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Dairy products, types and their nutritional value
Dairy products are products that are produced mainly from fresh milk. Their production is done with the help of special enzymes, which cause the coagulation of the proteins it contains.
It is rich in vitamins, calcium, phosphorus, saturated fats, carbohydrates, but also in proteins of high biological value, which are the main structural component of the body and ensure its proper functioning and muscle growth.
Dairy products are yogurt, cheese, butter, ice cream and of course milk.
Yoghurt
Yogurt is a dairy product, produced after the fermentation of milk, with special lactic acid bacteria. These bacteria are a combination of lactic bacillus (Lactobacillus bulgaricus) and a lactic streptococcus (Streptococcus thermophilus), which, acting together, cause the milk to coagulate and form the special taste characteristics of yogurt.
Bacteria should be abundant and alive in the final product, throughout its life, because their action is due to the beneficial properties of yogurt.
Yogurt is a very nutritious and digestible food, suitable for all ages and of course for all stages of development. It contains a high percentage of protein, calcium, phosphorus, zinc, vitamins A, B2 and B12. The combination of all these ingredients contributes to the rapid growth of the body and the maintenance of human health.
The proteins in yogurt are of high biological value, while their quality is superior to milk. In fact, their amount, like that of calcium, is much higher than that of milk, because all the ingredients are contained in concentrated form. In particular, these proteins are more easily digested because they are more vulnerable to digestive enzymes.
In fact, yogurt is fermented several times, with the result that it is digested (by 93%) by the intestine much more easily than milk. The rich nutrients contained in yogurt and the relatively low calories, help fight obesity.
A cup of yogurt is equivalent to a full meal and can replace our dinner, especially if we pay attention to our diet or to lose weight.
There are two types of yogurt on the market.
- The traditional , ie the classic yogurt in plain trays or in clay, which is like what we make in our homes, with the skin on the yogurt and all the nutrients, and the European type, which exists in many species, such as cow’s, sheep’s, strained yogurt, with 2% fat, etc.
- Other European-type yogurts are those that are mixed with fruit, cereals, honey and other items, which are made from cow’s milk only.
The difference between European and Traditional yogurts, is that the European type of yogurt, exists in many types but with the addition of preservatives, which make it keep for a long time in the refrigerator. Traditional yogurt, on the other hand, lasts a few days in the fridge like other yogurts, but is fresh and without preservatives, like homemade .
Cheese
Cheese is the product produced by draining milk gel and is one of the oldest and most valuable foods in the human diet, with enormous nutritional value. It is rich in protein, calcium, vitamins A and D, B-complex vitamin and phosphorus. The proteins it contains are broken down, due to the maturation of the cheese, as a result of which they are fully assimilated by the body, which makes it more digestible.
- The types of cheese depending on the fat they contain are divided into:
Lean cheeses with less than 10% fat (mizithra, feta, kefalotyri)
Moderate from 10 – 50% fat (feta, parmesan, kefalotyri, gruyere
Thick cheeses with 50% – 85 % fat (manouri, kasseri, touloumotyri, roquefort).
The cheese should be stored at + 2 ° C to + 4 ° C in their original packaging (plastic bag or container). Once opened, they are best kept in a transparent film, foil or plastic food storage container, which helps retain their moisture. Cheeses with a strong smell, such as feta, should be stored in a separate container, so that the smell is not transferred to other foods.
After the cheeses are opened from their original packaging and left in the refrigerator for a few days, it is very likely that mold marks will be observed on their outer surface. This is due to the microorganisms called Eurotum fungi, which grow and form colored spots on their surface, commonly mold, while tarnishing their fat.
Although most forms of mold are harmless to the body, to be safer, remove with a knife about 2 cm from the surface of the cheese where mold is observed. Consume the rest of the cheese in a short time.
The deterioration of cheeses depends on their moisture content. The higher the humidity, the easier it is to damage. In general, the harder the cheese, the longer it lasts, so soft cheeses should be consumed shortly after purchase.
Hard cheeses are stored for one to two months, while softer cheeses are stored for one to three weeks after opening, if stored in an airtight container. Also, cheeses last longer when they are cut into pieces than when they are grated. However the cheeses are still maturing, no matter how well stored.
