What software to use for large site construction.

investment to build a large website

[gstick]

I have built two websites with Notepad, manual coding and Windows file organization. I am fairly strong with HTML and CSS. I am in the process of learning PHP and MySQL. I have never worked with Javascript.

I am now in the planning stage for a large business site with should grow to 100 pages or more.

I have just started working with Textpad. I am wondering if it might be time to make the investment of time and money in Dreamweaver? Or do I have more basic work at this stage?

[trillianjedi]

I wouldn't concentrate so much on the volume of pages - typing out text is no quicker in a WYSIWYG editor than it is in notepad (and if you have all layout in CSS, it's easy anyway).

The bigger question is how complex are the pages going to be? For example, for large amounts of tabular data, I'll fire up DW any day over a text editor - simply for the ability to be able to drag table columns around.

With a CSS template, so all your HTML has is a header and content divided with H and P tags, I would go for the text editor any day of the week. It's a lot quicker.

TJ

[shigamoto]

To me it sounds like if you are going to put up a business site with hundereds of pages you will need a content management system. I wouldn't want to administrate that kind of site in Dreamweaver or a text editor for that matter.

If you go with a CMS you might continue to use a text editor or also use Dreamweaver. Have you considered one of those HTML editors?

[gstick]

For TJ
The idea of CSS template is a new one for me which I will follow up with. I am concerned about practical questions like updating a common menu over many pages and making sure that all links are working.

For Shigamoto
A Content Management System may be what I am looking for. I will look into that. I have just begun working with Text Editor but need more time with it.

[rawood3]

I'd forget using Notepad as an html editor. Go to www.evrsoft.com and download the free 1stPage HTML editor...it is pretty darn good.
For scripts, I like DynamicDrive....www.dynamicdrive.com. It is a very well run site with tons of scripts written by volunteer webmasters. Good luck.

Russ

[mack]

A content management system may be the way to go. The main benefit being you do not have to edit pages in the regular way, all editing and page building is done through a web browser, therefore making it nice and simple.

Another way it to use includes and build a site either in php, perl, asp or any other scripting language that you can use. This will mean having common components shared between pages such as headers, footers and other design sections.

Mack.