I've been working with HTML since 2000, so I'm not exactly a stranger to it. I'm lazy though, and for small sites I don't see the need to create a php backend of sorts. I like using HTML, it's easier to preview things that way offline and see how your changes will look.

I'm looking for an overall site manager and builder that can have templates which can track absolute and relative paths, the same within pages, and also the ability to embed templates/code snippets which will also calculate absolute/relative paths as needed. ie: <template name="templatename" />. This would be handy if, for example, the header of a page was exactly the same except for the links being slightly different.

Why mention absolute paths as they technically don't need changed? The absolute paths I use are different online, than offline. I can set up a localhost to emulate the same path-type, but it's a lot of extra hassle for a quick edit just so I can preview and upload it.

Ideally if it could handle FTP uploading too, that's what I'm after. WYSIWYG features are okay, but I'd say mostly optional. I generally don't like the HTML code they produce.

Seems I am lacking an edit button. Just wanted to correct my original post and say I'm not looking for absolute paths including the url, I'm actually looking for site-root based relative paths. IE /images/file.gif as apposed to using ../../images/file.gif for things.

Apologies for my incorrect usage of the term.

doesn't dreamweaver do all this?

I know it allows for templates
including css templates
I know it tracks relative links
I don't know about absolute...
has ftp upload... it's a little flakey though on version 4 (alo have mx but haven't tried... don't know about 8)

produces fairly uncluttered code... tables inside tables with multiple column combinations can get hairy...

Are you looking for a free or commercial solution?

Commercial is fine. Just whatever does the best job of it. I believe Dreamweaver does have most of these features, but I'm not convinced it can track paths if you, say, want to move your page to another directory. The paths embeded will get a little screwed. Not 100% sure, maybe I've not had enough experience with later versions. Plus I'm not convinced you can embed a link to an external template. I find it important in a way, because it's somewhat like having a php call to an external file without the need for that kind of thing. Less resources when your site is actually online, but it'd be nice to have that ability for your offline management of the site to have embedded links to templates that are inserted when you preview/publish for you, rather than.. lots of custom editing and such.