[starshaped77]

Hello there,

I wondered if anyone could help. I'm just starting out doing a bit of website design. (I do design for large format printing so this is all a bit new to me.......eeeekkk!) It is not so much the design part I'm worried about I'm quite confident that I can put together a nice website, its just the updating part. I'm doing the website for an unsigned band so some elements of the website need to be easily editable such as new/gigs and shop page. I'm doing the work in dreamweaver and once the site is uploaded I was wondering if there is anyway that they will be able to take over some of the the updating of the site. They are skint so the chances of them having dreamweaver themselves are slim. What would be my best solution for this? I'm quite keen to give them a nice website and to make sure they have everything in place to be able to maintain it. Any help greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[chris_17]

A content management system would be the best way to go, something like Joomla or Wordpress, however you need a pretty good knowledge of coding and php to be able to design a decent one.
Of course they don't need Dreamweaver to edit the site and could just use notepad, however I wouldn't recommend it incase the delete something important by accident!

Perhaps get a developer to code it for you, while you design it? Or modify an existing wordpress theme?

Chris

[starshaped77]

Thanks for the info Chris, I'll have a look into that. Going down that route, does that mean I'd produce the site in Joomla or wordpress instead of Dreamweaver?

I'm a bit cautious about them updating the site themselves as they know less about producing websites than I do and I'm really just starting out myself. I know how to produce one in dreamweaver but that is about it. I guess you have to start somewhere though!

[chris_17]

Well you can however you have to use the text editor and not the design view, like I say for wordpress you need a good HTML, PHP and CSS knowledge, there are a lot of tutorials out there, take a look on google.

Some others might have some ideas, I always just say wordpress because I think its great

[matobo]

Originally Posted by starshaped77

Thanks for the info Chris, I'll have a look into that. Going down that route, does that mean I'd produce the site in Joomla or wordpress instead of Dreamweaver?

I'm a bit cautious about them updating the site themselves as they know less about producing websites than I do and I'm really just starting out myself. I know how to produce one in dreamweaver but that is about it. I guess you have to start somewhere though!

I have done a few wordpress sites that the owner can update themselves, it is very user friendly with a WYSIWYG editor in the background that they can get to grips with - especially good for cheapie people without money to spend (like most of the friends I have looking for an easy option without paying...) I don't know how to code styles from scratch into a content management system, but you don't need Dreamweaver at all - I have it and I know how to use it, but it won't be needed, promise - find a theme that you like (there are lots of free ones out there) and update the css if necessary to change spacings, colours or fonts, but overwrite all the original graphics completely to personalise it it for your clients - open the original images in photoshop from your hard-drive, change the colour mode from index to rgb if necessary, make the amends on layers and then save for web using the same name and extension - make sure that you work to the same sizes as the originals, so that it fits into the current code (keep original .psd working files too so that you can go back to them to make amends). You can actually change the entire look and feel of the original template just by playing and being creative.

It takes a bit of thinking to get the pieces of the jigsaw to fit graphically and it is a bit of a backwards way to do it, but if you work directly to uploading to it on a server, then you can view it online and make amends accordingly as you go along.

Make sure you leave the original creator's name intact though as the code is essentially still theirs (keep your nose clean) and add an additional line saying that the graphics have been amended by you though.

[starshaped77]

Hi Matobo,

Thanks so much for the info, it makes wordpress a little more clearer as I have never used it but I will definitely be giving it a go.