DreamWeaver templates vs Wordpress, Joomla & Drupal - What is the real difference?

[tankman1989]

I am really confused about the differences between making a site in a program like DreamWeaver vs using one of the CMS platforms like listed in the title. I know that the base tools for most CMS platforms are free while DreamWeaver is going to cost you. However I don't see a huge difference in the final output of any of the products. I have seen templates made for Dreamweaver that look almost identical to themes/templates made for CMS platforms.

The thing is that it seems that when moving to a CMS platform you will have to learn that specific management system while something like DreamWeaver uses programming languages that have standards and their own communities for support. I know that CMS also uses languages like HTML, PHP, Java, Flash, etc but it seems like the only real difference is the way the content/source is manipulated and input.

I want to start to learn web development and design and I want to have learn the most powerful, flexible platform out there, even if it is a little harder I feel it is worth it if it has the most versitality in the end.

I do have very basic understanding of HTML and I can read source code and understand it better than I can write it. It's like a spoken foreign language, I can hear some words and get the basics of some conversations and context but usually not specific details. I've learned my HTML by downloading web pages/sites, opening them in Dreamweaver and looking at the code/design in the split view. It seems that this is the easiest way to learn and has a better view than CMS's which don't have a split screen where you can see the effects almost immediately. In CMS you have to apply/publish and then load the site. Sure you might have to do this as well in Dreamweaver with a "live preview" but less often than doing it with CMS.

Just to give you an idea of the type of site I want to make, here are couple templates/themes that I'm looking at:

DreamWeaver:
Template 1
Template 2

Drupal
Theme 1
Theme 2

 

[DlStreamnet]

All templates for drupal/wordpress derive from what a DreamWeaver template effectively is.

Except on a dreamweaver template you would enter the content and upload.

On a wordpress/drupal theme you would <?php include it.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Here's my 2 cents about using a CMS vs building a site from the ground up.

CMS's are all about saving time and money and not doing the same work over and over again. CMS's like Wordpress have an enormously long revision history of added features. Things like that take years to develop and doing that sort of work in house is impractical unless you're a major website with huge amounts of traffic (sites specifically like Newegg & Amazon that need highly customized php and a built from the ground up custom CMS.)

From the perspective of just the design and layout of the site yes, you can make anything from Dreamweaver look like something generated from Wordpress. That's because they're the same thing. It's all based around html and css. The design, and the way the site looks is all generated the same way. The only additional thing is customized php tags specific to the Wordpress backend to do all CMS functions. The point of Wordpress in the first place is to design the site once, and then allow Wordpress' (or another prebuilt CMS like Drupal, MODx, etc.) management system generate all of your pages. The reason why Wordpress has "it's own code" isn't because they're using something special, it's just those are the names (if you will) of their specific php calls. If you start working on php (even just an elementary knowledge) it will make sense quickly. Those calls just execute php code as part of the CMS (as an FYI, I hope I'm explaining this right, I wouldn't call myself a huge expert, I just dabble.)

The only two other options is to make each and every page in your site by hand one at a time like the old days (this method is highly impractical unless your site only has a few pages... even at 10-12 pages it starts to get impractical.) Or build your own CMS from the ground up like I mentioned will take 100's or 1000's of hours. CMS' exist in order to eliminate that problem. Granted, using someone else's code and piggybacking on it means that your back-end won't be custom, but that isn't what matters (and it shouldn't be what matters either.) The only thing that matters is if it's powerful enough to do what you want it to do. Luckily there are options like Drupal, Wordpress, MODx, & Joomla. I would simply recommend picking the one that fits your need the best... unless this is all academic and you want to learn how to build this stuff over the course of several years... in which case I highly recommend hitting the books!



EDIT: I just reread part of your post. It seems you don't know a lot about CMS' in general. CMS is an acronym for "Content Management System." Most CMS' are built using PHP (and sometimes other languages) and use a set of calls to generate content. They use these PHP calls in concert with the html and css to generate a page. What looks like a single page to the end user could be generated from two, three, four, or even more parts! The header, body, footer, and customized menus for instance could all be coded separately and then through PHP it's all generated in a web browser for the enduser. To the enduser, this process is seamless. Why have separate parts generate a site? It makes life easier. You may have the same header on ever page, but you want a different body on ever page (this is a simplistic example) let PHP and the CMS do the work for you rather than having to code each individual header for each page over and over essentially loading the same content over and over again. With PHP and the CMS the header if it's used over and over again will simply be cached, which wouldn't occur if each individual page is coded by hand. Even though the information is the same, the browser doesn't know that and has to download all the content from each individual page over and over again. Make sense?

Another example of how PHP works is especially for things like product catalogs or searching. Ever wonder how a website generates a search page or shows you select products after you've narrowed down what you're looking for? It's all done through CMS and PHP. The user narrows the parameters and the backend generates the content. Obviously it would be impossible for a coder to write each individual search page, who could predict what a user would search for in the first place? (Once again these examples are simplified. There are other methods outside of PHP to generating content or using lookup tables, I realize this.)

 

[flyingturtle]

UnknownSouljer explained it well.

If you are looking to improve your own web design skills, that's basic front-end client development. You'll need to know HTML, CSS and Javascript (and use jQuery libraries), in that case, Dreamweaver or notepad (or any programmers text editor is fine. Plus you'll need to know Photoshop, Illustrator or whatever graphics program.

So for your own stuff, if you aren't going to use and CMSs, then, yeah, you are fine. No need to learn about Wordpress, Drupal, or other templates.

Here's the rub though, most sites if you work with companies, web design studios, etc, will have some sort of CMS or use a custom-built database-driven site. In that case knowledge of creating front-ends for those CMSs will come in handy. I do freelance work, and I'll be asked if I know Drupal or Wordpress, which I do, and a variety of other CMSs. Even if you are on a project that uses a custom CMS, your experience with using a CMS template system will help as you'll understand some basic concepts.

Having said that, your main skill however will be to create effective HTML/CSS layouts and use Javascript, so even if you had no knowledge of templating systems from CMSs, you could probably learn fairly fast.

I do find though that my knowledge of web application/server programming languages, like PHP, C#/ASP.NET, Java, does help in my front-end design as I can split up my layout -- making my own custom templates as it were -- so it helps me in terms of planning and structuring the overall site even in small projects that don't use a CMS.

So in short, from a client-side viewpoint, you are right that there isn't a difference on what the client sees in their web browser, however in the development end, it is different. Sometimes it is more difficult to create front-end designs with CMSs as the files are many and in many parts, also various CMS use MVC structure so that may make it more difficult, too. Also because of this, it will affect what decisions you may make in your layout or design since things have to modular, you may have to repeat parts of your layout, like the sidebar, in a variety of different layouts, etc.

 

[thefreeaccount]

CMS are used to build web applications. The three important functions of a CMS are maintaining/tracking user state, templating, and retrieving data.

Dreamweaver is used to create or tweak the "theme" that determines what an application will look like.