MoPower.com
Which Mac Web software to buy?
There are many options for buying software to create Web sites, but not many of them are particularly good; nearly everyone has moved to on-server frameworks, blogging software, and such (e.g. Wordpress, Xenforo, and Joomla). But what if you want something fast and easy to manage, without all sorts of extra libraries and functions you’ll never use?
Most portals are designed to run on Linux systems (Windows setups are also out there), with Apache, nginx, or Litespeed, nearly always running on php, with MySQL databases. They usually require more work than you'd think to review, install, and customize, but provide a dynamic site that a large user base can contribute to with minimal work on your part. Portals are best for dynamic content. For other sites, such as motales.com, which like my first site (Allpar) has Chrysler-related information, I chose static pages to lighten the server load and increase speed. A new option for many people is using forums; some of these are incredibly easy to modify (phpBB) while others are mature and fully featured (Xenforo, IPB), or mature and free (SimpleMachines SMF), and others have all sorts of new, innovative features. You can even get your own social media software.
For most people, there are several basic types of Mac-based Web site packages:
- Exports from other programs, such as Word, Powerpoint, and the like. This creates massive bloated pages that often don't look quite right and won't work with some (or most) browsers.
- Template-based: programs that have templates you fill in. You can get a great-looking site very quickly using them but most pros and prosumers bypass these since they're relatively inflexible. You can create a site using a template program and then (usually) modify the pages later using a standard html editor. Two problems of these sites are bloated code and inability to import existing sites.
- Custom but producing bloated code, such as Freeway. This provides total control over placement at the cost of code complexity and large pages, and again you can’t usually import existing sites.
- Text-based. These are programs used by real gearheads who want to have total control; they include the excellent BBEdit and free TextWrangler (or Notepad and Write) on the extreme text-only end, as well as programs that help by adding the various tags on demand. If you're into that sort of program, you're probably not reading this. ... if you use a Mac, definitely get TextWrangler no matter what, it will be useful, and it's free!
- WYSIWYG, or what you see is what you get (within reason). This is mainly "deadies" such as SeaMonkey and GoLive. Be warned that there are numerous programs which devolved from Netscape Composer/Komposer (like nVu!) which are buggy and are quickly abandoned after someone raises money on their bones. The one exception is Adobe Dreamweaver, a buggy, crash-prone, increasingly hard-to-use descendant of what was once the best of the web creation programs. It remains the industry standard, which is not surprising since there are no other choices.
Do you use a Mac? You can make it a more powerful tool by installing free statistics software... more tips to come...