Dear Janine,

Please offer your recommendations for creating dynamic websites for those of us without ColdFusion. I have CS3 Master Suite.

Thanks for a terrific job on the Dreamweaver DVDs.

Tom

Hi Tom,

I completely understand if you don’t want to use ColdFusion. PHP and ASP.NET are more popular options, but many people teach the advanced features in Dreamweaver using ColdFusion because the way all three of these technologies works with Dreamweaver is similar.

That said, these days my best recommendation is that you don’t need to reinvent the wheel to create a dynamic Web site. A few years ago, the best option was still to build your own site in Dreamweaver; now I generally just use Dreamweaver to customize and build templates for sites and use programs such as WordPress or Joomla to add the dynamic functionality.

Although WordPress was created as a blog program, it’s increasingly used as a content management system to create complex Web sites. Joomla is more complex to start with, and more complex to use, but also a popular choice, especially for a site that will have many sections and subsections, such as an ezine. Both are open source, so they’re free.

To learn more about the difference between a web site and a blog, read this article in my Dreamweaver section.

I hope that helps you find the best solution for your site.

Janine