How to make a .dwt in html 5
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I bought a new HTML 5 theme. My website is still in frontpage and now the SE penalties are killing my business I have lost over $150K in revenues since July compared to the previous year and am going insolvent if I don't get my rankings back. So I have redo my website this week. I have tried many times to do this with many platforms (drupal, C5, joomla & others) and my brain keeps getting stuck. I think I figured out why. I am used to frontpage and the .dwt which allows me to easily create new pages from the .dwt and I know enough about SEO to do the job but I can't get out of the gate with the new themes. The .dwt worked with my brain & I am lost without it. My questions are
1-Is there a web editor I can get for HTML5 that I can create a .dwt from? The site I got the theme from also sells them for dreamweaver & expression web but I am concerned if I use those I will find myself right back where I am now, w/ an unsupported platform.
2-The other thing I am stuck on is when I open the index.html file in an editor and try to modify a page to get started, I try to preview the page and I can't see the CSS. Is that normal? My concern is spending the massive amount of time to do the work and then finding it doesn't display properly.
3-I also need the ability to 301 redirect my old pages which I can't do with frontpage, I'm at the point where i must redo the site ASAP and upload it but I can't get it started. I must rename most of my pages for SEO reasons, i used short form page titles not long form when I did it years ago. For instance, the domain is cheaptubes.com and I have a page that is cheaptubes.com/swnts.htm when it should be cheaptubes.com/single-walled-carbon-nanotubes.htm for proper SEO. I need to redo the site, rename the pages, and then 301 to the new pages. I had my hosting co do a 301 years ago from my old domain cheaptubesinc.com to the new one cheaptubes.com but a moz member correctly showed me yesterday that the 301 is no longer there. (another reason to get to a platform where I can do the 301's myself). I am getting a duplicate content penalty as the SE's see both sites with the same content. I think all of these things add up to the total devastation I am seeing with my business and I will go under soon if I can't start ranking well again. If I can get the new site up & the 301's working then I will resubmit the site to the SE's
4- do I need to 301 the old site too?
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I am going to tell you what you don't want to hear. Drop Frontpage, drop Dreamweaver and go with a platform such as Wordpress, Joomla, or whatever. The reason being is that they will most likely never go out of date. Front page was discontinued around 10 years ago and websites have changed so much since then.
Also a point I would like to make is to use your assets to fullest. I am just off the hip shooting here, but your website could possibly be redone for the 3-5k range, if it is just a standard service website. Your wanting to do it yourself has cost you 150k. I would hire someone that can knock it out in a week or two and focus my time on my company. I know when you own a small business you wear a lot of hats, but you have to pick and choose which hats fit.
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Thanks Lesley- I've managed to get the 301 done. Now I plan to resubmit my site to the major engines. Sadly, the state of my business now precludes me from hiring someone to do it for me. I am going to wordpress and already have it being installed with my hosting co so I can start on it. I bought the X theme.A few months ago I could've afforded the website to be built for me, now I can't.