DW CS3 for a site with 300 pages?

Question

Hello,
Our magazine has a underpowered, underperforming, old school
website that has been built piece by piece over 12 years. It is a
bit of a mess. I don't know the page count, but it must be well
over 100 and we plan to add a lot of content from now on.
We are now dedicating resources to improve the site. Right
now we are using DW MX, but if you talk to a magazine person they
will say, oh, you have to use a CMS (eg, Joomla or Bricolage). But
I'm not convinced. Partly, I like the flexibility a DW designed
site gives you: if you want one page to be a bit different, you can
do that. (And we want different sections to at least be a bit
different from one another.)
On the other hand, how easy will it be to do stuff that is
"easy" with a CMS: have a list of Most Emailed or Top Rated
stories; allow users to rate stories; search the website; allow
editors to edit from home or while on the road.
Will I be able to get DW to do any of this "out of the box"?
What about the DW Developer Toolbox. Will that give us the best of
both worlds?
(If I posted this on a CMS website I know the answer I would
get. I'm hoping the DW community will be blunt and honest.)
Thanks very much for your opinions and thoughts.

Answer 1

On Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:14:28 +0000 (UTC), "SnakEyez02"
<[email protected]> wrote:
>I would say DW is a great tool to utilize and get you
going.
>
> Personally though with 300 pages, most people here will
say that you are at
>the point where DW templates may not be the best way to
update your pages (ie:
>if you update one template you have to upload all 300
pages again). For this
>case, storing your template in a database like many
content management systems
>do is usually recommended.
>
> With that said, I think purchasing a content management
system in addition to
>DW would be a good investment. Primarily because you
don't want to have to
>teach, or pay for the licenses for multiple copies of DW
in order to have
>enough for your entire writing staff. Whereas with a CMS,
you only need to pay
>for the license to run it on your sever and then set up
as many users as you
>like (in most cases).
>
> In regards to your "out of the box" statement. No DW
will not setup a CMS for
>you out of the box. It is a web authoring tool to allow
you to create the
>pages. And while it does have the abilities to look at
code and edit code with
>pretty good efficiency, it will take an experienced
programmer to create a CMS
>from scratch with DW.
>
> I'm sure some of the other experts will also come around
and post here just to
>give you more advice on this, but most will echo
something close to what I have
>stated about using it with a CMS.
In my workflow, the price break point to move a client from
static
pages into a CMS is 20-30 pages depending on the site.
Which, coincidentally, is about the recommended maximum for a
DW
template-driven site.
There are so many CMS solutions and approaches available that
it is
almost always possible to find one to suit. I'm becoming very
fond of
Expression Engine myself. My preference is to use that, or
the one a
programmer colleague of mine has built.
Win
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