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Help! I need a new Web editor/publishing software

S

Sandy Santra

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 1, 2008
350
73
Brooklyn
Currently using iWeb, publishing directly to my .mac account, with domain hosted at GoDaddy. But I'll soon be reaching 100 individual pages. Every time I decide to change a whole subgroup of pages, I'm looking at changing borders, headers, etc. on a dozen pages.

I suspect I can automate this with style sheets.

Can anyone recommend a product like Dreamweaver that's capable of style sheets and publishing to .mac but that isn't quite so expensive?

Thanks!
 
dynamicv said:
Rapidweaver do you?
Click to expand...

I know people are using it, but there are a lot of negative reviews about it at versiontracker. Plus, I can't make head nor tails of their website--and there seem to be a lot of issues over creating blank templates (pages).

It's cheap, and the manual addresses .mac publishing, but the rest of it I'm not too happy about.

Can't even figure out if they do styles from their webpage or their manual.
 
Sandy Santra said:
I know people are using it, but there are a lot of negative reviews about it at versiontracker. Plus, I can't make head nor tails of their website--and there seem to be a lot of issues over creating blank templates (pages).

It's cheap, and the manual addresses .mac publishing, but the rest of it I'm not too happy about.

Can't even figure out if they do styles from their webpage or their manual.
Click to expand...

the styles are all through themes. It's a really good program. It uses themes that come with it and there are plenty of 3rd party ones. Almost all themes have variation options too. 1 thing, it's not wysiwyg like iWeb. It takes a slight learning curve to understand, but you can get a plugin called blocks and it will be more like iweb.
 
Sandy Santra said:
I know people are using it, but there are a lot of negative reviews about it at versiontracker. Plus, I can't make head nor tails of their website--and there seem to be a lot of issues over creating blank templates (pages).

It's cheap, and the manual addresses .mac publishing, but the rest of it I'm not too happy about.

Can't even figure out if they do styles from their webpage or their manual.
Click to expand...

Something like Dreamweaver has a steep learning curve if you don't have coding experience, so regardless of the price, that's something to consider. Although it would require some work on your part to build your own theme in RW, there's a lot of fun to be hard customising those of others in the meantime.

Not quite sure what you mean about the issues over creating templates.

Although the comments on Versiontracker and MacUpdate can be useful, they can be very unhelpful too. I don’t really use them these days, but if it’s anything like they used to be, some will be based on when the poster used a version five years ago; it doesn’t do something that it’s not intended to; they don’t like the software company etc etc.

I would check out some more detailed reviews – just do a google search or visit http://www.realmacsoftware.com/buzz/index.php for some snippets. You’ve probably seen the Showcase, but I’m the attitude of if it’s good enough for Michael. Bay then it’s good enough for me.

.Net (a leading – probably the biggest one – UK magazine for Web designers and developers) has given it maximum marks in two reviews in the last two years. MacUser magazine (aimed at higher-end users, particularly creative professionals) have also rated it highly.

Also, through a google search you’ll find some excellent first-hand reviews by bloggers etc.

I agree what tominated said – RW provides a quick way to make the changes you want. Also, a third-party app like ThemeMiner is a great aid to customising a theme, or looking at how someone has built theirs in order to help you understand how to build yours (with a bit of CSS knowledge and like everything, it requires a bit of time to get your head around).

With regards to building your own themes, this has a separate manual/tutorial – available for the RW software.

I would also say visit the RW forum… there’s one or two threads about how to design your own themes – it’s also a great place for tips. I have to say, it’s one of the most friendly (and informative) forums I’ve visited – also there’s a big community of theme and plug-in developers.

RW has a free trial (I think) as do most apps like ThemeMiner – so I would say, give it a go and see for yourself... if it's not for you, it's not fior you, but it won't cost you anything (apart from time ;) )
 
Excellent feedback, Igantius.

I have done coded before, in many different programs, so I don't shy away from a steep learning curve. I've already downloaded the Dreamweaver manual and have started reading it. I know I can handle it am excited about the control it provides. I especially like that it's not "theme"-based. I would prefer to build from the ground up.

It's expensive, though. The question in my mind is: can I build out my website with iWeb far enough to apply and get into GoogleAdSense to start generating some income to pay for Dreamweaver.
 
Sandy Santra said:
Excellent feedback, Igantius.

I have done coded before, in many different programs, so I don't shy away from a steep learning curve. I've already downloaded the Dreamweaver manual and have started reading it. I know I can handle it am excited about the control it provides. I especially like that it's not "theme"-based. I would prefer to build from the ground up.

It's expensive, though. The question in my mind is: can I build out my website with iWeb far enough to apply and get into GoogleAdSense to start generating some income to pay for Dreamweaver.
Click to expand...

You’re very welcome!

Dreamweaver is an excellent application – I love it… but not the price!

Although I’ve known professional designers/users who can’t code for toffee, it’s a real lifesaver if you know a bit of code and you would get the most out of it using that knowledge.

If you’re happy to build from the ground up (and from your posts, I doubt you would have much problem!), I would still try RW… the main reason I say that is initially I looked down on it for being template/theme-based but was very impressed with what I actually found. Also, while you’re getting the money together for Dreamweaver, using another applicationto iWeb in the meantime would most likely be more stimulating creatively speaking.

