It’s a bit of an exaggeration to say that Dreamweaver is dying out completely. However, over the past few years WordPress and Drupal, as well as other open source content management systems, have really taken over for most small to medium-sized websites.

A lot of the skills are transferable though. Content management systems use the same HTML, CSS, and JavaScript standards that ordinary web pages use. WordPress and Drupal are both written in PHP. Focus on those standards and you’ll be able to work on any platform.

Should I seek more training in Dreamweaver, or should I switch to a more dynamic program, and if so, which one?

Any input would be much appreciated.

This is my view.

Austin

I’m not aware of any problems search engines have with Dreamweaver sites. In fact, static pages don’t have many of the same problems that CMS-generated sites sometimes do. Most CMS’s are getting much better at optimizing for search engines now though.

@Ringo – I think the reason why static pages are becoming less common is because it’s getting increasingly rare to find a website that doesn’t require a) editing by regular people or b) advanced functionality that is better provided by an out-of-the-box system rather than being developed from scratch. Your case is an exception

You’re right in that there are some benefits to plain old HTML pages. It seems like now those benefits are being outweighed by the convenience of using a CMS.

@mysticpixesl – I wasn’t talking about people who use Dreamweaver as a code editor. I was talking about the practice of creating static web pages. I don’t know what you mean by “prototyper community”. Personally, I find other tools such as Quanta Plus to be just as good for code editng as Dreamweaver, without all the bloat. But, yes, this could be DW’s niche in the future.

Did u forget about the hardworking prototyper community ? i believe that the decency of code editing that dreamweaver provides is not to be beated. It is a n important tool of prototyping phase and maintaining a 1000 line css code is never so easy as in DW. Im sure, ADOBE, will keep coming with new features and functionalities to this web authoring tool and it sure is to stay here for long … longer

Of course, it all depends on the kind of page you want. Some pages are not suited for static stuff, most pages can be mostly static, with a couple of snippets of dynamic stuff, and lots of pages can easily be completely static. Of course, remember that a static page can also include JavaScript or Flash, so it doesn’t have to be literally “static”.

I’m starting work on a new site now, and my plan is to write code that pre-generates static html pages based on configuration files. This means that every time I want to update the site, I make some changes and then run a script once to generate all the pages. This makes it as easy to update as a dynamic web site, but saves the server from re-generating each page every time they are clicked.

And when making a website for a costumer its much more appealing to them if they can change it themselves or make new posts.