A quick disclaimer. I’m building my first website for a company for free. I have great difficulty typing so I’m working with Dreamweaver trying to use design view exclusively or as much as possible.I want to make the website I am building as easy to edit as possible for the people I am building it for. I am definitely thinking using WordPress as a content management system would be the best way to do this. Is this correct?Secondly I know that you can build a page with Dreamweaver and still use WordPress to edit the content. What do I need to keep in mind or stay away from when building my website to make sure that the content will be able to be edited with WordPress?Thanks in advance, I appreciate the help
Use Dreamweaver for graphics, To make your work easier use WordPress for adding pages and content. Does it make sense?
That makes complete sense. But how do I integrate WordPress with my website after the website is complete?
Let me give you a fundamental explanation of how Wordpress sites work. 1. There are all the php Wordpress files that power the platform, that you will never touch. 2. Whenever you add/edit content, it stores raw html code for that specific text in a database. 3. The appearance and layout of your site is dictated by what's called a theme, which is styled with css, and laid out with php page templates. So unless you're a pro (which I'm assuming you're not if it's your first site), Trying to lay it out in Dreamweaver is going to be a bad decision. I really like to create my Wordpress sites in a program called Artisteer. Basically, you lay the site out visually, then you can click a button to export it to a Wordpress theme. From there, you import that theme into your Wordpress site and add your content from within your Wordpress dashboard. If you have a web host with cpanel & fantastico (Most of the big hosting companies like hostgator, bluehost, etc. have this), you can do a 1-click install of Wordpress, which will make your life easier. I created a free step-by-step tutorial that will walk you through creating great sites in Artisteer, if you'd like to check it out. The site URL is artisteertutorial.com. Good luck, Zach
Thanks so much for the help, that program seems like exactly what I am looking for. I will check it out and see how everything goes. It is possible to take a layout from Dreamweaver to WordPress, correct?Thanks again
Great, be sure to check out the tutorial so you don't get overwhelmed. (There are lots of features to the program and it's easy to get confused.) And it's possible to do that, but not really. If you have a separate css file in your Dreamweaver site, then you can use that, but Wordpress sites are built VERY differently than static HTML sites. The times when I use Dreamweaver are when I want to do a layout for the content on a page. So in other words, the site as a whole is styled by my Wordpress template, but if I want to have a page with a 3-column layout or something funky with styled div tags, then I might move it into Dreamweaver to edit the code, then paste that code into my Wordpress page. But on the whole, you're going to be laying out 95% of your site in Artisteer, then moving the theme to Wordpress, wherein you enter the content.
This is my first attempt at web design, in fact e-marketing for a company where I am simply volunteering and not getting paid.I can't type very well so, I use Dreamweaver in design view. A lot of people are telling me that is basically useless for creating a decent site.Does this program mentioned allow you to create a fairly decent site?
It does indeed! And in my tutorial, I show you how to create a snazzy logo without photoshop or anything like that.
Thanks, I'll check them out. I downloaded the demo copy. It seemed to me like everything was based off a template. Are you able to build anything completely from scratch To create a reasonably good match to something that is in your head?
You are able to create things from scratch, but it is based off of a template, in a sense. I generally will lay the design out in Photoshop or on paper and re-create that design in Artisteer. You seriously need to watch my tutorial -- I answer all of these questions lol.
Sorry about that.Can I create a WordPress page completely from scratch or is it only limited to modifying prebuilt templates?I downloaded the demo version and it looked to me like I was only able to modify various prebuilt templates. Ideally I would like to be able to build something completely from scratch.
It's hard to create a template without knowing some decent HTML/CSS, but as an alternative I suggest to use the Weavertheme. This theme lets you create most of your designs by setting up values and selectors. I use this theme if I need a quick website.