July 4, 2003

Constructing the Web Site

The tools and services used to put this site on the web.

:: Webhosting by Fatcow of Albuquerque, NM
$99 buys you a year's hosting with e-mail and PHP/MySQL/CGI support. A good deal made better by the fast, courtious, and knowledgeable technical support provided the several times I have called. The MySQL support cost an extra $10 for setup.
:: Movable Type by Six Apart.
Movable Type bills their web logging tool as a personal publishing system. Even though installation and configuration require a bit more work than your average user possesses (Six Apart does offer a paid installation if you require it), the amount of control and customizability possible are excellent. Movable Type does presuppose you will host your own web log, though they will soon offer a hosted product called TypePad shortly. Free for non-commercial use, a license for renumerative purposes will set you back a modest $150.
:: HomeSite 5 or 5+ from Macromedia
Among a plethora of available Macromedia products, I still tend to open HomeSite first to make changes to my HTML code. That said, I have been using the Studio MX product more and more often.
:: WS_FTP Pro 6.05 from IpswitchI am sure there are other FTP tools available, but I am used to its ideosyncracies at this point, I suppose. Version 7.6 is available for purchase and download from their web site for $39.95, with a $9.95 upgrade from version 4.5 and higher. I will edit this post when I have had a chance to see how the current version has been improved.
::TopStyle Pro 3 from BradSoft is the full version of the TopStyle Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) tool bundled with Dreamweaver MX and is written by the same guy who developed Homesite. It allows one to write and preview CSS.

Posted by Sean at 3:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack