Switching from a custom designed website to a CMS or Content Management System like WordPress can have many benefits. SEO, easy updates, having a blog as part of your website and not having to buy software are a few. A huge benefit is keeping the content separate from the design. You can change the design later without changing the content too much, thereby not affecting your search engine rankings or inbound links. The best part is you can still have a customized design.
There are a few things you should know before deciding to switch to a WordPress CMS, especially if you have purchased Dreamweaver to edit your site in-house.
This is a brand new site.
Your website will be different.
Nothing will remain of your old site.
Editing and file management will change.
Images and linked documents will be handled differently.
You don’t need Dreamweaver anymore.
New hosting may be required.
There is a learning curve.
Are we clear?
Good.
Be aware that your file structure may change. If your pages were all at the root level before, they will be in an organized file structure with WordPress. This means old links will need to be updated and some pages may need to be placed differently or go away altogether. All pages now can be one click away from the home page through the drop down menu navigation.
The way you create page-to-page links will change. The ability to browse for a page or drop a target on a page to make a link are gone and will be missed. Instead, open a second browser window or tab to the page you want to link to and copy the url from the address bar. In the edit window of the page you are creating the link from, select the text, click the link icon, paste the link.
Images and linked documents will be handled differently. If you use numerous PDFs or other attached documents that need to be removed from the server regularly, this needs to be made clear up front. One folder can be set up to contain all linked documents to make clean up easier. If you do not set this up from the start it will not be easy finding and deleting old files because you no longer have the option to find orphan files or broken links. These features of Dreamweaver I would really like to see built into WordPress.
You will no longer have to open Dreamweaver for every little change. You can make changes through the admin panel by logging into your web browser. This is good news for people who have had to drive to work through bad weather just to post the weather cancellations. The admin panel is easy to use but has a slight learning curve. It is closer to Word than Dreamweaver, but resist the temptation to revert back to Dreamweaver.
Adding images is easier. With WordPress you can easily add images or image galleries.
It is easy to add pages and posts. You will be able to do most edits on your own. Navigation is still handled differently from website to website, but you may by able to add new links to the navigation on your own just by adding a page.
