Website Design Creation Software?

It seems there are several ways to get a website:

• Build it yourself using tools software like Dreamweaver, MS Frontpage, etc
• Hand coded using basic text editors (or combination WYSIWYG and hand coded for w3c validation)
• Web builders & site studio web tools provided by web hosts
• Templates (both original and modified)

What I am most interested in knowing is choice most people use and for the web hosts/designers out there, do you find most people favor templates and site building software over customer design?

Personally, I have found most people favor either modified templates and custom designs and find web building tools like SiteBuilder and Site Studio too limiting.

Some people seems to still like Fantastico Deluxe though.

For us here in the UK, it seems the vast majority use dreamweaver and such like applications to build their web sites.

Those who want simple web sites and are not designers, or cant afford to pay professionals, they opt for things like Adobe Contribute, or Soholaunch builder built in to Fantastico where they can build their own pages online, but thats only for a minority who dont have designer budgets and normally have no knowledge of things like HTML, CSS, FTP and things like that.

Richard Wraith
WESH UK Web Hosting :: 0845 257 1084
Cpanelv11 / Twice daily backups / PHP5 / MySQL5

As for me I prefer WebSiteMatic Soholaunch from SiberName.com that helps to create the web site in minutes. It is an on-line web development platform. WebSiteMatic AddOn Templates are also nice and can be installed to the WebSiteMatic account.

Dreamweaver and Photoshop together is a wonderful combination. I use it for all of my web designing. I usually use Photoshop to create a template and use tables to match that background in Dreamweaver.

You may use the ready made templates say from ServerPoint.com as they have done in a professional way. Besides ServerPoint provides Dreamweaver too and many other designer software.

They can't just provide you with Dreamweaver, it's very expensive and I doubt that any hosting company is allowed by Adobe to give it away for free. However, that post looks a bit like advertising.

ServerPoint's web design itself is pretty..err...bad, so I wouldn't trust them with web design.

Well, as for Serverpoint.com web site design, I think it's rather professional, navigation around the site is perfect and in general the layout is user-friendly, but they don't provide you with Dreamweaver, they give support for Dreamweaver, that's different.
I like Sitestudio web site builder, it's offered in Marblehost.com plans, you can try its demo here.

That's your point of you, I find them nice. It's the question of tastes. They are different as you know.
I have seen WebSiteBuilder that is free from HostWW.net. Their templates are nice. They offer them over 450 and youo may choose what you need among them. I mean that's to your liking.

Personally, I find all web templates offer a cheap alternative and would never use them for several reasons:

Unoriginal One of the biggest disadvantages of using HTML templates is that a template website will have an unoriginal design. The website that sold the template to has likely sold it to hundreds of other people as well. There is no telling how many other sites will look exactly like yours will look. If someone wanted a site like everyone else why not just get a myspace page? I thought a good web site should stand out yet be functional and pleasing to the eyes at the same time.

Knowledge Most people buy HTML templates because they don't know HTML and don't want to take the time to learn it. There is nothing wrong with that, but what happens when you want to change something about your website? If you play around with the template, you run the risk of bad coding therefore, messing something up. If you damage the layout, you won't have the knowledge to fix it. Therefore, you are basically stuck with the original template with no way to change it.

Bad Coding The problem with these templates is that they are often coded by mediocre web designers. This bad coding can affect your search engine listings and make it very hard for people to find your website.

Links Some templates require you to leave a link to the original author's website. This link on every page of your site not only looks unprofessional, but it also presents your visitors with the option of leaving your site. Thats great for creating backlinks and increasing SEO for the designer but is a disadvantage to the web site owner and his/she business.

Personally, I hate WYSIWYG because of the lack of w3c compliance, except with the addition of proper hand coding.

In the end it doesn't pay to be cheap because it reflects that of the business of that he/she may be promoting and is that really the online presents you would want to display?