Have 9 websites, hate Dreamweaver - Help!

[jtara]

I'm curious what the other 8 websites look like

I think you should not look at Dreamweaver as the police ... maybe more like the calvary.

good luck

I agree. That site looks like.... well, I don't want to invoke the MacRumors police...

Let's just say it looks like spam. I wouldn't give it a second look. That's no elitist, it's the truth.

Here's what I would do with it: I would look for an application that will strip all the formatting out of HTML pages. Get it down to just simple non-styled markup. Paragraphs, lists, etc. Maybe look for something that can de-construct the tables that don't really need to be tables.

Maybe there's something out there that has enough intelligence to try to figure out what was intended. You probably have lists that are not <lists>s. <list>s that are not lists. Tables that are not <table>s. And <table>s that are not tables.

Create a re-design triage list. Start with your most popular sites/pages.

Whether static or CMS, at least you now have something close to pure content to work with. Either apply a style sheet to the stripped-down HTML or start pouring paragraphs into a CMS. Find a nice modern style sheet for their the static HTML or CMS.

A good site today has almost all styling in style sheets. Without the style sheet, the site should look like it might have in 1994. Just paragraphs and lists of stuff.

Which would look a lot better than the site looks today.

Boil it down to a good, simple 1994 site. Then add style. Please throw out all that garbage.

 

[donelson]

Do you ever wonder why this page is on page 8 on a search for "gardens UK" in Google? (in other words, it doesn't really exist on the web, as far as the public is concerned).

Unimportant.

95% of our traffic is direct to the gardens themselves, and our research (via Google AdWords analysis) indicates people don't type "gardens UK" much for a gardens guide directory...

What they type is: Open Gardens UK
for that we are #4 in Google UK.

Also, since the Gardens-Guide.com site is generated from my own error-checking CMS, it is possible to convert it to HTML5 relatively easily. We have plans to do so at our next update in two months. Dreamweaver plays little role in that site.

 

[YanniDepp]

Your best bet, in the short term, is to learn HTML and edit your sites manually. This will give you the flexibility you want. In the medium term, learn more about CSS. It will make your life a lot easier.

In the long term, any sites as big as you're describing really should be database driven and CMS-based styled with CSS. You obviously don't want to make this move now, but the time will come when it makes sense. Consider the benefits:

- Using CSS separates your content from your styling. Applying class names to things makes it easier to style: if you wanted something to appear differently across the entire site, just edit one line of CSS instead of every single page. This makes your site accessible, and it's very easy to code alternate looks (a mobile theme, accessible themes etc.)
- Have your garden details in a database, and use that to generate pages. Again, you get consistent output. Have one PHP page that gets a record and outputs it, and that's all you ever need to change. Say you wanted to rearrange your page. You're editing one PHP file instead of 600 individual HTML pages.
- Using a database or CMS means your site is split into three layers: your data, your output (HTML, PHP) and your styling (CSS). They're separate, and any of them is very easy to change without affecting the others.

 

[digitalField]

heyyyo, thought id jump in one last time..

macrumors forums are a great place but sometimes people here can be a bit 'over helpful' as you have noticed. ( i have been guilty of it too at times )

in the future if you have a focused question, like the one you had here, id recommend going over to http://apple.stackexchange.com/ community over there does a great job of keeping on topic and quickly getting you the right answer.

M

 

[wpotere]

macrumors forums are a great place but sometimes people here can be a bit 'over helpful' as you have noticed. ( i have been guilty of it too at times )

Over helpful and sometimes just down right rude! The guy came here asking a fairly simple question and then gets berated about his sites. As a programmer myself, I can tell you that not all of my sites are up to date either. They are on my list of things to do, but with a short handed shop you can't always get everything you want to get done completed. Add to that, if they are working, and he is content with that, then let it be. Telling him to go learn something is not helpful, besides, he already stated that he knows HTML and CSS. Let it go folks!

I'm willing to bet most of the folks talking crap have never created a professional level site themselves and are regurgitating things they read in a book.

 

[bpaluzzi]

Over helpful and sometimes just down right rude! The guy came here asking a fairly simple question and then gets berated about his sites. As a programmer myself, I can tell you that not all of my sites are up to date either. They are on my list of things to do, but with a short handed shop you can't always get everything you want to get done completed. Add to that, if they are working and he is content with that then let it be. Telling him to go learn something is not helpful, besides, he already stated that he knows HTML and CSS. Let it go folks!

