[thelist] can someone build a 100-page website with only HTML/CSS skill?

Olivier Percebois-Garve percebois at gmail.com
Tue Nov 11 08:10:50 CST 2008


IMHO 100 static pages with an include for the header and thefooter is just
fine to maintain for somebody skilled in HTM/CSS.
no need for DW.

Olivier




On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 2:30 AM, Zhang Weiwu <zhangweiwu at realss.com> wrote:

> Hello. I am helping my girlfriend to start a web-design carrier. I am a
> 4-year web developer in PHP, she was fresh to HTML knowledge before
> started. I have no web design experience or know-how but knows all
> technology needed for a web project. (Lucikly I understand knowing web
> technology is not knowing how to do a web project! There are many other
> things to look for.)
>
> We managed to let her capable of creating small websites using pure HTML
> editor and CSS editor. She also did a few small projects for small
> websites. She does all these with simple gedit (from gnome), because her
> XHTML tutorial book was written assuming user using pure text editor
> ("Head First HTML and CSS"), also because I also work in this way.
>
> Recently we are trying to get a bigger project of about 100 pages of
> HTML. Then a lot of management requirement may rises that make the job
> difficult to do without CMS or website building tool with management
> features. By "management requirement" I mean:
>
>   1. re-organize navigation bars or add new item to navigation bar;
>   2. inclusion of 2 navigation bars into 100+ web pages;
>   3. easily rename an HTML page while automatically update all links to it;
>
> I am not sure if I should introduce a CMS because
>
>   1. it adds complicity, learning curve and require my attention from
>      me when she hits problems;
>         1. CMS also add whole lot of complicity of having to set up
>            MySQL in her workbench and maintain it,  mess with DB error
>            when it might happen;
>         2. Learn configuration files and the concepts of templates;
>         3. she has to work with a web server on her notebook instead of
>            just opening the project locally with browser, and I am
>            going to have to add and maintain that web server;
>         4. backup become more difficult than just drag the website to
>            DVD driver (that's how burning DVD is done in Gnome) and she
>            has to learn them.
>   2. the website is maintained by her, HTML skilled, instead of by
>      customer themselves, making CMS less demanded. And it's not
>      frequently updated neither.
>
> Maybe I introduce CMS later, but is there a way to work easily without CMS?
>
>
> I am thinking, should I just start to work with her with a CMS, or just
> use some management methods to make us workable on HTML level without
> CMS? For sure that depends on the task. One example of the task is to
> maintain the 3-level navigation bar.
>
> For static HTML websites the navigation bar sometimes is done by simply
> a server-side include:
>
> <body id="aboutus"><!--- below are included from navigation.html_seg -->
> <ul id="nav">
>  <li class="home"><a..>Home</a></li>
>  <li class="aboutus"><a..>about us</a></li>
> </ul>
>
> Currently highlighted navigation bar item is highlighted using:
>
> body#aboutus #nav .aboutus { font-weight: bold; }
>
> For this method to work with a 100-page website the navigation bar is
> probably long (50 lines, because half of the pages are not supposed to
> be accessible through navigation bar but only when user opened some
> page), and the corresponding CSS highlight file is also long. I start to
> think without good text editor automation support this is hard to do &
> maintain. A CMS seems inevitable in this case.
>
> How do you think? Should we start with CMS or with plain old HTML? I am
> thinking the place for HTML-based website nowadays are those websites:
>
>   1. do not update frequently (thus the HTML-skilled ones can do the
>      updates);
>   2. mid-to-small size. But how big is "mid"? Is a 100-page website
>      "mid-size" or "big-size"? I dealt with much bigger ones using CMS
>      and know CMS is mandatory, but having no idea how much work is
>      necessary if maintain 100-page website.
>
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