Ask Slashdot: Web Site Editing Software For the Long Haul?

MouseR writes "It seems we can't rely on software, in particular Web site editing software, to exist for the long haul. Every time I rely on something, it takes only a couple of years before it gets trashed. I have used GoLive's CyberStudio before it got engulfed as GoLive from Adobe. Both got trashed. I eventually used Apple's .Mac HomePage. It got trashed and replaced with iWeb. I then used iWeb, hosted on MobileMe, and Apple just killed it again, along with the hosting. So, as I'm preparing to move my stuff on various web sites, onto my own hosting server (outsourced), I'm wondering what kind of visual web site editor(s) I could use, for the long haul. I'm rather sick of changing tools every other year and as a software developer, would rather spend my time editing my web site rather than code it. Any suggestions?"

Comments

Wrong tag

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to troll or something, but I think this should be tagged as "designer", not "developer".

Text editor of choice plus knowledge of HTML/CSS

[Anonymous Freak]

Notepad, TextEdit, TeX, emacs, vi, pico, whatever.

Never have to worry about the editor itself going obsolete because of emerging HTML standards, never have to worry about the tool itself disappearing.

Find yourself random web host of choice (I like nearlyfreespeech) that supports direct upload of files, no fiddly web interface forced on you, and voila! Instant future-proof website!

(Yes, I'm going to have to be weaned off iWeb+MobileMe for my personal domain, too. I'm a lazy bastard, and iWeb was too easy. Now I'll have to go back to hand-coding and/or at least find a simple-to-upload-to-from-iWeb host; which, now that I think about it, nearlyfreespeech should do.)

Content Management

[TimTucker]

If you look at the solutions for "editing" sites that scale, ultimately you'll find that what you're really looking for isn't a better visual editor, but rather a content management platform.

WordPress has a pretty decent track record for longevity, but there are plenty of other options out there as well.

Re:Content Management

[nine-times]

This sounds right to me. Maybe you don't even need to administer the site, but use a hosted solution instead. That way, you can really focus on content creation.

But part of it is also having realistic expectations. It's very likely that in 10 years, the web will be a different beast, and the view of what constitutes a "good website" will change too. As the web changes, the tools used to create it must also change. Whatever you come up with, don't expect that you'll be using the same tools in 20 years. In computer terms, 5 years kind of is the "long haul".

Instead of trying to keep your tools constant, try to keep your data portable. One of the advantages of something like Wordpress is that it's so popular that, when it gets superseded by other things, there will certainly be methods to translate Wordpress into those new forms-- and it's generally easier to pull information from a database in a sensible way than to pull it out of HTML.

So what I'm saying is, don't focus on making sure that you can use the same editor for the next 20 years, and instead focus on trying to make sure you can pull your old content into a new form every 5 years. That's how you future-proof.

Re:Content Management

[Tridus]

Technically you can tell MS Word to output HTML, but what you get is really bad HTML.

That's the problem with most WSYWIG HTML editors. HTML doesn't lend itself well to WSYWIG editing and so what you always get is really bad HTML. If you want to do it well, you have to learn some HTML and use a good text editor.

If you don't mind shitty HTML then you have more options, but you're not going to find many people advocating them here.

Just learn HTML.

[Narcocide]

Seriously. You are looking for a solution to an impossible problem, and besides that it is *easier* to learn HTML than it is to learn Dreamweaver. Stop being frightened of the technicalities and just try it with a text editor for once.

Re:Just learn HTML.

[MouseR]

I actually built a complete e-comerce web site by hand something like 13 years ago. With php scripts (or was it Perl?) and some c-based CGIs. The reason I switched to WYSIWYG is because I don't have time to deal with that and that given web site development is a far cry from my regular Application programming duties, would rather spend whatever is left of my "free" time with my kids than learning to deal with CSS.

Re:Dreamweaver

[Dracos]

Still used as a crutch by self-professed "web designers" and clueless recruiters of such.

Dreamweaver is a tool, not a skill; same as vim, Emacs, Notepad++, Eclipse, or any other editor.

When was the last time you heard a craftsman get praised for having a tool, rather than possessing true skill?