The cheese melts faster when it is cut into small pieces or grated. When adding cheese to boiling food, lower the heat and stir constantly with a wooden spoon. The strong fire hardens the cheese and turns it into fine fibers. When making cheese sauce, put the cheese at the end and stir until it starts to melt.
Butter
Butter is produced from fat, the cream that contains whole, non-homogenized milk, by the method of culmination, ie the agglomeration of fat pellets and the differentiation of its density from milk. Thus, the fat rises to the surface, collects and matures with the help of microorganisms (betacoccus citrovolus and betacoccus paracitrovolus). Alternatively, buttering is carried out by placing the milk in a special container and after sufficient beating (defrosting). Buttering is completed by heating the butter to a certain temperature to get its final shape. The butter before packaging is washed with cold water to clean the buttermilk.
Butter is a source of fat, rich in saturated fat and cholesterol. It also contains small amounts of lactose and proteins, vitamins and minerals. It has a high caloric value and its consumption offers the feeling of satiety.
Butter has been known since antiquity, especially in areas that did not have olive oil or other fatty options and was used to enrich their food.
Today it is used as such, as a spread and as an additive fat in cooking and confectionery.
Ice cream
Ice cream is equivalent to a second glass of milk and is classified as a safe food because it is stored and consumed frozen. The sandy texture that is often observed in ice cream, from the crystallization of lactose in milk, is not an alteration. The consumer must be careful with the ice creams that are packaged. Not to be deformed in terms of their shape but also not to have thawed and re-frozen. Ice creams from well-known companies are preferred so that we can be sure about the pasteurization of the raw material, milk.
Alternative foods for those who avoid dairy
People who suffer from bloating, indigestion, nausea and abdominal pain, after consuming dairy products, usually avoid their consumption, thus depriving their body of important nutrients.
At the same time, fanatical vegetarians, who do not consume any dairy products, lack equally significant amounts of nutrients that could be covered by milk and their derivatives.
Although no food can completely replace the dairy group, there are some foods that are very good sources of nutrients and can meet the basic needs and functions of our body.
These foods are:
- Legumes, dried fruits, sesame, broccoli, and sardines (rich in calcium).
- Dried fruits, avocados, bananas, tomatoes, peaches, eggs. (rich in potassium).
- Meat, fish, mushrooms, eggs (rich in B vitamins).
- Almond or rice milk.
- Soy milk. Only prefer it if it has added calcium.
- Orange juice, preferably fortified with calcium.
Read more about dairy products and dairy machinery:
Afghan Uyghurs Fear Taliban Will Deport Them to China
Ibrahim’s parents fled political turmoil in China for Afghanistan more than 50 years ago. At that time, Mao Zedong had unleashed the Cultural Revolution, and life was upended for many Uyghurs, the mostly Muslim ethnic group in Xinjiang that included Ibrahim’s parents.
Ibrahim was born in Afghanistan. But now he, too, is trying to escape the clutches of Chinese authoritarianism.
He and his family have been afraid to leave their home in Afghanistan since the Taliban, the country’s new rulers, took control last month, venturing outside only to buy essentials. “We are extremely worried and nervous,” said Ibrahim, whose full name is being withheld for his safety. “Our children are worried for our safety, so they have asked us to stay home.”
For years, Chinese officials have issued calls for leaders in Afghanistan to crack down on and deport Uyghur militants they claimed were sheltering in Afghanistan. The officials said the fighters belonged to the East Turkestan Islamic Movement, a separatist organization that Beijing has held responsible for a series of terrorist attacks in China since the late 1990s.
The United States removed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement from its list of terrorist groups during the Trump administration, angering Beijing. But the Taliban, in their new role as diplomats, have been eager to establish warm relations with China, meeting most recently on Thursday with Chinese officials. Many Uyghurs in Afghanistan fear they will be branded terrorists and sent to China as pawns in the Taliban’s effort to win favor and economic aid from the country.
It is unclear whether Uyghurs in Afghanistan face an immediate threat to their safety, but some say they dread the future that would await them if they were sent to Xinjiang. Since 2017, the Chinese government has locked up close to a million Uyghurs in camps and subjected those outside to constant surveillance. China says the camps are necessary to weed out extremism and to “re-educate” the Uyghurs.
