Hi, there. I have returned to Web Design after a few years and have notice a lot of change.

 

Dreamweaver with small edits made in Notepad was the way at that time. Is it still a credible option?

 

How does this compare with using Wordpress etc?

 

In a nutshell, what is the most up to date aproach?

 

Thanks

 

APW

For e-commerce websites you can try prestashop. - excellent back office management features.

How many years is a few years?

 

Dreamweaver is just a text editor with wysiwyg capabilities and FTP too. You can still use it, there are just a few more editors out now that there were I suppose. Try Sublime Text or Text Mate for example.

 

Wordpress is a CMS, not an editor. You can edit inside it but I wouldn't recommend it. You can use Dreamweaver to edit and create a custom theme or add functionality to it.

 

To do the above, you should be fairly competent at HTML, CSS, PHP and reading the Wordpress Codex looking for the correct API's

 

In terms of front end work, you may want to look at things like (apart from HTML and CSS) Javascript, Sass,and Grunt for example.

Edited March 19, 201412 yr by Mr Ben

Study basic HTML5 semantic construction coding, along with a bit of CSS3 to aid in the flow of your site's layout (floating, positioning etc), find a text editor - any text editor, and you've found the latest and best way to build a site.

Edited March 19, 201412 yr by throzen

Welcome to the forum APW.

I think the major difference in web design today compared to say ten years ago is a more modular development approach.

Web applications have become more complex and is constructed of various technologies.

It's almost impossible for one person to master all aspects of web design/development. That is why frameworks have become so popular.

If your main skill is design work you can still create powerful web applications by using a CMS to handle database queries or libraries like jQuery for complex frontend fuctionality.

In contrast if your main talent is programming you can still achieve decent designs with CSS frameworks like Bootstrap.

 

Depending on your career choice and temperament you can:

1. Choose to become a specialist in a field.
2. Pick a variety of frameworks and learn to use them to develop projects fast.

Edited March 19, 201412 yr by Nillervision

I know things are different over here in the states. If you mention you use Dreamweaver over here, you get laughed out of the business... if you manage to find a job in the first place.

I know things are different over here in the states. If you mention you use Dreamweaver over here, you get laughed out of the business... if you manage to find a job in the first place.

 

I'm glad Dreamweaver is possibly less tolerated in the States than it is over here, although admittedly I use it at work because the code editing side to it is pretty good... but the rest is terrible, especially the server file manager.

I somewhat doubt that - for some - their habits have changed dramatically. Let's not forget people can be very stuck in their ways.

 

Unless you're planning on using different technologies that could potentially require a more intelligent IDE, then what worked for you then should work for you now - albeit I am not a huge advocate of Adobe Dreamweaver, nor Notepad. You need something with basic features such as line numbers, proper tabbing, etc.

 

I currently use Brackets.io (the plugins available are sufficient for [me]), but lately many great editors are in development. Ultimately, no one can make this decision for you. It is completely down to preference.

Really not true I'm afraid.

 

The absolute best way I know of to build a website involves version control, test driven development, automated builds and automated tools for things like testing and linting. This, combined with continuous integration/continuous deployment, collaborative code reviews and great IDE tools such as intellij/phpstorm, is the best, most professional way I know of. This is beyond the scope of most developers though in my experience.

 

I'd say at the very least you need to be using version control such as git: http://git-scm.com/, get used to automated tools such as grunt: http://gruntjs.com/ and use a decent IDE such as intellij/phpstorm/webstorm. Version control is mandatory.

 

With respect, APW states that he is getting back into web design, and given that he has noticed there is a lot for him to learn, I think backend development is a little out of his scope currently.

Edited March 20, 201412 yr by jakdothtml

Version control systems such as git is used for both front and backend, and really should be used on any project, especially if it's being built by a team of developers.

 

Another great thing with git is how it can tie in with ssh and using those combined using the terminal is so much faster than messing about with ftp.

 

I see more and more often now that agencies require applicants to be comfortable using git.

 

 

Css preprocessors such as Sass and html preprocessors like Haml are also becoming increasingly popular and since I've learnt them the coding process has sped up vastly.

 

Task managers such as Grunt have more recently become a big part of the workflow. Grunt is fantastic and automates a lot of the time consuming processes we once had such as code minification, lossless image optimisation.

 

The days of Dreamweaver as the go to product for web devs has gone - thank goodness!

Edited March 20, 201412 yr by rbrtsmith

Today the best means to learn anything is youtube. Even like you I am now going to develop my website. So rather than deploying any developer I have studied a lot Wordpress and have decided to develop the site myself only.

There's a term thats come to fruition over the past 18-24 months which is "rapid prototyping".

 

This is a methodology that web designers and developers have been implementing by using frameworks such as Twitter's Bootstrap or Zurb's Foundation both of which are packed with features such as responsive web design and a selection of javascript effects etc which you may find as a great starting point rather than trying to learn from scratch.

 

These two frameworks are easy to build on top of and can be used to construct anything from basic HTML pages to full on CMS themes.

 

All you need to get started is the framework documentation which is available online plus a text editor such as Coda, Sublime Text, Dreamweaver or even something much simpler such as TextWrangler.

Lots of good recommendations above - I'd say that Sass and Git are almost essential these days, if only because so many blogs and tutorials will assume that you are using them.

 

Here's a more controversial suggestion: Wordpress, or some other well known content management system.

 

Being from a database/programming background, I was very sniffy about using Wordpress for a long time but its becoming very hard to avoid. The nature of the modern web is very much content driven, and users expect the content to change frequently (as do search engines). It is not always desireable to be the only person who can update a site, even if you do have clients that will pay you to make very small changes.

 

You can of course develop your own CMS functionality but, as I discovered to my cost recently, you can never be sure what kind of chaos clients are going to unleash when you leave them to it. The back end of Wordpress is under constant development and is pretty much bulletproof.

I've always used Komodo Edit for "hand coding" there is no WYSIWYG editor though, so if you confident in your coding abilities this software is very good, in my opinion.

Really hard question to answer! This sounds like abit of a 'on the fence' answer but it all depends on what you want to achieve out of the website.

Wordpress, Joomla etc are great to use because you can customise already great pre programmed themes, if the know how is there with html and css you have it well covered!

A code editor - in my case Coda 2 - and a browser. Job done. Oh, and a MAMP installation, assuming you're going the Linux way and need to develop a dynamic site on your local machine.