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posted by martyb on Monday December 28 2015, @11:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the some-assembly-required dept.

My first web page was back around 1994, hand coded, learning HTML by trial and error. In retrospect we had things easy.

That was followed by a number of years of Dreamweaver, a program that worked very, very well for me for some moderately big sites, then later several years of Wordpress based sites because it was fast and easy.

It's time again to upgrade our sites, and what I'm hoping to find is an open-source package that will do what Dreamweaver did, but bring that ease of use into an age of CMS and responsive design. My specific goals are below.

[More after the break.]

  • Our sites tend to run to fifteen or twenty pages, don't require blogs, comments, or forums. They're informational and business oriented.
  • We seem to do a big redesign every other year, with content more or less static. There's likely to be one big update each year, and minor changes off and on.
  • Because we're not using the package on a daily or even weekly basis, anything complex or arcane tends to get forgotten, and has to be relearned next time that you need it.
  • One of the great things about Dreamweaver was the ease of designing and using a page template. I really liked that.
  • One of the reasons for moving away from Wordpress - aside from a recent upgrade borking one of our sites - is a feeling that there are about a million Wordpress sites out there, all of which look decidedly Wordpress.
  • We're also mildly concerned about security. Because we're not monitoring the sites every day it's likely we will miss anything unpleasant that creeps in.
  • I've spent a few hours with Drupal and Joomla a couple of years ago, but hit the wall pretty fast. They seem to be what I would like to use, but I just don't have the time these days to work through what seems to be fairly obscure and difficult learning curve. I just know that there's some underlying logic, but I've yet to find it. (That may have improved since then, and I'm up for looking at them again.)
  • I've also looked at a couple of the on-line design package like Weebly and Webflow, but they're fairly limited from what I can see, or want me to cough up a monthly subscription for full features.
  • Yes, I want the whole she-bang hosted on a server that I control. Yes I'm happy installing stuff, configuring stuff, and mucking about.
  • An active user forum is a big plus for me.

Ultimately I guess what I'm looking for is the Holy Grail - a program or application that will let me get something professional up and running fairly fast, then leave lots of room for tweaking and improving any and all aspects of it.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday December 28 2015, @12:52PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Monday December 28 2015, @12:52PM (#281657)

    First some confusion, or at least an analogy request:

    .... don't require blogs, comments, or forums ...

    ... An active user forum is a big plus for me ...

    You might have some fun with analogies. I want a graphics art project, like a printed newsletter of two dozen pages, but on the web. Or do you want a facebook page? Or if one of those analogies is any good, WHY aren't you just creating a facebook page or sticking a PDF version of the company newsletter online, such as what additionally or different do you need or what needs tweaking or are you asking for a wiki of some sort where only you and a couple others get edit privs, or ...

    The second thing is the issue

    Because we're not using the package on a daily or even weekly basis, anything complex or arcane tends to get forgotten, and has to be relearned next time that you need it.

    The first problem is the definition of whats good to web developers is whats complicated as hell and impresses other web developers with its trickiness. As a group they have no awareness of how they're perceived beyond what impresses other web devs. They don't care about users or graphics artist standards or business concerns, just impressing other web devs with how fancy and complicated their code is. Look at the types of things the noobs on Hacker News like for a good laugh. So you're asking a population for advice about something they're just going to screw up, like asking your barber how often he thinks you should get a haircut from him, or for that matter your dentist.

    The other problem is if you're trying to do "graphics artist produces newsletter on the internet" the existing graphics artist tools to make a nice professional newsletter are the definition of the opposite of what you want WRT ease of use because because the task is inherently complicated, insert the stereotypical "adding a GUI to sendmail won't make it easier to use" or "adding an IDE to Intercal won't make it easier to use". So by analogy with similar tasks it isn't happening because its inherently either cookie cutter or unprofessional in appearance or complicated as all heck. Or I guess what I'm saying is true professional level desktop publishing software is extremely hard to use successfully, arguably worse than CAD or IDEs, so if you're trying to output that, but on the web, you're in for a bit of fun inherent to the problem itself, not inherent to the software trying to solve the problem.

    The third thing is

    We're also mildly concerned about security. Because we're not monitoring the sites every day it's likely we will miss anything unpleasant that creeps in.

    Is not going to mix very well with

    Yes, I want the whole she-bang hosted on a server that I control. Yes I'm happy installing stuff, configuring stuff, and mucking about.

    You'd be surprised how helpful nagios and puppet or similar can be, but you're still going to have plenty of fun at 2am when some security hole is announced. Just sayin. On the other hand if you just annually upload static HTML and CSS to what amounts to a outsourced CDN, its all someone elses problem.

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