What's unique about SiteAssist Professional?

[jciol2009]

Hi,

I'm wondering if someone could give me a better idea what are the unique things SiteAssist Professional can give me that CSS Menu Writer/CSS Sculptor/DW template workflow doesn't.

Although I looked through everything on the SiteAssist Professional product page I feel like I still haven't been able to find anything significantly unique compared to the workflow mentioned above, besides maybe being able to use a site kit made by other people and/or using its built-in design template. I use CSS Menu Writer and CSS Sculptor, and I make my own design using Photoshop/Fireworks/Dreamweaver workflow. Is there any benefit I should consider that SiteAssist Professional can add to my existing workflow?

Any comments/advice would be greatly appreciated! :)

[Ray Borduin]

The difference is that SiteAssist pro does all of these things at once in one step.

In your current workflow CSS Sculptor can be used to create a page, then you can use it to create a template, then you can add menu writer, then you can create your pages and then update menu writer to match your site content.

SiteAssist pro does all of that for you in one wizard. It even starts populating the contents area of the css sculptor derived template with pre-designed layouts that you can design and add to yourself.

So it really helps when creating an entire site all at once and maintaining the pages and links to those pages so that they stay in synch, and allows you to keep standard contents outside of the layouts and menus.

In terms of the end result, there is little if any difference.

[jciol2009]

Hello,

Thank you for a quick response. I would like to follow up:

.....So it really helps when creating an entire site all at once and maintaining the pages and links to those pages so that they stay in synch, and allows you to keep standard contents outside of the layouts and menus.

Are you saying that SiteAssist Professional works somewhat like a CMS platform such as WordPress/Joomla/etc., maintaining both layouts and actual site contents in one package?

[Ray Borduin]

Kind of, but SA Pro is still limited in the type of functionality the contents can contain.

The idea would be to eventually get it to add more functionality in a future version. Currently contents are really content placeholders and don't have functionality. It is more of a place to quickly prototype and create a site with functioning links and pages so you can fill in the actual content and functionality in DW without having to maintain links and create all of the pages to see them in context.

Eventually having SiteAssist manage an entire functioning application is definitely the concept behind SiteAssist and the direction it is going. Currently it does that well for a html site, but doesn't add any database or server side functionality necessary to complete the application.

[jciol2009]

Interesting... It does sound to me like it would be a handy rapid prototyping tool to kick-start a project. Anything that reduces production time and effort would be a welcoming addition to my toolbox, but I might study the tool more before buying it. Thanks! :)