Best Free Software for Building Your Blog or Website
Any website, a blog especially, needs to have interesting content and be visually appealing. Software for creating that content and setting up the website can be expensive. While I am not ready to hang up my Adobe Photoshop or Dreamweaver, I have tried a few open source or freebie tools. The free or inexpensive choices out there today is impressive.
HTML Editor:
You don’t really need an HTML editor for blogs since most blogging software already have some form of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing. However building a site from scratch, creating HTML newsletter issues and creating side pages are a pain to do in Notepad alone—even if you know HTML well.
NVU -Web HTML Editor - This software is amazing. I’ve only used it a short while, but if I had this years ago, I probably wouldn’t have bought Dreamweaver. NVU (pronounced N-view) requires no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML. Everything is WYSIWYG and easy to control. Like many commercial web editors, you can choose between Visual or Code modes. Works with Windows, Linux and Mac operating systems.
Image Editor:
GIMP - Image Editor - I tried an earlier version of this many years ago but ended up buying Photoshop. I’ve been working more on a new laptop recently and having already installed my single copy of Photoshop on two computers (according to the license that is all I can do without uninstalling one), I decided to try the Gimp again. Again, awesome and you can’t beat the price. I am still trying to get used to it; it is a little frustrating since I’ve used Photoshop so long, but it gets the job done. Every image on this blog was created or edited using Gimp. It doesn’t seem to have the text effects that Photoshop has but it can do everything else. Works with Windows, Unix and Mac operating systems.
FTP Client:
Filezilla - FTP Program - Easy to use and free. If you have never set up a website before, FTP may sound scary, but it isn’t difficult to figure out. I will try to write a post about using FTP. Basically you use FTP to upload files from your computer to the server that houses your website.
