LESSON #30: Using Web Authoring Software

By | January 11, 2009

In the past couple of lessons, I showed you how to build a basic website with HTML and upload it to the web.

But what if you don’t want to become an HTML expert and write your website code from scratch?

One solution for you would be to use a web authoring software program…

(Watch this video…)

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Main points:

  • Web authoring software (aka. HTML editor) helps you build a website

    For example…
    -Microsoft FrontPage
    -Adobe Dreamweaver

  • I recommend XSitePro which is a hybrid HTML editor/ site builder/ site management platform.

  • Free option:

    NVU (old version)
    KompoZer (recommended) – http://kompozer.sourceforge.net

    (see demo using KompoZer on video)

  • WYSIWYG HTML editor (such as KompoZer) enables you to build a site without writing any code.

    Action step:

    1) Decide if you would like to use a web authoring program to build your site.

    2) If yes, choose a program and start using it.

    In lesson 27 I covered several different methods of building a website. If you’re not yet sure which method you want to use, I recommend reviewing that lesson.

    We’ve covered the first two methods so far. Next on the list are templates and site builders, and I’ll be covering those in the next lesson.

    As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below 🙂

    Have a great day!

  • 164 thoughts on “LESSON #30: Using Web Authoring Software

    1. Gary Pettit (Instant-Paysites.com)

      Eric,
      I agree that XsitePro is the way to go if money isn’t an issue.

      Ps…By the way I love the video you made for your new push button product. It had a great since of humor and made me laugh! Watched it 3 times. I’m not sure what your price point will be but hopefully your offer options depending on the price.
      Gary 😉

      Reply
    2. Eric Post author

      Thanks Gary. Me and my brother in law Micah had fun making it. You will like the price of PBM 😉

      Reply
    3. mark

      Eric,
      I would have to agree also from a newbie perspective that XsitePro has been fairly easy to use and understand. I have been waiting to publish my site until I finish more of your lessons.

      I can see that I just need to get what I have out there and get my feet wet.

      Thanks so far for what you have shared. I look forward to more. I am impatient at times for how long it has taken for these lessons to evolve but that does not mean I am still not grateful. I have little to complain about. I can not imagine attempting to do what you do in these lessons, do it for free, have a life and still be evolved in all the other business and personal activities I am aware of, let alone the ones I am not aware of.

      As always I appreciate your efforts.

      Mark

      Reply
    4. Leanne

      Glad to see you back, Eric. I have used publisher pro, any comments on this software? It seems fairly user friendly, too.
      I have felt a little like Mark, raring to go and impatient at times. Did use the time away to work on things, still trying to muttle through it all. Still working on ways to monetize my site. I’m hoping you will be covering some of that soon. I have greatly appreciated you and your tips. It finally got me to decide to move forward into the internet realm. Pray Mom and baby are doing well?

      Reply
    5. Michaela

      Eric, you already know, I work with xSitePro and love it, and I want to stay with this package.
      Sorry about being pragmatic, not philosophical, the video is great and fun, the idea just to “push a button” is great but I don’t know what this package is doing, which problem is solving from so many Internet marketing angles we can look at this business. Do you have a sale page or something from where I can find a little more?

      How is doing the little, little one?

      You can, and have to help your wife, but do what she said, nothing else, follow the instructions, you suppose to be good on this!.
      I remember when my husband decided to help me with the time consuming shopping. He requested a list, I made one with 5 items, he always came back with 20 items. After a while I gave up the “help” because I had our house full of things I didn’t need.
      Michaela

      Reply
    6. Jon

      Eric, I’ve been leaning towards dreamweaver. i bought xsitepro and was unable to get support for even basic questions, even in the forum so like so much other stuff, it will continue to spin at 7200 rpm on my hard drive. i upgraded from xsitepro v1 which was way too hard to use, and unfortunately fell for the sales hype and upgraded to v2, which despite the sales hype, is even tougher to even get a grip on, let alone master to any extent.

      until there is really a decent package out there, i think dreamweaver and notepad still get my vote.

      jon

      Reply
    7. Charles Pinheiro

      Hi Eric, thanks again for the video. I rather will use dreamweaver. Well never went to buy the xsitepro. At least now I know its a good software from all the input here. I do have hyperVRE.

      Thanks

      Warm Regards

      Charles.

      Reply
    8. Andrew Loucks

      Hey, you might even want to check out squarespace.com. I learned dreamweaver, flash and all the other programs in the Adobe Creative Suite through highschool as I planned to become a webdesigner, and squarespace has really become a nice web based option. They have a 14 day trial and the interface is actually beyond amazing. The big problem is that the web pages aren’t PHP, so that can limit things as far as analytics.

