How Easy? Really.

"Easy to learn and easy to use" are all in the eyes of the beholder. For an experienced designer with GoLive and Dreamweaver CS 5.5, experience but only beginner to intermediate HTML and CSS-based layout knowledge, how easy is it – really – to get up and running using the WebAssist extensions almost as WYSIWYG tools? What are the obstacles that you've found, if any? Advantages?

If you are looking to spit out a website using baked templates provided by WA Design Extender. Here are the Advantages.
1. CMS Builder, Menu Writer, Frame Builder, etc is implemented when utilizing Site Scultor to build your pages. This means that the moment you've upload everything. CMS Builder is ready and every page is already connected to the builder. So it is a matter of assigin a username and password for you and your client and letting your client import the information from there. Your almost practically done. (exception? You'll have to build the contact page from scratch...)
2. Everything is combined into on .mxp file so you won't have to install numerous exchange files to complish the same task.

Disadvantages (Based on what I've seen so far using it).
1. When publishing your site from Site Sculptor on to the web, the index.php (not in the admin folder, becomes rewritten and aimed at the CMS Builder index.php. Whic is the login page or CMS Builder Setup page. (to correct this, make sure that you have a index.html or index.php in your backup folder and use your homepage template to "Apply Template to Page" for your index.php file (that has been re-written).
2. There is no documentation on best practices when importing a complete website compressed in a zip file into Site Sculptor when Implementing a custom site design. My guess is to take a working site (complete with framework builder, site builder, css menu writer, etc) zip it and install it. If working on this write now so I'll have something solid to report.
3. if you are a web designer, and you are looking for an easy way to push your design without the need to script, this will not work. You will need to design you website, build it in either html, or php. Then your will need to implement it in Site Sculptor for replication (for multiple clients). Again, make sure that you utilize the extension before importing... It's better to be safe than sorry.
4. The CSS Menu Writer is MANDITORY, and I hate using it. I would like to make my own menu out side of the extension, if it works well, I'll implement it in CSS Menu Writer later.

These are my advantages and disadvantages... I don't consider myself to be a pro, but for the sake of thinking of beginners. This solutions, like other extensions WA needs a little more detail in the documentation. So, for me, I'm spending time understand in plugin to become comfortable, instead being comfortable wit it's features and building websites.

Again this is just me and my experiences... To each their own.

I'm sorry that my last post didn't address extender, but WA.

I have not activated Extender yet, but do own nearly all other extensions.

I work in code as much as in design, and I don't feel confined by any of WA products.

If you are a goliver, and have lost our list, see this:
golive_glhlists.com

Originally Said By: comfortzones435650

  "Easy to learn and easy to use" are all in the eyes of the beholder. For an experienced designer with GoLive and Dreamweaver CS 5.5, experience but only beginner to intermediate HTML and CSS-based layout knowledge, how easy is it – really – to get up and running using the WebAssist extensions almost as WYSIWYG tools? What are the obstacles that you've found, if any? Advantages?  

Hi Fellow GoLiver! :-)
When GL dropped the DC feature, I was left with 70 sites with no mysql/php system in place. At the same time, Adobe dropped their $499 package for web development. Too long ago to recall but do recall I bought it to get up to speed and it was useless. Then I found WebAssist. The DataAssist/SecurityAssist, and many others, replaced all the GL stuff I was using and had learned over the years. So, yes, fellow GLiver, WA is worth every penny.

But the best part of WA is the tremendous support. I've posted a zillion questions on this forum and always get help. With special issues, a paid ticket gets you top guys logging into your site/database with solutions. All my sites now use WA products and I can't say enough about how I appreciate their products and support.

Hope this helps you decide. And if you are on the GoLive list, say hi. :-) Patrice.

My experience is that you need a healthy understanding of how to fix files and code to really get out of the WA extensions doing what they're marketed to do and that you want. That's generalizing and I'm admittedly not the higher end of experience troubleshooting or figuring out which files are supposed to be modified to make the outputs work right. But I'm not a newbie either. I own most of the WA extensions (that's another story) and in my singular view of the world they are not the 'out-of-the-box' experience as the marketing suggests. More like an out of body experience in which I've spent many hours trying to figure out what went wrong. The documentation has improved, but it's still in many respects hopelessly out of touch with the beginner to intermediate level. Far too much is left to the imagination rather than stepping one through using and troubleshooting the products, outputs, and associated files. The latter is what I really want out of documentation and should be the bulk of it: which files are doing what in the outputs and here is the one you want to modify or customize to accomplish A... or B... or C etc. And if this happens instead of what you expected, here are some things to try to correct. Forums are fine, but the documentation needs to be the first line of reference. Then again, if you are pretty darn savvy with troubleshooting files and code. WA does make many products that aren't available in the same form for web design anywhere else. If you're on the high end of skills the products may just be a godsend saving you time by creating a lot of outputs in a few steps. They just haven't saved me that kind of time, which is probably a failing of both of us.