I normally develop websites by hand-coding the HTML and CSS, using an “intelligent” editor like Microsoft Visual Web Developer.
I’m now doing a very small site for a friend of mine who runs a one-person business. My friend is happy with what I’ve done, but - quite rightly - he doesn’t want to depend on me to make minor corrections and changes in the future. He wants a way of doing that himself.
However, he is completely non-technical. He knows nothing about websites or HTML - and he doesn’t want to have to learn.
So I’d like to recommend to him some sort of WYSIWYG web page editing tool that he can use himself to make minor changes. Basically, it should be as easy to use as editing a document in Microsoft Word. I’d be grateful if anyone can suggest a suitable product.
I did consider setting up a content-management system for him, but I think it would be overkill in this case. The site only has six pages, and the only things he is likely to change in the near future are a few prices, product descriptions, and similar. Also, he won’t want the overhead of having to manage a full-blown CMS.
I had a very similar situation. My friend needed to change existing text occasionally, but not to add anything new. In the end, I got her to download the free version of the Coffee Cup HTML editor, and basically said “Make sure you only edit the black text - never touch anything in colour” (the tags) and that seemed to work fine.
Many thanks for your reply, Technobear. I’ve just visited the Coffee Cup site. Their product looks impressive.
You mentioned that your friend is using the free HTML text editor. But the website ways it costs 49 USDs. The cost isn’t an issue in this case, but I just wanted to check I was looking in the right place. Is the free product something different, or is it a time-limited evaluation version?
Oops. My mistake. I see the free HTML editor is a cut-down version of the main product. I’ll give it a try (but I also like the look of their Visual Site Designer; I’ll try that as well).
The Coffee Cup site is more confusing than it used to be - they must have “improved” it.
There is a free trial version of the paid software, which I think is 30-day time limited. There is also a really free version, which is just the basic HTML editor without the Visual Editor and other features. This latter is the version my friend has been using. You can get that via the Download button on the page I linked to; the other link on that page takes you to the trial version. Hope that’s clear. (:
Another good thing about Coffee Cup - if you do buy software from them, you get free updates for life. (That’s another thing I used to be able to find on their web site but I can’t now. However, I’m pretty sure they haven’t changed their policy.)
Thanks for the clarification. In fact, the link you originally gave me was correct. I just got a bit confused when navigating the site.
I’ve been playing around with the free HTML editor. It has a lot of good features. I will even consider switching my own work to it (possibly). But I’m not sure if will cut if for my friend. I think he needs to actually work in a visual design mode. I’m havering between suggesting he gets the full-price editor, and does his work in the visual editing tab, or gets the WYSIWYG product, which (as I understand it) completely hides the HTML.
The only problem with the WYSIWYG product is that it does not allow you to open existing HTML files (as far as I can see), so I would have to repeat all the work I’ve already done for him. But maybe that’s not such a big problem.
I’ll report back, in case anyone else is interested.
