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Recommended website design software

It's becoming increasingly easy to publish content on the Internet, whether it be writing a blog, running a personal website, or operating a fully-fledged e-commerce website for a business.

Depending upon the purpose and aims of the website being created, the appropriate website design software will vary greatly - the number of functions and capability vary greatly, as does the price.

Basic websites

If you're not looking to make money with a website, and rather operate a simple blog or small-scale personal website, a free website hosting or free blog service is perfect.

Tripod provides 1GB of free web space to users, allowing them to create quite large personal website. Websites here feature a Tripod controlled  advert at the top of every page, and don't provide any opportunity to make any profit. Limited website design software is provided online allowing you to create your website for free.

At Blogger, users can setup free blog accounts and add content to them whenever they wish, through a web interface.

Create a free website at Tripod

Create a free blog at Blogger.com

Mid-range website design

These days, as more businesses realise the potential of online advertising, it has become very possible for website creators to make money from their sites. In order to do this, you need to spend a little. However, with a bit of work, this money can be earnt back supprisingly quickly.

Our recommended mid-range website design software is Adobe Dreamweaver CS3. This costs around £160 RRP and can be purchased directly from Adobe or your local computer shop.

In combination with Dreamweaver, we'd also recommend an image editing software package, such as Adobe Photoshop. 

Dreamweaver at Adobe.com

Photoshop at Adobe.com 

Top-end website

To really create unique, powerful and capable websites, a number of software programs are required. For this kind of website, you'll probably be thinking about using technologies such as PHP, ASP.NET, XML or XHTML.

At this level, you may want to consider Microsoft Visual Studio - a high-performance software programming suite, including programming ASP.NET with Visual Basic .NET or C#. In a similarly visual way to Dreamweaver, Visual Studio lets you create comlicated websites in a relatively easy way. If you want to try out Visual Studio, you can download the free Express editions.

You may also want to consider using Adobe Dreamweaver as well, for more artistic website design. Depending on the planned website, you could also use some database software such as mySQL or Microsoft SQL Server.

Visual Studio Express Web

mySQL  - Microsoft SQL Server