One of my potential customers is a group who have concerns about how I write my sites. They were worried that because I write my sites from scratch that they wouldn’t be able to edit it themselves.
I believe that the opposite is true. When you design a site from scratch by hand your code is much less cluttered than what you get with the design programs. It’s straightforward and easy to read and follow. That does several good things for you.
- It loads faster and looks the same in more browsers without having to use “hacks”. Every computer looks at a page differently and some (mostly IE) can really change the look of how you want your page to look.
- It makes it easy for the search engines to read it and follow your links. That helps get your pages indexed more quickly. I also believe that they reward you for making it easier for them by giving you higher rankings. Your actual content and how many sites link to you count much more for that, but every little bit helps.
- Because the code is also standards compliant, straightforward and simple most any page editing program will be able to edit it. There is a very nice page editing program that is in the control panels of most web hosting accounts these days. There is also a great program that I recommend to my customers Called KompoZer. I believe it is as good as Dreamweaver for most users, but is free and open source. These programs will clutter up the code a bit, but they both work fine and still comply to all current web standards.
I believe in helping my customers learn to do as much work on their site themselves that they want. I’m not the kind of designer who likes to keep things secret. I like to share information and will teach my customers (and you) anything that you want to learn from me.
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