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

I am a huge fan. Your DWCS4 tutorial on Total Training has greatly expanded the communication possibilities I have to fellow students when it comes to cooperative file sharing. However, I would like to begin learning ASP or Cold Fusion to make dynamic web sites. Any advice on where to start?

Thanks,
Jonathan

Hi, Jonathan,

Thank you for the kind words about my videos.

There are many benefits to using ColdFusion or ASP or any of the other technologies (such as PHP or ASP.NET) that make it possible to create dynamic web sites. But I must warn you that the complexity and technical training required are significant and developing these skills takes a lot longer than mastering creating static pages with Dreamweaver.

In my advanced Dreamweaver CS3 training, I cover the basics of Dreamweaver’s dynamic site development features and how to work with Cold Fusion, but if you don’t have a background in programming or database development, you will almost certainly need someone to help with the most technical aspects of your site, or you’ll need considerable additional training to build a complex site this way.

One alternative that I’ve seen more and more web designers use these days is to customize an existing Content Management System rather than creating one from scratch.

Some of the more popular programs for creating dynamic sites are Joomla, Drupal, and Expression Engine. I’ve also seen many sites that were created with the WordPress blogging program and then customized to add more advanced features.

I hope that helps you find the best solution for you and your fellow students and I wish you all the best with your web site.

Janine

Thanks for the advice, Janine. I do have some background programming-wise, I code in Java and some C++. Do you think that will be of benefit? Also, would you say that the programs such as Joomla do provide one with the majority of the versatility one would have if I were to code my own?

I am a high school student and my programming teacher has the knowledge and many years of experience, so he could assist in any issues. Would you suggest I go with a program such as Joomla or I learn from scratch? By the way, programming / software design is the career path I am currently trekking so in the long run would Drupal or others similar be better to know than the languages themselves?

Thanks again,
Jonathan

Hi, Jonathan,

I encourage you to do some experimenting at this point. You’ll have the greatest flexibility if you can create your own custom dynamic site, that’s for sure, but you’ll also probably be writing code for things that many other programmers have done already. When you start with one of the existing programs, you benefit from not having to “reinvent the wheel,” and your programming skills will still be important because most of these programs require customization to do anything but the basics.

Your programming experience, even if it’s with Java and C++, will certainly help you if you start working with PHP or ASP.NET because you’ll at least have some background in programming. Many people come into web design from a graphic design background, and the leap from Photoshop to PHP is much harder than the step from C++.

Here’s a quick look at a few of the most popular CMS tools and why you might choose one over another (I’ve been meaning to add this to my web site, so your question is a good excuse to start writing all this up).

Not only can using these programs help save you time, but experimenting with them will also help you learn from other programmer’s experience. As you see how they have created these tools, you’ll surely learn things that will help you if you decide you might want to create your own custom site.

WordPress
www.wordpress.org (note: wordpress.com is a free hosting service)
Price: Free / Open Source
Pros: One of the most popular and powerful blogging tools, WordPress is increasingly used as a CMS for more complex sites. You’ll find many great extensions for WordPress and it’s very easy to teach people to use the administrative tools to update the site after you build it (even if they don’t know any HTML).
Cons: WordPress was designed for blogging and it’s great for that, but if you want to add more complex or advanced interactive features you’ll still probably have to do some custom programming yourself.
Additional Resources: WordPress has many, many extensions that you can use to easily add special features, including polls, discussion forums, and shopping carts.

Joomla
Price: Free / Open Source
Pros: Offers more features than WordPress, including the ability to easily create categories and subcategories for magazine-style sites.
Cons: You’ll need some programming skills and advanced HTML/CSS knowledge to fully customize a Joomla site.
Additional Resources: Joomla has many, many extensions that you can use to easily add special features, including polls, discussion forums, and shopping carts.

Drupal
Price: Free / Open Source
Pros: Designed by programmers for programmers, this CMS is popular among the most technical fans of open source. If you have the programming skills, you can do just about anything with Drupal.
Cons: If you’re a designer, the learning curve on Drupal is a bit steeper than with Joomla and you won’t find nearly as many templates.
Additional Resources: Drupal has many extensions that you can use to easily add special features, including polls, discussion forums, and shopping carts.

