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October 28, 2005
WA SiteAssist - off to see the Wizard!
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!
Posted by sfegette at October 28, 2005 02:11 PM
Comments
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.
Posted by: Chris Charlton at October 28, 2005 03:47 PM
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!
Posted by: Scott Fegette at October 28, 2005 04:03 PM
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 :-)
Posted by: Joe Lowery at October 29, 2005 04:43 PM
Awesome- thanks for the clarification, Joe!
(just diving back in myself..)
Posted by: Scott Fegette at October 30, 2005 03:39 AM