Editing your own website

So you got a template somewhere (maybe from me) and you want to tweak it and put it up on the web? Or maybe you just want to be able to update your site whenever you want and don’t want to get me to do it… You wanna learn to do it yourself?

I have blogged about this before… And decided to do it again and refer people to this post when they ask about it… (And they often do) Here are some options:

• WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver or FrontPage (What you see is what you get)
• HTML (tweak the pages in the code)
• CMS Content management system

There are pro’s and cons for each of these methods…And they all require a learning curve. Dreamweaver works best… You can use FrontPage or something but once it gets ahold of that page it tends to do bizarre things to the page but the site still works (usually)

I tried a free one before too: http://nvu.com it worked OK but when you “publish” the site it scatters the files all over the server instead of neatly into folders like Dreamweaver does… I have had a few people use it but they couldn’t seem to understand the program and how it “publishes” the pages.

It looks like they have a new version so it may work better now…

Some people have installed a WYSIWYG editor that works from a browser… http://www.wysiwygpro.com/

I think it works OK but I know it has mangled one of my sites and I’m going to cut them loose after the 1^st of the year because of it... They never gave me any money and I’m hosting the site for free but can’t use it on my portfolio.

Some folks try to use “site builder’ tools that are offered by their host… Those things are not compatible with the software I use…. People often already have a site they designed with those things but want me to fix it up... When I do that it is hard for me to get them to understand they no longer can use the “site builder” tools because it will overwrite everything I have done.

My server has an area where you can log into the server and view your files and actually edit the pages from there either with html or with a built in WYSIWYG but I have never played with that stuff on my server before…

A Content Management System is a “web portal” that is all managed from a “backend” of the site… There are many sites that use these things. You basically install it and then “skin it” to try to make it look like you want and then add content in the backend… I have played with a few of these things and used to try and get folks to use them because many of them have lots of “interactive” features and stuff. But they can be quite confusing too… And buggy… I had a personal one up before but hackers kept trying to hack into it and I just got tired of fighting it… Still, they are pretty cool.

I do use a very small CMS on many of my sites for “editing news” articles and it works right along with existing pages… http://www.cutephp.com/ it used to be free but now they want a link if you don’t register it.

This personal Christian site is using it: Grapes of Grace among others of mine.

Good Grief… Isn’t that a lot to take in?