Beginner web design - Dreamweaver or Wordpress?

goTimmygo · 27-04-2009, 20:07

I decided I fancied a challenge, so am going to build a website for our wedding in September. Want to make it look nice, but have contact info, directions, accomodation in the local area, gift info, then pictures on it afterwards.

What am I best off using, as I haven't built a site since I was at Uni in 2000. I have Dreamweaver 2004, and have started slowly working through the help instructions on it.

Would I be better with Wordpress? Or something else?

Guest 47676 · 27-04-2009, 20:21

Personally, I would use a CMS system. They look professional, the fantastic Open Source ones are free, and you can add pretty much what ever you like, from a forum to an image gallery.

I would suggest either go with a simple CMS set up (Drupal perhaps) with a few links on the front page and link into Coppermine, or you could create a simple front end website yourself (in which case I personally prefer Dreamweaver), but I'd still suggest plugging into something like Coppermine.

You can try out every aspect from front end to administration of the different CMS systems here:

www.opensourcecms.com (PHP options are currently the best)

EDIT:// Changed link - that'll teach me not to check it first!

Jez · 27-04-2009, 20:34

Wordpress is easy enough and you can use it as a cms.

goTimmygo · 27-04-2009, 20:53

Can you make a pretty normal website with Wordpress, or does it have to be a blog. by normal I mean standard nav along top, or down left, then text and images in the body.

ajw000 · 27-04-2009, 21:01

go with wordpress, you can make it look totally normal nowadays. You can apply different templates to different pages so you can have non-blog front page and the usual content pages. (i.e this was done with wordpress).

It's great to use, and the template engine is sooo easy to use and adapt.

goTimmygo · 27-04-2009, 21:13

That might be a better plan. Dreamweaver is proving to be really hard work, and my efforts look pretty crap!

ben.bayliss · 27-04-2009, 21:40

Are there any obvious themes people might suggest for 'normal-site-emulation'?

I'd love to find a 'insert-your-graphics-and-go' one for a very low-maintenance site.

Guest 44140 · 27-04-2009, 22:24

depends what your goals are really.

If you want to learn about whats actually going on in the page and how its built up, etc and to create your own custom designs, then use dreamweaver.

If you just want to get something up nice and easy and you can find loads of professional looking templates and set up without much technical knowledge (but not actually learn that much by doing it) , then go wordpress.

nigel_williams · 28-04-2009, 11:56

I've been playing with Wordpress to update a website some friends setup for a youth mentoring scheme. I don't have any real design skills, so it's nice to use one of the many Wordpress themes to give it a polished look. Plugins are easy to add so you can have things like photo albums, slideshows, google maps and event calendars easily and quickly.

This article came up via Digg which might be of help: http://www.noupe.com/wordpress/the-c...wordpress.html

Guest 19474 · 28-04-2009, 16:23

If you're willing to pay a few quid a month then Squarespace is supposed to be very good. Saves having to mess around with hosting too.

goTimmygo · 29-04-2009, 17:12

Ha ha, got myself into a right pickle!!!

Decided to use Wordpress, which is fine, downloaded, managed to change the bits in the config file. My domain was bought with Fasthosts, so just added hosting to it and a my SQL database which Wordpress asked for (I think).

Am currently trying to ftp, it lets me in, but it is not showing the htdocs, logfile and private folders that are supposed to be there according to the help pages. Am about ready to smash this up and abandon. God knows what I've done wrong!!

goTimmygo · 29-04-2009, 17:26

Did I actually need to add MySQL to my hosting?

Feeling like I have wandered into strange and confusing territory!!!

ColinP · 29-04-2009, 18:00

You do need MySQL for hosting Wordpress.

goTimmygo · 29-04-2009, 18:05

Thanks Colin.

OK, so why is it when I ftp into my webspace there is nothing there and I cannot add folders or do anything?

Am I better off using Dreamweaver but starting with ready done templates? Can they be downloaded for free elsewhere?