Not only does 2CreateAWebSite.com have a new look, but I’ve finally abandoned the little annoyances of Microsoft FrontPage and decided to design and manage my site in Dreamweaver.
I must say, FrontPage does have its quirks such as adding unnecessary HTML code and not handling certain file extensions very well (.php, for example). But it isn’t that bad if you want a small, simple site that is mostly written in HTML.
But if you want to do more with CSS (a must for a large site like mine) and have the ability to add Flash elements and other cutting edge web features, you really need to graduate to something like Dreamweaver.
Plus, with Microsoft now abandoning FrontPage for its successor, Expression Web, I decided to move to a more “Web acceptable” design tool. Besides, I’ve heard nothing but horrible reviews for Expression Web so I was not going to continue to support their web building tools.
My new site design is managed with CSS and SSI (server side includes). In English, that simply means I can update my entire look (layout, colors, navigation, font size, etc.) by simply editing one file. And when your site is over 130 pages, this is a must-have!
When I used FrontPage, I did use CSS, but FrontPage doesn’t handle CSS very well and was constantly adding excess code that overwrote the styles I setup in my CSS file. (Sort of defeats the purpose of using CSS). I’m really glad to be done with FrontPage and have much cleaner HTML to work with.
As I continuously emphasize on my site, I am NOT a designer, nor do I want to be (which is why it took me so long to graduate to a more acceptable piece of design software), but I’m very glad to have my site managed in a program that is much more “Web acceptable” and does not add all this extraneous, annoying code.
Thumbs up to Dreamweaver!
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