KompoZer is Marching On

So far 2008 has been a good year for real life and web business. It is good to know that this blog has helped some of you with little experience recover from hitting brick walls while trying to create web pages. Web authoring with KompoZer, a free WYSIWYG editor, continues to grow in popularity in spite of the walls.

Free Downloads of KompoZer Hit a New High

KompoZer is a free, open source, web authoring system available for free download through the project site, KompoZer.net, or from SourceForge. Free downloads for February were 107,983 copies, a new high.

That number shows that interest remains high even though the last release, KompoZer 0.7.10, was six months ago. I haven’t seen anything to suggest when the next release will be.

Wysi Note: See information posted in 2009 about development and progress toward KompoZer 0.8.

KompoZer 0.7.10 is a good tool for web authoring even with no further upgrades. Development of Nvu stopped with the release of 1.0 a long time ago but downloads continue. Guess I was right in saying Nvu and KompoZer are classics.

KompoZer Manual and Tutorials

Demand has never been higher for instructions, guides and help in how to use KompoZer. Links to download KompoZer and the User Guide are a permanent feature of this blog and the Wysi Web Site.

The most popular page here is the KompoZer Tutorials page providing links to tutorials by others. My KompoZer Table Tutorial in January has also proven to be popular.

Interest in using KompoZer to create web sites with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is also high. I don’t have a tutorial yet but did provide links in Using CSS with KompoZer. Seeing examples and looking at source code is a useful way to learn.

What Comes Next

Traffic here has never been higher. We had as many visitors last month as in the first six months of operation. That tells me that (1) I have done my SEO work and (2) there are still more questions than answers. The counter I use gives me excellent insight into what the questions are and how well they get answered here and elsewhere.

The majority of visitors come here from Google search. StatCounter shows me the link, what you were looking for and what you found. I try to look at the situation through your eyes. That is easy because I still remember the frustrations of trying to learn how to create web pages. Looking at your searches helps me to figure out what I should do next as well as what I should have done better.

• I think I need to do something better on how to look under the hood of KompoZer to help you understand a little more about HTML – the very stuff we are trying to avoid with a WYSIWYG editor. Unfortunately you need to look at the source code to understand how to do things. The major points of my earlier piece should have been more clearly stated and illustrated but I didn’t know how to do either last July.
• There needs to be a tutorial on how to do a basic page. The tutorials out there aren’t getting the message across. Maybe I’ll use capital letters and bold type. Folks have contacted me about doing simple “hobby” pages and linking to other pages. That is a step beyond How Do I Begin My Web Site? and I guess a step I should take.
• Many of the visitors here have gotten past the “making a page” hurdle but remain confused by how to publish a web site. That one should be last because KompoZer 0.8 is supposed to address site manager and publishing issues. Since I don’t know when that will be but do know many of you have a need now, publishing will probably be first.

So that is the near term plan. Three subjects: Publishing with KompoZer, Using KompoZer to See HTML and CSS source code, and Building Simple Pages with KompoZer. Let’s hope real life will allow all that during March.

Wysi

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