Question on Templates

[yk2366]

I'm fairly new to web designing and I just semi-completed my first project on iweb. I am starting to realize how limited it is, so I wanted to use dreamweaver for my next project.

I am trying to build a dental website, and I wanted to know: is it fairly easy to learn my way around in personalizing my website with an already-made template? I don't think I have enough experience to create something that looks as professional as those templates sold online for $69. I just didn't know how hard it would be for me to learn my way around dreamweaver so I thought I would ask before jumping into the purchase.

I also thought it was better and cheaper for me to do this than to pay a $29/month on solution21, which customizes everything for you. But they said they would also have to charge me $499 just to upgrade to a different template than the one I'm using now, thus my attempt to create my own from a different company. Is it normal to charge this much?

Thanks in advance!

anyone? Can anyone tell me if this site would be safe to buy?

http://templates.entheosweb.com/Dentist.asp

 

[londonweb]

IMO if you are thinking about web building in the long term you should steer clear of any sort of WYSIWYG editors and get stuck into learning barebones HTML and CSS - there's never been a better time to get started as HTML 5 and CSS3 are becoming widely supported by new browsers and they allow you to do a lot of cool things that weren't possible before.

The trouble with using Dreamweaver and those kind of applications is that they are always going to limit what you can do, and you'll hit the limit of the software much sooner than you hit the limit of what HTML/CSS can do.

Sorry, I know this doesn't help you in the short term but I think the Dreamweaver path represents a dead-end, whereas learning HTML and CSS (and later JavaScript, PHP and things like that), will mean the possibilities are comparitively limitless.

Having said all that, buying a ready-made template and then examining the HTML markup using the code view in Dreamweaver would be a good way to learn. But I'd advise you try to understand the code and edit that directly, rather than trying to edit the layout using the visual interface.

 

[yk2366]

Thank you so much for this. I just switched over to wordpress and bought a pre-made template, but would like to learn HTML and CSS. I was first going to move it over to Dreamweaver, but is it best for beginners like me to try to edit it with TextEdit? Is that how most people edit their work? This has been a step by step learning process for me.


Thanks.

IMO if you are thinking about web building in the long term you should steer clear of any sort of WYSIWYG editors and get stuck into learning barebones HTML and CSS - there's never been a better time to get started as HTML 5 and CSS3 are becoming widely supported by new browsers and they allow you to do a lot of cool things that weren't possible before.

The trouble with using Dreamweaver and those kind of applications is that they are always going to limit what you can do, and you'll hit the limit of the software much sooner than you hit the limit of what HTML/CSS can do.

Sorry, I know this doesn't help you in the short term but I think the Dreamweaver path represents a dead-end, whereas learning HTML and CSS (and later JavaScript, PHP and things like that), will mean the possibilities are comparitively limitless.

Having said all that, buying a ready-made template and then examining the HTML markup using the code view in Dreamweaver would be a good way to learn. But I'd advise you try to understand the code and edit that directly, rather than trying to edit the layout using the visual interface.

 

[angelwatt]

I was first going to move it over to Dreamweaver, but is it best for beginners like me to try to edit it with TextEdit? Is that how most people edit their work?

I wouldn't suggest TextEdit. Use a text editor that has color coding at least. DreamWeaver has a code view that works very well as a text editor and has code completion to help you remember what kind of options exist for specific CSS properties. I always work from plain text, but I'm more developer than designer so there isn't alternatives to that.

 

[Mal]

If you want to go with direct code editing (not WYSIWYG), which I do recommend when starting, if you're serious about learning and don't just need to get a quick site up and running, I'd grab a copy of either Fraise or TextWrangler (both free), which do syntax coloring and autocompletion. I have both and randomly switch between them, and they both work great. Of course, Dreamweaver also has FTP integration and many other features, but I don't feel that it's worth the price, especially because it's bloated and slow. I usually just use one of the aforementioned editors in combination with CyberDuck for FTP (allows you to edit using an external editor very simply), although I also have Espresso, which I got for free a while back, although it's not normally free. It has the FTP integration along with the syntax highlighting, really nice auto-completion and tag closing, as well as code folding and a few other nice features.

Basically, you have a lot of options depending on where you want to start.

jW