Just checked out a slick new Dreamweaver extension from Macromedia extensibility experts WebAssist, called SiteAssist. If you need to build a site up very quickly - SiteAssist is a great wizard-based means to rapidly design, build out, and manage web sites in Dreamweaver. There's a slew of pre-designed templates and color schemes to choose from, or you can update the resulting sites with Dreamweaver's template engine and your own visuals for a more custom look/feel. Changing designs and information architecture is even a snap.
SiteAssist is a commercial extension ($149 USD), but the kind folks at WebAssist are offering $50 off for the next two weeks to anyone who wants to grab a new copy - just click here and you'll pick up the discounted price. (For the record- I've no commercial interest here, the savings is yours alone!)
Very nicely done DW extension, for those times where you need a site up yesterday- and the clock is ticking fast. Check it out!
Danilo was handing out coupons/copies at MAX and I wanted one but was shy to ask. 0:-)
I really wonder if it's extensible in that I can add my own master DW templates and pump a site out from those. I haven't found sufficient info/FAQ on their site yet.
I admittedly haven't spent much time outside the UI with the SiteAssist extension yet, but it would seem the templates it uses are all SiteAssist-specific - i.e. the editable regions follow a consistent format/data model with their wizard interface- but could be modified (or new ones created) to add your own look/feel reasonably easily. I know the WA guys were saying that updated template libraries/visual styles would be a drop-in affair, so I'd assume customizing the existing templates (or creating your own) shouldn't be too difficult. Next time I've got some spare play-around cycles I'll check it out!
To answer's Chris' question, yes, in this release you can only use our templates for the initial build. However, we do output standard DW templates for your customization. Two quick cool things about SiteAssist: first, it builds all the navigation to the site and when you add new pages - or even new branches to a site - the navigation is updated globally. Second, you can actually take the settings file it generates, plop it in another SiteAssist-ready copy of DW and it will re-generate the entire site in one step. Had to share :-)
Awesome- thanks for the clarification, Joe!
(just diving back in myself..)