Should I change from Netobjects Fusion

[wanadrive]

I started using NOF as it was easy to use and produced fairly pleasing results. I need advice as to whether I should change. I understand that the html is bloated and that this may affect my rankings with Google and my ability to optimize the site. I also ran a w3c validator and it came up with 109 errors on my home page - most of which relate to the automatic code produced by NOF. Could this also affect my SE positioning? I guess my basic problem is I find it easy to use but I'm worrying its affecting my rankings which is very important. I also know Google doesn't list most of my backlinks.

I've done a one month free trial of Dreamweaver and found it very complicated and expensive! Is there a halfway house that is not too expensive and not too difficult but which is nice and clean for the Search Engines? Any other advice available?

[pmkpmk]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

Fusion (NOF) was the very first "useable" WYSIWYG editor out there. I switched to it many years ago, when hand-coding my sites was simply not possible anymore due to reduced time/resources. When I started to build a team, we switched to the NetObjects Authoring Server (NOS), which was again unique back then to allow collaborate site development. Unfortunately it did not get the attention from NetObjects it deserved, so development stopped at some point and it was later sold to a competitor who actually let it die.

Thus said, I am very fond of the concept that NetObjects developed many years ago and managed to transfer to the new company which now maintans Fusion. Unfortunately, NOF is too bloated today.

When using the NOS was not manageable anymore, I considere various options and settled for a Content Management System (CMS). This system needed an HTML template, and reluctantly I used Adobe GoLive for it. Not that GoLive produces super lean and clean code - far from it! But NOF produced even worse code, and it would have been much more work to trim the NOF code than it was with the GoLive code.

I can only recommend the use of a CMS - even for small sites! Make your clean, lean and fast HTML template once (you can even do it manually), and you never have to worry about your code again.