I was given a web site that was created in dreamweaver and asked to make it "functional": registration, some user surveys, reports, pdf generation, emailing reports, credit card payments etc. etc. What was given to me wasn't much of a "web site": just a bunch of pages linked together. Code that dreamweaver generated was terrible. Took me DAYS to clean out all the repetitive sections and make some sense out of a load of redundant CSS files, before i even started working on PHP part of it.
In the end i got a well functional site that everyone liked using "front controller" technique. Its assembling the page based on templates set in header, footer and on the user access level. I separated PHP logic from HTML templates as much as i could. Done all of that; everyone is happy, until i had to give it back to them so they can make my forms looks pretty (sorry, i am not a designer) and add their own text, messages and pictures.
Because index.php assembles the page on the fly based on some criteria there is no way to look at any complete section of the site directly in dreamweaver to make it look pretty (its a dynamic site, after all). For them to get an idea of what the page would look like, edit it, and save it back to the server while remaining functional, i instructed them to do this:
1. get the HTML content of the section you want to edit.
2. put stuff in header.php above that content and footer.php bellow that content <- this way dreamweaver can show in the wysiwyg editor approximately what the section will look like.
3. make changes to words, colors, whatever.
4. extract the middle section - the content part of it while removing the static template parts merged in #2.
5. upload the content file, leave alone the header and footer templates, and merge css file changes.
Sounds simple, except at #2, where dreamweaver freaks out as soon as it sees even a little php and puts things all over the place. I tried #2 in wysiwyg part of Zend Studio, which i use for coding, and it does a pretty good job but its editing tools are extremely minimal so they can't do much in there.
The designers said they know some HTML and will do their best in code alone and will try to make dreamweaver behave.
What do you suggest? How can we get along so that the site remains functional and dynamic while they can continue using a wysiwyg (doesn't have to be dreamweaver) to make it look how they want it?
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