Simple website builder needed

[silkstone]

Hi all,

Does anyone know of any simple online site building & hosting tools?

I've been playing around with a wordpress, weebly and blooger for the past few hours, but with little luck. They are either way too complex to understand quickly and easily or just don't offer the customization options in order to have the freedom to make the page look how I want. Unfortunately, I don't have hours and hours to learn everything from scratch and just need something that will give me a blank template and allow me to add in sections, kind of like publisher, I guess.

This is the style of homepage I am looking for:

But nothing I have found will allow me to create a page like that. It's been a rather frustrating experience.

 

[P4-630]

You could try a Dreamweaver Trial. (if Adobe still has trials for download)
I have used Dreamweaver in the past, it always included basic templates.

 

[silkstone]

You could try a Dreamweaver Trial. (if Adobe still has trials for download)
I have used Dreamweaver in the past, it always included basic templates.

Yeah. I've used dreamweaver before (years and years ago), it wasn't simple, but it was fairly easy to do what I wanted. How easy is it to publish from dreamweaver? I remember that I always had problems with my links after uploading. I'd have to spend a long time making sure that they pointed to the right place. Also, and again this was about 10 years ago, i wasn't able to get the pages to work properly on different browsers and at different resolutions. It's kind of why I'm looking for a simple, but powerful online tool that will make sure it all works.

I'm not really looking to learn anything new as I just don't have the time right now. I'd just like to get something up and running that can act as a centralized database of resources that I share with students.
A header with picture, 4 links on the page and space for possible news items on the front page. Whenever I try to use a template, they are more fit for businesses or personal blogs. They have a tonne of sections that I don't want, or need, but are impossible to delete.

 

[silentbogo]

Is it going to be a blog or a landing page w/ static content?
If blog, there are tons of lightweight and easy to use blogging engines, like Anchor and PicoCMS.
Otherwise, if you have some spare ether, you can shoot me a PM and I'll help you with your project

 

[silkstone]

Is it going to be a blog or a landing page w/ static content?
If blog, there are tons of lightweight and easy to use blogging engines, like Anchor and PicoCMS.
Otherwise, if you have some spare ether, you can shoot me a PM and I'll help you with your project

Essentially, I just need something static. It would be cool if I could add news items on the front page, but not essential.

I'm going to spend a little more time on it, before looking for professional help. It's not really an important project, just something that would make things a little easier and I'd build up over time.

 

[silentbogo]

Essentially, I just need something static. It would be cool if I could add news items on the front page, but not essential.

I'm going to spend a little more time on it, before looking for professional help. It's not really an important project, just something that would make things a little easier and I'd build up over time.

Then just go with cheap hosting+PicoCMS.
Wordpress is way too heavy and complex for conventional use nowadays. Tried to get my blog up and running on DigitalOcean a couple of years ago, and still ended up writing my own mini-engine in PHP cause WP would use up all available RAM (I was on a 1 core/1GB plan) and hang until I restart MySQL server... which I had to do daily, or several times a day if there were more than 200 visitors.

 

[silkstone]

Thanks. PicoCMS looks interesting. Still a little more involved than just signing up, and logging into a editor, but it does look like a simple way that I could host the site on my own little server. I'll try to dedicate some time during me next break see if I can do that.

Can you give me a basic overview of how it work? From reading, it seems that you download it, upload everything to a hosting provider, navigate to your address and begin editing. How does the password protection work though? Can't anyone just go to your address and start editing your page?

 

[silentbogo]

Thanks. PicoCMS looks interesting. Still a little more involved than just signing up, and logging into a editor, but it does look like a simple way that I could host the site on my own little server. I'll try to dedicate some time during me next break see if I can do that.

Can you give me a basic overview of how it work? From reading, it seems that you download it, upload everything to a hosting provider, navigate to your address and begin editing. How does the password protection work though? Can't anyone just go to your address and start editing your page?

First, there is an initial setup, where you put your website settings (incl. admin login/password).
Afterwards you simply add news entries through admin page whenever needed.
I haven't tried their newest version yet, so I might do just that later on this evening.

 

[silkstone]

First, there is an initial setup, where you put your website settings (incl. admin login/password).
Afterwards you simply add news entries through admin page whenever needed.
I haven't tried their newest version yet, so I might do just that later on this evening.

