Designing a website for a serious beginner

Question

My fiance's aunt came to me asking for help on designing a website. I am pretty good at it but I'm not sure how involved I want to get in helping her. I'm busy as it is and I don't think I have the time to be of any value to her.

She is a nurse and in her 50's. She is working on her masters and this was a class she had to take. She is working on her final project which must be a website with relatively basic requirements (8 pages, links, images, etc.). No server-side scripting or JavaScript is required. The req's for her project told her to use HTML/Notepad, Microsoft Word or any web authoring tool of her choice. She is computer literate. I don't think she has a firm grasp on HTML.

What kind of tools are available to the absolute beginner? I personally use Dreamweaver to do my development but I think that is overkill. Plus she doesn't have a copy of it. Do you know of any online tools that could work?

I did tell her she can register a domain and then put it on my hosting account. So one of my only requirements for this would be that I can take the resulting site and upload it to my provider.

Answer 1

Notepad++ will handle your formatting, autocomplete, coloring, etc.

Other than that she'll need to rely on her own (lack of) skills to produce a website. No tool out there is going to magically do it for her (at least not one that will allow her to pass the class).

Answer 2

Look at this page: http://www.thefreecountry.com/webmaster/htmleditors.shtml

Pick any product. For example: http://www.seamonkey-project.org/, http://www.w3.org/Amaya/Amaya.html

Answer 3

A bit of an overkill, but try Aptana

Aptana Studio is a complete web development environment that combines powerful authoring tools with a collection of online hosting and collaboration services that help you and your team do more.

(Mentioned on SO before, e.g. tools-for-website-development).

Answer 4

I also suggest W3Schools as a primary point of reference. For the total HTML noob though you might want to look into prepackage software with an interface like Joomla. As always when in doubt Google It. You can find documentation for the install of Joomla and other Content Management Systems for your individual hosting provider via Google as well. You might also want to look into Developer Toolbars for your webbrowser.

Internet Explorer Web Development Toolbar

Firefox Web Development Addon

Answer 5

I think you would be best off pointing her toward a resource that can act as a reference for learning HTML, rather than teaching her to rely on a specific code editor. With that in mind, here are a few references:

• HTML Code Tutorial
• Tizag
• W3 Schools

Answer 6

A bit old, but I started with this: Microsoft FrontPage.

Simple WYSIWYG interface, just like office. I don't think if this is still out there! :P

Answer 7

if she want's to actually write HTML she could try w3schools like it was suggested before and use webby to avoid all the copy paste for menus and similar functions, as a plus using webby could be more fun for her (but that will depend on the person ;).

Answer 8

If you want to get into coding, I'd recommend Scite which is simple and easy. Then take a look at some tutorials online on how to write HTML.

Answer 9

To my understanding, your aunt doesn't have to code in HTML, so why does she have to learn how to? I guess it would be easier to provide her with a WYSIWYG HTML Editor and just show her some basic stuff, menus, the general concepts etc.

You can find a list of such editors here.

I can't really pick out one of them because I don't really use WYSIWYG Editors but I guess you should check the list above and aim for simplicity. Indeed, Dreamweaver and such professional suites would be a bit too much!

Answer 10

If you want the absolute basic, easiest-to-use HTML editor... Save-As HTML in Microsoft Word.

Now to get the sour taste out of my mouth, if you have any textbooks or handouts or anything from some sort of HTML class, you should be able to get by with Notepad. I use Notepad++ exclusively for all my code and it is a wonder to work with - it just requires you know what you're doing, even if just a little bit.