Been a long time since I fussed around with website design. My early sites were created with Notepad and then HotDog. I resisted WYSIWYG programs because the code was so bloated. Well time moved on and now I'm back doing what I grew up doing, farming. Of course one's deeds do tend to come back to haunt one and my dear wife, bless her loose lips, ratted me out and now I find myself in the position of designer and webmaster for our local farmers market.

Looking into the current state of the page coding I discovered I am two versions of HTML out of date and CSS was just something being considered when I left the field. I've got too much to do to get caught up and go back to writing everything by hand so after doing my research I found the most excellent CoffeeCup VSD. Of course as the old DOS saying goes "If a program will do everything you want it to do, you'll never be able to learn it and if you can learn it, it won't do everything you'd like it to do." So there are some compromises involved BUT the farmers market has a nice, tidy, simple website that everyone seems pleased with and I'd still have my nose in the books if I'd had to stick with the Editor and CSS programs.

Long way to get to my question, but thanks for bearing with me. I want to be able to create simple FREE web pages for our vendors who don't have a web presence. Last year we had about 80 who came to market from time to time so I don't want to create them in VSD. Every time I made a change on anyone's page I'd have to resave the entire website and images, not efficient. My thought was to create a simple template that looked good using VSD. Then move it over to the HTML Editor and clean it up so I can insert text and graphics. Then I'll link the pages as I create them to the "Vendors" page that exists in VSD. Essentially creating two different sections of the website. One that I manage with VSD and one that has pages that are updated and changed in the Editor.

Can any of you with lots more experience with these products let me know if I'm on a efficient track here. Any pitfalls I should look out for? Any better way to do what I'm trying to do?

To quote the immortal Bones "I'm a farmer Jim, not a web designer." Well at least not anymore.

Thanks for your help.

I don't know where to start answerring this...

The thing is, those two programmes do things very differently, and to wade through the code made by VSD is hell, because it apparently seems to lack any logic.

Having said that, I must admit that in some cases, if I can't get something the way I want it with html and css using the html Editor, I fire up VSD and create that particular bit, study the code and then copy it into the Editor. In other words, I don't make a whole template in VSD, just those bits and pieces that I can't work out the code for myself. By studying the code snippets this way, I also learn a lot from it.

I could have gone on saying things like VSD uses absolute positioning for everything, and the illogic appearance of the code is not all that illogic after all, the code just appear in the sequence that the various elements have been put in, not following the flow of the page... But anyway, my suggestion is: Try learning as much of the current coding as possible so that you can do it in the html Editor, but by all means, use VSD as an aide when needed.

I would have thought that the visual lot in here would have jumped into this topic with their suggestions, but since they have not, I'll mention what some of them have said from time to time, which shows that it also is possible to follow the other route:

Using VSD mainly, but since it has certain limitations, using the html Editor to create code bits that can be inserted into VSD.

Some people want to have their own style sheet. That can be created in the Editor and then inserted into VSD. Some want to use the CSS menu builder that comes with the Editor. They create it and pop it into VSD. There are numerous other examples of little things that can be done outside VSD and then using the 'html tool' to get it incorporated.

What you should NOT do is opening a VSD-created page in the Editor and edit it. If you do, the changes you have made will be gone next time you open that file in VSD again.

I'm thinking also that by the time you get done messing around adjusting the code etc. you could probably have had it editing in VSD and uploaded. If the sites you're talking about are fairly small sites, and if you make them be totally separate files rather than making them part of the main site you are creating for the Farmers Market (in other words, uploading them to subdirectories which then allows you to make them separate entities), then the uploads would be pretty minimal even if you did have to upload all things. I am not sure it actually does upload the entire site each time, don't think so, but I could be wrong since I don't use the program myself. Just some thoughts

VSD uploads everything the first time, then only the changes - unless you resync the site. In that case everything gets uploaded again.

If it's going to be a lot of separate pages, I don't see the Editor or VSD being much different. You'll still need to insert the text and images for each page whether it's drag/drop or html. I have not dabbled with PHP, but I wonder if that might make this more efficient. Just have one "farmers" page with everybody listed (like a menu) and one area on the page that would change as a name/farm is clicked.

Even an Iframe or frames would work for this.

Thanks to all of you for responding.

Paintbrush, I did think about putting a database behind a dynamic web page and then I thought lambing is coming soon. Better stick with something a little less efficient but much easier to deal with and troubleshoot if something starts displaying weirdly. I've put together dynamic sites and they're great until something goes wrong, then you can spend days trying to track down the issue.

That said, your idea is probably the best from a web design standpoint. What intrigues me is the comment that VSD doesn't resave every page and image no matter how minor the change I make unless the resync feature is selected . I'm going to go look into this resync feature. If I can unselect that, then most of my issues will be resolved.

Resync is in the publish choices. It's not something you turn on and off. It's just one of the ftp publishing choices you have. I really think you'll enjoy VSD and all it can do. It's a really fast way to get a website up without a lot of work. I have a website with 61 pages and an update with only a few changes only takes about one and half minutes on a wifi connection.

Hmmm.....whenever I save my work in VSD it seems to resave everything so I can't tell what needs to be uploaded to my server since all the files have the same date and time. What am I missing here?

Thanks