      Reply
    9. Mel

      Thanks for another lesson. Was just thinking about your lessons this morning so good timing. Hope your family is well. Looking forward to the next lesson.
      Ta

      Reply
    10. Dan

      Your “Push Button” movie is very personal and sympathetic! Please let us know, what kind of camera you used? Webcam 30frame/sec stuff is out…
      BTW: why didn’t you switch on some lights for the video? Not in the bedroom, of course, but in the scenes before and after, I mean. Nice, bright colours would not destroy the wanted amateurish, personal and sympathetic character of the movie, just my opinion.

      Reply
    11. mike

      Hi eric, your lessons are truly great. I have been searching for along time for this sort online coures, thank you so much for sharing this with us. I have xsite pro 2 and it is as you say a good bit of kit, didnt know there was anything on the opensource market im going to download that and have a play. Are you going to be putting these courses onto dvd or downloadable in the near future?

      Reply
    12. mal

      this is great stuff eric as as always,your a star,this lesson was made easy to understand,can you do some like this with xcitepro for us, that would be excellent if you could eric,keep up this great work its much appreciated.mal.

      Reply
    13. Bryan

      Thanks for the resources! I prefer WYSIWYG HTML editor,it’s simple as copy and paste only!

      To Your Success
      Bryan Hee

      Reply
    14. Party Plan Pat

      Ahhh Kompozer is good! I got it for its cross platform friendliness! you know us mac folk :)!

      I have learned alot and guess what finally completed my project now off to Clickbank to register and all that fun stuff. Have made sales too…this is exciting as it falls into place :)!

      Reply
    15. LeRoy

      Eric,
      Don’t know if any of you looked at this one? 90secondwebsitebuilder.com It seems like the price was maybe $77.00 and if you tried to leave the site then they grabbed you and offered $20.00 off.Greg Hughs at TechNon Media put this out a while back. It’s a drag and drop and seemed pretty simple to me.
      LeRoy

      Reply
    16. Luca

      Hi Eric,
      Great stuff as always. I’ve played around with NVU and Dreamweaver and really like them both. I’m always a little nervous about creating a static site because I find it difficult to make changes once the site is up. What I mean is adding pages, articles, changing links and so on. Do I need to keep a copy of the site on my hard drive and then re upload the site every time changes are made?

      I’m currently using WordPress but not sure if it’s the best way to go. You’re right that I need to just start doing it and learn as I go but I’m afraid of making mistakes. Will take your advice and start playing.

      P.S. what is the PBM video link and when will it be available?

      Thanks,
      Luca – Reach Success Online

      Reply
    17. Eric Post author

      I am not familiar with Publisher Pro. Feel free to leave your comments here about it if you do use it.

      Reply
    18. Eric Post author

      The sales page will explain everything about PBM, the video is just a teaser 😉

      The little one is doing great, thanks

      Reply
    19. Eric Post author

      That is not typical of what I’ve heard from many other users, but thank you for sharing your experience.

      Reply
    20. Eric Post author

      We shot on my brother in law’s JVC GY-HD110U in 720p. We actually did use lighting, even in the bedroom, but the flash conversion really darkened the video. Also if you watch it on a mac you will see the lighting looks natural, but in retrospect we should have overcompensated and made it extra bright so it would look better on PC’s.

      Reply
    21. Eric Post author

      Yes when the 100 lessons are done I will likely compile them for dvd and/or download.

      Reply
    22. Eric Post author

      Nope. A lot of marketers are having success with twitter lately. But I personally don’t like it because I’m too one track minded. I don’t want to worry about what I’m going to tweet next. It would slow these lessons down even more 😉

      Reply
    23. Eric Post author

      I think
      90 second website builder looks like a decent WYSIWYG editor. I added my aff link to the link in your comment.

      Obviously you should not expect to build a website in 90 seconds with it. Also, I’m not sure that it’s much better than Kompozer… I’d be particularly interested in seeing the code it outputs (probably not valid HTML). But I think it could be good for some people, particularly newbies.

      Reply
    24. Eric Post author

      If you want all the pages of the static site to be integrated, then yes you would need to reupload the entire thing every time you add new pages and change links.

      That is another thing that XSite is very good at; managing static sites.

      But you’re on the right track… WordPress is my favorite platform. I’ll be covering it after a couple more lessons. I just need to cover the basics first.

      PBM = http://www.pushbuttonmarketer.com/

      Reply
    25. Luca

      Thanks Eric,
      I can’t wait until the 23rd. Looks very interesting. I hope the cost is within my reach.
      Can you give us a clue?

