An Affiliate Marketer from the Ground Up

I last posted on an open source (free) software package called KompoZer. It’s a great program, especially for free. It does have some bugs, mostly in the CSS area, but well worth the ‘price’.

Well, if you’re doing your own websites you’ll also have the need for a good graphics program. The one I’m using, and highly recommend is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). It’s a really complete, fantastic piece of software. (Actually it’s Gimp 2 now).

I’ve seen comparisons of it to PhotoShop. I don’t use PS so I can’t really comment on the similarities, but I do know that it does everything I need in a graphics program and much, much more. I can’t believe that any ‘typical’ user would need anything else. Whether it’s as powerful as PhotoShop, I don’t know, but I do know that if it was a commerical release, it wouldn’t be cheap.

At this writing, a new version (2.4.7) has just been released. I’m still using (2.4.6) and I’ve had absolutely no problems whatsoever. The only ‘issue’ I had was when I closed a docked window before the main program window, and it took a while to figure out how to get it back open. Obviously not a bug, just required a little effort on my part.

Go into ‘File – Dialogs – Create New Dock – Layers, Channels & Paths’ if/when it happens to you.

Also, there’s many plugins available for Gimp. I’ve only downloaded and installed GAP (Gimp Animation Package) so far, but I’ve yet to use it so I can’t comment on it.

So, you’ve got KompoZer to do your sites and Gimp for your graphics needs. That’s a big part of everything you’ll need to get into website development for zero cost. I know some people swear by DreamWeaver and PhotoShop, and if I had more money I might just use both, but it’s nice to know that there’s other, free options available that will do the jobs at hand, and due them nicely.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008 at 1:00 am and is filed under Website Building. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.