Creating and Maintaining a Website

When one runs a website, they need a decent knowledge of the code used or a piece of software which will write much of the code for them. There are many software programs connected to websites which promise to allow even a novice to create a site. This is true, but for a professional they will no doubt find them lacking. Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Someone I know wanted to create a website and used what I call the House Software. That was the software provided by the website host. They found it had only a limited number of colors and they couldn’t seem to get it to place objects on the screen where they wanted them. I have no such problem and I use a software program named Dreamweaver by Adobe. You still need to know some code and understand what is going on, it is not simply a move and drop program and it does cost hundreds of dollars so it is only for a professional, but it is a great piece of software which has served me well over the years and through many updates. You can see the results on my web page.

Drawing and photo editing software is a must when you have a website and over the years I have tried them all. If you ask people what is the best software in the field they will mostly tell you Photoshop another extremely expensive piece of software. You can also get it on a yearly basis but who wants to have to pay every year to use something? The truth is there is another program which is incredible and those who use it claim it is the best for what it does. That program is Xara Designer Pro. I have found nothing it can’t do that Photoshop can and it is cheaper being on sale today when I wrote this article for $129.00. For those who just need a photo editor with some rudimentary drawing capability there is Infanview and it is free.

If you are going to write and post articles you should have a good piece of office software. There are two ways to go. It just so happens there is an excellent piece of office software which is free. It is named Libre Office and contains just about everything one might need to write. Its weakness is it doesn’t come with an email program but it is said to be 100% compatible with Microsoft Office Word files. The other option is to buy or lease on a yearly basis. This probably means getting Microsoft Word or Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office comes in several different packages. The one I use is Microsoft Office Professional Plus and has all the Microsoft Office programs which I find useful and it also contains Outlook the email software. Again, we are talking about an expensive piece of software if purchased from Microsoft or one of their outlets. If you don’t want the Outlook software you can purchase Microsoft Office Professional or Microsoft Business. You can also lease the software yearly. You see ads all over for this software at much cheaper prices but Microsoft claims the product keys are stolen or being misused and they will deactivate the software if this is found out.

If you are going to run a website one of the things which is necessary is a good backup program. There are all sorts which you can spend a lot of money on but there happens to be a very good free one which has an awful lot of options and is as good or better than most of the commercial ones. The program is AOMEI Backupper standard. It allows one to use many different types of backups and you can even clone drives. Once you made the backup image you have tools that come with the software which let you examine the image and browse it. It is said by the company you can restore the image to a different computer. I have never tried this and it sounds like it could be a problem if the two computers have different operating systems or even different versions of the same one.

If you are going to run a website you need a piece of software which will allow you to transfer, move and delete files to and from your site. I can do it through Dreamweaver but I prefer to use Core FTP Le. It is free and has served me well over many years of updates. It is very dependable and can easily connect or disconnect. Its options are easy to get to and it shows you exactly what is happening.

When you have a website, you have to consider several things. Your pages have to be able to be seen on a computer screen, a tablet and on a cell phone. That takes a little work sometimes. You also have to test your site using several popular web browsers to make sure it comes up the same on all of them. My default browser is Opera but I also test on Chrome and Edge with an occasional test on Firefox. To me it is important no matter which browser you are using everything looks the same.

None of these things would do me any good if I didn’t have a good program to protect my computer because viruses are rampant as are all sorts of other malware. This is where I use the best anti-malware software I can find. I don’t use any of the free ones or Windows Defender although that might be alright for just a private home computer which is backed up. I use the commercial product Bitdefender Total Security. I have used it for several years and it has prevented many attacks and I am very satisfied with it. I have tried many other products over the years but none have been as reliable as this one.

If you are going to run a commercial website perhaps to sell something on or advertise some sort of service, it is important to have the right software to design and maintain it. You don’t want it to look amateurish and you don’t want it to get infected with a virus.