Show me one response that is rude. Every single post was extremely cordial.

I was ever doing something in a professional capacity that was as out-of-date as the OP, I'd be tickled to receive guidance from people more familiar with current tech that what I'm doing is wrong in such a restrained manner.

 

[wpotere]

Show me one response that is rude. Every single post was extremely cordial.

I was ever doing something in a professional capacity that was as out-of-date as the OP, I'd be tickled to receive guidance from people more familiar with current tech that what I'm doing is wrong in such a restrained manner.

#14 is rude.... (since you felt the need to ask)

Did you ever think that not all companies want to constantly update all sites? Sometimes they are simply maintained how they are until they die because they don't see the value in spending manpower money in updating it. He already stated that he is familiar with the current tech, he just wanted some advice on tools that don't enforce certain rules to keep some of the older pages functional. It wasn't a hard question to answer but everyone then wanted to see the pages and rate him on them.

Lastly, you had one post and I didn't say that you, bpaluzzi, were being rude. That being said, you could have answered the question rather than give your .02 on a topic that he already gave the reason that it was the way it was. If he as his company don't see the cost benefit in updating the pages then that is their choice. Why beat him up constantly?

 

[redAPPLE]

Very insulting, and wrong.
In fact, one of the sites not included in my list is done via a custom CMS I developed, which uses a set of templates ( Gardens-Guide.com ) to generate pages via a custom production engine I wrote about 8 years ago.


Thanks for the (backhanded) recommendation of Freeway.

no offence dude, but that site gardens-guide.com is not an "attractive" site.

it still works. ok. i am sure a windows 95 machine would still work, too.

now to something constructive. ever tried asking some design students if they would like to do some freelance work? some might want to build up their portfolio and so.

 

[jtara]

To refine my previous comments, I suggest the OP look into "refactoring" software for HTML/CSS, which I assume exists. The OP says he's done programming, so he should be familiar with refactoring.

Such a tool would help-out both with a redesign of the site and the present problem.

I suppose an editor with Regex support and and REALLY learning Regex would be a start. (I'd suggest the book Mastering Regular Expressions.)

Refactoring goes beyond pattern-matching, though, to understand the structure of a language. (HTML/CSS in this case.)

As an example, let's say I'm writing a Ruby program. I made an unfortunate choice of a class name, and now it's all over thousands of lines of my software. No problem! Most Ruby IDEs have refactoring support: I can just tell it to change the class name, and all references will be changed in my entire project, without me having to check every change to make sure it's appropriate. Simply doing a "search and replace" for the class name or even using a poorly thought-out Regex could have disastrous results.

Refactoring tools will help you to make massive edits to your existing documents, and could also be used to help bring them into the modern world of CSS.

So, look for standalone refactoring tools, and/or an editor or IDE that supports HTML/CSS refactoring.

 

[Kissaragi]

Unimportant.

95% of our traffic is direct to the gardens themselves, and our research (via Google AdWords analysis) indicates people don't type "gardens UK" much for a gardens guide directory...

What they type is: Open Gardens UK
for that we are #4 in Google UK.

It looks like a site from the 90's to me sorry, even I clicked it, Id leave right away. Number 3 on that search looks like a much nicer site.

 

[donelson]

It looks like a site from the 90's to me sorry, even I clicked it, Id leave right away. Number 3 on that search looks like a much nicer site.

You're kidding right? Their layout is certainly not better than ours, and the content is about 1/3 of ours per garden. You clearly did not look past the home page, did you?

Even then, many of you are seeing the Wrong Things here. Visitors do not enter through the home page, as I stated earlier. 95% of visitors to these gardens will Google a garden's name, then go to that page, never seeing the home page, ever. Second on the list is looking at other gardens nearby the one they sought first.

Compare the #3 site's garden pages with ours - far less information and no picture, no map, no local amenities, no history, no features, no NGS days, etc etc. If you still think their garden info is better, please compare, point by point, why.

And one FINAL TIME: Gardens-Guide.com is NOT the issue here, and never was. READ the thread from the top if you wish to be helpful, if not, then you are clearly only angry trolls, and should grow up and get a life.