Before the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, the Chinese government said it had received assurances from the insurgents that the country would not become a staging ground for terrorist attacks. Anxious Uyghurs in the country watched television footage of Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, standing side by side with leaders of the Taliban in July. Earlier this month, Mr. Wang pledged $30 million in food and other aid to the new government, as well as three million coronavirus vaccine doses; on Thursday, he said Afghanistan’s overseas assets “should not be unreasonably frozen or used as a bargaining chip to exert pressure,” obliquely referencing American control of billions of dollars belonging to the Afghan central bank.
Since the late 1990s, Beijing has succeeded in pressuring several countries to deport Uyghurs. The Uyghur Human Rights Project, an advocacy group based in Washington, has counted 395 cases of Uyghurs being sent to China since 1997. The group said in an August report that journalists and human rights organizations have documented 40 cases of detentions or renditions from Afghanistan to China, though it has verified only one of them.
Khorsid Hasan, a Uyghur retiree living in Virginia, said that after she contacted the Uyghur Human Rights Project in August, the group wrote a letter to the State Department urging American officials to address the vulnerability of Uyghurs in Afghanistan. Uyghurs in the country “fear more for their lives than ever before,” Ms. Khorsid said in an interview. “They hope to be evacuated as soon as possible.”
The rights group’s letter to the State Department warned of the grave fear that the Taliban “will now make secret agreements with China to extradite Uyghurs to the P.R.C.”
The Uyghur population in Afghanistan is estimated to be around 2,000 to 3,000. They arrived in waves, some as early as the 18th century. Many are second-generation immigrants with few links to China. Their parents joined an outflow of refugees from Xinjiang in the late 1970s, ending up in neighboring Afghanistan, where they settled and had families.
Those families are once again seeking to uproot their lives. Even though they are Afghan citizens, their identity cards show that they are either Chinese refugees or members of the ethnic group, making them easy to track should the Taliban decide to round them up.
The Taliban did not respond to requests for comment.
In the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, Mohammad, a 39-year-old Uyghur farmer whose full name has been withheld to avoid reprisals, said he was so desperate to flee Afghanistan with his young family that he contacted human traffickers to help them get into Iran. He was told that it was impossible to do with the Taliban in charge, he said.
He has also contacted exile Uyghur groups in Germany and Turkey, and organizations providing refugee assistance in the United States and Canada with no success, he said.
Well before the Taliban took control, life was difficult for Uyghurs in Afghanistan, who often faced discrimination. Ibrahim, 54, said he kept a low profile as a businessman. “We tried our best to erase our identity as Uyghurs,” he said.
He and his wife, who is also Uyghur, live with their two daughters, 28 and 20, and a 25-year-old son, who has a 1-year-old baby. He said his children were depressed and passed their days surviving on food that they had stored away before the government collapsed.
Under Taliban rule, Afghanistan has been battered by food and cash shortages. People have been unable to withdraw money from banks. Grocery prices have shot up. The Taliban have also looked to China for help avoiding a possible economic collapse.
Andrew Small, a senior fellow with the German Marshall Fund who studies China’s policy in Afghanistan, said the Taliban had not previously demonstrated an “obvious willingness” to hand over Uyghurs to the Chinese, though he believed their fears were legitimate.
Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan
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Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more on their origin story and their record as rulers.
“The lines are blurred on China’s part between who constitutes a terrorist and who constitutes someone who has simply been politically active,” Mr. Small said. “Individuals who are politically and economically connected with any activities they find problematic” are likely to be targeted, he said.
The uncertain future of Uyghurs in Afghanistan has caught the attention of Abdul Aziz Naseri, a Uyghur activist who was born in Afghanistan and now lives in Turkey. Mr. Abdul Aziz said he had compiled a list of roughly 500 Afghan Uyghurs who want to leave the country.
“They say to me: ‘Please save our future, please save our children,’” he said.
He shared the names and photographs of these people with The New York Times, but asked that their information be kept private. At least 73 people on the list appeared to be under the age of 5.
Shabnam, a 32-year-old Uyghur, her mother and two sisters managed to get out of Afghanistan last month. The women rushed to the airport in Kabul during the frenzied United States evacuation. Her sisters boarded one flight, her mother another. Shabnam said she was the last to leave.
