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Which Web software to buy?

There are many, many options for buying Web software. First, of course, there are portals - many of these are free and open source, and most seem to be designed to run on Linux, Apache, and either php or Perl with MySQL databases. We can't recommend one, but we will say that most have one thing in common - they require more work than you'd think to review, install, and customize! When you're done, though, you have a truly dynamic site that a large user base can easily contribute to with minimal work on your part. We've done that for our charter school site using phpwebsite, which has been a bumpy ride but rewarding in the long run. Portals are best for dynamic content - in our case, a small number of permanent pages coupled to a series of announcements and calendar events that nobody cares about after they're over. For other sites, such as allpar.com, with its 900 pages of Chrysler-related information, we've chosen static pages to lighten the server load and increase speed, with various php and database-based services for news, links, and forums.

For most people, there are four basic types of Web software:

• 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 most browsers. If you only care about reaching Windows users with Internet Explorer and fast connections, by all means, go for it. Otherwise, read on.
• Template-based. These are programs that essentially have a series of templates that you fill your own information into. 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.
• 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 includes such "deadies" as Netscape Composer and Adobe PageMill, as well as the current monsters:
  • FrontPage. A typical Microsoft program, this creates massively bloated web pages that tend to have features that can only be used when your Web server is running Windows (or FrontPage extensions on Linux) and, in some cases, when the user is running Internet Explorer. We don't recommend it, but you may have guessed that.
  • GoLive. This Adobe program runs much better on Macs than on Windows, where we're told it tends to be crash-prone on many systems (certainly that was our experience). The user interface is relatively good for non-programming tasks - that is, basic web page design - and the site manager can be useful for finding and fixing errors and making sitewide changes. However, it still has a number of serious bugs, including periodically nuking a page, pretending to delete text but not really deleting it, and moving some things to the top for no apparent reason. These bugs usually only come out on long and complex pages (e.g. over 20K) but can be embarassing and annoying. We don't know if Adobe will keep this program going since they bought Macromedia which owns... The cost is about $400-$500 with upgrades costing about $150. Academic pricing is about $100.
  • Dreamweaver. This program is moving to Adobe now, but the basic rundown is that it's the industry standard for sites that include a lot of scripts and active elements. I've found it to be less intuitive and easy to use than GoLive, but it does have some nice features. It tends to run rather slowly on Macs, though I'm told this has improved. The cost is similar to GoLive. Academic pricing is about $100.
  • nVu. This is a cross-platform, open-source program designed to fill 80% of GoLive's and Dreamweaver's functions for the average webmaster. At the time of writing it was not exactly bug-free, but it was also much faster than GoLive or Dreamweaver, not to mention much cheaper - that is, free - and available on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. It's the descendant of the generally liked Netscape Composer, but its feature set is quite modern, and the developers are moving quickly and respond to user concerns. We recommend it especially for beginners, since it's a very small investment. For those who find nVu not to their tastes, try a 30-day demo of Dreamweaver and GoLive - 30 days with one, then 30 days with the other - go back to nVu if it's gone into a new version - and then choose one.