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

[Stephen Rider]

I did a solid business site using nothing but HTML, CSS, and SSI.   
This was a while back.  I took an existing site that was basically  
something a graphic designer had shoved through Dreamweaver (whatever  
pops out the other end must be a web site).  Going from six-deep  
nested tables to full CSS design cut the site's size in half, and made  
things much more consistent from page to page. :)  I used Server-Side  
Includes for the menus, footer, and such.  I even chained series of  
SSI to make breadcrumbs.

It works.  The site is still in use today.  Because I was very, VERY  
consistent in my coding page-to-page, if there is a site-wide change  
to make I can frequently do it using grep.  Minor page changes are  
very easy because the markup is so lean and clean.

That all being said -- if I were to do it today, I would probably use  
PHP.  There are things I would have liked to be able to do since the  
site went up that would require PHP and templating.  So... the site is  
great to work with and works perfectly as originally intended, but by  
not using templates and PHP, I limited my future possibilities.

To start out, for the non-coder, you could just use include() as you  
otherwise would use SSI, and beyond that stick to basic HTML/CSS.   
Down the road though, the fact that it's PHP will leave your options  
open.

Stephen