In an interview, she described being separated from her husband while getting through the chaotic security lines at the airport. She was holding his passport and begged the security guards to deliver it to him. No one helped, she said.
Shabnam waited for her husband for four days, while the people around her at the airport encouraged her to leave.
She finally did — boarding a U.S. military plane with hundreds of other Afghans late last month. Her trip took her to Qatar, Germany and finally the United States, where she landed on Aug. 26. She is now in New Jersey and still trying to get her husband out of Afghanistan.
“I was happy that I got out of there, thank God,” Shabnam said. “I like it here. It’s safe and secure.”
Nilo Tabrizy contributed reporting.
Best cloud hosting services in 2021
Cloud hosting has changed the hosting industry for the better, allowing for increasing reliability and resilience for clients.
Signing up for a simple web hosting package would usually buy you a defined block of resources on a single server: register your domain name, then choose this much web space, that much bandwidth, maybe a set amount of RAM or CPU cores.
While this works well for many websites, having fixed resources can be a problem for larger projects. There’s generally no way to temporarily allocate extra RAM or bandwidth if you experience an increase in traffic, and even a simple plan upgrade might require your website to go offline for a while.
Cloud hosting plans look much like virtual private server (VPS) web hosting products, where you’ll initially pay for a set amount of web space, RAM, CPU time and bandwidth. But these resources are spread across multiple devices instead of just one, and changing your plan later – adding another gig of RAM, for instance – is generally as easy as dragging a slider, with the extra power coming online within moments.
There are also additional options for small business web hosting, such as environmentally-friendly green web hosting. Additionally, cloud hosting is scalable and can provide for a good alternative to needing a dedicated server with colocation provider, and there are options for managed web hosting services.
You can use cloud hosting for everything, from just hosting your emails, to replacing your business server. However, if you want a hands-on experience expect the virtual servers to be running Linux, not Windows.
Cloud hosting still won’t be for everyone, and small, simple websites are likely to be better off with regular packages. But the technology has a lot to offer anyone with larger or more ambitious projects, and many hosts run free trials which make it easy to explore their abilities for yourself.
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These are the best cloud hosting services of 2021
Hostinger is one of the biggest providers of free web hosting via its 000webhosting brand. It has well over 30 million users, and some of the lowest prices thanks to low running costs and overheads. Hostinger prefers to use its own technology (for example, it has its own customized control panel instead of the ubiquitous Cpanel), so that it can better control performance and features.
There are three plans available, Cloud Startup, Cloud Professional, and Cloud Global, all of which offer unlimited websites and unlimited bandwidth for your account.
The Cloud Startup plan comes with 200GB of SSD storage, 3GB of RAM, and 2 CPU cores. The Cloud Professional plan increases these to 250GB storage, 6GB RAM, and 4 CPU cores, the Cloud Enterprise plan extends these further to 300GB storage, 12GB RAM, and 6CPU cores. All plans come with a free SSL certificate and domain name.
Pricing depends on how long you commit to the service. For the Cloud Startup plan, it costs $29.00 on a month to month basis. However, if you commit for a year the monthly cost falls to $12.99 a month. For a two-year contract, it drops to $10.99 per month, and for a four-year contract, it falls to $9.99 a month.
If you only need to host a website rather than additional business data, then HostGator’s cloud platform could be a more ideal choice. Unlike normal web hosting, Hostgator’s cloud hosting platform spreads your website load across multiple virtual server instances for more reliable and scalable hosting, but it’s as easy to use as standard shared hosting, and only costs a little more.
For example, the baseline Hatchling Cloud plan gets you support for one domain, unmetered bandwidth and storage, a share of up to two cores and 2GB RAM, and distributed Varnish caching to speed up the loading of static content. You can get started for as little as $3.13 (£2.26) per month if you buy three years upfront, although the price leaps to $8.95 (£6.40) on renewal.
If you need something more powerful, the top-of-the-range Business Cloud plan supports unlimited domains, gives you up to six cores and 6GB RAM, and includes private SSL and a dedicated IP. Another chunky introductory discount means you can pay as little as $6.28 (£4.54) per month over three years, but after that, you’ll pay $17.95 (£12.80) per month.
Benefits of the cloud plans include (up to) twice as fast load times, along with more site statistics, and because your site is mirrored across multiple devices, the ability to switch your site to another server in the event of a hardware failure.
