Site Grinder for Quick & Stunning Web Design

Published March 16, 2009 | By Sarah

SiteGrinder has been a dream come true for me! Having a print design background, I needed something that would allow me to have complete control over my web design without having to be an expert on code. Now, learning code is extremely important, but with SiteGrinder, I can put out dynamic sites now without having to wait until I am knowledgeable enough in coding (which could take months to years).

With SiteGrinder (which is a plug-in for Photoshop) I can design a website completely in Photshop taking advantage of the Layer Comp tool to name my pages. SiteGrinder will generate the proper code necessary and put out a beautiful site in no time. Because the design is completely done in Photoshop, you can achieve the exact look and feel that you want without having to beat in your brains trying to add and edit the proper code.

SiteGrinder is also a great tool for those who are experts in code and use Dreamweaver. You can build your site through Photoshop using the SiteGrinder plug-in, then bring those pages into Dreamweaver to further edit the code as much as desired. It will save tons of time, however, and give you the exact look that you designed in Photoshop.

If you are worried about CMS, you can go into the style sheet after you have built a site and label items that you would like to be editable in a CMS system such as Cushy CMS in order to provide further editability to clients without messing up your design.

If you are concerned about SEO, Sitegrinder has fields for meta data descriptions and keywords you can add, and there is always the option of adding external SEO media as desired such as google analytics, etc.

You are almost limitless in what you can add directly through SiteGrinder. Some ideas are the following:

External media including Flash videos
Slide shows
Galleries
Placeholders for external links and data
Metadata
Forms

The part that I especially love about SiteGrinder is their terrific customer service. I got nothing but fast, gracious, and helpful assistance every time I emailed or called the support staff (which was quite a lot at first!) They also have tons of online documents and forums to give you all of the tips and tricks necessary to put out your site fast. So, check them out! You won’t be disappointed.

Posted in Tools of the Trade | Tagged Design, Photshop, software

2 Responses to Site Grinder for Quick & Stunning Web Design

Jacob Fields says:

August 18, 2009 at 9:09 pm

I found this article on a google search. I am a print designer by trade and have been using sitegrinder for about six months, love it! CMS is being put in front of me as a must for some of the sites I am working on. I was advised of Cushy from SiteGrinder and just have not tried to implement it. I really know nothing about coding and am really looking for more direction in implementing CMS with Cushy. You mentioned using the style sheet, please excuse my ignorance, but where???? I have the full creative sweet so I have access to dreamweaver but don’t really know the program. Any further help with this would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks Again,
Jacob

Reply
- admin says:
  
  August 19, 2009 at 7:24 am
  
  Jacob,
  
  I haven’t really had the chance to dig into Cushy yet, but they do have instructions on their site as to where to add the code. Probably the easiest thing would be to open up the build in Dreamweaver and switch to the view that allows you to see the code. Otherwise, you’ll just need to go to your Site Grinder data folder (located most likely under User/SiteGrinderData/sg-builds… and open up the correct html sheets. You’ll see there is a separate sheet for each page of your site. Just right click on it and choose open with Notepad, and the html document will appear. Than simply add in the appropriate code as needed (again, you’d have to depend upon the instructions from Cushy for this).
  
  I’d like to play around with this more in the fall, but what I have done more recently is create a static landing page through SG, then build a working, matching WordPress blog design through Artisteer where all of the editable pages can be. I’ve found this to be much more user friendly for customers, and blogs are increasingly popular. With WordPress, there are so many plugins that are free and give the client the ability to add photo galleries, videos, change their text and pages as much as desired, etc.
  
  Hope that helps.
  
  Reply