We explore the latest in DIY website building and maintenance products.
1) Promoting Your Website
Search engines are an easy way to advertise your business to potential customers but if you have to manually submit your site to multiple engines you could be sitting in front of the computer for a very long time. That’s why Trellian have developed SubmitWolf, a software program that can tender your application to both major and minor engines in minutes, ensuring your presence on the net doesn’t go under
the radar.
- Features:
- • Priority submission
- • Prevents multiple submissions to restricted engines
- • Submits to 50 engines concurrently
- • Technical support
- • Engine filter
- • Supports most proxy servers and firewalls
Product: SubmitWolf v6.0
RRP: AU$199.95, (US$169 online)
2) Selling Online
Providing an online shopping cart on your website doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Ezimerchant professional has tools to help you build your online store then all you have to do is load your product details into a database and ezimerchant will handle the rest—they’ll even store your customer orders once you’re up and running.
- Features:
- • 120 design themes
- • Fraud-check on credit card orders
- • No HTML coding needed
- • Customer database created
- • 128bit SSL encryption
- • Australia Post freight calculator
- • Email marketing
- • Compatible with PayPal, PayMate and manual transactions
Product: ezimerchant professional
RRP: $449 incl GST plus a monthly online transaction fee
3) Editing Software
Once you’ve set up a website, whether it’s a DIY job or outsourced, the problem becomes how to keep it updated. Macromedia’s Contribute 3, the editing component of their Studio 8 software suite, could be the solution. Anyone can use this software to edit websites, from web designers to those who have never seen HTML coding. In three steps you can browse the site, edit it and click on ‘publish’ to make changes.
- Features:
- • Edit HTML sites from Dreamweaver, FrontPage and GoLive
- • Control who can edit
- • Review before going live
- • Integrate any printable document using Flash Paper 2
- • Edit while offline
Product: Macromedia Contribute 3
RRP: $299.90
4) Create a Website
MultimediART is an online service dedicated to helping you create a website. Once they’ve helped you build your site they’ll also host it for you. You don’t need to download any software as all the tools you need are based on the web and as long as you’re connected to the internet you can continually make changes to your site.
- Features:
- • Create online forms
- • Manipulate and edit images
- • Create Flash animated intros
- • Step-by-step site building wizards
- • Online shop builder
- • Add banners and footers
- • No HTML coding knowledge required
Product: MultimediART
RRP: $34.95 per month or $365 per year
http://www.simplewebsitebuilder.com
5) FrontPage
If you’re a little more HTML savvy then Microsoft FrontPage could be the software you need. Microsoft reckons this software is so easy to use it can help you learn HTML code. Also included with FrontPage is Microsoft IntelliSense technology, which is designed to simplify code writing and cuts down on the amount of errors. For a more design-focused product check out Microsoft Publisher 2003.
- Features:
- • Cascading style sheets (CSS)
- • Overlapping layers
- • Quick tag editor
- • Split-screen format for viewing code and design
- • Code-writing aids
- • Database interface wizard
- • Create clean HTML code
- • Publish to File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) servers
Product: Microsoft FrontPage
RRP: $349
6) DIY Website
Looking to launch a website for your business but HTML web coding and JavaScript editing sound like a foreign language? Website Pros’ NetObjects Fusion 8 could be your answer.
With its easy-to-follow format for building your own website, all you have to do is choose your template from the SiteStyles library and the in-built site wizard will help you create your site in three easy steps. Website here we come!
- Features:
- • Onsite image manipulation tool
- • Ability to build e-commerce sites
- • Add pop-up features without HTML web coding
- • Integrate with database software
Product: NetObjects Fusion 8
RRP: Full version $259.95 (boxed), $254.95 (download)
*All prices correct as of November 2005
