Needing help from experienced HTML coder

I am working on building the website for our company. We have LITERALLY a shoestring budget to work with, and I cannot afford to hire someone to build our page or anything like that. I have done some reading and research, but am still having trouble with a lot of the design.

1. I can't afford to buy the big editors, so any suggestions on a free web html editing software? Anyone have an older, but still viable copy they are willing to give up?
2. I am trying to work with mostly WYSIWYG editors, are they better than the others? What if I already have a template, and just want to take the basic template and make it fit me?
3. Can someone out there take the time to look over my site files (not the current website, but the one I am working on) and give me some help and suggestions? I have a lot of ideas, but am not sure how to implement them. The entire site when zipped is less than 40MB in size. (starting simple)

Some of the things I am looking at doing is taking a music file and have it play continuously in the background, without restarting every time they click on a menu button to another page on the site. Also I have been struggling with putting a Facebook "like" link on my site. it does not show up. (I am curious if the site has to actually be uploaded on my FTP and active on the internet for the like link to work?)


Any help would be appreciated.

 

I haven't used html in a couple years. Usually when I build websites now a days I use wordpress. www.baldeaglehouse.ca and www.graniteportable.com are examples.

If you haven't done much on the site, it would be easier to use wordpress. Its completly free.

 

Agreed. Wordpress is the way to go.

 

OK. I will look at Wordpress. So you actually build sites professionally, or personally? Is Wordpress a WYSIWYG editor, or something different?

I downloaded a 30 day trial of Adobe CS6, but it keeps freezing up (I get the "program not responding" every 30 seconds)

 

I used too work for Canadian Home Trends Magazine. I did all their web designing for a couple years. I've also build a couple other sites for my uncle's business, and church. They all use wordpress. The thing I like best about using wordpress is that it is very easy for somebody who knows nothing about websites to edit the site content.

 

deathproofduck.com is my personal site. It is a Wordpress / Magento hybrid. Magento just because i need a secure shopping cart system. What You See Is What You Get. (WYSIWG). Is there in Wordpress. I also use Wordpress for my ebay auctions, so i dont have to retype it all. It is just a default template. http://www.ebay.com/itm/190734007303?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649

 

Thanks so far for the advice on editors. Any of you experienced enough and willing to help me with the other issues I am looking at?
Maybe a little pro-bono work?

 

OK, I downloaded the wordpress installation. When I follow the setup instructions, the first step says to run "install.php" in my browser. When I try it, I get the error "Error: PHP is not running" and "WordPress requires that your web server is running PHP. Your server does not have PHP installed, or PHP is turned off."

What am I doing/not doing?

 

Do you have your own servers? Or are they from a hosting site? If they are your own, you need to install php on them.

 

I have a hosting site. Can I not run Wordpress when not connected to my hosting server?

I am really looking for an editing program that I can just run from my computer and work off-line like CS6 does. I just can't afford that much. Thanks for all the help so far!

 

Wordpress must be installed on the sever. So you will need internet access whenever you are editing the site.

If you are wanting something you can create offline, then wordpress won't work.

 

When i started learning html from a buddy of mine I learned on note pad. Yea thats right. He made me remember and type the html codes to design things in my head.
i use an old homesite program that's about as small and ancient as you can get. you can do all your work off line and check it except for imbedded links etc.

I still do a site once in a while and i still type most of it out of my head.
I know you don't want to try that but a simple editor may all you need.

 

*Vomit* @ wordpress....but I guess you gotta start somewhere..

Ok hotscripts.com is your new bestest friend. Your best bet is to use a free template, there are TONS laying around the internet, you can hack them up to kinda get what your wanting. As for having music playing on your website...no, its the most annoying thing in the world trust me! People have their volume turned up and all the sudden it starts blaring this shit, its like in 1996 when people were putting MIDI files on every website in existence -not cool!! I ran several websites for years and I just hacked apart different templates to get what I wanted out of the site. HTML, javascript will compose most of your site, and you can start using PHP scripts to make it easier to update parts of the site, for instance your news section, so you don't have to edit the .html files manually everytime and then upload them afterwards, but that can come later when you add more features and stuff, you can make do without for now.

Your hosting should have PHP and many many more (perl, cgi, etc...) installed if not then they are LACKING so much. I assume its shared hosting (one server with about 200+ websites/accounts running on it) so they *should* have everything you need installed already and fully updated aswell.

Whats the address to your site man?

 

First you need to understand what your hosting site supports. Unless you are hosting the site yourself and have total control, what you build and publish may or may not work.

I would suggest calling them, telling them what you are trying to do and what your budget is, and asking them for suggestions on what will work in their environment.

Do that before you go too far down one road or another.

 

I have always used HTML-KIT ...the free version is fine. I have tried and used may others, but ALWAYS came back to this.

The music player code you're looking for is something like this...

Code:

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.fxcomponents.com/components/mp3player/MP3Player_v201.swf" style="outline: none;" width="300" height="20">
    <param name="movie" value="http://www.fxcomponents.com/components/mp3player/MP3Player_v201.swf"></param>
    <param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param>
    <param name="FlashVars" value="trackURL=[B][COLOR="Red"](PLACE YOUR MP3 LINK HERE)[/COLOR][/B]&title=[COLOR="red"](ENTER YOUR TITLE HERE)[/COLOR]&color1=0x333333&color2=0x444444&color3=0xdddddd&color4=0xffffff&width=300&volume=80&timerMode=0&autoPlay=true" />
</object>

the player is up on my website for you to view.



Be glad to help you out in anyway that I can.

 

I appreciate a lot of the suggestions here, but remember, I have absolutely ZERO money to spend here. I can't get a developer to help me at the hosting site because you have to pay for it. I already have a free template that I am working on editing. What I am looking for is a FREE off-line website editor. Dreamweaver looked interesting, but it did not like my template for some reason and I had trouble getting it to do anything more than freeze up on me.

Please understand that I do appreciate the info, but some of this is way out of my budget, and experience level. I need something more along the lines of a WYSIWYG, and I need something that will edit off-line so that I can get it finished, and THEN upload it to the FTP server. I have already confirmed with them that my template will work. The one problem I have yet to solve is getting a dang Facebook "like" frame to work. I follow the developer code directly from FB itself, and the page, when run live will not show anything except a blank frame.

 

The CURRENT site, which is not the template I am working on, is marionbumper2bumper.com

We are using FatCow for our hosting. One of the big reasons we chose them was that they are "green" friendly and use renewable resources as much as possible (Some of their power comes direct from windmills, not power grid for example)


By the way, It looks like I have access to a free copy of "Expressions Web 3", anyone know much about it?

 

Yea I used WYSIWYG editors when I first started in 2000, back then you could tell that they were made from them and looked rather cheap and elementary, I'm guessing now days they have improved. I from then on learned to use a text editor (wordpad, notepad, etc..) but learning that way can take time which you probably don't have.

http://kompozer.net is a free WYSIWYG editor, never used it so I cannot vouch for it. Your going to spend abit of time getting it all right unless you hire a freelancer.

maybe this link will help you with the facebook button thingy. http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/04/adding-facebook-like-buttons-to-your-site-is-damn-easy/

 

I still just use Notepad for HTML and CSS. I know nothing of programs. Heh.

 

use the <iframe> code & place it directly after the <body> tag

what is the URL to your website?