Back in November, I was contemplating purchasing Dreamweaver for my website business. I had gone through the 30 day trial twice and felt that, in time, I could actually learn to create some pretty powerful websites … someday.
About the same time, I created a website using the tools I was familiar with (HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL and XML) and posted it on the host server. I contacted their help desk and the president of RegiSTAR, John DeUlloa, called me to make sure my problem had been resolved. We spoke for almost an hour and during that time, he convinced me to look into WordPress and encouraged me to consider the Genesis Framework and Child Themes offered by StudioPress.
Timing is everything. Rather than purchase the Adobe Dreamweaver Web Developer Edition, I jumped on the WordPress and StudioPress bandwagon. Now I could use WordPress and the Genesis Framework from StudioPress and I had over 40 Child Themes at my fingertips. John pointed me to the tutorials on his website. I went through the tutorials on Wednesday, Thursday was Thanksgiving, and over the weekend, I converted the entire PAWS Park website from hand-coded pages to the Outreach Child Theme. On Monday morning, the President of PAWS Park’s Board of Directors was admiring his new and improved website.
Since then I have turned over two more hand-coded websites, Birkholm Orthopedic Services and the Valley Gardener. I also created my own website from the ground up, all using the Genesis Framework and Child Themes.
I just took a simple on-line test and the results showed me to be 60% left-brained and 40% right-brained. That may account for my taking to WordPress like a fish takes to water and why I had difficulty learning the graphically based Dreamweaver. In any event, WordPress works best for me. You can become proficient in a short period of time but you can never master it because it is a constantly growing and evolving entity supported by many thousands of website developers.