      Reply
    26. eric wong

      thanks eric for all the lessons and information..just a question on building the websites..is it possible to use adobe photoshop? if so how do u go about doing it?

      Reply
    27. Eric Post author

      It is possible to build an an entire site in photoshop, generally using what are called slices. I’m sure there are some tutorials out there if you google it. I do use photoshop for my graphics, but I won’t be teaching it as a site building tool, because I do not think it’s a good way to build a site. It results in a site that is too graphic-heavy, difficult to add content to, and difficult to edit in anything other than photoshop.

      Reply
    28. Frank

      Hi Eric,

      Thanks for your response on HyperVRE in the past lesson, you said Yes, I can still use HyperVRE to build Adsense sites. will I not be penalized by Google for duplicate content? especially when I use the Adsense Templates?

      Thanks in advance… God bless…

      Reply
    29. Ray

      Hi Eric,

      Happy New Year and thanks for the ebook bonus for purchasing PLF through your link to go with my new site http://www.bigticketdollars.com I am really pleased with it. Quality from you as always.

      I now build all my websites with either XSitePro or as a WordPress blog. The big advantage of XSitePro is their training manuals. They have sooo much content (over 1000 pages) that you can’t fail to find an answer.

      Blessings

      Ray

      Reply
    30. Jane

      Eric, I was interested in learning more but when I went to my download I got the list below and I don’t know how to chose. I am using Windows MS and so which do you advise/ I
      ll be stuck till you advise me as I am 72 years old and not that technical. YOur lessons are excellent always.
      Thank you.
      Jane

      kompozer-0.7.10dfsg-src.tar.gz Mirror 35284737 42908 Platform-Independent Source .gz
      kompozer-0.7.10-gcc4.0.3-i486.tar.gz Mirror 10845915 40044 i386 .gz
      kompozer-0.7.10-i386.deb Mirror 8550636 84320 i386 .deb
      kompozer-0.7.10-i386.rpm Mirror 8678928 42813 i386 .rpm
      kompozer-0.7.10-i386.tgz Mirror 8592822 3208 i386 .gz
      kompozer-0.7.10-mac.dmg Mirror 11490452 138442 PPC .dmg
      kompozer-0.7.10-src.tar.bz2 Mirror 29892874 2115 Platform-Independent Source .bz2
      kompozer-0.7.10-win32.zip Mirror

      Reply
    31. Eric Post author

      You can still use HyperVRE… and as I said in the Adsense Templates videos, I recommend using your own articles rather than scraping them. So that you won’t have duplicate content. Dupicate content generally won’t get you penalized, after all so much of the web uses syndication. But it won’t be the most beneficial either. You can also use a batch of PLR articles, which you have customized. You can use some software to “rewrite” them or else pay a ghost writer a small fee to make them unique.

      Reply
    32. Owen

      Hi Eric, I have been a FrontPage user since the very beginning and ofcourse knowing how to hard code HTML makes it easier for me. I am using the new Expressionweb 2 along with a style sheet plugin, Paypal plugin to make those quick and dirties. I don’t have a fav but back in the day there was a tool called Hotdog thats really neat but that dates me a bit 🙂
      On the Twitter note, your right, it can be a huge distraction but a large following is a great testing market IMHO.
      I wonder, with nanotechnology being able to cure Diabeties will nanobots be able to build websites? That’s another article coming 🙂

      many Blessings, Owen

      Reply
    33. Kristina Lim

      I’ve noticed that many sales letters have wide margins on either side of the page and the text is in a center column. How is that usually done? Tables? Also how wide do you make that center column – is it a fixed width or a percentage of the page?

      Reply
    34. Alfonso Ruiz

      Hi Erick,

      I hope your are enjoying a Bless New Year with your family as i’m doing as well.

      Thanks a lot for these videos, i’m continuing learning. The compozer is great, i remember i downloaded it 2 years ago but never had used it until now, and let me tell you it was a big mistake 🙁

      Thanks again,

      Reply
    35. Colin Noden

      Hi Eric,
      Yes it is great to have a number of tool options. I use XcitePro, HyperVre,Wordpress,Kompozer and even Blogger. They each have their own strengths. But at the end of the day, it is good to have some comfort level with HTML. Every platform will demand tweaking sooner or later.

      Your previous recommendation of w3schools was more important than perhaps many beginners realize.

      Thanks again for your efforts. I always scan my emails for Eric’s Tips first of all.
      Colin

      Reply
    36. Eric Post author

      yes its a good rule of thumb to have lots of white showing around your text on a sales letter. It helps it feel less claustrophobic, and helps people feel like they are able to breeze through it.