Ah, so you need SSH access to the web server in order to install? Are there any free hosting options that offer that?

 

[silentbogo]

Ah, so you need SSH access to the web server in order to install? Are there any free hosting options that offer that?

Most do, but you don't really need SSH. Just FTP access to upload your CMS, and whatever management panel they offer for the rest.
But in case you do need SSH, I can tell you for sure that 000webhost has it.
Alternatively you can get a free 1 year trial on AWS, which is even better.

P.S. Have you tried blogspot yet? I'm pretty sure that you can tweak it out to look close to your draft outline.

 

[silkstone]

Most do, but you don't really need SSH. Just FTP access to upload your CMS, and whatever management panel they offer for the rest.
But in case you do need SSH, I can tell you for sure that 000webhost has it.
Alternatively you can get a free 1 year trial on AWS, which is even better.

P.S. Have you tried blogspot yet? I'm pretty sure that you can tweak it out to look close to your draft outline.

So far i've spent the day looking into wix, weebly, blogger and wordpress. All of them I just find impossible to customize or overly complicated and I can't even create an account in Blogger (just loops). I thought I was getting somewhere with Wix, but you are locked into whatever template you choose for a page and changing the style and content is impossible.

I'll take a look at blogspot now. [Edit] - Ah, Blogspot seems to have been renamed to blogger. I can't create an account, it just loops me back to the homepage when I try to sign in.

As to CMS, if you just need ftp access, how do you install it? I really have no experience in modern web authoring. 10 - 20 years ago, it was just a matter of building your .html files and uploading them, now I am starting to think you need to take classes to understand just how to get started.

Edit - Okay, I just came across Google sites. It seems pretty simple to set up a basic website and add content. It also has the customization I am looking for.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

If you don't mind a super primitive looking website, you could manage your layout with an HTML table.

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
 <head>
  <title>Document</title>
 </head>
 <body>
  <table border="1">
   <tr>
    <td>Title<br/>Sub heading</td>
	<td>Header Image</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td colspan="2">
	 <table border="1">
	  <tr>
	   <td>Pic Link 1</td>
	   <td>Pic Link 2</td>
	   <td>Pic Link 3</td>
	   <td>Pic Link 4</td>
	  </tr>
	 </table>
	</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td>picture</td>
	<td>Blurb</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td>picture</td>
	<td>Blurb</td>
   </tr>
  </table>
 </body>
</html>

Which looks like this:

"picture" is <img src="path-to-file" />
"pic link" is <a href="link-dest"><img src="path-to-file"/></a>

Most of the above is self explanatory. The things that aren't so much:
tr = table row
td = table divison (creates cell)
a = anchor (aka hyperlink)


Yeah, div/span/CSS is...stupid...these days.

 

[silkstone]

If you don't mind a super primitive looking website, you could manage your layout with an HTML table.

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <title>Document</title>
</head>
<body>
  <table border="1">
   <tr>
    <td>Title<br/>Sub heading</td>
    <td>Header Image</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td colspan="2">
     <table border="1">
      <tr>
       <td>Pic Link 1</td>
       <td>Pic Link 2</td>
       <td>Pic Link 3</td>
       <td>Pic Link 4</td>
      </tr>
     </table>
    </td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td>picture</td>
    <td>Blurb</td>
   </tr>
   <tr>
    <td>picture</td>
    <td>Blurb</td>
   </tr>
  </table>
</body>
</html>

Which looks like this:

"picture" is <img src="path-to-file" />
"pic link" is <a href="link-dest"><img src="path-to-file"/></a>

Most of the above is self explanatory. The things that aren't so much:
tr = table row
td = table divison (creates cell)
a = anchor (aka hyperlink)


Yeah, div/span/CSS is...stupid...these days.

Thanks. I was considering just doing something in HTML, but a table would be a little too 80's.
I think google sites is my best option for now. It allows me to add text boxes and images and drag stuff around to where I want it placed. It should serve it's purpose until I get something set up on my own mini-server at home.
I've been meaning to find some time to learn Dreamweaver again, and likely will, but I find the back end stuff much more fun and interesting.

