Create template for client to update their own site

Does anyone have any tips for making Dreamweaver Templates for clients?

[jetnovo]

I'm about to start building a site for a charter yacht. The client has a rudementary knowledge of HTML and is in the process of self-teaching herself Macromedia Dreamweaver.

I'm fond of building sites using Dreamweaver Templates, and am keen to use them for this site to prevent the client from accidentally changing key things like navigation and general page layout.

The client will be wanting to update a photo gallery page, adding pics and text as she does. It's easy for me to make various types of editable regions to allow her to do this (and provide a guideline for using the correct CSS styles) - but can anyone suggest anything else I should consider when building a template-based site for someone else to maintain?

[limbo]

What about Contribute? I thought you use it already?

When I am creating Contribute based sites I really push the use of editable regions and CSS - so they can't make a mess too easily (still very easy though ;) )

So I might code:

<h2>
<!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="usertitle" -->

Users Title Text

<!-- TemplateEndEditable -->
</h2>
<p>
<!-- TemplateBeginEditable name="userpara1" -->

Users Paragraph Text

<!-- TemplateEndEditable -->
</p>
<hr>

.... etc

This way I'm not leaving too much up to chance.

You are going to need a lot of patience though if you are expecting her to take to this easily. Begginers might have the right frame of mind for this but can make mincemeat from your perfectly crafted pages with out too much effort.

<added> I'm not stalking you btw ;) </added>

[jetnovo]

Hi Limbo

Yes you're so right about users making mincemeat of sites when updating themselves!

I do have a couple of clients using Contribute and it works generally well (well, as well as can be expected given their insistance on trying to apply MS Word formatting concepts to HTML). Unfortuantely though, this particular client doesn't want to buy Contribute since she already has Dreamweaver, she has a rudimentary knoledge of HTML (but not CSS), and is keen to learn.

I think I'll do exactly what you've suggested - make the editable regions really tightly defined.

Generally until now I've just had one big editable area called "body" which encompassed pretty much everything except the navigation, metadata and footnotes. I shall have to tighten my controlling grip!