Web Design Programs?

[Redfraggle]

Do any of you know a good user friendly program to design a webpage which can be linked to a database? All teckies please speak up. I have Frontpage 2003 but am getting bad reports about it.

[LAT]

A mate at work has suggested Dreamweaver. I've PM'd you

[Scurra]

Well it depends what you mean by "link to a database", of course...
The Puzzlebrains site doesn't use a web-design program as such; it uses something called a "content management system" (CMS) which does all the tedious work of linking to a database (which is how all the clever password stuff is done.) And I think it looks pretty smart, but the great thing about most CMSs is that there are loads of very snazzy templates that look really cool without you needing to do any real work at all!

[SparkOut]

Dreamweaver is the usual choice of web professionals, and as such, comes with a professional price tag. It may also be significantly over your needs.
Web design packages don't get "linked to a database" - but they do sometimes (eg Dreamweaver) have components that build the code necessary for your pages to connect to the database, but they won't build the database for you, or set up the database hosting itself. Would the database be used to store content (eg Scurra's mention of CMS) or more like data that can be retrieved dynamically for display (eg score tables).
It depends on who's learning, how much time they are investing in the learning, how the database is constructed and hosted and who is paying in order to give you more advice.

[Redfraggle]

Ok, this is the problem. Ive been given funding to put together all the songs and games we played as children because the children of today don't play the same way we did eg skipping, street games etc. Many of the songs and games have been lost and it's my job to link them all so that they can be searched following themes. The whole thing must then be linked to the Education Board so that everyone can get access to it.

For example, the game of What's the time Mr Wolf? can be searched using key words group - (as its a group game), number recognition (cos it teaches children to count out the steps) and wolf (because thats a keyword for the title).

Does that make sense?

So I have all the plans on paper and a linked Excel file already but I need to write the entire thing now for the web.

[Redfraggle]

Beleive it or not, most children nowadays dont know how to play if they have no 'toys'.

The Education Board recognises that these songs and games help children with literacy, numeracy, motor skills, spatial awareness and interaction with others.

So I feel it's important to do a good job on this!

Any suggestions welcome as it has to be inter-generational.

Thanks

[gill216]

I do believe it. In my line dance teaching days I was hired to play disco music at the local working mens club childrens xmas party. The children came in, got an apple an orange a selection box and a MacDonalds box. Instructions were play some music and they'll all run wild for a couple of hours. Not surprising given all the e numbers, coca cola and sugar rushes.

I prised £50 out of the treasurers mean mitt and went and bought some prizes. Musical chairs, statues pass the parcel etc. No-one had ever done this before!!!!. I got the job every year for the next 6 years. Then I gave up- or rather the knees gave up for me.

[Scurra]

Well it sounds as though you need something more like a CMS (like the Puzzlebrains site) since the information is in discrete chunks (like the individual puzzles on here), but new ones will need to be added all the time. (I don't have a keyword search feature implemented here, because it's not really appropriate, but it's a fairly standard feature in these sort of systems.)

But SparkOut is right - it's largely about how much the people running the project are prepared (or need) to learn. Because a lot of these sorts of projects fall down when they are "outsourced" and there isn't proper documentation about how they work. But equally there is no need for people to learn web-programming when there are lots of good tools out there: I wouldn't have done the on-line version of PB if it hadn't been for Joomla doing almost all of the serious work.