But the key advantage of all cloud hosting schemes is scalability. If your site can’t cope with demand, you can scale up to eight cores and 8GB RAM with a click. There’s no waiting around for someone to process your order and no downtime while your web space is reallocated – you get the extra resources right away.
Also, while prices go up after the initial discount promotion, they still remain extremely competitive.
At first glance, cloud hosting products seem to be divided into two clear groups: enterprise-level technology from Amazon, Microsoft, IBM and more, or simpler and more user-friendly products from hosts like Hostgator.
Cloudways represents an interesting middle path. The company offers managed cloud hosting which is powered by your choice of the top providers – Amazon, Google, DigitalOcean, Linode or Vultr are supported – and comes packed with features, yet is configured from a simple web console which is just as easy to use as the more basic competition.
It’s an impressive platform. Cloudways’ ThunderStack covers all your core performance needs: Nginx, Apache, Memcached, MySQL/MariaDB, Varnish Cache, PHP 7, PHP-FM and Redis. There’s one-click cloning, backup and restore, integrated Git and team collaboration tools for developers, and no less than 60 data centers strategically placed around the world (over 25 locations).
Despite all this high-end functionality, Cloudways products are generally simple to operate, and prices start at a beginner-friendly $10 (£7.15) per month for one core, 1GB RAM, 25GB storage and 1TB of bandwidth. It’s all supremely configurable, and a free trial allows you to check out the product, with no credit card details required. Furthermore, a referral system is available, where both you and your friends can receive free hosting credits.
Bluehost is a company based in Utah which is owned by web giant Endurance International Group (EIG). It offers basic shared hosting from $2.75 monthly (on a three-year contract), with managed WordPress plans starting at $9.95 per month (although that’s also a discounted introductory rate).
For the money, you get automated setup for WordPress, not to mention other popular apps via a Mojo Marketplace-powered system. There’s also a cPanel-based area to allow expert users to tweak things.
Furthermore, Bluehost provides a Weebly-based website builder. This is a basic browser-based affair that lets you create a website of up to six pages, and there are no extras like site templates included. But still, it’s better than nothing, and more functionality is in the pipeline – plus you get this builder with the basic account.
There’s also good customer support on offer, and the end result is a mix of user-friendly aspects alongside a good amount of power, and potential tweaking for more advanced users.
While Bluehost doesn’t offer cloud hosting as a separate service, it does offer free access to CloudFlare cloud hosting with all of its plans. This automatically increases the performance of your website without having to code or program for any changes.
Dreamhost offers cloud server hosting, taking it a step up from the other plans offered here. However, by running their unmanaged cloud servers the expectation is that users will be comfortable with a command line environment for managing their cloud hosting service.
Dreamhost’s cloud hosting services cover two main areas: cloud computing and cloud object storage.
DreamCompute is the cloud computing service, and offers an easy way to develop and grow your own cloud services. You can run it based on Linux, BSD, or Windows, in a serverless environment based on the latest SSD storage and next-gen processors.
Built around the free and open-source OpenStack platform, there is no lock-in to proprietary software, and you can use Dreamhost as a place to grow until you’re ready to manage your own OpenStack.
DreamObjects is Dreamhost’s secure cloud storage hosting storage service, which can be use as a web development environment to augment or replace AWS E3 services. DreamObjects can also be used for backup storage.
While cloud services and storage can seem over-whelming for new users, Dreamhosts provides the ideal place to start to experiment, explore, and grow your cloud services at a very cost-effective rate.
Energy Vault valued at $1.1 billion after merger
Did the War in Afghanistan Have to Happen?
Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy for Afghanistan, was adamant that although the Taliban had been left out of Bonn, they should at least be included in the next step in forming a transitional government: a loya jirga, bringing together tribes, sub-tribes and other groups to determine the country’s way forward.
A few people close to the Taliban ideologically, but not part of the group, brought binders with their nominees’ resumes to a United Nations office where rising Afghan leaders were reviewing potential representatives. But some of the potential representatives were dismissed as terrorists and later detained, and one was shipped to the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, where he spent more than six years even though he had never supported the Taliban, Mr. Rubin said.
