[tspike]

Originally Posted by waffles

Where exactly are you pulling the "elitist" title from?

I'll grant you that I should have targeted my post more specifically to the person whose post rubbed me wrong (spyderscripts).

Originally Posted by spyderscripts

With the coming of PHP CMS, the uniqueness of web sites have dropped tremendously. Any Joe Smith can have a web site if they pay someone $10 to install a PHP CMS for them.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. The web has always been about information of one form or another, and in its present form, it's about accessing as much relevant information as easily and as quickly as possible. Every person in the country has some bit of knowledge that could be used by others. From an ideal perspective, the high-quality information will get linked to, and thus rank higher on search engines (Google in particular), and the less important information will sink to the bottom of rankings.

As to uniqueness, while I'll grant you that CMS sites tend to be less unique, the capacity is still there to be creative. Above that, however, consistency is listed as an important trait for usable interfaces in just about every UI or usability textbook. If websites have more or less the same layout, users will know where to look for the information they want.

Additionally, my impression is that CMS systems will gradually replace the crappy '10-minute' HTML sites that pervaded the early web, which to me is a good thing -- CMS sites almost ALWAYS look better than "Here is a table. Here is some information. Here is a link." Still, people who really want to be artistic will do what they've always done - design a site from scratch to look the way they want it to.

Originally Posted by waffles

And as far as using the site is concerned, I really don't care how they do it. Hijack my browser size? Doesn't matter if it's javascript or PHP or what, I still hate it.

I'm not really sure what part of my post you're addressing with that. The use of PHP and javascript doesn't mean hijacking your browser size.

Originally Posted by waffles

I really don't understand your example either. Unless I'm forgetting something, no one ever mentioned using a CMS or other such script as being a bad thing. Granted, you do have a bunch of noobs who will do stupid things with those, but that has nothing to do with the script itself.

spyderscripts definitely said CMS systems are a bad thing: "If it's a PHP CMS, I just believe the web site owner didn't care enough about us visitors to change the template or to learn how to design a site themselves."

This belief is patently false and I have a hard time believing it represents the opinion of the vast majority of site visitors.

Originally Posted by waffles

But on that grain of things... I hate when you have to design your site so that anyone, regardless of actual site making skills, can edit it. At school we almost have to do everything with Frontpage so anyone can come back later and change things without having to work through your code. I wanted to do a site for my building and it's hall government, but once I realised that I'd have to use Frontpage I just lost all interest in it. I don't like to dumb things down for people. If you're going to make a site, you need to have the skills. And you should be able to do it how you wish. It forces people to know what they're doing.

I'm not entailing that just anybody should be able to edit the site, but I don't think my customer should be forced to learn HTML and CSS and wade through a bunch of code just to change the hours a store is open, or to change the price of a menu item. Furthermore, I don't think he should have to pay me to do something as simple as that. By the way, I personally can't stand FrontPage and I don't think it even compares to Joomla. BUT -- that doesn't mean I'd knock FrontPage if it accomplishes the task someone's trying to go for in a more straightforward, intuitive way than the other options.

Keep in mind that there's a big difference between designing a site and updating its content. Even with a CMS system it's necessary to have a solid understanding of the basic set of web design skills to properly design a template.