To conclude: Thank you, those who offered answers to my question about alternates to Dreamweaver - all very helpful and interesting. If further readers of this thread have additional answers to my question, please PM me.

 

[jtara]

You clearly did not look past the home page, did you?

That should be your first clue that the site needs a refresh.

Even then, many of you are seeing the Wrong Things here. Visitors do not enter through the home page, as I stated earlier. 95% of visitors to these gardens will Google a garden's name, then go to that page, never seeing the home page, ever. Second on the list is looking at other gardens nearby the one they sought first.

The landing pages look just as bad.

Compare the #3 site's garden pages with ours - far less information and no picture, no map, no local amenities, no history, no features, no NGS days, etc etc. If you still think their garden info is better, please compare, point by point, why.

Irrelevant, really, if you can't get users to stay when they see the mess when they land.

And one FINAL TIME: Gardens-Guide.com is NOT the issue here, and never was. READ the thread from the top if you wish to be helpful, if not, then you are clearly only angry trolls, and should grow up and get a life.

It goes with the territory. You posted your site on an open forum about site design and development. Expect some criticism. Or a boatload.

To conclude: Thank you, those who offered answers to my question about alternates to Dreamweaver - all very helpful and interesting. If further readers of this thread have additional answers to my question, please PM me.

I think most of us are willing to help. Don't get so upset when you get some advice you'd rather not hear.

 

[englishman]

Best bets are older version of DW on Snow on a 2010 Mini.

Alternatively

CoffeeCup
Kompozer
Nvu

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_HTML_editors

compares them.

 

[digitalField]

no offence dude, but that site gardens-guide.com is not an "attractive" site.

it still works. ok. i am sure a windows 95 machine would still work, too.

now to something constructive. ever tried asking some design students if they would like to do some freelance work? some might want to build up their portfolio and so.

you seem to be of the mindset that if something is not 'attractive' or pleasing to your eye that changing it will make it better.

people care about content first and design second, which is why sites like craigslist and ebay do just fine.

and. fwiw OP never asked for opinions on how 'attractive' his site was, if you are looking to offer critiques of visual site design there some dedicated threads for that.

 

[jtara]

people care about content first and design second, which is why sites like craigslist and ebay do just fine.

Craigslist's design is simple, functional, and easy to read.

OP's (Taj Mahal) isn't.

My eyes wander all over the page, trying to make sense of it. That is, when they aren't distracted by the jarring colors.

The centered paragraphs of text are particularly annoying.

I mean, it's not just that it's unattractive. It's a poster-child for bad design. If somebody showed me this without telling me what it was, I'd say it was a made-up example of what not to do from a web design class.

 

[decksnap]

What is this '**** you' mode and how do I start using it?

Is this what you're trying to turn off?

 

[SpinThis!]

What I think is happening is the OP has a bunch of sites with Dreamweaver templates attached. Those were old school templates that designers made and designated which pages of a site could and could not be edited. Easiest way to stop that from happening is just to detach the template from the page. Modify -> Templates -> Detach page. That will give you the control you need.

I agree with everyone else, the hard work of getting that content out into a database needs to be done by someone eventually. Find someone from elance or craigslist or whatever and pay them to do that stupid monkey work if you can't afford to do it. Someone will be happy to do it.

If you use wordpress there's an html import plugin that will import whatever pages you want from the site. You can also specific a specific html tag string to start and end on and it'll just grab that content instead of the header and footer content. IIRC it can tidy code too.

 

[revelated]

In defense of the OP...I do like Dreamweaver for one thing - simple HTML form creation. What I don't like is the way it creates tables. It assumes that every table should be a perfect rectangle every single time, which doesn't necessarily need to apply unless you're embedding tables. But Dreamweaver wants to use colspan instead of width, creating issues when you don't want to span the whole frickin thing.

For example, I had a customer who asked for a specific layout on their form. They wanted two fields at the top, all the way on the right side, so that's two rows and two columns, with the first column being like 80% of the table width. That's fine...but then in the next section down, they wanted a single name field in one column. Well, when using colspan, you can't do that unless you create multiple separate tables which is a pain to later manage. Whereas if I use width, I can get it to do exactly what I want to do.

The FONT tag is another good example, only because Dreamweaver consistently wants to apply formatting changes to the entire "content" element, rather than the specific text that I selected. It tries too hard to help you and ends up failing. I would use the good old Evrsoft 1stPage (OP, there's another gentle recommendation for you. Was using that application since the 90's for basic editing requirements. It just sucks for WYSIWYG a little bit), but they haven't updated it in ages.

