Dreamweaver Users please HELP!

[lertno]

I'm using Dreamweaver for my site and it seems that no matter which template I use Google seems to see my sidebar before my content because it is first in the code.

Has anyone had this problem?

Any Tips or suggestions?

I just have a feeling it's hurting me in the search results.

[MikeS]

Do you have the site up, and a URL you can share, so we can view it?

[lertno]

Hey Mike

I've tried so many times to try to fix it.

Now I just tried again and "Click" It hit me.

I just moved the main content above the sidebar in the code, then just switched the values for the sidebar and main content, then took the opposite of the values. And it works.

If that makes any sense at all.

Hopefully this improves my site so google sees my Main Content First. I noticed that when I did a search for specific words, in the description it would have the words highlighted but they were from my sidebar.

Hoping this will improve my rankings.

I don't understand why the dreamweaver templates would be setup like this in the first place.

Thanks for your time.

[MikeS]

That makes since... If you don't mind, I'm curious, what made you choose to use Dreamweaver as opposed to using Wordpress, Drupal etc. which are CMS programs?

[lertno]

Hey Mike

Well I was working on another site that is for a non profit organization and I decided to use dreamweaver for it.

I never really thought of using a CMS program. I was actually thinking that I would probably be good to be able to have people comment at the bottom of the articles whether they used them or not.

Are you using wordpress?

Do you know if there is much involved in getting it going?

Maybe it will improve my site for the users.

[MikeS]

I use Wordpress for about 75% of all my sites, the other 25% is a mix of Drupal, HTML with Dreamweaver or hand coded, and Free Social Media sites.

Is Wordpress easy, Yes for the most part, quick to load if your using hosting like HostGator which have the Fantastico built in program loader. Or you can manually load it about as easy as Dreamweaver with an FTP client.

One thing to understand about Wordpress is that there are two versions, Wordpress.com (http://www.wordpress.com) and Wordpress.org (http://www.wordpress.org), the dot com version is hosted by Wordpress and is limited to what you can do with it, the dot org version is hosted on your own host or server. I use the .org version for my sites.

Once you start working with Wordpress, you might not want to use Dreamweaver much, try it out, it's FREE other then the hosting for the .org.
You can setup and play with the .com version for free just to see some of the features, just note, the .com version is limited to the plugins etc. that you can use. And if you wish to get really into Wordpress.org versions you can program your own plug-ins yourself.

Lynn also has some good stuff about Wordpress on her Clicknewz.com (http://www.clicknewz.com/) site, just go their and do a search.:)

[premiumweb]

I used Dreamweaver for most of the past 11 years I've been doing design but I started using WordPress about 6 months ago and I love it. It's just so much easier to get the site going, plugins are awesome, changing a site's theme (look) is easier, etc.

[lertno]

I'll give it a try and let you know how it turns out.