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Hi All,
With all recommendations for using Blogging software, and especially Wordpress.org going on in the forum on the one hand, and people still discussing which html editor to use (Dreamweaver, Frontpage,…) on the other hand, I wonder what you all consider best practice when starting a new (affiliate) website. Wordpress or html editor. (Or both but then how?)
In short my question I guess is: is using a html editor becoming slowly unnecessary?
Francis
I think it really depends. I know most these days recommend just using Wordpress.org as a CMS (content management system) much like you would use an html editor. I personally use both (I use XSitePro web design software and have a blog attached to that website as well). It's really your call but I'm going to venture to guess people will tell you that yes, the html editor is becoming slowly unnecessary with all the Wordpress capabilities.
As for how I do it, I just build my websites in XSitePro and then within my host's cpanel, I add a wordpress.org blog to the site using Fantastico (a simple few steps to get a WP blog on your domain).
I'm actually looking at converting some of my HTML stuff into Wordpress, just to make outsourcing easier. I love HTML, but it seems these days everyone is more familiar with Wordpress and it makes it easy to assign "roles" to any helpers you have so that nothing gets broken on accident.
I do not ever ever edit any page directly, without backing it up first as it can be time-consuming to find the last backup of that page you made. Maybe I'm old-fashioned but as of now, I still prefer to use a HTML editor. There can be a lot of coding to be done and it is often easy to accidentally miss a few lines 'cos of lack of color coding and highlighting and other niceties that come with a Html editor. :) And I'm not ready to deal with over 300 lines of coding, right in a mini-window. :o
I think the general rule of thumb these days is to use HTML only if it's only going to be a few pages that you won't be changing often. If you're planning a blog-style site or one that will grow and need regular updating, the advantages of a WordPress installation are hard to beat.
If you're not familiar with using a WordPress install, I'd suggest getting a free subdomain on your existing hosting, doing a non-public test install of WP and checking it out. There are a few hassles a WP newbie has to sweat out and it's nice to do that when it doesn't count.
Wade Watson
I use wordpress if it's a site that I know will grow to more than a few pages. If I'm just selling one product, I just use the html editor in my cpanel.
I use both Dreamweaver and WordPress on a daily basis. Single sales/squeeze/landing-type pages I build as html most of the time and use Dreamweaver.
However, the majority of the sites I do are now in WordPress, but do still do the occassional static html site now and then. :)
I use Wordpress pretty much for everything and I can usually make it do anything I would want a html site to do. To me it's less work and easier organization. Plus much easier to outsource once I get to that point.
Speaking of squeeze pages and WordPress, I ran across this interesting WordPress theme, WordPress Squeeze Page, that makes it easy to do a squeeze page/sales page site using WordPress. I tested and found it a decent, if rather basic WP theme. My only issue is that the header graphic is a bit complex and not easy for newbies to change.
Wade Watson
I use Wordpress for all my sites. I had a couple that were in html but converted them over to Wordpress to take advantage of some plugins.