More and more websites, in my experience, are using WordPress. I've been using Dreamweaver and CSS and I am thinking about learning WordPress to build my clients' websites.

What is your experience with WordPress?
Do you find it easier and faster to build sites for your clients?
Do you include in your rate the cost of training your client in the use of WordPress?
What is lacking in WordPress that you used in Dreamweaver or other software for building websites?

Any insight will be greatly appreciated.

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Terri Williams, Assisting the small business owner
www.terripwilliams.com

I can't give you any opinion on Dreamweaver, as I have no experience with that program. I have a friend/client, however, who has spent a lot of time with Dreamweaver and then asked me if I would build his site on WP. We both set out to build our websites around the same time. I had mine up in a short amount of time. I actually changed my template three times (I build my own with a WYSIWYG software I purchased) and he still has nothing up, and that was probably about 3 or 4 months ago when we started.

I think the beauty of WP is that it is relatively simple to use and to teach clients to use, especially once you have everything installed and tweaked the way the client wants it. They only have to go to the WP dashboard to add / change content. I think clients like the fact that they have some control over their website, versus having to rely on a web master.

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Chela Lucia
www.LucentAdminSolutions.com The Bright Choice for Virtual Assistance!

Chela,

Excellent information! Thank you. After my research this week, I have set aside this weekend to learn WordPress via my Lynda.com training site. Thank you very much for your answer.

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Terri Williams, Assisting the small business owner
www.terripwilliams.com

Well the big difference is that Wordpress is a content management system and Dreamweaver is a design software.

Wordpress has a dashboard which allows for easy updating and editing plus you can switch themes very easily and there's a plethora of widgets and plugins on the market (free and premium) to help better the user experience.

You have solid frameworks like Thesis and Genesis (those are premium, but there are free ones) which essentially are parent themes (the foundation). They are SEO optimized, secure and when they update the framework, you automatically receive their updates via the parent theme.

You can then either purchase child themes, find free themes or create your own. If you want to create your own you have the choice of either creating one from scratch (which takes more time) or creating a child theme, which is based on a parent theme but you can modify it to your hearts desire and can end up with something that looks nothing like the parent.

Wordpress is so much less work than building a website from scratch and it's end-user friendly, so the client can update his website/blog on his own if need be.

Btw, Lynda.com rocks. I learned PHP and MySQL through them. You neethat at to make custom themes from scratch. Happy learning!

Thanks, Christina! I see that you are a new member to this forum...congrats!

Can't wait to view your website.

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Terri Williams, Assisting the small business owner
www.terripwilliams.com

Hi - I hope my comments help...

I have 3 years experience using WordPress and I enjoy the flexibility and page management ease. I customize themes so that everything is to my clients' liking. Themes are nice because they keep the website uniform. I find that I build sites faster in WordPress. I used Dreamweaver in the past when there was a fancy/complex layout I just wanted to transfer from photoshop and get up and running. But I like that WordPress is online content management and I can log in from anywhere and not have to wait to get to my home computer. I just don't do fancy/complex layouts anymore. Just clean layouts that can be easily done with themes.

I do not include a cost to train clients but I should. Just never figured out how or what I would charge. This is a great advantage to using WP because I have had clients that forget the steps to updating their dreamweaver site, where WP is like logging in to an email program and editing. The client hardly needs to do design changes on their own. But in dreamweaver they just have problems editing their site content.

What WordPress lacks - or at least I have not seen yet if it exists - is version control. So in Dreamweaver, if I make a change there are ways for me to keep a copy of the original and revert back to it if I feel like I need to - or I could preview something without making it live via ftp. In WordPress it is more involved for me where it is possible to do a back up each time but that is more than I want to do for simple edits.

Good luck,

Michelle

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Michelle Diaz
http://www.linkedin.com/in/mdiazweb

Michelle,

Very good information and yes this is helpful!
Terri

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Terri Williams, Assisting the small business owner
www.terripwilliams.com

Originally Posted by LucentVA

I can't give you any opinion on Dreamweaver, as I have no experience with that program. I have a friend/client, however, who has spent a lot of time with Dreamweaver and then asked me if I would build his site on WP. We both set out to build our websites around the same time. I had mine up in a short amount of time. I actually changed my template three times (I build my own with a WYSIWYG software I purchased) and he still has nothing up, and that was probably about 3 or 4 months ago when we started. I think the beauty of WP is that it is relatively simple to use and to teach clients to use, especially once you have everything installed and tweaked the way the client wants it. They only have to go to the WP dashboard to add / change content. I think clients like the fact that they have some control over their website, versus having to rely on a web master.

What is the name of your WYSIWYG software and do you recommend it?

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Collaborative Business Support

Version control is available in Wordpress by using a plug in. Here's a link:

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/...ersion-control

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Collaborative Business Support

Peppy,
I too am learning that WordPress is a very simple program to use. I created a blog for my husband's business yesterday and changed the theme to my already existing blog. My next task is to link up my husband's business website to the blog--which after reading the 'warnings' that pop up in WordPress when doing so--I've decided to wait until I've learned more about using a current domain for a blog.

Creating a website in WordPress vs. Dreamweaver is less time consuming and I love the fact that my clients will be able to update their own site!

Thanks to all who have posted here...the information given freely has been a tremendous help.

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Terri Williams, Assisting the small business owner
www.terripwilliams.com