“A number of Afghans with the Taliban offered to surrender and, when they did, we put them in prison, in Bagram and Guantánamo, and there was never any discussion if that was a good idea,” recalled Mr. Dobbins, who worked with the transitional Afghan government.
At the time, he said, “I was dismissive of the idea that the Taliban would ever be a factor in postwar Afghanistan. I thought they had been so beaten and brushed aside that they would never come back.”
Looking back, he said: “I should have known. But what we didn’t understand, didn’t pick up on for five years, was that Pakistan had abandoned the Taliban government, but had not abandoned the Taliban. That was a critical distinction. So they could re-recruit, re-fund, re-train and project themselves back into Afghanistan. That was a major missed opportunity.”
While it is not clear that a deal with the Taliban in 2001 would have been possible — or that the Taliban would have kept their word — some former diplomats say that by repeatedly shutting the door to talks, the United States may have closed off its best chance of avoiding a prolonged and extremely costly war.
Best web design software of 2021
The best web design software makes it simple and easy to build the website you need, either by offering a coding platform, or a drag-and-drop interface.
The best web design software
It used to be the case that the only option was to code a website directing, using HTML & CSS and even JavaScript. However, these days drag-and-drop editors have become much more commonplace, making it a breeze for anyone to customize or even build their own website.
Whichever option you prefer, all of them make it easier to build in the elements you require on your website, and can work with additional tools such as form builders, image hosting, and even content delivery networks.
In this guide we have focused on the best web design tools currently available. When weighing up which to include, we have focused on ease of use, supported web languages, cost, and how easy the tools make it to upload the finished project once you are done.
Wix is more of a website builder than a coding platform, but it is one of the most popular online website creators, offering a range of plans and products. The free version has Wix branding, limited storage space (500MB) and bandwidth, but move up to the most popular plan (unlimited) and there’s no Wix ads.
An excellent collection of 500 plus templates gets the design process off to a quick start. The drag-and-drop editor gives you all kinds of tools and features to explore – an image editor, video backgrounds, animations, social buttons, an integrated site blog – and just about everything can be tweaked, tuned and restyled. Furthermore, as of recently, Wix introduced Wix Turbo, which increases the speed and performance of websites substantially.
All the core editing functions are really smartly designed, and operate more like a native app than your average website builder. Wix does have some weaknesses, with tech support seeming a little sluggish and limited in some respects. But there’s no denying that the superb editor and range of top-notch templates make it easy for web building novices to create something impressive.
Adobe Dreamweaver is a long-established app that allows you to code your website design directly, without having to know too much about programming. The software works through a mix of visual editing and HTML editing, which means it shouldn’t have too steep a learning curve for most users.
Additionally, while coding your own website design requires you to put in more effort than simply using an existing ready made template, at least you have the chance to ensure you get the look you actually want, rather than trying to work around someone else’s design specifications.
A particularly good feature of Dreamweaver is that it allows you to produce a responsive design, which means your website can be optimized to display on desktops as well as mobile devices, without limiting the user experience.
However, if you are a more advanced user you may be pleased to note that Dreamweaver provides multi-monitor support for Windows. It also supports the Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF) to work with HTML5 elements and CSS grids. Additionally, there’s also support for Git to allow you to edit source code directly from within Dreamweaver.
Dreamweaver is available as part of Adobe’s mid-range packaged app subscription service, Creative Cloud, which also includes Photoshop.
WordPress is an alternative way to set up and design your website, being rather different to the other offerings we’ve highlighted here because it’s actually a content management system (CMS). The power here is that it is a simple matter to set up a website in minutes. Indeed, many web hosting packages include a one-click install of WordPress from their Control Panel, but even without that, WordPress is relatively easy to install.
Once installed, the backend for administration and management is very user-friendly. You can use the existing WordPress design templates for your website, but more likely you will want to download and install an existing free or premium WordPress template – all of which can be done with just a few clicks.
Even if you would prefer to work with your own design, you can often do so using drag-and-drop functions, usually from a downloaded design with an in-built framework. This can allow you to create a professional-looking website without having to learn programming or coding at all.
Better still, there are so many free add-ons available to download and install, often requiring nothing more than a few clicks. This makes the whole process of customizing your website very simple, and it does not require any professional skills.
