I'm helping a client get a flash-based site up and running. They have purchased a template (contains the main .fla and associated PSD files) and as a Flash novice I'm looking into how it all works.

My question is this:

Is a flash-based site very efficient for sites with dynamic content? Much of their content will be static but they will also need to post news and updates on a fairly regular basis. So far I'm not seeing how they can do it on their own without having Flash and/or Photoshop installed. Definitely not as easy as a Wordpress or basic HTML based site. Am I missing something here or is it a lot of effort to update content on flash sites?

Thanks.

The site initially loads with a brief animation, then the main index (home) page comes up. The problem is, I don't know where it's pulling the stuff from in the Flash code after the animation completes. I can see the animation frames but not the portion that pulls the PSD files for the main structure (columns, background, etc) or the text and images that populate the various sections of the page. I'm just starting with this so I'm likely just needing to play around with it some more, but if they are going to update this on their own once it is set up I'd like to give them some impressions on whether or not it's the most efficient way to do a site. I simply have no experience with Flash so I'm not sure how easy or difficult it is to make the required modifications.

I'm sure that many Flash-based sites use dynamic content that gets hauled in from somewhere, either from databases or text files. I'm just wondering if it is as easy to do as updating say a blog post through an editing interface or an HTML page.

And don't forget that search engines don't like graphical content -- they can't get text out of it to index. The site will index poorly, compared to a site with actual text.

Are you sure that the Flash content is being dynamically updated (generated on the fly), or is this just text over a graphical background? It's not hard using CSS to position a graphic as a background, and then place text on a specific place. I suppose that there could be products (libraries) that build Flash presentations on the fly from database text content, but that seems like overkill (and a server killer, too).

I agree that excessive use of Flash and other animations is a sign of a bad website -- all sizzle and no steak.