Design Your Own Website

If you're working to a tight budget, or want total contol over your website from the start, you may want to consider doing it yourself.

Until recently, this was not an option for most people, as a) You'd need to buy software to build your sites, typically Microsoft Frontpage, or Macromedia Dreamweaver, and b) it takes a lot of time to learn to use the software.  

Frontpage costs around £170, and Deamweaver, around £300.

Both of these programmes have a very steep learning curve, and for a novice are difficult to use.

Help is at Hand:

If you're prepared to put in the time and effort, you can now build your own websites, without having to learn HTML (programming language) however this isn't really neccessary any more as there are lots of different platforms to build sites on.

I routinely use two different types of software to do this:

• XSitePro
• Wordpress Blogs

XsitePro is now on Version 2 and has been around for about three years. Developed by a Brit, Paul Smithson, who saw a gap in the market for easily useable software that produced great looking websites; XsitePro V2 is highly recommended for those looking to build their own website. This website, and many of my other websites are built using XSitePro.

Wordpress is my favourite website builder. The basic install is pretty awful, but easily customised by dropping any one of thousands of wordpress themes on top.