But I will keep you in mind for the next time someone needs a site stripped out of a content management system

Stuart

And I also agree that it’s relatively easy to take a site from a content management system and rewrite it in HTML but that takes time and so it incurs a cost and that’s a cost that someone has to pay for.

That cost may well be the difference for a small business between having their website updated and rewritten in good code and making do with a site that is not performing at it’s best.

We’re happy to say that every one of our clients is currently sitting on the first page - usually around position four or better - of the major search engines for the search terms that they consider important and that brings them paying customers.

And I should say - simply for clarification rather than bragging - that some of those sites are for businesses who need to perform in a much more competitive search market than here in Hervey Bay.

Stuart

Having a client use a content management system does not mean they are doing it just to keep their client - the whole purpose behind a CMS is as the name implies - to manage content.

I work with a variety of custom content management systems and although some are are great, some are really bad and were most likely written by some poor overseas programmer working for peanuts. Either way, nearly all come with a templating system so it is easy to take the html and either create a static site or integrate it with a more useful CMS. Even if it doesn’t, it’s easy to take a sites html.

Using Dreamweaver for starters is bad enough, unless it’s the “code only” mode.

I know what you are referring to with the tags to position images - done badly (as I did when I first learnt about it) it works but really has no advantages, done properly it is far superior to putting images in the markup along with the content.

- Matt

Of course I’m going to leave your comment because it raises important points and it also reflects on the writer.

All our clients ask for are web pages that will sell their products and rank well in the search engines … and that’s what they get. And that’s why they keep coming back to us for more work

Pages designed in tables will rank just as well in the search engines as do pages written in CSS and that’s what clients want. So we design pages that work and that any web designer can work on. We certainly do use CSS and I’m not attacking anyone who does. Of course you may not like the code behind our pages - and the poor coding I was complaining about originally was my own - but it renders well.

What we don’t use are content management systems that are unique to just one designer and that can’t be used by other designers and those that do are simply trying to ensure that they keep what customers they’ve got.

When we do find a client who has a website that uses such a content management system we explain why we can’t work on it and suggest that it may be more economically viable for them to continue on with the designer who first built their site.

We’ve already done that with three potential clients this month - obviously it’s not what we like to do but it may save them money in the short term and right now times are tough for many small businesses here in Hervey Bay so we prefer to be upfront with them.

And unless you know the content management system that I was originally referring to you’ll just have to trust me on how unusual the CSS it produced was.

Stuart

Do your commercial clients specifically ask for tables - literally say “we want tables”?

Tableless, done properly, also renders no matter the browser. Not only that tableless is more lightweight, flexible, and sitewide changes can be made in a flash rather than editing every html file.

Just because it’s too advanced for some others to understand does not mean it shouldn’t be done - I have no clue what a doctor is doing but I let him do his thing.

Lots of front end developers can’t work with tables because not everyone is living in the past. Tableless is simply better over tables for a variety of reasons, and using tables is disadvantageous to clients. It would hypocritical to say that you care for your clients when you are not letting their site reach its full potential.

Everything I say is my personal opinion, and was not endorsed nor has any connection to anyone else - the same way their opinions and actions (such as nofollow) is theirs, and has no connection to me

“And there’s a lesson for any business looking for a web designer to build a site for them - make sure that you have a guarantee that everything that will be done for you can be worked on by any other web designer.”
That’s like saying you want a guarantee that what your mechanic does can be worked on by any mechanic - if the other mechanic doesn’t understand then thats not the fault of the first mechanic (they should be penalised for being much more advanced than the other?)

You keep talking about designer this, designer that. Exactly! Designer - do I see HTML in that? No, they DESIGN. They are two completely different things, and if they don’t know what they are doing when it comes to html they should get a html specialist to deal with it.

And about this: “CSS was nothing like I had ever seen before” - read up

- Matt

Not at all Matt - sure we use tables - because they work in all browsers and that’s what commercial clients want. A site that renders no matter which browser a surfer might be using

Not only do tables still work in all browsers but any web designer can work on them and that’s important so that no business is tied to just one designer.

Thanks for your comment though - I’m sure it made you feel good - and tell Ben I said hello

And no follow on the links to your clients? Now that’s sad.

Stuart

It sucks when people talk the talk but don’t walk the walk!

I’ve seen some bad code by people who like to brag about how good they are, which:
- Uses tables (it’s not 1999 people)
- Uses inline styles (it’s called a stylesheet)
- Uses the wrong tags in the wrong places (they need to learn semantics)
- Don’t even know the fundamentals of html - html is for content, css is for presentation
- Was made using a WYSIWYG editor because they really have no clue what they are doing

Exactly like these guys: http://www.copytextonline.com.au

Oh wait, thats you!

Hypocrite.