Another affordable alternative is Freeway (there are Express and Pro versions), which takes a very DTP approach.
 
Kompozer is free, has a growing support and user base, is now being developed by SourceForge and friends, and seems to do most of the basics. There are friendly online tutorials, and even a dumb-ass like me is learning how to use it. :D

FREE!

I'm about to learn how to set up my own template. I learnt some php stuff on their forum and this forum for setting up the one Navigation Bar page that I could update and it would automatically flow through to all the other pages. So that's "Components" from GoLive replaced.

It seems like — and this is as a total newbie speaking here — if you know who to ask about code stuff, almost any web function can be found out there for free.
 
eclipse said:
It seems like — and this is as a total newbie speaking here — if you know who to ask about code stuff, almost any web function can be found out there for free.
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I can attest to that (more or less). I'm completely self taught in web design using essentially just the Internet (own two books, but was after I learned the stuff). I run my own server, know X/HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Ruby on Rails, Perl, Python, etc. all for free. My university didn't offer web related languages, just those more core languages like Java and C++.
 
Coda is a good solution. It's a very good HTML, Javascript, php, etc, editor with built in FTP (Transmit). Since I started using it, Ive never looked back.
 
I am also seeking a reasonably simple web design software for the mac. I have just started using Kompozer, which I like, but it has enough bugs which bother me enough to want something else. The only thing that I have come up with is to use Dreamweaver, which may be overkill for me. I don't care about the price, however I don't want to get into something overly difficult. Can I assume that if I use Dreamweaver in WYSIWYG mode, that it would be fairly straight forward -easy to use? The web page I am designing is pretty simple.
 
Coda

My vote also goes for Coda - bought it the first week it was released - and I use it everyday. I have since removed Dreamweaver from my machine completely. If you code by hand and you're looking for a text based editor - then I don't think anything compares with Coda. Dreamweaver is too bloated for the few features that make it somewhat useful.
 
How about for WYSIWYG? Coda is for hand coding, and I checked out Rapid Weaver, but the themes look very limiting.
 
JohnnyBgood said:
How about for WYSIWYG? Coda is for hand coding, and I checked out Rapid Weaver, but the themes look very limiting.
Click to expand...

You don't have to stick with the themes packaged with RW - three main options open to you:

  1. Build your own theme (there's a Theme SDK availavle free from the RW website).
  2. Obtain additional themes (again these are available from the RW) - although most of these are commercial (i.e. you have to pay), they are cheap. Also, some are free.
  3. Customize existing themes - using something like ThemeMiner is a big help in this. Also this is a handy way of seeing how people designed their themes, which is useful for understanding how to build your own.
Freeway might be worth a look.
 
Great replies, folks! Thanks.

I will definitely look at RapidWeaver again, and also look at Coda.

Meanwhile, study of the Dreamweaver manual continues. The app reminds me of the complexity of Photoshop.
 
There's absolutely no cost to you (other than time) in downloading Kompozer. It's open source, it's slowly chugging along in development, and the word on the street is that it's WYSIWIG editing does better code than DW.

They even have a Kompozer version of "CSS Zen garden" which is a HTML page run with all different CSS done in Kompozer. Exactly the same HTML, but just different Cascading Style Sheets.

http://www.kompozer.net/css/themes.php

It's what I'm learning.... if you join up and head on over into the Kompozer forums as well... how do the kids say it?

"I'll be your best friend?":D
 
Hey, folks, thanks for all the responses!

I went to Apple on Fifth Avenue this week for a 1-2-1 session. They recommended Dreamweaver for me, since what I really need is style sheets (CSS).

Another possible solution is Wordpress (maybe).

The biggest problem with talking with people there, however, is that they didn't seem to understand my focus on business models (i.e, how the big sites like Yahoo, Engadget, tuaw.com, Gizmodo, chris.pirillo.com, set up their sites) and preferred to promote things like Tumblr (although, oddly enough, very few people knew about Twitter, and no one had heard about Chris Pirillo).

I need style sheets so I can one-click change an attribute on the entire site (every web page), and I need a "blog roll" on the front page so that I can keep adding new entries by the hour and have everything else get pushed down. But I don't need Tumblr for that because I'll be using my MBP rather than my iPhone for updates.
 
(Edit: I changed my mind)

DW is great, go for it, and even buy the DVD tutorials from VTC.com which are much cheaper than a week long course and you get to watch them again and again.
 
eclipse said:
(Edit: I changed my mind)

DW is great, go for it, and even buy the DVD tutorials from VTC.com which are much cheaper than a week long course and you get to watch them again and again.
Click to expand...

Wow, I like your blog. Fascinating reading, and very prescient visionary economic thinking.

Re tutorials, I stumbled across this lately, which is apparently free:

W3 Schools
 
On second thought....

Oddly enough, I'm actually thinking about going back to iPhoto (temporarily). Although I might revise this plan due to new info from business modeling, my thought is that the learning curve for Dreamweaver and the time required to learn it now might be too big a setback. It's almost April, and I need to develop traffic on my website and get Google AdSense going. Dreamweaver could potentially set me back months.

For now, with my very small operation (no employees yet), I may be able to post content and articles faster with iPhoto. I won't get hung up by too much coding.

Thoughts?
 
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