WebProWorld - View Single Post

slideri812 · #6 (**permalink**) 06-05-2007, 11:26 AM

Hey,

I have been building sites for years. We are a MM shop. As far as templates go DW has all of the tools any ones needs for creating and maintaining large static sites. They key is in the design. Not the look, but how you put all of the pieces together. I create a root template in DW. SAVE it as a template and use the template tools. Second is to use the library objects. These are great for footers and other repeating elements that need to be changed from time to time. You simply open the lib object, make a change, save, changes are populated to all instances of the object used through out the site. Make template variations from the root template. Since my contact pages are PHP I create a new page, detach from the template, save as PHP. All the lib objects are there. FYI I use lib's for main and sub nav items most of the time.
Finally, and you are on the right track here, we use CSS to control as much of the presentation as possible. Though I have mentioned this last, it is actually a key part of the root template development. I easily maintain sites in excess of 100 pages with this system. I have some that are updated every month, it only take a couple of hours per site. This includes archiving old pages, updating site map, updating features and news pages and linking it all back to the front page.

To that end, good design (from the template POV) is key in the use of Joomla!. I have been using it for 4 years now (started with Mambo). In Jan of 08 we will no longer be creating static sites, even for our 5 page site clients.

Sure, there are other CMS out there, and I suggest that you try several. After having done this myself, our shop adopted Joomla! as the CMS to embrace, get to know intimately. Besides, as with all OS apps you need to look at more then just the app itself. You need to look at the community, how large it is, how active it is, how much help can you really get. Also, what kind of extensibility is available? How is the API? Even if you can't program custom items yourself, you need to know what kind of a pool of experienced programmers there is to draw upon for hire and for help.

just mtc