What free or cheap tools I can use for website creation business?

Question

I need to do a website for a friend who will pay me on delivery. I took a few courses in ASP.NET and think I can do it in ASP, but I am not sure ASP is free, since its a Microsoft product. Is there a way to use some kind of free version of ASP.NET to develop and sell a website or should I buy it? If it's not free, what are the free or cheap alternatives to it?

Answer 1

Microsoft offers Visual Web Developer Express for free. It will do pretty much everything you need in terms of developing and testing an asp.net website.

http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/

---

Edit-

The only expense with using ASP.net is the hosting environment. Asp.net typically requires an IIS web server to run. If you are planning on hosting the site yourself this can be a significant investment. If you are using a hosting company windows hosting with Asp.net is typically included at little or no additional charge.

Answer 2

Mono has ASP.NET support

Answer 3

PHP and Perl are free. I believe you need IIS as your webserver to host ASP applications, meaning you need to run Windows Server.

Answer 4

Just about anyone can create a content-only web site using many free tools that available. ASP is an industrial-strength solution for reading/writing to a data base, managing 1,000's of users and/or pages of content or similar.

For example, You could probably create a site for a family-owned restaurant that had their hours, menu and a map to them, maybe photos of their specialites and a "web coupon" and do it in a few hours.

But if you wanted to create the corporate site for TGI Fridays or Dennys, let users sign up, keep track of their points, have a loyalty card, etc. you would need additional skills.

Accepting credit cards? Consider that VISA has very strict standards for storing numbers you accept from customers.

There's a LOT to creating a web site that is more than some static HTML and a few photos.

Answer 5

ASP.NET is free development platform. Try visual web developer express edition which is free. If you need database try sql server 2008 express edition which is free. At microsoft express edition of any product is available for free.

Yet microsoft is giving away their proven developer tools for free for startups and freelance develoeprs.

1. If you are a student -> DreamSpark

2. Small website development company having less than 10 people -> WebsiteSprak

3. If you are a startup with more employees -> BizSpark

Microsoft rocks.