Website creation - advice please (1 Viewer)

Keith, I like the look of that Textpattern. I couldn't see a price anywhere - is it free?

Yep, totally free, and available for download at www.textpattern.com (which I guess you've already figured out!)



I would point out that it isn't the easiest "out of the box" blogging script by a long chalk, but I fancied a challenge - I can heartily recommend Wordpress (http://wordpress.org) as an alternative.

I'd also mention that the way my site looks isn't the default look of the pages generated by the software - I've hacked the code and the CSS a lot to get it to look the way it does (well I like it!)

Keith Reeder said:

Yep, totally free, and available for download at www.textpattern.com (which I guess you've already figured out!)



I would point out that it isn't the easiest "out of the box" blogging script by a long chalk, but I fancied a challenge - I can heartily recommend Wordpress (http://wordpress.org) as an alternative.

I'd also mention that the way my site looks isn't the default look of the pages generated by the software - I've hacked the code and the CSS a lot to get it to look the way it does (well I like it!)

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Yes, I had noticed the download link.

The other programme looks OK too, but seems to be only for weblogs, whereas the Textpattern can be used for any site, by the look of it. Does it need PHP and MySQL on the server, as Wordpress does? It's not a problem, as www.Easily.co.uk provide that in most of their hosting packages. It's just that, for our work website, we've bought the basic hosting package which does not include MySQL. We would have to upgrade when it's due for renewal.

Hi Diane,

Wordpress is actually surprisingly versatile and can be used for most online presences, but I'd say that Textpattern was more versatile still and I've built "proper" websites out of it too (just out of curiousity - none are still "out there" - but I couldn't find any requirement it couldn't deal with).

It is a php/MySQL system.

I would say though, that there are better solutions if you're looking to a proper, content managed website: if you can give me some ideas of what you're trying to do I can make some recommendations which "fit" better - I've tried pretty much every CMS/portal script out there!

Thanks, Keith. I will PM you about it sometime so we don't hijack this thread.

digi-birder said:

Thanks, Keith. I will PM you about it sometime so we don't hijack this thread.

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I wouldn't call that hijacking, I would be interested in the outcome and it is relevant, I would have thought.

Mick

I agree with Mick - it seems "on topic"!

Just a small pointer (if you want an international audience): Sites like geocities, bulletin boards, etc. are blocked in certain countries (China, Vietnam), I therefore went with freewebs.com, and am quite pleased. For my website, I used FP.

I started my webpage with no clue whatsoever, but FP makes it fairly easy. Having said that, the one mistake I made is that I did not first sit down and plan the site on paper, just added pages as I went along. This has, IMHO, made the site somewhat difficult to navigate now; I will probably pull it and re-do it (once I have about two weeks of time:-((

Hi Hanno,

forgive my ignorance, but what's "FP"?

You make an interesting point about planning the navigability of the site before building it - and you're absolutely right, because site navigation is the deal-breaker with most sites...

Another benefit of script-driven sites of course, is that the navigational issues are generally effectively dealt with for you.

(Sorry to bang on about scripts, but they're great!!)

Keith Reeder said:

Hi Hanno,

forgive my ignorance, but what's "FP"?

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I thought it was 'Frontpage'...most interesting Thread this for the uninitiated.

Doh!

Course it is - I used the same abbreviation myself in earlier posts!!!

(Is there a "My God, I feel totally humiliated" smiley?)




Because to the context of Hanno's post, I thought "FP" was an ISP or a free hosting service - goes to show how important context is to any "ID"..!

Keith Reeder said:

I agree with Mick - it seems "on topic"!

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OK I'll post it here then, when I have a bit more time. I just thought we were getting into more advanced web building advice, which wasn't really relevant to the original poster's questions and didn't want to 'take over' the topic.

digi-birder said:

OK I'll post it here then, when I have a bit more time. I just thought we were getting into more advanced web building advice, which wasn't really relevant to the original poster's questions and didn't want to 'take over' the topic.

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Exactly! All that was ever wanted was to know how to set up a simple web site - for free/cheaply!!

madmike

No it wasn't Mike - nobody except Digi-birder has stated their requirements in any detail, and she's clearly interested in more than "quick, cheap and easy" (which - again - you can get from scripted sites anyway).

Besides, the thread has already dealt with the cheap and easy options, and has moved on.

We'll just agree to differ, eh?

Diane, if it does get too involved/off topic we can go private, but Mickeymouse has expressed an interest too, so we can play it by ear.

Been doing a bit of messing with Frontpage with a view to getting a site together and discovered one other thing (or maybe I'm just doing something wrong): it pays to test how it looks on different screen resolutions. I use 1024x768 and the pages needed a bit of tweaking in order to look OK at 800x600 as well. It was easy to do though.

I'm definitely not 'quick, cheap and easy', as you so rightly point out, Keith!!

OK, here goes.