Overall, WordPress is a very easy CMS to use, and can provide a very quick way to get any form of website online fast. The huge variety of template designs and additional community supported features mean that getting something which is near the mark of what you want isn’t hard at all. Just ensure that in the settings you select to turn off comments so as to avoid spam.
Weebly is another online CMS, this time targeted at people with little or no coding experience, by providing easy to use drag and drop tools for creating a website. Weebly also provides the ability for users to create online stores using existing templates to work with their simply website-building framework.
The number of themes available for Weebly is somewhat limited, but the designs are clean and professional-looking, plus there are options to personalize accordingly. Additionally, the themes are responsive, which means they are optimized to work with mobile devices, plus they have in built SEO, analytics, and even a feature for posting ads directly to Facebook.
There’s a free tier available for basic use, and allows you to get used to the service, with paid plans allowing you to connect a custom domain. However, to use your own domain and get rid of ads, you’ll need the Professional plan.
Webflow is a cloud-based service which has been created specifically to allow people with no coding knowledge to get started with web design.
Aside from being truly cross-platform, as it’s web-based, Webflow emphasizes the concept of ‘smart codelessness’. In the first instance this means a crisp drag and drop interface allowing you to drop elements such as text and images seamlessly onto a page using one of the freely available templates.
Unlike many WYSIWYG editors, the code produced is very clean and well-written even if you choose the ‘I have no coding experience’ option during setup. Webflow’s automation tool will create the necessary HTML/CSS code for you. You can make granular changes to individual elements using the panels on the right.
Webflow offers a free demonstration of its features via the website, and you can also subscribe for a free Starter package which allows you to create up to two projects.
Bluefish is among the smallest web design tools available today. The tiny installer takes only a few moments to setup. While the interface is text-only, it’s clearly designed with novices in mind as it employs clear-cut toolbars, user customizable menus and syntax highlighting.
While the main focus is on HTML, Bluefish supports a huge range of other languages including PHP, Java, JavaScript, SQL, XML and CSS. Unlike visual WYSIWYG web design tools, the text interface makes for much cleaner code.
Bluefish has an excellent search function, allowing you to find text across multiple projects. The tool also has no trouble juggling hundreds of documents at the same time. Although Bluefish supports working with remote files, the varied and useful dialogs and wizards don’t currently support direct upload of web pages via FTP.
Despite the best efforts of the developers, Bluefish may take some time to get used to. The tool is available free of charge, however, so you have nothing to lose by giving it a try.
Visual Studio Code (or VScode) has become popular among developers – the ones who aren’t put off by the fact that it’s a Microsoft product, anyway. It offers a variety of packages and free extensions that can be downloaded from its marketplace to add additional features – and the code editor itself can be customized.
While a lot of people may be intimated by the idea of coding if they have no programming experience, at some point in the web design process it can be important to be able to edit code directly. This is particularly helpful if you want to customize code for existing software add-ons in order to get the features you want for your website. Visual Studio Code can help make the process less painful by providing a dedicated platform for coding.
Visual Studio Code sports its own terminal and debugger, supports linting, and has integration with all manner of source control tools. It especially offers good support for Javascript and Python, making it potentially useful not just for coding the frontend of a website but also potentially some backend functions as well.
If you’re involved in web design, the chances are you’ll also need some graphic design skills and assets. Here we’ll look at a couple of other resources and assets you’ll properly need to help with your website design process:
1. Graphics program
You don’t need anything too expensive or fancy unless you’re chasing a career in graphic design or illustration. However, you’ll probably find yourself wanting to create simple logos, headings, text features, as well as manipulate photos, all as part of your website design.
There are a lot of different packages out there, from GIMP which is a completely free software platform, to older software such as Jasc’s Paint Shop Pro which remains a competent program that can be bought on the cheap at Amazon.
Alternatively, check out these other features for the latest in best, and sometimes free, software you might want to use:
2. Stock photos
On top of creating your own graphics, there’s also a good chance you’ll want to use stock photos to really give your website a professional look.
Stock photos are available on almost any subject matter, and on top of that there are also an increasing number of stock video websites, in case you want to add video media.
Even better is that there are a number of free stock image and video websites, but be advised that these tend to be much more limited than paid-for stock image sites.
Here you can check out some of our features on these, to help you choose the best ones:
You might also want to look at our many web hosting guides:
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