Dreamweaver CS4

[katielovespink]

Hey LJ, who here uses Dreamweaver to build websites? Does anyone have any good sites for tutorials that they can recommend me? I've always built HTML by hand in the past, so with this, I'm just like "HURRRRRRRRRRR, WUT?" I wish I had the patience to teach myself like I did with Photoshop at 14, but 14-year-old Katie had a lot more free time. XD

Comments

[insane_pencil]

http://www.adobe.com/support/dreamweaver/tutorial_index.html

*bows*

[katielovespink]

Har har, gee, thanks. XD

[kichara]

Photoshop is a LOT easier to learn than Dreamweaver is. DW has made me shed many tears and scream at my computer at 5 in the morning, trying to get it to work.

http://www.vineyardesigns.com/resources/dreamweaver/

And, with more links than you probably care to look at:
http://delicious.com/Kamanda/html

Good luck! D:

[livvylove]

Dreamweaver is only good as an HTML editor. It adds a lot of crap markup, doesn't validate and is a pain to update if you ever want to build a good site using the same content. Plus as a Web Developer I could not ever suggest something like that. Stick with HTML and use some basic PHP like include for your header, footer, and menu if you want to do something easy. If you want to do something cool then go with a content management system, which I wouldn't mind helping you out with since that's pretty easy for me.

What kind of specs do you have for hosting? do you have access to MySQL and PHP? Also what kind of access do you have (ftp, ssh)?

[katielovespink]

I don't know what a content management system is. @_@ I don't want anything complicated, just something a little more complex than the layouts I've done in the past... which doesn't take much!

I'd bring up my cpanel to tell you what specs I have, but my host has everything down for maintenance, so I can't tell you at the moment. I'm sure I have both, and I use FTP for file management and uploading.

Well, if I can't generate HTML in Dreamweaver, I do think I'll still like it as an HTML editor!

[livvylove]

Feel free to IM me and I will be happy to help you with PHP. But yea don't use dreamweaver to create your site just to edit html.

I like JEdit for a code editor, it's free and it has plugins that color the code and allow you to edit directly on the server plus so many other useful things that you wouldn't really need but I do.

[twinklebat]

Yaya's current site was done with Dreamweaver. So she might have some tips. I was going to try and use it to until glorious WordPress was suggested to me. I'm really liking it for something not super flashy and easy to work with. I also have a sneaking suspicion that Adella's site might have also been put together using WordPress.

[katielovespink]

But WordPress is really only for blogging-esque sites, though, isn't it? I had something similar (GreyMatter) in the past when I kept a personal site, but that's not really what I'm trying to do now. :[ Can you generate pages and galleries in WordPress, or just blog entries??

[twinklebat]

You can generate pages as easily as posting a blog entry and get plug-ins to do galleries. I've listed the plug-ins I'm using on my site so far if you're interested in any of those. And if you want to see some better examples just check out some showcased WordPress sites.
http://wordpress.org/showcase/

[asatira]

It's been pointed out that Dreamweaver is good for putting it together. However, if you want to lay it out first, and especially the graphics, try working first with Photoshop, then export the pieces to Dreamweaver. The links provided above should be helpful.