Our work website (http://www.ukeconet.co.uk), which wasn't built by my own fair hands and is fairly untidy, is on the basic hosting service at Easily, so cannot at the moment be converted to Textpattern or similar, as mentioned above, due to the level of hosting that we bought. My thoughts are that, when the time comes to renew the hosting and we can move up to the next level, this site could then be converted. This would allow any office member to update the conference details, etc, without taking a crash course in Dreamweaver, as was used to create the site. At the moment we are relying on a very unreliable member of staff to do this. I was thinking of downloading the files to my computer so that I can at least update it on the day we want it updating and not have to wait a week or more, which has happened in the past. I am the only other person there who can use DW, so when I'm off and the person who designed the site is uncontactable, the site cannot be updated. Does this look like it's suitable for a CMS conversion? (Content Management System, for those who don't know)

I had looked at CMS programmes some time ago, but can't remember which ones now, but left it as I didn't have time to look into it in any great detail. I knew it looked a good idea and always intended to revisit the subject as and when we were ready for it.

Now, however, one of our other directors, who does not work with us in our office, so I don't see him too often, has developed a product and he wants me to create the website for this. Initially, he bought a domain name through a company who also provided an online web-builder, which anyone could supposedly log onto and edit. They couldn't get to grips with this and roped me in to sort it. I couldn't get to grips with it either! It was awful. There was a limited number of templates and you could only edit certain parts of the page, which wasn't too clever as they managed to get the company name wrong and that was in the heading of the page, which wasn't editable!!

He's now decided to ditch them and has asked me to sort out a domain name and hosting with Easily. I intended to do the site in Dreamweaver, but thought that it would be better if they could have a setup where they wouldn't have to call me every time it needed updating. If the system was easy to use, they could do it themselves, with a bit of training, as they should have been able to do with the other company they signed with. They are very limited in their knowledge of computers, so it would need to be very simple indeed. It doesn't need to be too fancy and I don't think he'll want online ordering.

I hope that's enough info, and I hope that everyone else finds this, and the possible answers, useful.

Your site (which I happen to think looks rather good it is!) is an absolutely ideal candidate for a CMS approach, Diane.

A few reasons why:

• it's a pretty substantial site - lots of material. I'm willing to bet that the content changes pretty regularly;
• I'd guess you have multiple content authors;
• a search engine would be/is important for your site - most CMS have extremely powerful built-in search engines;
• it would be possible to mirror the current look and feel of the existing site if required, but the template approach used by script-driven CMS allows easy, global "one-hit" updates to look and feel, often just by editing a few lines of the associated CSS (Cascading Style Sheet);
• link generation of multiple page documents and site navigation are handled automatically;
• although some CMS come with built-in forum functionality (very good too), you might not want that or some of the other bells and whistles: switching such things off and on is a simple matter in the CMS Administration section;
• creation and update of content is as simple as using a word processor, or creating a posting on this forum, and non website experts can do it just as well as experienced Dreamweaver/Frontpage/HTML coders.

It's no coincidence that so many of the biggest, most regularly updated sites on the internet use this approach - can you imagine how often (say) the BBC or DWP websites update? It simply wouldn't be possible for those sites to exist as they are now if it wasn't for this approach.

DWP (the Department for Work and Pensions - my bunch) has the biggest intranet in the world: we use exactly this approach - non technical people who know the business - to create and update its content, and it works like a charm.

There are also options in many CMS for things like automatic generation of printer-friendly pages, and some can even generate your PDFs for you "on the fly".

I am in absolutely no doubt whatsoever that your site's a prime candidate for the CMS approach. Gimme a day or two and I'll go through my notes/do a bit of testing, and recommend some scripts.

They'll be completely free scripts, of course - bosses love that!



But to start you off, here's one that always impressed me: http://www.opencms.org/opencms/en/

It's a big script as these things go, but one thing that's just caught my eye is that it appears to have a module/plug-in which will automatically import static HTML pages (like yours) and convert them!

Another one I always liked was E107 - http://www.e107.org/news.php, and - silly name or not - Geeklog - http://demo.geeklog.net (this is their "demo" site - you can have a play and check out some of their alternative theme/template possibilities!)

Finally, have a good look at http://www.opensourcecms.com - it's the site I rely on for what I know about CMS, blogs, forums and whatnot...

Thanks for this information, Keith. It's very useful. I will have to study it in more detail to see which would be the most appropriate for our needs for both sites. I have seen the opensourcecms site before.

Our existing site doesn't have its content changed that often. Most of the other areas are still in preparation (by this unreliable staff member). Only this one person uploads pages/edits to the site at the moment, although myself and another colleague prepare the flyers for uploading. We have all the events for this year posted up - it's just a matter of uploading the flyer PDF and location directions when they've been prepared. It would be great if that could be done 'on the fly', or at least uploaded by anyone in the office. It's also not really essential that the site design stays the same.

I don't think we would need a forum, but some sort of feedback facility would be good, especially something where someone could request to be added to our contact list to be informed of future events. Or a facility where we could automatically send out a periodic newsletter to subscribers, although this is not a priority as we don't really have time to do this at the moment anyway.

I don't do programming, but I know HTML and CSS and can usually pick things up fairly easily. Essentially, it needs the website to be editable by any staff member, which would obviously be the case with CMS.

Decided here as it's pretty relevant and might apply to LimeyBirder's request. I'm looking for a good HTML editor program. Notepad and Word are fun but i'd like a program specifically for coding.

Drake said:

Decided here as it's pretty relevant and might apply to LimeyBirder's request. I'm looking for a good HTML editor program. Notepad and Word are fun but i'd like a program specifically for coding.

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This page has some:


http://download-ecke.de/nonags/htmledit.html


Disclaimer: download at your own risk. The site does carry out virus-checking, I believe.