InDesign to Web... is it possible?

[Label Printers]

Believe it or not, but up until a week ago our company didn't have a website despite being around since the 60's!

Over the last few months I had been playing around with a really basic site, doing all the design work in InDesign as I just needed mock-ups to convince the bosses that we needed something, anything.

So after a few revisions and whatnot, we finally had something they they liked. A local company that we do a fair bit of printing for also offers web services, so it was decided to contract to them to build our website.

I packaged all the indesign files up, as per my normal routine, and shipped it over to them on DVD. Within 24 hours they had our entire site done. I asked their technical guy why it didn't take very long (their initial estimate was 3-4 days) and he basically said that I did 90% of the work by supplying them with everything they needed.

This intrigued me as to how they were able to take my indesign files and produce a entire website (about 10 pages) from it, in a short period of time.

I've got to do a re-design on my volunteer fire department's site, something I've been putting off because I wasn't sure how to approach it. BUT, if I can do all the mock ups in InDesign, and figure out how to create a website from it, i'd be laughing.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

[longcall911]

Creating a static website is very quick work these days. I happen to like Microsoft Expression Web as the development tool.

Quite frankly, what takes time is developing content and finding / editing photos. If that's done, you can have a site online in about 20 minutes.

[Albiem]

Nice post

[actiononlinenz]

Hi,

I've not used indesign before but depending on which format you sent the web design company, it could be fairly easy to build a website from it. Actually, there's probably an option to save an html format from indesign. See if there's an option when you do Save As or Export for html.

It's not really the ideal way to build websites (as I've found a lot of these app which export to html, are a bit messy) but it should let you make a website.

Or as someone else suggested, there are a number of basic free web design tools such as MS Expression which you can try learning.

Just experiment and in no time, you'll have a website for your fire department. It won't have all the bells and whistles but it will do the job!

Cheers,
Bob.

[SEOArbiter]

There are definitely template sites out there that are free or relatively cheap. Not much functionality but should get you a website presence at least. You definitely must have an online presence to get found by prospects and clients.

[Victor]

Its easier to build a website if everything needed to develop are readily available. It often takes time for the designer to find out , arrange and place the content neatly and satisfy user, customer and the search engines. Static Websites are easier to build than Dynamic Websites. Of course template sites are there where we could try designs free of cost.