Expression Engine
Price: $99 personal use, $250 commercial use
Pros: Because it’s not open source, many professional web designers prefer Expression Engine, saying that it’s better supported by the staff at Expression Engine. The open source programs listed here are free, and you’ll find lots of support for them, but you’ll also find unfinished tutorials and calls for volunteers to help.
Cons: You won’t find many templates or extensions for Expression Engine because most people using it are creating their own custom solutions and have no motivation to share them with other developers.
Additional resources: You’ll find decent support and documentation on the Expression Engine site, but you won’t find all of the third-party resources, templates, or extensions available for programs such as Joomla and WordPress.

Hope that helps,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

First let me say that I appreciate the advanced training for Dreamweaver CS2.

I just upgraded to CS3 and will delay the CS4 until later.

I have a “tiger by the tail” in my newest project. My idea is to create an International Search directory, including a CMS module (programmed by others) whereby we have included a mapping solution similar to what “googlemaps” uses. Except the maps are not Naveteqs. . . not that it has anything to do with my main question.

The main concern is that we are going to have a landing page according to every search down to a city or town view for all the cities and towns in the world. I have not even calculated how many landing pages this is, but it is becoming a concern!

Each landing page will have a directory for a class of “thing,” a photo area and content area for information regarding the particulars to the class. A map will correspond on the right side area that is almost the entire visible height of a standard screen.

The gist of this is to provide the opportunity for one “banner skyscraper” ad on each page.

I visualize thousands upon thousands of landing pages and thousands and thousands of banner ads to have to keep track of.

The “site logo banner” will remain constant throughout the pages as will the horizontal navigation bar.

Is there any advice as to what training I could purchase? I do not know php or java or any coding skills. I have been designing in “design” view only.

Best regards,
Steve V.

Hi, Steve,

What you describe can only be efficiently created as a dynamic Web site, using PhP or ASP.NET or ColdFusion or a similar technology.

One of the advantages is that you don’t create a separate landing page for each city or town; you create one template (sometimes called a Master page) and then display content from the database for each city dynamically. In that way, one page design can be used millions of times, displaying different words, a different map, even different ads, each time.

This is a much more complex kind of site to create than I cover in my CS3 Essentials video, but if you are to pull off the site you describe you will definitely need help from experienced programmers. You may also want to consider using one of the Content Management Systems (CMS) already popular on the Web. Many can be customized, and using an existing CMS can save you lots of programming time.

Here are a couple you may want to consider: www.Joomla.com and www.Drupal.org. You would have to customize these to create your own site, but many people specialize in doing so and the rates are often much more reasonable than creating an entirely new system from scratch.

Hope that helps and I wish you all the best,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.

I’m a graphic designer here in Southern California and have been designing and (attempting) to create and publish websites for years. I absolutely couldn’t wait to dive into the Flash and DreamWeaver lessons. I spent the past weekend finishing up your DVDs and felt like I owed you a big thank you for what I learned in such a short time.

I have a question: I’ve worked on Photoshop since the early ’90s, and I’m very comfortable in that application. Is there anything that Fireworks offers that I can’t get from Photoshop? Also, in your opinion, is ColdFusion worth looking into?

Thank you for your time.
Chris

Hi, Chris,

Although Photoshop has many great Web-image optimization features built into it, Fireworks has a few added advantages in the slicing and exporting feature set. In general Photoshop is the more complex and advanced image editor overall, and Fireworks has a few features that make it slightly better for Web design.

That said, most designers seem quite happy with Photoshop, although I know a few professional Web designers who swear by Fireworks because they say it going back and forth between a design created in Fireworks and the page layouts in Dreamweaver is so easy. Fireworks seems especially popular among people who are working on many sites and appreciate the streamlined workflow you can get from using Fireworks and Dreamweaver together.

ColdFusion takes you to another level. If you’re relatively new to Web design, moving on to the kind of dynamic, database-driven sites you can create with ColdFusion can be a big step. In general, unless you have a really big site (100+ pages and growing) or you need many interactive features you want to be able to customize, you probably don’t need to take this step. But if you do want to create a dynamic site, ColdFusion is easier to use than some of the other options, such as PHP, JSP, or ASP.Net.

Hope that helps,
Janine

Still want more? Visit the Dreamweaver Help Center at www.DigitalFamily.com/dreamweaver to find Dreamweaver tips, tricks, and tutorials.