Hi Everyone - I have a small company and several of us know HTML but we are not experts. We use Frontpage / Expression / Dreamweaver but it seems as it takes us much more time then it should to make it look (semi)-professional. Is there an "advanced" website builder that programmers can use which might be good for us? We want to create and modify web sites and have them look professional, as well as control things like page titles, metatags, etc. for SEO purposes, but don't want to become experts in HTML. All the "web site builders" out there seem as they are for real beginners and don't come out too professional. Any suggestions? Thx Mike
stay away from frontpage, it bloats your pages with tons of unnecessary code. Give Joomla a try. there are a lot of templates for it and it's great at managing your websites www.joomla.org The forum there is filled with advice, and examples too. Otherwise, hire a web designer and have them do it. If you need your plumbing fixed, you hire a plumber right?
It has the same problem as Frontpage and any other WYSIWYG - it outputs bad, bloated code. The only reason "pros" use it is because it is taught in university by professors who never did anything in the website world. It is not a pro-grade tool. It is for teaching innocent beginners how not to code. Just because it is professional looking does not mean it is professional. You will need to learn to code or pay a pro coder, who can at the very least make a valid page for you.
errmm... I don't believe that. Anyway, back to topic, I'd suggest you guys learn 'expert' html coding since you are getting paid for the service. Nothing beats a real coder. Most WYSIWIGs just suck. ***After reading for a while, I get that your company is not the company that gives the web development service :| I would suggest you just get a professional to do it. It's much cheaper(considering you are using so much time) and less time-consuming.
Yes actually we don't do it for clients, but we do want to have a constantly improving website. Most things in Dreamweaver and such aren't that difficult, however we run into small things that set us back way too much. It's hard for us to justify having an internal resource become an expert for a few hours a week. Also outsourcing it to someone is difficult as we want to make contstant small changes (landing pages, news, etc.) Just looking for alternatives. I'll check out Joomla. Anyone ever hear of BlueVoda? Thx Mike
Please tell me that was sarcasm. As a person who does a lot of hand coded HTML, NotePad is not up to par for any serious work. And Dreamweaver is more for designers.
Dreamweaver is the way to go, but there is another way: xSitePro I've used it and it's great for sales letters and other HTML based websites, also it has some built-in SEO so you can easily add keywords and other meta. Thought I'm creating my sales letter in dreamweaver now. Yeah the code that xSitePro makes is a bit crappy in my opinion, but thats not the main thing.
If someone is being paid to code websites and they use Dreamweaver or any other WYSIWYG program, FIRE THEM IMMEDIATELY. WYSIWYG programs don't deliver crossplatform code and they hinder search engine spiders. Your professionals show know code by now and should be using a text editor. I would suggest UltraEdit, but Notepad works just fine.
What you are asking is the impossible. You want a professional looking website without learning how to code websites. You at the very least need to learn HTML, even to use simple CMS's such as wordpress.
You sound like a purist, but I very much doubt that if making money and time management is an issue. PS. Sorry for the double post.
I am when it comes to coding I guess but I find it faster to code HTML by hand in notepad++ and the debugging is cut down greatly, for me atleast
The web would be a much better place if web "developers" would stop taking shortcuts by using these html generators, and start learning the languages that their business revolves around. Sorry, but that's like me saying I want to write a book, but don't want to bother learning the English/Spanish/French/etc. language.
I guess Dreamweaver is about as good as it gets for WYSIWYG (at least it was half-decent when I was learning), but professional? Any serious webdesigner/developer writes code using a text-editor that colors syntax/validates/etc. For me on Windows (which I assume you're using) it's a toss-up between e, Notepad++ and ConText (depending on what I'm doing). Two of which are freeware.