Redecorating Your Website, The Easy Way

You might well be familiar with Adobe Dreamweaver, being the best-known and most widely used web design application available. You may well have learned, whether through using it yourself, word of mouth, articles or adverts, that Dreamweaver offers an immense range of tools with which you can build a more effective web page, and without having to delve into complex code any more or less than you want to.
 
Dreamweaver certainly makes it easy for you to create the webpages you need, catering for all levels of expertise, and allowing the straightforward construction of a consistent, stylish and comprehensible page. However, Dreamweaver doesn't stop working for you when the page is finished; if details change, editing the page could not be easier.

InContext Editing can make a huge difference to how you maintain your website, not merely saving you time, but helping to ensure that your page doesn't lose any of the style and appeal that you've given it.  After all, if you've spent a good deal of your time wrapping your site in a style unique to your organisation, a style that shows off the goods and/or services that you offer to the finest extent that you can, then you're not going to want to risk disturbing it just because some of the detail in your content has changed.  But on the other hand you can't let your site get out of date.  InContext Editing offers an alternative.  Pages are edited visually, without need for recourse to the code - indeed, the code is kept the same as far as possible, to ensure that the style of your page remains the same.

Imagine that your page is like your living room. You have a mixture of furniture dotted around - a sofa, some chairs, a table, a desk perhaps, tv, bookcase, and so on and so forth.  If you'd like to buy a new sofa, or move the coffee table, it shouldn't mean you have to take everything apart and start again.  Rather, you can make sure that everything fits in with the style you've already chosen; suitable upholstery for your soft furnishings and a new home for the table even better than the last.
 
With InContext editing, your pages can be adjusted in much the same way.  Elements can be moved about freely and updated without disturbing the whole.  For instance, if you have text describing a product and that text is no longer accurate, it can be easily replaced and will still fit in place without altering the overall appearance.  If it is now more important, and needs pride of place near the top of the page, it can easily be moved up (or down) or formatted to give in greater prominence.  For this, Dreamweaver provides a simple control panel for each element - everything can be achieved at the touch of a button, with no need for delving into the code.
 
The same easy editing can be applied to any part of the page - pictures, banners, forms can be moved, altered or replaced as simply as the text, and all require just the use of the control panel. 
 
What if the items on your site aren't your own?  Perhaps your company might be marketing goods or services for suppliers - advertising holidays for a number of operators, for example, or providing the means for car dealerships to offer their wares direct to consumers at a single site. 

InContext editing doesn't have to be restricted to yourself, managing your own website.  Permission can be granted to anyone you choose to edit individual elements - so the dealership can add a more detailed description of the car, or the tour operator can cut a little more off the price of a holiday.  All the while, every other element of the page will be locked - the client will see a border around the editable area and the remainder of the page will be as normal.  Such restrictions can also be provided for your staff, if you want to ensure that one department doesn't interfere with another's work.
 
Of course, different people might have different ideas about how the page should look - particularly if your site carries items from competing companies.  Dreamweaver protects your style, and ensures that any alterations are formatted in line with your decisions - whilst still allowing you to give clients and colleagues as much or as little freedom as you need them to have.
 
InContext Editing with Dreamweaver can make maintaining your organisation's website a much easier, quicker and smoother process, whilst ensuring that customers always see an up-to-date and effective site in a style that best promotes your enterprise.  A short training course can help you to take advantage of all that Dreamweaver offers, and give your business the online image it deserves.