Other than the boasting "designer" with his masterful command of drag-and-drop but merely an apprentice's comprehension of what his tool produces for him, you never did.

Re:Dreamweaver

[tycoex]

Actually, I'd say that the difference between a professional craftsman and a hobbyist who builds stuff in his garage is often largely because the professional has a much larger assortment of tools to use.

Re:Notepad

[grcumb]

Before someone comes in putting down all the IDE's and tools for web designing and suggests Notepad, let me just say this - no, notepad is not replacement for a good, solid IDE.

Notepad is not only a useless HTML editor, it's a useless text editor. Use a real one and you'll see the virtue of this argument.

EMACS or vi on a decent Unix/linux workstation is your IDE. I challenge any web developer to keep up with me in site design and updating. You might be able to stay with me on a trivial site with a couple of pages/templates, but I guarantee you that as soon as you start working on anything non-trivial (like the 100,000+ static documents I currently administer), a real text editor and the basic set of *nix utilities will leave any IDE looking weak and impoverished.

Re:Notepad

[realityimpaired]

Even good coders have off days. I used to prefer writing all the code/scripts in Notepad, but switched to Geany because of the automatic syntax checking and formatting. It's not that I'm not capable of doing it right myself, it's because it makes it easier to find typos.

As for my answer to the OP's question, if he's got database access, he's best off installing a CMS of his choice, and using that to do his website. It'll make updates easier, and he won't have to worry about his program of choice going the way of the dodo, because he can always keep it installed on his system.

Identifying OP's Target

[Rie Beam]

I'm a little confused -- are you looking for an online CMS? Or an offline tool for editing? Because that seems to be more than half of the recommendations coming up.

If you're looking for content management, your options are pretty much limited to how much power you ultimately want over your content. Drupal has a little bit of a learning curve but is easily the most flexible options in the pack; outside of that, try browsing a couple of distribution sites, or hell:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems

Of course, when it comes down to it, just simply learning to hand-code is not going to be the end of the world, I promise. Nothing has changed in the time you've described on the code-side of things except for bolted-on additions, and browsers are still pretty forgiving to older code (programmers could only wish for the kinds of backwards-compatibility HTML has had during its existence). HTML is not that difficult. CSS is not that difficult. AJAX might be a bit of a push, but JQuery is pretty solid for adding a little extra "zing" for not a lot of extra work. Look into it:

http://www.w3schools.com/

Re:Notepad

[Chas]

Before someone comes in putting down all the IDE's and tools for web designing and suggests Notepad, let me just say this - no, notepad is not replacement for a good, solid IDE.

No. Notepad isn't a replacement for an IDE (of whatever caliber). It is CLEARLY superior.

Most IDEs (and all the PhotoChoppers out there) with their top-down development do nothing but produce reams of hackish code bloat that doesn't work well cross-platform or in terms of accessibility. Worse, these sites consume many many times the bandwidth, load dogshit slow, and tend to look like crap on anything other than the dev's machine.

It's a shitty excuse for NOT knowing how to code the site from scratch (or at least a basic template).

It's a shitty excuse for having zero compliance with accessibility guidelines and using eye-blinding color pallettes and microscopic font sizes and typefaces CLEARLY unsuitable for web presentation.

It's a shitty excuse for having a layout take up a narrow sliver of the entire page canvas (or side-scroll "infinitely" as if everyone had a 2048x1535 monitor like the foofy, brain-dead webmaster).

It's a shitty excuse for having 3 megabytes of markup and images to display 10K in text.

Yes, learning how to do it CORRECTLY takes a bit more time UP FRONT. But it saves effort down the road as your code is portable, maintainable, and can be rapidly and cleanly altered and appended without massive surgery and metric ass-tons of further prototyping.

Re:Notepad

[monkeythug]

Biggest problem with sourceforge and has been for ages.

You'll do a search and find a project description that makes you go "Wow! That's exactly what I'm looking for!", then you get the disappointment a few seconds later of realising that writing the description is actually the entirety of the effort ever expended on the project.

Sourceforge really need to purge all these vapourware projects.