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Written by Peter D'Aprix
November 13, 2006

Web Editors & Content Management Systems

> Does anyone know a good website editor?
        - Mary Findley, LED Digest 2284

I would suggest that you carefully consider hiring someone who already knows how to do this stuff and is willing to work for short periods of time to update content. I agree with Barry Mills that your time is more valuable than that of a standard person who does not have to design and build a site, just has to modify content. Plus they are less likely to damage the site which is a major risk you are taking in trying to do the work yourself...

Having said that, I know full well that sometimes time is in supply, funds are not. Barry Mills has a good point. Have the site redesigned from the ground up by someone using a content management system or even have someone set up the site with PHP and a control admin module. But then, that again costs money.

Adobe Macromedia Dreamweaver is an excellent wizywig program which costs a lot less than having your site completely redesigned but has a reasonably steep learning curve as does Adobe GoLive. On the other hand, if you really have to do this yourself, you could try the end user site management tool made by Adobe Macromedia to complement their Dreamweaver called "Contribute" (www.adobe.com/products/contribute/) $149.00 from their site. While it is made to work seamlessly with Dreamweaver for exactly needs like your own, some of my clients have found it works fine also with almost any HTML site including Adobe GoLive.

While it does not work on the site on your hard drive, using the site host server instead, it does work on a copy of the page held on your computer so if you mess up, you don't change the original page on the server until you hit the "save to sever button". But I would suggest to be safe, you use it in tandem with an FTP program, saving the current site to your hard drive before making sever side changes with Contribute. That way you are covered. You can copy pages and make new pages as well. It has its limitations, but the learning curve is not steep although there is one. It has a built in tutorial.

But the main thing is that you need to choose a tool that suits you and your needs. The best tool in the world, if it does not work for you, is useless. So you can download 30 day free trial versions of both Dreamweaver and Contribute to check the fit. Then if you find this just is not for you, you might just decide to hire outside professional help having only invested time not money. Also you need to determine which, if any, of these tools will work happily with the code that is used for your site.

Lastly there have been many posts over the years here on just this topic. You might also comb the LED archives.

Good luck with this.

Peter D'Aprix
peter, daprix.com


Comments (3)add comment

Stuart said:

  I certainly agree with what Peter says and I would just like to add that, no matter what HTML editor you use, there will come a time when you need to change some HTML code by hand. If you don't know the basics you're going to be in a spot of bother when that time arrives.
November 13, 2006 | url

Defmonkey said:

  definitely get to know HTML code at least a little. even when i have to use Joomla or Drupal i usually dig a little deeper and hack at the code. for example, just today i was working on a client's site and it's pretty big. the editor i use in Joomla (JCE) is sweet, but because of the amount of pages on this site very slow. The linking plugin took forever to load. so i just popped open the html code and put href's in myself quickly.

just one example here of why you need to know a little of the "guts" of this stuff...
November 14, 2006

Roger Hass said:

  For years I have been using this HTML Editor - "DerekWare HTML Author 3.0 by Derek Smith" in all versions of Windows from Win 95 up to 2003 and have incorporated it into most FTP programs I have used over the years. And as Derek Smith tells why he wrote it, (back in the good old days):

"So you're asking yourself, "What do I need with *another* web authoring tool? What could this one possibly provide me that I don't already have?" Well, I find myself asking that same question. However, no matter what application I used to create web pages, none of them seemed to offer everything I wanted. That's why I wrote DerekWare HTML Author."

Features

(seems a bit funny now when you think about it and the fact that it still works in 2006)

- Fully 32-bit Windows 95 application

- Supports all HTML 2.0 tags and Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 extensions.

- Intelligent tag formatting, allowing the user to select the text to be formatted and click a button.

- Tag Wizards for the more complicated tags, including font changes, extended horizontal rules, images, dynamic images, links, marquees and forms.

- A customizable tag list, allowing the user to add, remove and modify user-defined tags.

Licensing

DerekWare HTML Author 3.0 is being released as freeware to the general public. The program may be freely distributed, so long as none of it's contents are modified in any way. Corporate use is hereby forbidden without written consent from the author. (if you can find him!)

There are many sites that still have it available for download (some attempt to incorporate it or claim it as their own, so take care and make sure it's genuine). Have fun using it, and if you can still find Derek Smith (I did 2 years ago) let me know where he is please.

Roger Hass
November 16, 2006 | url

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