      There are a number of different ways to do it. I usually use tables. I like to use fixed width because then I can control how it looks, and how the text flows, and it won’t be all skewed if someone has an extra wide monitor or something. I always make it less than 800px, because some people still use 600×800 monitors and you don’t want it to be wider than the display. Most often I make it about 700px.

      Reply
    37. Denise

      Hi Eric

      Just found your site. What a lift!! and gift. debating if I should go for Traffic Geyser or not??

      I will be back

      Thanks

      Denise
      Lake District UK

      Any more thoughts

      Reply
    38. stan

      Eric,
      Good to see you posting again. Congrats on that bundle of joy.

      I joined arbitrage conspiracy after reading your review. I wish they have a forum to ask questions as they hardly answer 5 general questions a week.

      Aside from that, the biggest stumbling block for me is landing page.
      Some say just create one page landing page. Amit Mehta of ppc classroom 2.0 says, now Google is moving away from those thin affiliate sites, you need a full site.

      Keeping all that in mind: I search online and came across these,
      1. kompozer
      2. xsitepro 2.0
      3. speed ppc with landing page creation
      4. LPGen: landing page generator
      5. wordpress: old friend.

      I love to know to create landing pages in wordpress as I believe you can have a full site also and they rank well in SERPs.

      2 questions:
      1. which of the above 5 is your favorite and recommend to create landing page to work with Arbitrage Conspiracy.
      2. would you teach us to create landing page in wordpress when you make the tutorial.

      Thanks again.

      Reply
    39. Don Westacott

      Hi Eric,
      A happy new year to you and yours.
      I have been following your tips and they are giving me great pain, only because I wish I had I met you a few years ago when I first started on the web. The pain comes from all the time and money I have spent trying to get a grip on the fundamentals. They are not part of the myriad of offers that purport to show you how to make a business on the web. They ignore the fact that most people over 60 have not had a computer education. I am now 80 and find most of what I learn today I forget by next week if not tomorrow. I have used my miserable looking website over the past 2 years to create the content for a 130 page Ebook for sales people based on 40+ years in sales which I would like to have distributed. I purchased SiteXpro and found even that to much for me to deal with but I like your videos because you don’t assume prior knowledge. I can store the videos and view them whenever I forget a detail. I want to thank you for all the effort you go to, to make the web available to us at an understandable level. I feel a need to buy into something from you but I don’t know what exactly you would recommend that would enable me to create sales squeeze pages and affiliate sites ect. to get my book “out there”.
      Whether you can help me or not on this, like lots of other people I really do appreciate the fine job you are doing teaching the basics.
      With best wishes,
      Don

      Reply
    40. ShapeToLiveLong.net

      Hi Eric

      I went to Yahoo answers and I replied to few questions about health as I am a herbalife independent distributor. All my answers given were chosen the best by the askers. I need to maximase the opportunity.

      Please do see one of the answers I gave here (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/?qid=20090121013941AAkxtfG).

      I just go to my website and paste information about the product. I have used the products for over a year now, they do work I just need to maximise the opportunity.

      I know I can make money from this, just not sure what you recommend. A blog on what and what can I call my site.

      I am exited and confused at the same time.

      Regards

      Reply
    41. Joseph Chmielewski

      I find that WYSIWYG editors make a mess of the HTML code, and I have not found one that doesn’t need code editing to clean it up.

      Even Dreamweaver can’t be trusted. Some of the problems: unexpected insertion points when editing, lots of repeated (useless) tags.

      I suggest always examining WYSIWYG-created Web pages in “Code View” to fix the mess.

      Either that, or, go to the Code View to obtain the proper insertion point when editing, then go back to the WYSIWYG view.

      Marketers may argue that as long as the page works, who cares?

      My answer: Google’s bots seem to care. Google seems to prefer: semantically correct, accessibility-leaning code.

      Of course, key words and backlinks are still more important, but in competitive markets; proper code can make a difference.

      Reply
    42. Joseph Chmielewski

      WordPress is a great platform.

      And, I like Jeff Johnson’s free Underground Labs system WordPress template.

      I’ve had a site indexed by Google in less than four hours using this free product.

      So far, I think that every site that I have used this free product on has a Google Search Results Page 1 ranking for the keyword.

      You have to upload the entire site, create a database, and connect the product to that database…takes about 15 minutes…once you know what to do. Jeff Johnson’s tutorial on how to do this takes five minutes.

      HyperVRE, xSitePro and other for-cost systems can’t be as cost effective as the free Underground Labs WordPress system. And the Underground Labs WordPress system has Web 2.0 promotion built in!

      Reply

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