Guidelines for adding static pages

I’m attempting to convert an existing site to WordPress, mainly for the following reasons: a) I want to add new News & Blog pages and b) so other people can make occasional simple changes to the static (or almost static!) pages.

I’m confused as to the best way to add the static pages to the site, should I be using custom templates, or just WordPress Edit & html or something better? Broadly speaking, for most of the pages, I want the text on the left with pictures, maps etc on the right. Should I use sidebars or html floats?

Also, I’m used to using Visual Studio for editing html, in comparison the Worpress editor seems pretty rudimentary + I have already lost some code switching between Visual & html. But obviously I want the pages saved on the database and I also want to insert plugin calls, etc

I’d be grateful if anyone could give me some guidance on adding static pages. Thanks

The WordPress Dashboard comes with separate sections for Edit Posts (your new News & Blog pages) and Edit Pages. The latter is for your current static content.

Styling of the frontend (what the visitor sees) can be done in the stylesheet file.

You would only need custom Page templates if you want the Pages to function completely different than they currently do. This all depends on the theme you choose/have chosen.