Quicker way to design and edit your website ?

[dansbanners]

Hi,

I've been working on websites for several years now. I tend to be very code-oriented in designing, maintaining and editing the sites. Basically using Internet Explorer and Notepad. Even taking care of the identation in the codes.

However, I'm beginning to wonder that maybe it takes longer to design and edit websites by putting emphasis on the codes ? And am looking for several alternatives that would help speed up the designing and editing process.

For starters, I know of a couple of methods. Such as using style sheets and using the BK ReplaceEm software tool.

Any others ?

I'd appreciate it. Thanks in advance !

[Jeff]

I think it depends on:

How complicated the layout is graphically
How precise you need the layout to be
How complicated/deep the organizational structure of pages is
How often the site is updated
How many dynamic elements are in play, if any


I do find Dreamweaver to be faster than editplus/notepad + browser to visualize. I like working with DW's split code + design views. I find the css panel handy for applying close-to wysiwyg formatting. I find dw templates to be handy (though I could do this with ssi server side too.) Many little things in DW are handy, though I also use edit plus as a lightweight editor for some quick changes too, bkreplacem to do local find and replace, magic file renamer to handle local windows image/file renaming when necessary, and other miscellaneous tools.

The question I'm faced with often now is whether it makes sense to hand-code a site using dreamweaver or whether it needs a server-side cms solution like mambo or something like movabletype/wordpress/etc. The problem with cms solutions is that if changes are not that frequent it can take more time coming to terms with the cms software itself and keeping it patched and up to date than actually adding content, plus as the software changes you continually have to keep up with features and re-add any customizations whereas raw html has an incredible lifespan as browsers themselves have a huge degree of backwards compatibility, much more than the database->output tools we are using will have.