Don’t Buy Dreamweaver – You’re Making a Huge Mistake

Ok. I’m going to get to the point here.

If you’re a high school publication looking to move online: Don’t buy Dreamweaver.

If you’ve already bought it and haven’t opened it: Return it.

If you’ve opened it and can’t return it: Sell it on ebay.

If you’re not allowed to sell it: Just cut your losses and stop using it.

When I’m approached by others who tell me they are moving online and looking for a bit of advice, I always have one question – What program are you using? Too often, ‘Dreamweaver,’ is the response. While Dreamweaver is a great program that can do some amazing things, it’s not practical for scholastic media.

It’s Expensive.

It’s Klunky.

It’s Machine Specific.

And it’s got a steep learning curve.

My recommendation is always to use a free, web-based CMS like WordPress, Joomla or Drupal. They are all great, flexible options, that make complete sense right now for scholastic media.

They are free.

They are Web-based (which means students can work from home whenever they feel like it.)

They are Open Source and there is an extensive network of online tutorials and free resources to learn the programs.

And, did I mention it’s free.

We’ve talked about this quite a bit on this site, but I felt it might be better to take another approach to this and not beat around the push. “Don’t Buy Dreamweaver” should get the point across. If you’d like more info on WordPress, search the site and you will get quite a few options. A few you might want to pay special attention to are:

What is your staff using to build its site and why was that platform chosen?

Written By: Aaron Manfull