Amazon.

I'm really not impressed by MrSite, very basically the HTML they produce is rubbish and I can't believe that they get away with charging for it.

As BP says - part of the downside with hosting using your ISP is that they might restrict the traffic allowed.

One, Plus.Net, has a daily limit of 250 MB (which is quite generous - 10 GB total each month) but it only needs a bunch of friends to mention her website the same day on FaceBook or MySpace and if the amount of downloading takes the traffic level over 250 MB, the website would be 'suspended' (so no more visitors would see/ hear content).

I think 123-reg.co.uk has a deal going for students, charging them 1 pound per month for hosting.

If she classes the music as 'business' the www.gbbo.co.uk (Getting British Business Online) - a collaboration of firms including Google and BT - is offering a .co.uk domain name of your choice and free Google Sites web hosting, ALL FREE. After 2 years there would be a renewal fee for the domain.

I have used Google Sites (it was a free option on the control panel of one of the domain registration services I use) and it does allow user editing / creation of the web pages, with their own sample templates etc.

Using GBBO would ensure the site was listed with Google (the most popular search engine in the UK {... unfortunately ... it gives them too much clout IMO, and is exacerbated when people say to 'google it' instead of 'search for it'}).

It should be possible to get creating free on Google Sites, and then if she wants, get more adventurous and design pages with different graphics, and promote them separately. The Google Sites pages could link to YouTube video, allowing the cost of the downloading to be avoided.

One downside with using Google Sites would be the difficulty in tracking visitors. It would perhaps be worth adding links to MySpace and so on, so she can have some other content (outside the control of Google Sites templates) and allowing her to have 'friends' (or with Twitter, followers) to be able to market herself, and perhaps sell MP3 copies of live sessions (if she wants to go down that route).

If she went for a full webhost / webdesign situation, and had downloads etc, then she could find it more of a drain on funds than bringing them in. It's unfortunately very easy for some of the traffic (downloading) costs to end up with the site owner, before they get anything coming in from the artistic works... IYSWIM HTH

Net Objects fusion is not free but is very good. My DP built his website using it.

They seem to do a Fusion Essentials now which is free, but has less functionality. Probably well worth a look.

As for hosting my DP uses ultraspeed and has never had any problems (again, not free)

To make sure the site is picked up on google make sure there is lots of relevant taxt (google cant spider flash etc), and make sure your page titles etc are done properly. And have a look at www.google.com/websiteoptimizer