Which software should i use to design my websites? Or use wordpress?

Hi
I started designing my own websites around 14 years ago using dreamweaver then dreamweaver ultradev then MX, which i am still using although i only use the basic functions, i recently had some sites designed in Wordpress which work very well.
My new project is to design around 10 different websites each consisting of around 10-15 pages each site and link them all together to form a powerful collection of sites about my business which is selling scientific equipment.
My question is as far as the search engines are concerned for ranking these websites what should i be designing these site in?
Should i still be using Dreamweaver MX (i havent the time to learn another new program) or should i have them designed in Wordpress (pay someone to build a template)?

Or should i be using another program and spend the time teaching myself how to use ?
Thanks.

The key phrase in your question is: “As far as the search engines are concerned”.

The answer is that a search engine neither knows nor cares what tool you used to design your site. All it sees is the finished HTML. Provided your software lets you produce valid HTML, it matters not a jot to the search engine.

Also, Wordpress does not come into this category. Wordpress is not software for designing a site. It’s a system for managing your content on an existing site, allowing you to publish, edit and delete pages without having to code the HTML.

Finally, I would question your strategy of creating ten separate sites to promote the same business. I would have thought your customer would find that confusing, to say the least. If you have a good reason to take this approach, I would be interested in hearing more about it.

Mike

First try to streamline your requirement and get some info about the tools for it. Photoshop is to create the Mock for your design, Dreamweaver is to create HTML version of it and Wordpress is to manage the content, this are totally different things what we use in web development process. As far as SEO is concern it comes at last once your site and content is ready.

Hi Sgwilks,

If you are friendly with word press. Then it go with wordpress. There are many wordpress SEO plugins which will help you.

I love Wordpress because its more SEO friendly and the plug ins give me more functionality. Wp’s user-friendly backend is probably what made it so famous in the first place.

for the web design you can use phtoshop and Dreamweaver MX.

I use wordpress with catalyst dynamik child theme. It works very good and makes designing a site in wordpress much easier.

Ok my answer is use Wordpress, wp is seo friendly, which is your purpose, look for a good theme and you can add the information fast, in fact if I were doing this job wp would be my way to proceed.
Just look for a nice jquery plug in for your images and your work will be to add photos and text.

I want to suggest you wordpress.I is very user friendly and according to your requirements you can install plugins here.

Let’s just put the brakes on here, keeping in mind that this forum is primarily about web design (in other words, not so much about marketing your product via the Interwebz, etc). This thread is beginning to sound like the old and unlamented SEO forum. :slight_smile:

First, reference Mikl’s post above. HTML and CSS can be produced by anything that will generate pixels, from Notepad to Dreamweaver. Google doesn’t care what produces a site. Wordpress is not for designing sites, it is a blog engine with CMS capabilities. Wordpress mavens create a kajillion templates for use with the program, and that’s where the focus on design (and SEO) largely takes place. It is true that some Wordpress sites do well in Google, but I doubt that being a WP site alone has a lot to do with that favorable placement. Strong content, good usability, good outreach, good community-building practices, good participation from users, and so forth put most of those sites onto Google’s first pages, I would think, over “it’s a WP page, Google slobbers over those.”

Next, SEO is a marketing concern as much or more than it is a Web design concern. You can call me a purist or an idealist or an anti-money commie or whatever, but I firmly stand by the principle that if your site is well structured and coded that 90-99% of your SEO concerns are handled in the context of good design based in best coding principles. Trying to get your site to vault to the top of Google over five dozen sites all selling the same widget or whatever is not a primary function of Web design – though from my experience, I guarantee you that having a well-designed site will go a long way towards propelling you over at least half of your competition solely because of their sites’ poor coding and design practices.

Finally, this thread is turning into another “SEO hoodoo” discussion: people making obvious and superficial suggestions in order to Make Big Dollarz With the Quickness Yes Precious via SEO magic. It ain’t happening, people. Worry more about your ability to produce strongly designed, strongly coded sites and most of your SEO concerns will become essentially irrelevant. As far as trying to Find the Magic SEO Bullet, it doesn’t exist. If you insist on continuing snark hunting for such a thing, more power to you – the time you waste in that fruitless venture is time the rest of us get in stealing a march on you.

wordpress is very good to use if you just start as web designer

I recommend using Wordpress especially for 10-15 page websites.

WordPress is by far the most popular CMS on the interwebz, so it makes a lot of sense to choose that as your flagship. I’ve personally used Drupal (another CMS) a lot and I would recommend it but it is a bit more complex and in terms of available plugins I don’t think anyone can match WordPress.

More SEO friendly than what?

That’s good advice. The only thing I would highly recommend is to focus on relevant, quality content which is useful to human beings, not search engines.

Why? A small, 10-15 page site is ideal for a collection of static Web pages unless the site requires the interactivity of a blog or the data update capabilities of a CMS. Wordpress is not only overkill for many smaller sites, it’s just the wrong tool.

Not exactly, using a CMS such as WordPress (or any) will allow the user to have the ability to update their own website more easily along with using plug-ins to fit their needs.

As I said.

I disagree, but, oh well.

It’s all good. :slight_smile: