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Are WYSIWYG HTML editors the way to go in e-commerce? To be short I will tell you: YES. You should use them but you should also have some basic HTML knowledge. (HTML=Hyper Text Markup Language)

WYSIWYG HTML editors are very controversial tools and there are many webmasters (web page designers mostly) who criticize them. In this page I will disagree with them and I will also try to prove that WYSIWYG HTML editors are the way to go for those who are not, don't want to, and don't have to become professional web designers, but still need to build a website.

What is HTML? Well, HTML is the "language" that the browsers are interpreting to make the web pages look to us the way that they do. It allows the use of characters, images, tables, frames and many other advanced features that a webpage can have. I will not post here a course of HTML. I'll simply recommend you a great course instead. You can find it at http://www.draac.com/.

Comments

OK... the first thing that you should know (in case you don't know it already) is that all sites are made up by a various number of separated pages and that standard HTML pages have the extension ".htm" or ".html".

When you go to a site, the first page that appears is usually the file called "index.html" or "index.htm" because the server that hosts the site reckons this file as being the "homepage". Seldom, the "homepage" is "default.htm", "default .htm" or "home.html", "home.htm". Anyway, as a general rule, you should name your site's homepage either "index.html" or "index.htm".

To create a HTML page you can use any text editor (for example Notepad on Windows based computers). That is because a HTML file is essentially a text file.

However, using Notepad is a slow, unproductive method to create webpages because you have to type every single character by hand. You will also have to know HTML rather well.

Most webmasters recommend you to take the Notepad approach, but, although it would be good for you to know how to make a webpage this way, it's simply too unproductive. Those webmasters are, in my humble opinion, old fashioned. (Sorry guys!) Why keep on living in the stone age if we have iron tools to help us in our work?

As I was saying, a much simpler and faster method is to use a WYSIWYG HTML editor (What You See Is What You Get). What you can do with such programs is to build your page just like a document in Microsoft Word and the software will automatically save it in the HTML format.

Although many webmasters do not approve with the use of WYSIWYG HTML editors, I recommend using them! They argue that WYSIWYG HTML editors are full of errors and that the pages created by them are full of HTML errors. And this was true sometime ago, but today's WYSIWYG HTML editors are a lot better than they use to be a few years ago. So the errors are no longer an issue in my opinion.

Another argument used by some web designers to favor HTML coding "by hand" is the fact that WYSIWYG HTML editors tend to add unneeded HTML code to the pages they generate. This is usually true, but does it matter that much? So what if the code is with 2% longer if it took you 10 minutes to build it instead of 2 hours? I say it's a small price to pay. After all, time is the most expensive currency to pay with.

My conclusion? There's no real reason not to use WYSIWYG HTML editors, but there are benefits if you use them. They make our lives a lot easier and allow us to focus more on the design of the web pages instead of spending precious time to write the HTML code. And who cares how you made your pages if in the end they look great? Absolutely no one (except for those Notepad fans)! So take my advice and use WYSIWYG HTML editors! You'll thank me for not making you waste your time!

If you want a good HTML editor you have to pay for the extra features. Here are some of the most valuable WYSIWYG editors:

• Macromedia Dreamweaver - very powerful. I used it and loved it. It's not cheap though.

Here are some that are free:

• NVUA very popular free web design software.
• 1st page 2000 - not quite a WYSIWYG editor; you have to know HTML pretty well
• Arachnophilia - not quite a WYSIWYG HTML editor either, but hey, it's free and loved by many users.
• Coffeecup Free Web Design Software

Important advice! Learn HTML! You'll need it when you'll have to setup various things (affiliate programs and many other things) that require you to have this knowledge! It is really simple! It takes only a few days to master the basics. And most times the basics are all you need to know!