 

[Mindweaver]

I would put my containers in CSS. Also, download Notepad++ you can add the FTP Plugin and upload your HTML, CSS, Pictures, and files with it.

 

[silentbogo]

If you don't mind a super primitive looking website, you could manage your layout with an HTML table.

Tables are so 90s.
With HTML5 it's all about doing semantics in HTML, and layout/design in CSS separately. Scalable multires pages are basically a bunch of flexboxes today.

Also, download Notepad++ you can add the FTP Plugin and upload your HTML, CSS, Pictures, and files with it.

And don't forget to add a mandatory crash-course on HTML5, CSS3 and JS. Basically a few evenings with coffee on Codecademy or EDX.
A bit of learning with a bit of work ain't gonna hurt anyone

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Tables are so 90s.
With HTML5 it's all about doing semantics in HTML, and layout/design in CSS separately. Scalable multires pages are basically a bunch of flexboxes today.

HTML5, CSS, and JS basically just gives web designers more tools to make a terribly unusable and resource expensive websites.

Too bad XAML isn't supported by browsers. Not only is it a sane interpretation of UI design in XML, it's also GPU-centric in design and extendable. Precompiled binaries also speed up execution and prevent browser mishaps.

 

[Xesteanov]

You should try Bootstrap. They have great documentation and examples but you might also check out the tutorials at w3schools

 

[Jetster]

Is it a WYSIWYG you want? Like Wix.com?

 

[damian246]

So far i've spent the day looking into wix, weebly, blogger and wordpress. All of them I just find impossible to customize or overly complicated and I can't even create an account in Blogger (just loops). I thought I was getting somewhere with Wix, but you are locked into whatever template you choose for a page and changing the style and content is impossible.

Why not spend about $ 50 for a website done by professionals? Free stops that precise moment when you spend too much time to get it done.
Takes about a week to do a website. https://website-with-seo.com

 

[Aquinus]

HTML + Bootstrap could take care of the majority of your visual needs. It's pretty easy to use.

<html>
  <head> ... stuff ... </head>
  <body>
    <div class="container">
      <div class="row">
        <div class="col-md-6">
          <h1>Title</h1>
          <h2>Sub-title</h2>
        </div>
        <div class="col-md-6">
          <img src="some-image.jpg" />
        </div>
      </div>
      <div class="row">
        <div class="col-md-3">
          <img src="picture.jpg" />
        </div>
        <div class="col-md-3">
          <img src="picture.jpg" />
        </div>
        <div class="col-md-3">
          <img src="picture.jpg" />
        </div>
        <div class="col-md-3">
          <img src="picture.jpg" />
        </div>
      </div>
      <div class="row">
        <div class="col">
          <figure>
            <img src="something.jpg" class="figure-img img-fluid rounded" />
            <figcaption class="figure-caption">
              Something about the image above.
            </figcaption>
          </figure>
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

 

[peche]

wix does offer some blank templates to try, also sells hosting and all goodies you might needs, whats the site for? if something simple, cheap and quick, wix is the way to go ...

Regards,

 

[moproblems99]

Before you give on word press, see if you can get a free version of visual composer or plug in like. VC allows to build a page responsively by dragging and dropping components within the editor.

 

[Canon]

There are most likely a whole host of freely available plug 'n' play PHP scripts ideal for your needs. I would suggest having a quick look for something like that. Then set yourself up with a free web host to begin with.

I'll let you in on a little secret. I run an online shop, using a commercially free PHP cart script, a free webhost and I pay £0.99/y for a .co.uk domain. My needs never exceed the free host and it seems secure enough, including a happily operating payment gateway (PayPal).

Here's some links to check out;

Free Hosting
PHP Scripts

For a real dev it's silly stuff but it can be a little daunting if you don't know what you're doing. Feel free to drop me a PM if I can help with anything.

 

[Frick]

Some web hotels have decent basic site-builders and it's defiitely what Iwould use. If you don't have a few hours to learn something more complex you probably don't have the time to read up on all the tools you need, keeping yourself updated on them (for the inevitable security bugs) and host the stuff yourself. I'd definitely go for a webhotel.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

Would something like www.squarespace.com assist you with this?