Question for web site authoring gurus

I am trying to setup a decent,simple business web site on Linux/Solaris platform with Apache as server engine.

To develop the site, what tools I have to have ?

- Is just HTML enough to author a modern,functional site ?

- I have Front Page 97, but find the offered 5-6 templetes pretty generic and limiting . Does it mean that for a cool site design I will have to write all HTML code from scratch using Word as editor etc ?

Any other recommendations about tools I can use for developing the site ?


Your help is appreciated.

This is what i would do...

I would use notepad, (or something similar) for the HTML.

then for the dynamic things (such as submitting forms) i would use PHP.

if you have apache then I would make it in php which would give you more options to run the business, ie. shopping carts, and such. you also have the option to use cgi/perl. regular html is not enough.

I don't use word as my editor I use notepad.

tools??? I don't need no stinking tools :D:D:D

hey sail, if you have a minute can you look at this link and give me your thoughts.

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=90721

thanks bud ;)

yeah, definatly do not use word. You want html to be saved in plain text format. Not RTF, which is what word will save it in.

Also, you might want to set up your site using CSS templates. This will allow peoples browsers to cache parts of your pages, and make them go faster because they have less code.

Thanks a lot guys.

I was afraid to hear about javascripts , frontpage2000 etc, but I would rather not look into those unless I had to.

I have some expertise in unix c-shell and perl programming.
Any suggestions about a good book on HTML or any good web site tutorials ?



regards

www.php.net
www.cgi101.com

http://www.htmlgoodies.com

http://www.pageresource.com

this is useful http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/...bl.3880.ref_l.

and of course, http://www.w3.org