Help: Wordpress or Dreamweaver???

Hello gabby6480,

One of the first things that I learned on my webdesign journey (I'm a WordPress addict!) is the following: "do not reinvent the wheel." We are in 2011, which means that more likely than not, millions of webdesigners put together HMTL or PHP pages before you. Even better, there are "done-for-you" and "ready-made" solutions available for most of the webdesign questions you have.

You are asking if your best bet would be to start learning HTML or if it would be just wasting your time. Before jumping into the creation of such technical pages, here is what I believe you should wonder:

1. What are the benefits of learning how to produce such pages (sales pages) in HTML/PHP?
Is it for you to know how it works and feel better by understanding this aspect of website development, or is it for you to go fast and reach your long term goal quickly?
> If it's for understanding purpose, congratulations, not everybody has the patience to learn something which will have little impact on their bank account but greater impact on their expertize!
> If it's to reach your big goal fast - then you shouldn't bother and should go for OptimizePress and similar solutions. You want it fast and you want to learn as you start to bank, even if it's not much dollars, you can still learn from solutions that are already out there rather than hesitating for decades. By hesitating or by learning slowly first, you could be missing out on money-making opportunities. The best advice I could give you is the following: launch it and adapt afterwards! The key is to have it out there. You can always ask for advices later, but you can't expect anybody to show you how it works if you do not have anything to show. Be fearless and launch at least one such website, even if it's just one sales page

2. Can I really beat the solutions out there?
> Trust me, if it wasn't working, nobody would be in there for so long.
Wordpress blogs rank quickly and high in Google Search Results Pages. Ultimately, whatever is the type of page you design, as long as it's produced through Wordpress, it will be indexed and see results faster than any simple HTML or PHP page. Without talking about all the plugins that help you skyrocket the SEO aspect of your WordPress website.
> What about the security?
Do you know or plan on knowing what are the typical hackers methods to exploit HTML or PHP pages? One error in the pages or around the folders hosted on your server and your website could start generating messages or scripts that you could not control. CMS like Wordpress are fairly secure and are responsible for millions of blogs updated daily on the web (last time I checked, WordPress was downloaded by 11 millions people around the globe. That's quite a lot and they probably are very analytic when it comes to the security of their users.)

So I believe that you should learn how to do the basics: HTML, CSS, PHP because it is going to help you tremendously when you will have to create or modify the custom templates of any future CMS you will be using. This is invaluable information that you will keep forever and will be able to put forward in a conversation or even at a job interview.

But if you want to go fast and furious on reaching your goal - do yourself a favor and get the best of what is already available out there: OptimizePress and other similar solutions. You can learn webdesign basics at any given time - and it's probably better to do it when you have money in your bank from your projects and can invest yourself fully in the classes rather than having to worry every single minute that what you are learning might not have any impact on your bank account.

I give this advice based on what I've been through and I know that if I look back in time, this is exactly what I wish I heard back then.

Best of luck for your projects gabby! And keep me posted on how it's going for you.

- Patty

You could also hire someone to do it for you or at least help you on site like elancing.net

If you don't have any web design skill it's much more convenient to pay someone who is already an expert.

My personal opinion when it comes to developing squeese pages is to use your skill sets the best you can If you need to learn a skill in this case html you are using time which you can be invoicable in other areas if for example (you can write great sales copy). I think sometimes it's better to utilize other peoples/warriors skills again with html/css and using dreamwearver. With the amount of cross browser bugs out there today. I would consider working with the other warriors to achieve what you want and make. An exmaple of this is I would love to look after the companies accounts but I know my time is better used working on invoicable work and using an accountant to deal with that side of the business. If their were more hours in the day I would love to get involved in everything, sadly their isn't :-\

Hope my advice helps.

I will suggest you for Wordpress, it is great for multiple pages website. In html if you need correction on header/footer you need to edit on every pages, but here just you need change on single file.. Or you can develop own CMS using PHP/mySQL...

Wrong question...

WP is the CMS (content management system) and DW is the design tool.
Advanced players use both: WP for publishing the content and DW to design/code the layout or presentation of the data (aka making a custom theme).

Since in WP you can have custom Page templates... you can use any html editor to put together your sales/optin page and add the template to your theme. And then create a Page using the template.

The custom Page template can look the same as the rest of your blog's design - or have a completely different look.

Thanks for the useful post!

I use Wordpress for all of my sites but I still use HTML and CSS on those sites The coding to do up a sales letter type page is the same in WP as it is on a straight forward HTML page for instance if you want to us custom bullets for your list or you want to format your texxt with a particular font and letter spacing etc. So you can and probably learn HTML and CSS while working with WP. The reason I use WP is for all the plugins like SEO pressor (Great SEO plugin)

Yes, gabby, Istvan is correct. Dreamweaver and Wordpress are two different animals.

With Wordpress there are thousands of themes, you just have to go through a lot until you find one that does what you want. It's a content management system.

With Dreamweaver you will have a lot more control in building the pages, but it does have a bit of a learning curve. Of course, so does WP for that matter.

For a blog, nothing beats Wordpress. For quick custom design, Dreamweaver wins. You really need to learn each. And if you are outsourcing the construction of your sites, you can make little tweaks to your sites after someone else has built them for you.

For me when designing a sales page, I like Dreamweaver - probably because I know it better. There are some courses in a book available for Dreamweaver, and your local community college or adult education programs will probably have a Dreamweaver class. I did both - course in a book followed by a class.

Even with that, I still often need to come here to this forum to get answers.

I sent you a PM.

:-Don

I am totally agree with Istvan. Both are different platforms.