Website Creation Software You could use a text editor to create all of the pages in a website. In this case, you would need to have a thorough understanding of how to write all of the tags and attributes that are required to complete your site. Although it is possible to create an entire website, regardless of its complexity, using just Notepad and HTML, developers rely on other options. Adobe Dreamweaver (www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver.html) is a good example of a website creation and management program that has a graphical user interface (GUI) and generates the HTML documents necessary to produce webpages that can be displayed on any device. Dreamweaver includes toolbars and panels that let you format text, create hyperlinks, and perform other tasks that are supported by HTML and XHTML. Using a website management tool such as Dreamweaver reduces the need for the developer to understand the syntax of all the tags and attributes that create webpages. Management tools also provide other benefits by simplifying some of the tasks needed to complete a website. You can simplify the process of adding multimedia, such as animations, movies, and sound, to your webpages by incorporating drag-and-drop interfaces that let you place the multimedia object in a page and automatically generate the necessary code to support it. You can also include code that can create animated content and check the entire website for broken links and other problems. Figure 8-17 shows the home page for Adobe Dreamweaver. Notice that Dreamweaver offers a free trial version of the software that you can download and use before purchasing a license. Many colleges offer classes in website development using Dreamweaver, and Adobe offers discounts on its products to college students. Figure 8-17 Adobe Dreamweaver home page Source: 2016 Adobe Systems Incorporated Another option for designing and creating a website is to use one of the many web-based site creation platforms that let you select templates that provide the structure and overall design for a site that you can populate with your own content. Some examples of these sites are Weebly (www.weebly.com), SquareSpace (www.squarespace.com), and SnapPages (http://snappages.com). These sites often let you create a website for free or for a small fee. Other sites charge a monthly or annual fee that includes site creation tools and web hosting space. Even if you have to spend a little money to use the site’s creation tools, these options provide you with a way to develop a professionally designed website quickly and without needing to learn how to use a sophisticated program such as Dreamweaver. Figure 8-18 shows the home page for SquareSpace, which lets users build and manage a site for a monthly fee, in addition to offering a domain to use for the site’s address. Figure 8-18 SquareSpace home page Source: Squarespace, Inc.