Altering websites made with other software?

[johnneumann]

Ok guys...I'm a complete newbie to creating a website so please bear with the naive question.

If I use a program like Yahoo's SiteBuilder (drag and drop & templates) to create a website, and then later on get handy with something like Dreamweaver, do programs like SiteBuilder and Dreamweaver allow you to import sites made on other programs for subsequent editing?

Or is a guy stuck with continuing to use one piece of software once he's made a site with it?

[txbakers]

You can convert to any program, or use a bare text editor like Notepad or Textpad.

You will have to wade through the "bad code" to find what needs to stay.

[mack]

Most editors like dreamweaver, frontpage ect have an import function where you can download the entire site from the web and then develop it localy on your own machine.

Mack.

[sidyadav]

Just copy/paste the HTML of any page into any editor you like, and it becomes editable.

Sid

[bagatell]

Don't get hung up on using just one editor, they all have some down sides.

[robert adams]

you don't even have to copy and paste, you can take any html web site and save it to your computer then use any text editor to open it. notepad, wordpad, etc.
Front Page and Dreamweaver, etc. put some of their own coding in pages but you should still be able to edit it and make it what you want.

luck
robert

[Robert Charlton]

Or is a guy stuck with continuing to use one piece of software once he's made a site with it?

You can take the code written in programs like FrontPage and Dreamweaver, clean it up in a text editor and continue to maintain it that way with no problems. You may, though, have difficulty if you then return with the altered code to the original authoring program.

FrontPage in particular used to be extremely troublesome if you did this. And you have to be very careful what you do with pages based on Dreamweaver templates.

I'm not an expert in either of these programs, but I've seen the grief caused by trying to use them after pages were modified outside them.