That's where CSS breaks down a bit. In projects where there is a variety of formatting on the page, you have to create so many CSS elements as to be counter productive. On a page like MacRumors where all the text is basically the same font with different formats, sure...CSS is fine, but you'd have to have created it that way from the get-go. That's what the OP is trying to say.

 

[bpaluzzi]

In defense of the OP...I do like Dreamweaver for one thing - simple HTML form creation. What I don't like is the way it creates tables. It assumes that every table should be a perfect rectangle every single time, which doesn't necessarily need to apply unless you're embedding tables. But Dreamweaver wants to use colspan instead of width, creating issues when you don't want to span the whole frickin thing.

For example, I had a customer who asked for a specific layout on their form. They wanted two fields at the top, all the way on the right side, so that's two rows and two columns, with the first column being like 80% of the table width. That's fine...but then in the next section down, they wanted a single name field in one column. Well, when using colspan, you can't do that unless you create multiple separate tables which is a pain to later manage. Whereas if I use width, I can get it to do exactly what I want to do.

Why are you using a table for this data in the first place? Tables are meant for tabular data, not for positioning.

That's where CSS breaks down a bit. In projects where there is a variety of formatting on the page, you have to create so many CSS elements as to be counter productive. On a page like MacRumors where all the text is basically the same font with different formats, sure...CSS is fine, but you'd have to have created it that way from the get-go. That's what the OP is trying to say.

Ignoring the styling considerations of having too many fonts / sizes on a page, I don't think you fully understand how to use CSS.

Even in the worse case scenario where literally every block of text is using a different style, it's not _more_ work to do it with CSS. It's just replacing inline font styling with an ID, then applying the style where it belongs, in the CSS.

The reality, where you have patterns of styling (like a standard word document, for example -- headers, paragraph/body text, and different modes of emphasis), you use CSS classes and drastically reduce the amount of work for creation and maintenance.

 

[bevel]

don't normally post but felt the need after reading this post.

the op posted a question asking for a solution that can help him manage a bunch of flat HTML files and exclude CSS; then when the responses informed him that those sorts of practices were inanely stupid and had been dropped in the 90s he spat his dummy out.

this guy is not willing to listen to decent advice - he is just arrogant moron who is looking for some software that can accommodate the uselessly outdated skills he has somehow learnt over the years.

well good luck with coda/regex. see how that goes ey? hey, why don't you use vim - it's free and you've already got it installed

 

[digitalField]

I mean, it's not just that it's unattractive. It's a poster-child for bad design. If somebody showed me this without telling me what it was, I'd say it was a made-up example of what not to do from a web design class.

I am not defending the design.. I would agree that its more on the ugly side then the attractive side, but I do not think that it matters for this site.

Regarding your comments about Craigslist being good design. I am of the opinion that you are only saying that in hindsight. As we are both aware that if someone presented the Craigslist site to a design class, as a 'finished' design, the professor and students would all laugh him out of the room.

It works because the content on Craigslist is great, which is the case with the OP's site ( taking his word for it as he has expressed no concerns over traffic or customer satisfaction )

Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration ( Zeldman, 2008 )

M!

 

[CLWelch]

people care about content first and design second, which is why sites like craigslist and ebay do just fine.

If you think you can separate content from design, you have a horribly misguided definition of design.

 

[THX1139]

people care about content first and design second, which is why sites like craigslist and ebay do just fine.

You couldn't be more wrong. There are thousands of poorly designed websites that have a ton of content and that doesn't make them acceptable. Good design allows content to be manageable and aesthetically pleasing. Otherwise, it's just a page full of unreadable information that it not easily accessible.

By the way, even heavy content driven websites such as eBay or craigslist follow a formula of design. Otherwise, they would be impractical to use.

Websites like the OP posted pretty much throws out any reasonable concept of design, and that is why they look cluttered. Yeah, the information is there... but you have to work at it to find it.

 

[bpaluzzi]

If you think you can separate content from design, you have a horribly misguided definition of design.

Uhh. I don't think you really have any idea what you're talking about.

 

[CLWelch]

Uhh. I don't think you really have any idea what you're talking about.

Why?