Hello,
We are very new to web development. We know what we want, just need to find a way to make it happen.
We had hired someone to do the site but that turned into a disaster, delayed the start of the company and put us behind by a good 6 months. We mutually parted but were left without a fully functioning site.
I had a friend who was able to step in and re-bulit the site for us in a very short period of time to something that we could use as we had a trade show coming up. She used dreamweaver. We are forever in her debt but she has other responsibilites and just does this for fun so we want to take over and do the updates ourselves. Also, GoDaddy is the hosting site....
Can we use coffee cup? How easy will it be to get the files off go daddy and in a form that is easy for us to edit in Coffee Cup. I see us eventually learning HTML but that is way down the road. Right now we just need to do things like change some text, add some more pictures and PDF links. Eventually we want an automatic e-mail contact us and re-order page.
Any advice is helpful.
Thanks,
Julie

If HTML is on the horizon for now give VSD a try. You'll be able to put up a site in no time with no HTML for now. If you decide you want to give coding a try you could use the CC HTML editor down the road when you get settled in and have more time. No matter which app you use a complete rebuild wil be needed. Don't let that scare you away. There's plenty of helpers here to guide you through the forest of unfamiliarity.

Just to add to what Eric has said, try and download all your images, Links and text that went into the site. You will find a lot of that reusable and will save you time. VSD, Virtual Site Designer creates sites just as spectacular as any made with an editor. with all the flash and clever bits that any system can give you.

Best of all you do not have to struggle with html. You can hit the ground running and guess what. In an hour or too you will be having fun.
Best of luck


Hear Hear

Coffee Cup is easy enough to use with it's drag n drop interface that you should be able to design a site rather quickly. If there are additional customizations you want to make then i recommend getting a web designer to help with advanced changes.

Julie There are lots of questions put like yours. A website is a personal thing, Only you know what you want. I realise it may seem a daunting task to start but like so many others it is like learning to ride a bike. Once learned never forgot
Until you use it and take advantage of the free trial you won't believe just how easy it is and in your case you have most of the content. VSD is not just an inferior tool to its big brother but a complete web building tool in its own right. You do not need anything else to produce sites that far exceed most peoples expectations.
All the help you need is here. Plus you can post your efforts and we can help you achieve what you want. take one step at a time

Julie,

That fact that your friend was able to help you out quickly by using Dreamweaver suggests that CoffeeCup's VSD or HTML editor would be appropriate tools for your present requirements.

If you have future requirements for dynamic site features, such as blogging and product catalogs, there are additional tools and sub-systems to consider. CoffeeCup offers some of these, as do others "out there" on the Web. Some tools are free, some cost $$. Some are better supported than others.

I have found CoffeeCup to be amazingly patient with how-to-use questions related to their products. This forum is a warm and friendly place, as you probably have noted.

You say that your business depends upon your Web site, and you are already delayed by six months. In that case, I suggest you find a good replacement designer. Perhaps your friend can provide referrals. Web design is a big topic to learn your way into, and it's constantly changing. It does you no harm to prototype and experiment, learn as much as you can hands-on, and even take on site maintenance / updates or functional extension projects. However, you can ill afford to hold your business hostage to learning "just one last thing before going live," because there is always one more "last thing." You must put your head down and sell. So please find a pro to build the "skeleton" and first draft of your Web presence.

You also say that you know what you want. If so, you are in a better position than you might imagine. It is often more difficult to nail down the site requirements than do the technical work.

GoDaddy is a well known hosting service. Though other services might be better cost / performance / scalability / functional choices for you in the long run, I recommend you remain with GoDaddy for now. It is not too difficult to move a site from one hosting service to another, but that is a complication that you need not confront today.

Just avoid GoDaddy's proprietary what-you-see-is-what-you-get site building tool. Having used it on a project, I can assure you that what you see is NOT what you get. It is inflexible, a pain to use, and is designed to lock you into GoDaddy. Standards-based tools, such as CoffeeCup's VSD and HTML editors, and even Dreamweaver (if you enjoy spending entirely too much money, IMHO), are better choices. Using them leaves you free to move to a new hosting service anytime you want.

Extending this idea, you can also set up a private Web host on your own development computer. This allows you to get everything just right on your desktop, then blast the whole site up to the public hosting service. If you are strictly a Windows user, check out http://www.wampserver.com/en/. If you use Linux, or both Windows and Linux, see http://www.apachefriends.org/en/index.html. Each is available at no charge.