WordPress Weblog Assignment
Hand Coding vs Dreamweaver vs WordPress
Web publishing can be accomplished through a variety of methods that depend on the publishers skills as well as the overall content requirements for the site being built. The three most common methods for building a site are hand coding, utilization of WYSIWYG editors, and utilization of content management servers or CMS. Each of these methods has strengths and weaknesses, but they can all be powerful tools for creating a professional looking site.
Hand coding is the process of creating a site using only hand written code that can actually be done in something as simple as a text editor. The primary advantage of hand coding is that the author has full control over every piece of code that is placed on a page. Naturally, this methods provides the greatest flexibility over code and content management since the author is not limited by the available features or the techniques for coding that would be available on a WYSIWYG editor or CMS. Editing existing code can also be simpler assuming that the hand written code is clean and well documented. However, the virtues of hand coding come with a price. Generally speaking, hand coding can be a more time consuming process and requires the author to acquire the knowledge of every bit of code that will be used in the page. Therefore, hand coding a professional looking site requires expert knowledge of the code techniques that will be used in its development.
For those looking to speed up complex web development, nothing beats a WYSIWYG editor. Although there are several choices in the market, Dreamweaver seems to be the industry standard. Dreamweaver is a feature rich website development tool that is constantly updated to support the latest web technoligies. With support for CSS, XML, PHP, ASP, and ColdFusion, Dreamweaver is capable of advanced web development. Speed is one of the greatest assets of Dreamweaver development. With one click access to complex code, an otherwise difficult and time consuming task is reduced to a simple click or drag and drop. However, the price to pay for this automation is in code that can often be more complex and very difficult to edit without the same editor that was used to create it.
For anyone looking for a shortcut or fast track to site development, content management servers can be a great ally. A CMS is essentially a group of tools to assist in creating, organizing and publishing content for the web. The great thing about CMS is that it places these tools in a single management console that allows even a novice to publish web content without any coding knowledge. Advanced users have the option of customizing their CMS content through coding, but the options available are limited to what the CMS engine allows. In the case of WordPress, the product is primarily designed to develop Weblogs and for that purpose it is a fast and powerful tool. However, anyone looking for something other than weblog development should look elsewhere.
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